Chapter 306: Kill Or Be Killed [Bonus - ]
The superheated energy flared violently against the sole of her leather combat boot.
Even through the fire-resistant enchantments built into her footwear, the intense solar heat burned into her skin, causing a sharp flare of pain to shoot up her leg.
Tasmin gritted her teeth tightly with her jaw setting into a hard unyielding line.
’Pain is just information,’ Tasmin reminded herself.
Using the solid surface of the flying light lance as a temporary stepping stone for a fraction of a second, Tasmin pushed off with explosive force.
SWISH!
She leaped to the next lance, then the next, vaulting across the floating salvo of solar weapons like a phantom dancing on falling leaves.
With every leap, the intense thermal heat scorched her boots, but Tasmin ignored the sensation completely, rapidly closing the fifty-yard gap between herself and the floating priestess.
Out from the upper corner of Tasmin’s vision, a blinding reflection of golden light flickered in the clouds!
Hana... still hovering high above had anticipated Tasmin’s aerial trajectory.
She raised her arms, sending her massive, eight-foot-long Greatsword of Holy Light plummeting down from the sky once again, aiming to crush Tasmin mid-air!
FWOOOOOOSH!
The massive golden greatsword cut through the atmosphere with the force of a falling meteor.
Tasmin’s twitched with a wicked confident grin breaking across her face.
’You might have gotten me with that trick the first time...’ Tasmin thought smoothly, ’...but I never fall for the same move twice!’
Instead of trying to dodge the falling greatsword, Tasmin adjusted her body angle mid-air, kicking off the side of a flying solar lance and diving directly into the slipstream of the descending greatsword.
BOOM!
The giant holy blade crashed into the dirt ten feet below, generating a massive, vertical shockwave of wind and pressure.
Tasmin caught the edge of that exploding shockwave, utilizing the upward air current like a slingshot.
Her body accelerated past supersonic speeds, blurring into an invisible shadow stream that shot straight through Celeste’s defensive light tornado.
"WHAT?!" Celeste gasped, her wide bloodshot eyes locking onto the shadow emerging directly in front of her chest.
Before Celeste could even raise her rapier—
STAB!
Tasmin drove her right shortsword deep into Celeste’s upper abdomen!
PFT!
The steel penetrated cleanly through her pristine white robes, slicing through skin and muscle until the hilt slammed flat against Celeste’s ribs!
"GHAHHHM!" Celeste let out a wet strangled gasp with thick crimson blood bursting from her lips and spraying across Tasmin’s cheek.
Desperate, dying rage flared in Celeste’s eyes! She raised her crystal rapier, trying to drive the point into Tasmin’s throat—
...But Tasmin was already three steps ahead.
PULL! STEP!
Tasmin forcefully yanked her shortsword out from Celeste’s gut, bringing her boot up and driving a heavy, full-force push-kick flat into Celeste’s chest.
BAM!
The impact launched Tasmin backward through the air, while sending Celeste plummeting straight down toward the earth...
At that exact second—
WHIP-CRACK!
From the sky above, Hana had just unleashed a colossal sixty-foot whip constructed from solid solar light, aiming to strike Tasmin where she had been floating!
Because Celeste had just been kicked into that exact position by Tasmin...
KABOOM!
Hana’s own superheated light whip struck her sister, Celeste, directly in the back.
A blinding explosive detonation of white light and shockwaves erupted upon impact.
"GAH!"
Celeste was slammed violently into the hard bedrock, creating a deep fifteen-foot crater in the ground as the holy light whipped across her body, scorching her robes and breaking her remaining ribs.
SWISH.
Tasmin executed a fluid, graceful mid-air rotation with her boots touching down lightly on the edge of the crater fifty yards away.
She lowered her shortswords, looking down into the smoking pit.
Inside the crater, Celeste Sunsword lay face down in the dirt, her body trembling weakly and her pristine white robes charred black.
She was still barely alive, her fingers feebly twitching in the soil as she gasped for air... but her combat capability was completely ruined. Well until she got healed at the very least.
Tasmin narrowed her crimson eyes, evaluating the broken priestess.
’She’s wide open...’ Tasmin analyzed internally. ’If I execute her right now, that eliminates one Hero permanently...’
Before Tasmin could step forward to deliver the final killing blow...
BOOM!
The air behind Tasmin shattered.
A colossal white-hot fist surrounded by swirling light magic crashed directly into the side of Tasmin’s face with the force of a battering ram.
The shockwave from the strike blew away the surrounding dust and rock for thirty yards.
...However, the moment the fist made contact with her cheek—
SWRRRRH!
There was no crunch of bone and there was no spray of blood.
The physical form of Tasmin dissolved into a swirling, harmless vortex of murky shadow smoke.
The punch had struck nothing more than a Tier 2 [Shadow Decoy]!
