Chapter 92: [Magic Castle Bonus 3/3] Temporary Act [3]

Augustus moved.

He moved as fast as lightning, appearing at his spot almost instantly. He crossed the space in a red and black flash, swinging his sword toward Alden’s throat before he even landed.

Alden tilted his blade up a fraction.

CLANG.

The strike deflected into empty air.

Augustus twisted his wrist mid-swing and redirected into a crushing overhead chop. Alden swept his blade across his chest.

CLANG.

Black sparks scattered across the snow instead of the usual gold or blue ones.

Augustus didn’t breathe between strikes. He spun on his heel, used the rotational force, drove a horizontal slash at Alden’s ribs. Alden dropped his center of gravity slightly and caught it on the flat of his blade.

CLANG.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" The laugh bounced off the cliff faces. Augustus launched himself twenty feet backward and immediately detonated forward again. His sword had become a blur of crimson steel, red-black lightning clinging to every edge.

"DO YOU SEE IT?!"

The blade slashed, and Alden blocked the hit.

"DO YOU SEE HOW STRONG I’VE BECOME?!"

A swing hard enough to break stone. Alden turned his wrist and parried it past his left shoulder.

"LOOK AT THIS POWER!"

Augustus vanished from sight entirely.

Alden’s crimson eyes shifted a fraction to the right behind his mask.

The lightning materialized directly behind his blind spot. Augustus’s swing came down with everything he had.

Alden rotated his torso just far enough for the blade to cut through nothing. In the exact microsecond Augustus overextended, Alden drove his pommel upward into the path of the sword’s return arc.

CLANG.

Augustus barely got his guard up. Just barely. He grinned blood at Alden from close range.

"You’re finally struggling!"

He launched a wild storm of attacks, swinging high, low, left, and right. Thrusts and slashes blurred together into one endless loop, with every hit packed with deadly power.

The frozen earth beneath his feet turned to powder from his footwork alone. Red-black lightning cut black scars into the snow with every discharge.

And Alden blocked all of it.

His dark blade moved only when it needed to. A small tilt here. A slight shift of the shoulder there. A quarter-step to redirect a thrust’s angle. Every movement was exactly as large as required and no larger.

He wasn’t breathing hard.

Augustus’s grin began to do something around the edges. Something that wasn’t entirely grin.

"WHY AREN’T YOU MOVING?!"

He swung again. Blocked. He drove a full two-handed downward chop with everything he had, channeling every volt of mutated lightning into the blade’s edge and bringing it down with enough force to split the mountain pass.

BOOOOM.

The snowfield detonated. A wall of ice and pulverized rock shot into the sky. Dust and snow filled the air in a thick fifty-yard cloud.

Augustus stared into the white. His chest heaved. His grin came back.

"Got you—"

The dust cleared.

Alden was standing in the exact place he’d been standing when the fight started.

Dark coat barely disturbed by the wind. Black hair drifting. Feet planted in the snow.

Not one step backward. Not one step in any direction.

Augustus’s smile twitched. His eye twitched. His whole face did something complicated and ugly.

"...What."

Alden raised his blade.

Augustus’s panic reflex sent him surging forward before he’d decided to move. His sword drove into Alden’s guard and they locked, blade to blade, Augustus throwing his full mutated weight into the cross, the red-black lightning surging up his arms and into the deadlock.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" The scream came from somewhere past frustration, past rage, all the way into something desperate. "WHY WON’T YOU MOVE?!"

Alden looked at him through the mask.

"Didn’t you notice something, Augustus?"

"WHAT?!"

Alden’s voice stayed completely flat. "I’m still here."

The words landed in the silence between sword strokes.

Augustus’s breathing stopped.

His eyes dropped.

Down past the locked blades. Down to the snow. Down to the spot where Alden’s boots were planted.

They were in the exact same spot they’d been in when this started.

Not shifted by the smallest fraction of an inch in any direction. The entire barrage, every furious slash, every burst of immortal lightning, every pound of mutated strength he’d thrown — all of it combined had not moved Alden a single step.

Augustus’s breath came back ragged and wrong.

"...What?"

"You’ve gotten faster," Alden said, and his blade began to push back against Augustus’s sword with something that wasn’t effort. "And stronger."

The dark aura around him expanded outward, slowly swallowing the available light the way deep water swallows sound.

"But you’re still attacking me like I’m someone you can overwhelm."

"SHUT UP!" Augustus roared. He poured everything left into his arms, lightning surging, his whole mutated body straining. "SHUT UP! I AM STRONGER THAN YOU! I AM IMMORTAL!"

Alden’s eyes stayed completely calm.

"Then why haven’t I moved?"

Augustus opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

For the first time since he’d drunk the blood on the cliff, since he’d descended to the road, since any of this had started, he had no answer.

Alden twisted his wrist.

CLANG.

It was a tiny exact move. He used the angle of their locked blades against itself and with one quick flick Augustus’s huge sword slammed sideways. His defense opened wide and his body lost its balance leaning far forward.

Augustus’s eyes went wide. "What—"

Alden stepped forward.

His first step of the entire fight.

The air changed when he moved. The pressure in the pass dropped like something heavy had been placed on the atmosphere, the abyssal mana around him condensing as he advanced.

Augustus’s body made a decision before his mind did — it took one terrified step backward, which was the first time in his entire life he’d voluntarily retreated from anything.

Alden drew the dark blade back along his hip.

Then he swung.

SWOOSH.

The dark sword swung fast and flat through the air. Black lightning poured from the blade as Alden stepped forward and sliced clean through his target.

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Don’t worry dear readers, today’s Chapters will be posted in a few hours it’s just that your author is lazy to edit Chapters after drafting... Cya!