Free Web NovelChapter 42: The Battle of Ancients (Part 2)
The silence between them lasted for only a heartbeat. Malakai and the marble replica of Natalie Silver stood perfectly still, circling each other over the black stone floor. Both were apex predators searching for a single flaw, a momentary lapse in stance, or a clean opportunity to strike. But at their level of combat, such openings would not be given freely; they had to be carved out through blood and steel.
Without warning, Natalie raised Silver Spring. In one fluid, blinding motion, she closed the distance, her figure blurring as she brought down a devastating overhead strike.
Clang!
The room echoed with the screech of metal on metal. Malakai managed to intercept the blow, catching the razor-sharp edge of her eight-foot blade on the flat of his shadow sword. The sheer kinetic force of the impact vibrated violently up his arms, threatening to numb his fingers.
Natalie was now only a few meters away, her emerald gemstone eyes glowing with an unfeeling, artificial intelligence. Instead of overextending, she killed her momentum and slipped backward, maintaining her perfect radius. They resumed their lethal dance, circling like hawks, occasionally trading single, high-speed slashes that rang out like gunshots before immediately backing away to reset their guards.
Malakai deliberately increased the speed of his advances. With every exchange, he was mapping her range, testing the exact reach of that legendary weapon, and calculating the speed of her recovery.
"Right there," he thought, spotting a micro-flicker in her stance.
Malakai stepped forward, gauging his chances for a successful lethal pierce. He lunged, but the replica anticipated the movement with terrifying agility.
Fwing!
The silver blade whistled over his head at a speed that defied physics, The displacement of air alone felt like a gale, nearly impaling him through the throat.
"Tsk, I can’t get any closer," Malakai realized, his jaw tightening as he ducked beneath the follow-up trajectory. "She moves too damn fast. Those sudden bursts of acceleration are lethal."
He exhaled a low breath, a dark, wicked smirk finally cutting across his face. "Screw it. Let’s just go all out."
Dropping into a low, predatory hound stance, Malakai locked his gaze squarely on the glowing core within her chest. He channeled every ounce of his excess essence, flooding the dark energy directly into the muscles of his legs. With a violent, explosive burst of speed, he detonated forward. The marble floor shattered beneath his heel as he threw himself back into the fray.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Ring!
The center of the metropolis became an absolute blur of silver and shadow. They traded blows at a frenetic pace, strike after strike unleashed in a symphony of violence. Yet, neither could draw first blood. Shadows intercepted silver; silver deflected darkness. Their defensive capabilities were flawlessly matched.
Suddenly, Natalie leaned her frame far forward. She swung her massive blade in a sharp, incredibly precise horizontal arc, aiming to decapitate him in a single clean sweep. Malakai instinctively dropped his weight, letting the blade pass safely over his head.
He readied his posture for an immediate counter-attack, intending to pierce her exposed flank, but his instincts screamed at the last nanosecond. Time seemed to slow. Natalie’s blade didn’t follow through with its natural momentum. Instead, the sword completely defied gravity, killing its forward trajectory instantly to form a sickeningly tight curve in mid-air. It reversed direction, rocketing back toward his blind spot.
Malakai barely managed to wrench his shadow blade around to block the incoming strike, but the awkward positioning left his center of gravity utterly ruined.
Natalie did not hesitate. Capitalizing on his compromised guard, she unleashed the true, terrifying capability of her legendary style. In the span of a single breath, she executed six successive flurries, each consisting of sixteen micro-strikes. The onslaught left Malakai completely battered and stunned. He did everything in his power to parry, his blade moving like a frantic shield, but the sheer volume of the assault was overwhelming. Dozens of silver thrusts slipped past his guard, hammering into his torso. Thankfully, his reinforced shadow armor absorbed the brunt of the piercing force, though cracks began to spiderweb across the dark plating.
Desperate to create breathing room, Malakai leaped backward to re-establish his mid-range advantage. But Natalie was an unrelenting ghost; she refused to grant him an inch of space. She pursued him instantly, bringing down a massive downward strike.
Bang!
The heavy blade impacted the floor, completely vaporizing the black stone into a shower of debris. Malakai successfully rolled away from the crater, but he knew exactly what trick was coming next—the blade would curve upward. Anticipating the reversal, his shadow sword dissolved into a fluid wave of pure darkness, wrapping around his body like a thick cocoon.
Just in the nick of time, the protective layer solidified. Silver Spring ripped upward, slicing an entire inch deep into his shadow armor, right across his chest. The smell of burning essence filled the air.
"Not good."
Thinking tactically, Malakai commanded the surrounding darkness to manifest a thick, heavy tentacle directly out of Natalie’s own shadow. The appendage whipped through the air with a loud, sonic crackle, wrapping violently around her legs.
