B4 Chapter 32 - Duel (Patreon)

Vivi’s armor was completed, and it was time for Shilman Fried to die.

Void ether alone mapped the world around her, as Vivi’s helmet fully covered her vision. Her armor was designed to cover her entirely with asmite to the point that even getting fresh air required her to lift the visor. A horrible feature for extended battles, but for a quick showdown, void ether replaced breathing just fine.

Ascension Of Divinity active, she pushed ether into all thirteen runes inside her armor, though the asmite didn’t glow like Abyss Destroyer did. She was a dark figure with her aura of ten thousand ether concentrated entirely into her boring, but deadly armor.

She swung, and Dawnpour made contact with Shilman Fried’s staff as the man panicked the block.

The archmage flew across the hallway like a batted ball. Cracks spread across his staff, and only cracks. Vivi gritted her teeth, failing to kill him in one blow.

Vivi immediately activated Momentum Leap after him. She had to kill him now. A single opportunity for him to recover could mean her end. Momentum Leap was much slower with asmite covering her, which only made her push harder.

Shilman landed on his feet. In the void realm, Vivi felt precisely what happened with his ether much clearer. He pushed ether into the runes of his staff, only for that ether to get clogged in the cracks.

His staff was broken, and he realized that immediately. He dropped it and pushed ether into his arm instead, pointing his palm at Vivi’s sword hand. Vivi moved much faster than a person could run, with perhaps fifteen feet between them, but that was enough for Shilman to make an effort to stop her.

He zapped her fingers, as if trying to make her drop her sword by force. His ether was stopped by her gauntlet, which literally could not open. The gauntlet on her right hand was the shape of a ball with a cylindrical hole to fit Dawnpour’s hilt in. The only way to detach the sword from her armor was to call Dawnpour to spatial storage.

Dawnpour's tip was five feet before Shilman’s face; he concentrated all the ether he had into his palm and released a discharge straight at Vivi.

Death Sense regarded this as a catastrophic threat, something to instantly burn a boss monster. The violent discharge of wisps hit her chestplate directly.

She felt no pain. The wisps grazed the asmite, scratching it, before being redirected off and to her sides.

Vivi slammed her sword down. From his left shoulder to his right thigh, she cut right through.

She cut again, slashing his ethereal figure into pieces. Wisps leaked rapidly into the air from his mortal wounds as he collapsed onto the ground.

She wasn’t done. She replaced Dawnpour with her old war hammer, filling its strife runes, and slammed it on what she hoped was his corpse. His presence had dwindled after the second cut through his heart—she was fairly sure he was dead—but there was a slight chance he could live with some fifth elevation nonsense Vivi didn’t understand.

Just to be safe, Vivi grabbed a spear from a display shelf on the wall and pierced the largest piece of Shilman’s remaining body with it. She took him into the smithy and tossed him into the red-hot forge, emberstones burning with ether. Shilman’s corpse burned.

The smithy fell into silence, with a large ethereal aura coming from the beacon rising from where Vivi had first cut him down.

Lucius was cackling within her core. “There you go! A fifth elevation hunter defeated! Collect his ether!”

Beyond the hallway, more ethereal auras, though much weaker, were rushing in. As they got closer, Vivi could map out the shapes of their outside-carved armor. These were Adalene’s guards. Compared to Shilman, they were nothing.

It’s not over, Vivi thought. How do we deal with these guys?

An instinctive urge told Vivi to kill them. For a moment, she was about to agree. Killing the guards would be as easy as weaving Dawnpour through their armor. Vivi could collect their ether and probably capture the Queen afterward, asking her where her friends were captured, or she could easily escape the city.

Or she could just kill everyone in the city just as easily for their ether.

Immediately as that thought came, Vivi pushed her aura of ten thousand ether on her void core, forcing its door shut. It refused, making her burn ten thousand more. Even still, her void core threatened to take control of her.

