Chương 168: Duel of Fate

She took no note of the fact that the Ebon Blade had already impaled her, and instead stepped back, letting the wound close without issue as she walked to some imagined spot to start their duel. It annoyed the blade that she shrugged off a mortal wound. It wasn't sure how best to strike down a god that could ignore being stabbed in the chest. +67 Life Force. -84 Life Force. As if she were reading its mind, the demon queen said, "If you strike me in the heart, I will set you free.

If you don't, well then, we will fight until your wielder falls apart completely. Then I will claim you for my very own for the rest of eternity." The weapon did not like those terms, but before it could protest, she'd already raised her spear and launched a number of exploratory feints to gauge its ability. Each of them was faster than a mortal could have moved, but the blade avoided them easily. All except for one, which it parried.

It could have avoided that one, too, but it was distracted as it gauged the condition of its wielder's body. While only a few seconds had passed since its initial embrace with the Demon Queen, it had been in less than optimal condition even before that, and it was hemorrhaging dozens of Life Force every second as its magics worked to keep the delicate mechanisms that powered the machine from melting down entirely. -224 Life Force. I need to end this quickly, but how?

The blade looked past the blinding light of the Nuella's spiritual corona as she flipped her weapon from a spear to a halberd and lunged at it again. She was toying with it and in no particular hurry. Meanwhile, it only had a few minutes before it was entirely depleted, and the only body in all of hell that was capable of wielding it melted down to slag. At the center of the Demon Queen's soul, there was so much power that it almost blinded the blade.

As it shoved her blade aside and lashed out with a swing just to force her to keep her distance, it looked for her heart. It hadn't been where it expected the first time, but that didn't surprise the blade. She was likely as malleable as her realm. That wouldn't save her it could target it, though. This deity might be many things, but the blade was confident it was still better at fighting than she was.

Several seconds, and half a dozen exchanges later, it was forced to reckon with a terrible truth: either she didn't have a heart, in which case its cause was lost already, or her power prevented it from finding it, which was nearly as bad. I have to find her weakness, the blade thought as it waited for the moment she switched weapons again before it launched a blistering attack that she couldn't keep up with.

Its blade raked her flesh three times in as many seconds, earning a trickle of life force each time, but even as a boundless font of energy, those blows only bought it seconds, not minutes. +191 Life Force. -138 Life Force.

"So quick!" she purred, "But you'll be even quicker in my hand. Perhaps I will wield you at the end of days and we can bring down the heavens together, if I have not tired of you by then." The Ebon Blade did not respond.

Instead, as she taunted it and drew forth a monstrous claymore from thin air, it used Bolt to snap back to her location, removing her arm and stabbing her in the chest in half a dozen different places, looking for her heart, before she casually knocked its wielder a dozen feet backward with a casual open slap from her other hand. +459 Life Force. -889 Life Force.

"So eager, too," she laughed as her arm regrew and a ball and chain appeared in her hand.

"I thought you didn't want to penetrate me?" It didn't dignify that one with an answer either, but it also didn't spring right back into the action because her weapon was acting strangely. The spiked steel ball danced around like it was on a leash, and longed to drag its wielder around rather than being flung as would normally be the case. Concerned it might be some strange projectile weapon, the sword slipped behind the glowing rift, placing the thing between itself and the demon queen.

As it did so, it tried to study it, but aside from a shape that might have been a keyhole for the giant key it had glimpsed, and the energy leaking from creation, there was nothing there. That thought occurred to it a tenth of a second before the morning star flew through the blinding energy, caving in the side of the Warbringer's helmet. As the ball retracted, it charged toward the Demon Queen. She had time to lash out at it one more time before it reached her, though.

This time, the ball came from the side, but it deflected oddly, wrapping around its blade and forcing the weapon's wielder to leap sideways to avoid becoming disarmed. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. -993 Life Force. This maneuver was clever and unexpected, but it didn't save Nuella's head. Still, that didn't seem to trouble her at all, and a new one appeared in a burst of flame almost immediately after the old one vanished.

"Ahahah," she admonished it with a wagging finger as the dents in Warbringer's head popped out one at a time in a series of pings.

"That rift isn't for you. Stop playing with it and start playing with me, or I'll have to get jealous."

