I Can Copy And Evolve Talents - Chapter 1169: Northern vs Bairan [part 1]
Chapter 1169: Northern vs Bairan [part 1]
The desert sand erupted as Northern launched himself forward. The odachi in Bairan’s hand came up in a blur of lightning-wrapped steel, the clash sending a shockwave that carved a crater fifteen feet wide beneath them.
Northern’s blade vanished the instant before impact—reappeared at Bairan’s kidney line. The Sword King twisted, odachi reversing grip, catching the invisible edge on his crossguard.
Sparks of lightning traced the phantom sword’s outline for a heartbeat before both warriors exploded apart, each taking a dozen steps across empty air.
They met again above the dunes.
Steel screamed against steel. Northern feinted high, his blade flickering visible-invisible-visible in rapid succession. Bairan didn’t track the weapon—he tracked Northern’s shoulders, his hips, reading the body that wielded the sword. The odachi carved upward through where Northern’s blade would be, lightning crackling along its edge, and caught Illusioned Hefter just as it phased back into reality.
The force sent Northern spinning. He converted the momentum into a lateral slash that would have opened Bairan’s throat. The Sword King leaned back until his spine was parallel to the ground, odachi coming around in a rising arc that forced Northern to parry with both hands.
They hung there, locked blade-to-blade, suspended forty feet above the desert floor.
Lightning crawled down Bairan’s odachi toward Northern’s hands. Northern’s blade vanished, reappearing behind Bairan’s guard, forcing the Sword King to release and spin away. They both dropped, hit sand simultaneously, and exploded forward again.
The night erupted with their violence.
Northern’s blade traced seven lines of silver light in a single second—each one aimed at a different vital point, each one timed to manifest precisely when it would meet flesh.
Bairan’s odachi became a wheel of lightning, deflecting strikes Northern hadn’t even made yet, reading the rhythm of invisible steel through nothing but the whisper of displaced air and the minute shifts in Northern’s stance.
Their feet never stopped moving. Northern advanced in a spiral pattern, each step calculated to force Bairan’s guard to overextend. The Sword King gave ground in measured retreats, each backward step baiting Northern’s aggression into killing zones where the odachi waited.
A thrust aimed at Bairan’s heart. The Sword King sidestepped, odachi coming down to pin the invisible blade against the sand. Northern released his grip, rolled forward over Bairan’s lowered guard, and Illusioned Hefter materialized in his hand mid-roll to slash at the Sword King’s exposed back.
Bairan’s odachi was already there—reversed grip, blade pointed down, catching Northern’s strike on the flat. The lightning discharge sent Northern tumbling across the sand. He converted the fall into a backward handspring, came up with his blade already in motion.
They clashed in the air again. Once. Twice. Seven times in three seconds.
Each impact sent them higher. The desert floor fell away—fifty feet, a hundred, two hundred. They fought in the space between earth and cloud, their swords leaving trails of silver and electric blue against the night sky.
Northern attacked from seventeen different angles simultaneously—his blade phasing in and out of visibility so rapidly it created afterimages of steel that existed and didn’t exist in the same moment. Bairan’s odachi moved in perfect defensive spirals, each rotation precisely calibrated to intercept threats that hadn’t fully materialized.
But Northern was learning. Each exchange taught him the rhythm of Bairan’s defense. The Sword King fought in perfect circles—every movement flowing into the next without beginning or end. To break that circle, Northern needed to—
He stopped attacking.
The cessation was more violent than any strike. Bairan’s odachi continued its defensive rotation, found nothing, and for a fraction of a heartbeat, the Sword King’s guard opened.
Northern was already there.
Illusioned Hefter thrust invisible through the gap, aimed at Bairan’s throat. The Sword King twisted, odachi coming around impossibly fast, but Northern’s blade was already gone—reappeared at waist height, cutting upward. Bairan bent backward, spine arching, but Northern’s follow-through brought the blade around in a reverse grip slash that should have disemboweled him.
The odachi’s pommel caught Illusioned Hefter just below the hilt, deflecting it by inches. Lightning erupted from the point of contact, sending Northern tumbling through the air. He spun through the discharge, landed on nothing, and pushed off empty air to attack from a new vector.
They fell and rose and fell again, fighting across three dimensions as if gravity were merely a suggestion. The clouds above became their battlefield. They clashed within the vapor, their blades leaving cleared channels through the moisture where their strikes displaced the air itself.