However, Natalie used the momentum. With her blade still deeply embedded in the fractured stone floor, she utilized the weapon’s hilt as a vaulting pole. She spun her entire body around the shaft, tearing her legs free from the shadow’s grip, and slammed both of her armored heels directly into Malakai’s chest.
The impact sent him flying through the air like a cannonball, crashing violently into the thick city wall.
Natalie landed gracefully back on the stone, her hand instantly gripping the hilt of her sword to pull it free. But right as her fingers tightened, the shadows beneath her feet rippled like disturbed water.
Bang!
A heavy, physical fist erupted from the darkness, striking her squarely under the chin. Malakai had created a shadow shell and slipped into her shadow, waiting to strike landing a devastating, bone-shattering uppercut. The force of the blow sent her marble head reeling backward, fracturing her jawline.
Seizing the golden opportunity, Malakai morphed the ambient shadows into a thick, thorned whip. He brought it down with a thunderous strike, lashing her across the torso before wrapping it around her waist and slamming her body repeatedly against a nearby structural pillar. The marble column shattered, burying her in rubble.
Yet, within three seconds of the impact, the statue was already emerging from the dust, rushing toward Malakai with her emerald eyes blazing brighter than before.
In response, Malakai manifested twelve black shadow spears, launching them like a ballistics barrage aimed directly at her face and core. Showing off her insane, supernatural speed, Natalie contorted her body in mid-air, dodging seventy percent of the incoming projectiles. She deliberately allowed the remaining spears to impale her non-vital limbs, refusing to sacrifice her forward velocity just to defend.
Slam!
"Argh, damn it!" Malakai hissed, his ribs vibrating violently as her armored shoulder rammed into his chest.
Gritting his teeth through the agonizing pain, he anchored his feet deep into the ground using tendrils of shadow to ensure the impact wouldn’t throw him off balance again. Balling his hand into a massive fist coated in dense darkness, he drove it straight into her face. Pieces of her beautifully sculpted marble visage went flying through the air in sharp, white chunks.
But the emotionless replica didn’t care about pain. She immediately returned a lethal counter-blow, driving a straight piercing strike directly into his stomach.
Except, the impact never came. The moment before her fist connected, Malakai allowed his torso to transition into an intangible shadow state. Her arm passed entirely through his body, striking nothing but empty darkness.
Before she could register the trap, Malakai solidified his upper torso. Interlocking both of his massive, reinforced fists, he brought them down like a sledgehammer onto her extended arm, snapping the marble limb completely in half. The sheer downward force dragged her entire upper body toward the floor.
Blam!
With a brutal follow-up, Malakai drove both hands upward, smashing his palms into her fractured face. The kinetic energy shattered the rest of her head completely, sending her glowing emerald gemstone eyes bouncing across the dark room.
Malakai stepped back, chest heaving as his shadow armor slowly knit itself back together. His gamble had paid off. He knew that a construct built for such extreme speed would naturally be brittle in nature. Because she held the advantage at weapon-range, his only option was to bait her into an unorthodox, close-quarters melee brawl where his brute strength and shadow manipulation could dismantle her piece by piece.
He had deliberately concentrated all of his active essence into reinforcing his physical body to ensure every single strike was lethal.
But before he could stomp his heel down to crush the remaining torso and claim the core, the floor beneath them suddenly split open. A vortex of black goop swallowed her fractured remains and the legendary Silver Spring, denying him his prize.
In the next second, the sound of heavy marching echoed from the darkness. An entire army of black steel knights began to pour out of the subterranean trenches, their weapons drawn and eyes locked on him.
"Well, that’s not very fair now, is it?" Malakai said. His breath was shallow, but his usual, lazy playfulness instantly returned.
He knew he had won the tactical exchange. Even if the city core had salvaged her remains, she had been constructed from the valuable essence of the Rank 2 district paladins. If the central core wanted to secure the inner sanctum now, it would be forced to drain its other monsters as fuel—which would leave the outer districts entirely unprotected, or force the city’s defensive array to shut down completely.
The green-and-black cube above came back to life, its heavy, rhythmic mechanical clicking echoing like a death toll through the metropolis. Responding to the core’s panic, the entire floor of the central chamber began to ooze a sea of black goop. The liquid materialized into hundreds of black steel knights, flanked by the fifty massive obsidian sentinels. United under a single directive, the massive horde charged directly at Malakai.
Malakai stood tall amidst the rumbling chamber, letting out a dark, mischievous laugh that echoed over the marching of the army.
"Come at me then," he shouted, his eyes flashing with a predatory hunger. "I need a massive stockpile of essence cores for Camilla and the pretty boy. I can’t exactly return back to camp empty-handed now, can I? That would just be rude."
Those mocking words seemed to genuinely infuriate the ancient mechanism. The sea of guardians surged forward, their metallic footsteps shaking the very foundations of the eternal city as they ran toward him with pure, automated hatred.
