3.20: Duel! Ash vs Allexus

All the clan members who were online assembled behind me in preparation for my duel against Ash. They all eagerly introduced themselves to our new members while Scythe and I discussed what it would take to set up the new death magic enchantment. Unfortunately the setup wasn’t something that could be done in a short amount of time, so we would just have to take it easy. Ash seemed to click with everyone, she was outgoing and friendly, even cracking jokes with Nialla and Bray. Kyra seemed standoffish and quiet, and I was having trouble getting a good read on her. When she did speak, however, her Irish accent seemed to enchant everyone around her; it was so utterly sexy and it fit her so well. When we were finally all properly introduced, I let everyone into my new “boss room.”

“Seriously Allison? A little conceited are we?”

I merely shrugged and gave Emelia a wide smile.

“Come on… you know you love it. It’s an entire room dedicated to your favorite person.”

She scoffed loudly and shook her head in amusement.

“You are too much, babe, but I still love you, massive ego and all.”

I opened my inventory and retrieved my Power Limiter. I sighed softly and looked at the enchanted choker. It felt so good to go without it… I felt so… free, so powerful. But all I had to do was look at my uncontrollable rage and the way my demonic body affected my mind even outside of combat, and I knew it was better for me to keep it on. I looped it around my neck and closed the clasp. The runes glowed faintly and I felt a massive wave of weakness hit me so strongly that it nearly brought me to my knees.

“What’s that?”

Emily held me tightly to steady me as she looked up at Ash.

“It’s a Power Limiter. At full power, Allie’s spells and attacks are so powerful that they are extremely dangerous for anyone nearby. It reduces her total power and levels by 80%.”

Once I recovered I stood up and looked over at Ash. She was studying me with a curious look on her face.

“So wait, you’re going to fight me at only level 40? That hardly seems like a fair fight since I’m level 62. I’m not opposed to you using your full power if you want. I would love to see just how strong you are.”

I shrugged and waggled my eyebrows at her in a gesture that basically said ‘we’ll see about that.’

The others withdrew to the viewing area that each room was setup with, and I walked up the steps and sat on my throne. Ash watched me closely, her muscles twitching slightly in preparation for whatever might happen. I smiled at her, baring my fangs.

“You can start whenever.”

She nodded once, but remained stationary.

I sighed softly and shook my head.

“Letting me take the first move? How generous.”

I stood up slowly and watched Ash tense up like a coiled spring. I stretched out my limbs dramatically and tilted my head side to side to pop my neck. I feigned a yawn and then focused all my energy on my demonic speed as I burst off the platform towards her. Even with her waiting for me to strike, the speed of my movement still caught her off guard. As I landed on the floor next to her, I reached down with a single hand and extended my claws to slow my momentum. I pivoted on my heel so that I was now behind her and I lifted my other hand high and raked my claws downwards to swipe at her back. Just as they were about to tear into her, my vision was suddenly filled with a small cloud of smoke and my hand simply struck the empty air. I growled in irritation and I jumped backwards and spread my wings. I flapped a few times to create a forward draft in an effort to clear the smoke from the area. As I was scanning the area, I suddenly felt a jolt of pain in my side. My head snapped in that direction and I locked eyes with Ash as she pulled out the long jagged blade that had just impaled me deeply. I let out a throaty growl and sneered in anger.

“Power Limiter release: 30%!”

My level shot up to 88 and I bit my lip as the pleasure coursed through my body.

Instead of attempting to get close again, I shot into the air and used my wings to hover in place. I reached both of my hands towards Ash and saw the look of determination on her face.

“[Blastburn]! [Corrupting Fire]!”

I launched both spells simultaneously and smiled as the edge of the small explosion from my [Corrupting Fire] attack had caught her in the side and sent her flying upwards. She used the momentum to turn in midair and as her feet connected with a pillar she pushed off and launched herself towards me. I simply flew higher and watched as she sailed uselessly below me. I was about to cast a spell with each of my hands when I saw the chains around Ash’s wrists unwind quickly as she threw both of her shortswords towards me. As one of them struck me in the leg, I saw her hand ignite in bright orange flames. The fire traveled the length of the chain and shot into the sword in an instant, and I roared at the searing pain. Just before she was about to hit the ground, Ash maneuvered her body so that she was going to land mostly on her feet. As she landed hard, the blade embedded in my thigh jerked free and she pulled the chains back towards her. She caught both swords and looked up at me with a wide grin on her face. I scoffed loudly and held my hand to my side.

“Your speed and attacks are most impressive, Ash. As is your athleticism. I will admit that I vastly underestimated you… But easy mode ends now. Power Limiter release: 50% [Corruption’s Caress]. [Blessings of Corruption]. [Summon Arcane Heavy Armor]. [Thorns of Corruption].”