Northern emerged from one cloud bank, blade invisible, stance suggesting a downward cut. Bairan rose from below, odachi held in both hands above his head, prepared to meet the strike. At the last instant, Northern twisted midair—his body rotating horizontal, blade manifesting at hip level in a slash aimed at Bairan’s ribs.
The Sword King released his odachi with his left hand, let the blade drop to catch Northern’s strike on its edge while his now-free hand shot out and grabbed Northern’s sword arm at the wrist.
For a moment they hung there—eye to eye, close enough to share breath. Lightning crackled along Bairan’s grip, burning through Northern’s sleeve. Northern’s blade phased invisible and out of the Sword King’s trap, manifested again in his other hand already cutting toward Bairan’s neck.
Bairan released Northern and caught his falling odachi with his free hand, bringing it up in time to parry. The clash sent them both spiraling away through the clouds, each tumbling through vapor trails of their own violence.
They emerged on opposite sides of the cloud layer. The moon illuminated them from above—two figures suspended in the night, swords held ready.
Northern attacked first. He didn’t move toward Bairan—instead he pushed off the air itself, building momentum through empty space, each push creating small whirlwinds of displaced atmosphere. By the time he reached the Sword King, his speed had tripled.
Illusioned Hefter came in visible, a straight thrust with Northern’s full weight behind it. Bairan’s odachi deflected it high. Northern’s blade vanished mid-deflection, reappeared cutting low. Bairan dropped into the strike, letting it pass over his lowered body while his odachi swept up from below.
Northern twisted, avoided the counterstrike, and planted his foot on the flat of Bairan’s rising blade. He used it as a springboard, launching himself into a spinning slash that carved three separate arcs through the space where Bairan’s head had been.
The Sword King had already ducked into a roll through empty air, his odachi extended behind him in a one-handed grip, the blade’s lightning trail serving as a barrier that Northern couldn’t cross without being electrocuted.
Northern crossed it anyway. Illusioned Hefter phased through the lightning, materialized on the other side, and would have taken Bairan’s leg off at the knee if the Sword King hadn’t somehow anticipated this and brought his odachi around in a reverse grip slash that caught Northern’s blade at an angle.
The deflection sent Northern spinning. He used the momentum, his body rotating through seven full rotations before his feet found purchase on a condensed platform of air that shouldn’t have been able to support his weight. He pushed off immediately, blade already in motion.
They clashed in the center of the cloud layer. Steel met steel fifty-seven times in eight seconds. Neither gave ground because there was no ground to give—only air and velocity and the perfect mathematical precision of their blades finding each other through darkness and vapor.
Northern’s attacks came from impossibility—his blade visible from one angle, invisible from another, existing in a state of uncertainty that should have made defense impossible. But Bairan defended anyway, his odachi moving in perfect spirals that somehow intercepted threats that weren’t fully committed to reality yet.
They fought downward, their clash carrying them toward the desert floor in a spiral of steel and lightning. The sand approached rapidly—first distant, then close, then immediate.
They hit the ground simultaneously, their impact creating a crater that spread outward in concentric rings. Neither stopped moving. Northern rolled with the landing, came up attacking. Bairan absorbed the impact through his knees, his odachi already rising to meet Northern’s invisible strike.
The clash sent them bouncing across the desert like stones skipping across water—each impact with the sand creating new craters, each bounce carrying them dozens of feet before the next collision. They fought through the bounces, their blades meeting in midair between each ground strike.
Northern landed first. His feet dug into sand, creating furrows as he arrested his momentum. Bairan touched down thirty feet away, his odachi held in a low guard, lightning crackling along its edge with such intensity that the sand beneath him began to fuse into glass.
They stood there, both breathing hard despite their supernatural endurance. The desert around them bore the scars of their battle—craters and glass formations and cleared channels where their clash had displaced entire dunes.
Northern’s grip on Illusioned Hefter shifted slightly. His stance lowered by inches. His weight transferred from his back foot to his front foot—not movement, but the preparation for movement, the coiled spring before release.
Bairan saw it. His expression hardened—cold, focused. The Sword King’s own stance shifted in response, his odachi rising fractionally, his weight redistributing to counter whatever Northern was about to do.
Neither moved. They stood there, separated by thirty feet of scarred desert, each waiting for the other to commit, each reading the microscopic tells that would reveal the coming strike.
The wind died. The sand settled. Even the lightning along Bairan’s blade seemed to pause.
Then Northern moved.