With a grimace, and with Lucius’s help, they forced it shut.

She found herself in pitch blackness, breathing the musty air inside her armor with heavy breaths, already sweating. This armor really wasn’t supposed to be worn for extended periods.

It had done its job. Shilman was dead.

Without the void realm, her thoughts were much more cluttered, and she suddenly felt nauseous. A light amount of void ether always made her feel like a tactical genius, able to consider the smartest solution to any problem almost instantaneously. Until, of course, void ether threatened to take the solutions into its own hands.

She’d just brutally murdered a fifth elevation hunter.

And she was about to get caught for that with Adalene’s guards outside. She was stuck inside pitch-black armor that she’d designed to only use with void ether active.

She hadn’t even made the visor removable. The helmet was quite literally a coating of metal wrapping head like a cocoon, and removing it with her ball-shaped hands would be impossible. She couldn’t move her fingers at all. Really, her armor had one goal; to hold Dawnpour while Vivi let void ether go loose.

Luckily, she had spatial storage. She removed her helmet into spatial storage, finally letting her see.

Unsurprisingly, she was met with the smell of blood and burned archmage. She wrinkled her nose, and her nausea grew. Her armor was already splashed with blood.

Outside the room, she could hear Adalene’s two guards pause at Shilman’s corpse. They went silent. She doubted she was in any risk of death. More so, she was afraid that her best option would be to kill Adalene’s guards as well.

She really didn’t want to do that. Shilman was evil, sure, and she didn’t regret his death, but she wouldn’t want to kill random Knights. But if she let them see her, everyone would know she’d been the one to toss Shilman’s corpse into a burning forge.

She found herself frozen, lightly shaking inside her armor.

“I didn’t know you were this violent,” Lucius said, amused. “That was beautiful. How are you feeling?”

We’re alive… Vivi thought. Logically speaking, that was the most important thing. Now that void ether was gone, however, the gravity of what she’d done sunk in.

Lucius watched her from her core. He seemed to read her mood. “We had the goal of killing Shilman, and we accomplished that. Nobody will blame you for focusing on survival.”

Vivi doubted that. Shilman had allies. Fifth elevation hunters, who were quite literally trying to kill a god. Vivi had just brutally murdered their ally.

“Hey…” a voice came from the doorway. Vivi turned her head to see an armored man, horns poking out of his helmet. Spotting her bloodied armor, he froze, hand inching toward his sword.

“I’m friendly,” Vivi said. “That’s Shilman Fried. He’s dead.”

Ether oozed out of the red veins of the outside-carved armor. Vivi must have looked rather silly in her armor in comparison.

“You’re Vivian Runeblessed, correct?” the man asked. He took off his helmet, revealing a demon with a sharp, bulky face, looking much less threatening when faced with the scene before him. “Do you wish to follow the pact?”

The pact? Vivi asked in her thoughts.

“Ah, that agreement thing,” Lucius said. Freimar’s pact. It vows to separate qualms of fifth elevation hunters from the regular world. If you killed Shilman, that essentially makes the event not Adalene’s problem. It also means that now that you’ve replaced Shilman as the strongest member present in the city, you will replace him as the most important person in the city.”

Hm, Vivi thought. She’d need to verify that later. Knowing Lucius, the details of that were definitely simplified.

“I’d like to meet Adalene,” Vivi said either way, “and I want to free my friends from wherever they are being held captive.”

The knight lowered his head. “I will arrange this to the best of my ability.”

He saluted and exited, leaving Vivi in the smithy.

“Let’s not forget to collect Shilman’s ether,” Lucius said.

Vivi sighed, but moved outside to collect a surprising eight million ether from the bloodied hallway, where another guard stood in shock. Vivi had really done this.

She didn’t regret it, but somehow, she felt awful regardless.

I just want to see my friends, Vivi thought. Maybe Lortel can talk some sense into me.

And if she was lucky, they’d be on their way back to Shivenar sooner than later.