I slowly descended to the floor and landed hard, my heavily armored boots clanging on the stone. I drew both of my swords and sneered at Ash as I slowly walked towards her. When I was about 20 feet away, I channeled my energy into my speed and the world blurred around me as I shot forward with the point of one of my swords raised. Just as before, the second before my attack struck her, a cloud of smoke filled my field of vision and my sword met no resistance. Instead of moving backwards, I stopped my momentum by planting both of my feet and scraping my boots along the stone floor. As I scanned the room for my target, the smoke in the area became even thicker than before and when I moved around slightly I noticed that it was spreading throughout the room.

Clever girl.

I felt the stab of a blade hit my armor on my left side, followed by another on my right calf. Ash was using the smoke to hide her movements and darting from one spot to another to attack me seemingly at random. While her flaming swords did manage to take a few chunks out of my armor and knocked a bit of my HP off, it wasn’t doing much beyond pissing me off.  I saw a flicker of movement to my right out of the corner of my eye and I whirled and rushed towards it. I swung my swords and hit empty air again, before hissing at a blade striking my left shoulder from behind.

Dammit Allie. Stop acting based on pure reaction. You’re falling into her trap. Focus! Trying to predict her movements or relying on your demonic senses is worthless. She’s a fucking ninja, she will be using every trick to keep you from knowing where she is. She couldn’t fully dodge out of the way of my AoE spell earlier… so that’s the key. Go big, Allie. No kill like overkill.”

“Power Limiter Release: 80%.”

I moaned softly as I spread my wings and lifted myself into the air until I was about 30 feet up. I continued to allow Ash to strike me from various angles while I allowed my MP to recharge fully for what I was planning. If it hadn’t been regenerating so quickly it wouldn’t be long before I would have to activate [Stoneskin] to mitigate the damage I was taking. When my MP was completely full, I held my hands out in front of me with my palms almost touching. I started rapid fire casting my three attack spells, alternating between [Coldfire] [Corrupting Fire] and [Blastburn]. Every time I cast a spell, I moved each hand further and further apart to fully bombard the area in a wide swathe of devastation. I turned in place and continued to blast every square inch of my throne room until I had completely run out of MP. I let the dust settle and slowly descended to the floor next to Ash. She was laying on her side with burns and scorch marks all over her body. The others rushed out of the viewing area and ran towards us as I moved closer to Ash. When she saw me approaching her, she looked up at me and glared.

“Where was the duel?! The skill against skill or trying to beat me at my own game?! You just went 'cheat codes activated' and blew everything up! That was more you flipping the table because you were losing on objectives!"

I cocked my eyebrow and scoffed loudly.

“Uh… Demon Overlord… Remember? I never said anything about playing fair.”

“But... that’s... Ugh!! Fine! You win this round! But I swear I'm stabbing you in the ass one of these days!”

“Hey, at least I didn’t use my World Tier skill.”

“... You have a World Tier skill?!”

Scythe knelt down next to Ash and started casting healing spells while I took several steps backwards. As I channeled all of my MP into casting [*Overlord of Corruption*] the air grew heavy like the moments before a storm. Energy crackled off my body like sparks of red and black electricity. All of my clanmates assembled before me looked like a tremendous weight was pushing down on them as I held my hands out to the sides with my fingers spread wide. As the power grew in my core, I felt it build more and more and push its way out of every pore in my body. The dark crimson smokey shapes of my Corrupted formed around me, each one that appeared looking more menacing than the last. When the last figure formed and took the shape of Emelia, she moved to my side and kissed me softly on the cheek before standing next to me with her arms crossed over her chest.

I walked back over to my clanmates and did my best to ignore their shocked stares. I reached down and helped Ash to her feet, but she was more interested in studying my Corrupted. She walked across the room and stepped close to Mellic’s berserker form. Even though his face was mostly formless, it was obvious the massive representation of my creator was glaring down at her, but she merely stuck her tongue out at him. I laughed softly at the gesture and looked at the rest of my Corrupted. I stopped when I came to the form of a muscular man with long flowing hair who was holding a huge scythe. I quickly opened my character menu and switched to my Minion menu, and saw the photo of Scythe’s character displayed there. I selected it and waved my hand in front of me. As his body materialized in front of me he turned towards me, surprised.

“Uh… What just happened?”

“How are you my minion?”

“I’m sorry… your what?”

I showed him my menu and he cocked his head to the side as he read it. He opened his own menu and showed me.

“It must be this [Corrupted Blood] effect I have on me. I thought it was something to do with being partially undead, but this makes so much more sense.”

“You don’t have a Blood Tithe meter do you? And… What class even are you now?”