"Jealous of what?" the blade asked, standing there. It wasn't holding back out of politeness. After the last attack, it wanted to glimpse what weapon the demoness intended to use before it struck. Still, even this small delay hurt it. The blade was well below half Life Force now, and falling fast, and it still hadn't succeeded in finding her heart.

"I can be very… rough on my toys," she answered, manifesting a huge secreted battle axe as she spoke.

"I can even break them, but that doesn't mean other people can touch them. They are mind after all, just like you will be soon enough." This time when she came at it, the blade was more than ready. It didn't know what the axe did, but when the serrations started to buzz and spin, it stepped around them parrying the haft of the weapon instead of the blade before using a Vorpal Strike to thrust through the body of the axe itself. -437 Life Force.

Then, using its leverage and strength, it whipped the blade around, slamming it into its owner. Nuella cried out in pain for the first time then. At least the blade hoped that it was pain. It wasn't completely sure. While she was busy suffering from its horrible grinding motions, it stabbed her another half a dozen times in her torso and limbs, desperately looking for where she might have hidden her heart. +461 Life Force.

The ground was soaked with her blood before she vanished, and reappeared on the far side of the volcanic island they were dueling on.

"You're pretty good at this, aren't you? That's alright," she said, wiping the blood off of her face as her wound healed so quickly it might never have actually happened.

"I've got lots of other toys we can play with." As she spoke, she unleashed her rings, which soared into the air and danced around them both in irregular overlapping orbits. The blade paused, settling into a guard stance that would allow it to respond in almost any direction. Its first response was to use bolt to try to flee the ring, which had become almost like an arena wall with the rift to creation in the center.

Only the fact that it would be forced to approach the lava and increase temperatures further prevented that plan. What does she plan to do? It wondered as she began circling it again, this time changing her bladed whip for a rapier of liquid mercury. Is she going to summon demons to fight on her behalf? Will she overwhelm me with numbers? That struck the blade as unlikely.

Not only were most demons unlikely to survive these temperatures for any length of time, but she seemed to have no interest in anything but it at the moment. Adding others to her play time would defeat the purpose. It found out a moment later when she launched an attack that wasn't so different from its own Shifting Blade technique. The rapier's pointed tip extended endlessly, but the blade only needed to juke its head to one side, and it easily ducked under the blow and surged forward.

She didn't seem the least bit surprised, nor did she attempt to reel it in. The blade found out why a moment later when the same tip kept extending from another one of the rings. She's using them as portals… the weapon realized, blind sided by the trick. The weapon rolled under the second strike in a quick somersault, but that didn't stop it either. There were nine portals, so, without reeling her weapon in, it could presumably strike at the blade's wielder two more times at least.

The question was which two directions would those attacks come from? It wasn't just two; the blade found out too late, as it moved toward a direction it thought had already been used up, only to get pierced through the leg for its troubles. Just because she's used one portal doesn't mean she can't use it again as many times as she wants, it realized belatedly. -315 Life Force. It slashed down, severing the metal strand that anchored it in place. That should have broken whatever strange magic drove her rapier.

Breaking the blade anywhere was breaking it everywhere. It didn't stop moving, though, and pierced it through the back and then the side. The sword sliced at these wounds, and managed to dodge a few of the others before it was firmly held in place by twenty-three different strands of metal. -2, 143 Life Force.

From the time she first thrust to the time she'd transformed her arena into a metal web, less than half a minute had passed, but the only empty spaces that were left were where she stood, and where the rift to creation floated, just out of reach. It ignored both of those, though, and instead studied the web. The blade only needed to look closer to see why the metal still worked: because, like the quicksilver it was, it had flowed together at hundreds of other junctures.

The sword hadn't narrowly missed itself in those places; it had rejoined itself into a single flowing whole.

"Good! You did very well!" she cried out, moving as close to it as she could without breaking her web.

"I knew you would be the perfect plaything. No one has ever dodged so many strikes from the Weaver's Blade before."

"It was not enough," the Warbringer gasped, slowly winding down.

"It wasn't," she agreed, "But you never really had a chance anyway. It's better this way. How could you ever have struck the heart of a heartless Goddess?" -1, 639 Life Force.