“No. No Blood Tithe meter. I’m a Phantom Reaper. I guess that’s basically a variant of a grim reaper? All my stats and skills get stronger the more people die around me. I will also passively drain life from any living creatures unless I specifically turn that skill off. It’s strange, I have to manually choose to not do it, or else it will automatically just start absorbing life-force. The cool thing is that even once I’m full on HP and MP, I’ll still keep absorbing more and basically give myself pools of temporary Hit Points or Magic Points that I can use. They still have a limit, I tested it with Bray and Emily. That was an impressive display of power, by the way. And an effective way to get around her dodging. She’s right about it being a cheap win though.”

I scowled at him playfully and nodded.

“Yeah, I know. But, truth be told, I didn’t want to show her up that badly. If I fully channeled my power into my speed I would have made her seem slow in comparison. I didn’t want to do the whole ‘win harder’ thing and make her feel inadequate. The way I did it displayed my power, my brutality, and also my drive to win. But I also let her take pride in the fact I couldn’t hit her without resorting to such cheap tactics.”

Scythe looked momentarily taken aback.

“That is surprisingly empathetic, Allie. Now I’m not saying you don’t have empathy… you just tend to be a bit… I don’t want to say self-centered… more like… you’re the main character in a story and we’re all just side characters. Letting Ash think she was actually able to outspeed you was probably a big boost to her confidence. You really are an amazing clan leader.”

“Thank you, Spencer. That means a lot coming from you.”

“Anytime, Allie.”

My eyes flicked to the notification on the side of my screen warning me that it had been nearly 5 hours since my last bathroom break and that it was almost 4:00 in the morning. I walked over to Emily who was chatting with Ash and Kyra and nudged her playfully. She smiled at me warmly and turned towards me.

“Hey babe, Kyra says she wants to take a look at your swords to see the level of Judas’s skill when it comes to forging Hellforged Voidsteel.”

“Sure.”

I drew one of my blades and shifted it in my hand so that the grip was now facing the tall redhead. She took it and her arm barely sagged despite its weight. She took a few steps back as she studied the blade closely. She moved it around in her hands and looked at it from different angles before giving it a few test swings. She nodded once before walking back over to us. She held the handle out for me to take it and I gently lifted it from her hand.

“Whatcha think? Pretty impressive?”

“Honestly? It’s… adequate. The blade could have been weighted better so that you get a different balance that makes it easier to slash with. It was also forged in such a way that it severely limited the total number of enchantments that could be placed on it. Its overall weight could have been drastically reduced by making use of the length of the blade to remove sections of the metal within the blade itself. Finally, it’s all function and no form. There’s no artistry behind it. For you I would have made the handle something like the figure of a woman stretching out her arm that slowly gives way to an elegant yet no less deadly blade. I would have placed the jeweled pommel that’s on here in such a way that it looked like she was cradling a ball of fire in her other hand.”

My mouth hung open at her brutal critique of what I considered the best weapons I had ever seen. But, at the same time, I was astounded at the possibility that she was so above Judas’s skill level with crafting that his best work couldn’t even compare.

“I can see why Emily and Judas recruited you, Kyra. Thank you for your honesty. I guess I have a lot to learn when it comes to crafting. You are going to make an amazing addition to our clan… and I’m going to make sure that you are well supplied to craft anything and everything you desire. And Ash… I know I didn’t say so earlier… but you were amazing. I had to release 50% of my power to even keep up with you at all… and your ability to dodge was ridiculously good. So much so that I had to resort to otherwise cheap tactics to win. I’m glad that Kyra insisted on you joining us as well.”

While it was a minor stretching of the truth, I knew that my words would be appreciated. Ash confirmed this by giving me a happy smile.

“I am curious to see just how powerful you are without the limiter. The fact your magic is just as, if not more powerful than your physical attacks is crazy. If I hadn’t seen you fight in the Clan Battle I would think that you are primarily a mage.”

Emily laughed and shook her head.

“Give her a chance to prove you wro-”

She yawned loudly and turned towards me.

“We gotta log out, babe. I’m not sure how much longer I can ignore this notification.”

“I was wondering why everyone here was awake so late. It’s already past noon here… So it’s got to be late for you guys.”

“To be fair, we don’t normally play this late. We’re just getting ready for this PVP clan challenge thing we’re setting up. Although, some of us set up a room that is more than a little… ostentatious.”

I scoffed and playfully elbowed my fiancée’s arm. She winked at me and gave me a sly grin before yawning again loudly.

“Alright, ladies, I think my beloved and I need to call it a night… It really was awesome meeting both of you, I’m sorry we can’t stick around for longer tonight… But we’ll definitely be on later today. Before we go, I’ll have Judas show you around the castle and take you to your… Room? Rooms?”

“Just one room is fine. Preferably somewhere close to the forge so Kyra can sneak off whenever she needs to.”

I waved my demon retainer over and he moved quickly to my side. I asked him to locate a suitably large room for our newest members as close to the forge as possible, before bidding everyone goodnight and logging out for the night.