Hana landed heavily on the grass where the decoy had dissolved, her gloved fist still extended with her knuckles glowing with heat.
Her white eyes blinked in realization as she looked down at her hands.
"Ha—"
Ten feet away, emerging smoothly from the shadow cast by a large boulder, Tasmin materialized.
She uncrossed her arms, leaning her hip casually against the stone as she looked at Hana’s pale trembling face with a long dramatic sigh.
"You know..." Tasmin spoke, her voice carrying a dry scolding tone. "...if you had been even a tiny bit cautious about your surrounding environment, you wouldn’t be throwing those massive light weapons around so recklessly and blowing up your own sister."
Hana’s face turned ghostly white.
She slowly turned her head, her trembling gaze landing on the crater where Celeste lay broken and bleeding from the strike of her own light whip.
A wave of suffocating sickening guilt washed over Hana’s heart.
Her teeth clenched together so tightly they threatened to shatter, and her breath hitched in her throat as she choked out.
"I... I know... I KNOW!"
Hana gritted her teeth with her hands shaking violently at her sides.
As a high-tier Light Specialist, she had been supremely confident before stepping onto this field.
She had assumed that facing a shadow user would be an effortless walk in the park since it was a simple matter of illuminating the field and burning the dark magic away.
She had never imagined that a shadow user could possess this level of god-tier combat instinct, speed, and spatial awareness.
At Tasmin’s Level, her shadow magic had developed a dense elemental resistance against light magic...
Tasmin wasn’t just hiding in the dark like one would expect... she was actively using their own light spells as footstools and blinding smoke to manipulate the battlefield!
’I don’t want to die...’ Hana told herself internally with her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. ’I don’t want to die here... and I won’t let Celeste die either!’
Hana’s eyes flared, turning completely white.
If she wanted to survive this battle, if she wanted to protect her broken sister and fulfill Lord Sky’s explicit orders, she had to execute her mission with uncompromising lethality.
HUMMMMMMM!
An overwhelming aura of superheated white light erupted from Hana’s body, illuminating the entire clearing in a blinding heavenly glare.
She reached out her right hand, catching the handle of the Greatsword of Holy Light as it flew out of the dirt and slotted firmly into her grip.
Hana raised the massive blade, pointing the glowing tip directly at Tasmin’s eyes, her voice echoing with a cold vow.
"Your very next breath... will be your last!"
BOOOOOOM!
Hana charged.
The ground beneath her boots shattered into powder as she accelerated across the terrain at high speed, swinging the massive Greatsword of Holy Light in a sweeping horizontal cleave.
CLANG!
Tasmin raised both of her shortswords, crossing the void-infused blades in an X-block to absorb the heavy downward strike.
The absurd physical force behind the blow slammed into Tasmin’s arms.
HISSSSSSS!
Even though Tasmin’s Level 30 stats held firm, the extreme thermal heat radiating from the holy greatsword instantly scorched the soil beneath her feet...
Tasmin was pushed backward a full twenty meters across the grass with the soles of her leather boots leaving two thick glowing red lines of melted dirt trailing down the field!
Tasmin’s boots came to a halt. She wiped a tiny drop of sweat from her forehead, shooting Hana a dangerous smirk.
"Is that all the weight you’ve got behind that big sword, darling?" Tasmin taunted smoothly. "My Lord hits ten times harder than that when she’s just playing around!"
Hearing her strike dismissed so easily, Hana’s eyes narrowed in rage.
She suddenly pulled her greatsword back, dropping her defensive guard and leaving her entire torso completely exposed to an immediate counterattack.
It was a blatant deliberate opening.
...However, Tasmin was no naive amateur.
She recognized a lethal trap the second it presented itself so instead of capitalizing on the open gap and lunging forward...
Tasmin drove her heels into the soil, executing an instantaneous high-speed backward dash.
FWOOSH!
That decision saved her life.
The exact second Tasmin retreated ten yards backward, the space where she had been standing exploded in a blinding, nuclear pillar of solar light.
The trap spell Hana had primed beneath the dirt detonated, completely eviscerating the surrounding bedrock and melting the soil into glowing, red-hot glass.
BOOM!
Through the thick rising white smoke of the explosion—
Hana burst forward like a white phantom...
She held five glowing light lances in her left hand, thrusting them forward in a rapid lethal stabbing combination toward Tasmin’s throat.
THWIP!
Tasmin vanished into thin air!
Hana’s white eyes scanned the smoke instantly.
As an experienced Hero, she knew how standard shadow users operated... ninety-nine percent of them reflexively glided into their opponent’s physical shadow or merged with the nearest dark obstacle behind them.
Hana didn’t hesitate.
She swung her free hand, summoning a dozen light daggers and spreading them in a wide, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle around her own shadow and the surrounding rocks, seeking to impale Tasmin the second she emerged.
"Come on out, hiding won’t save you!"
...However, Tasmin didn’t pop out from the shadows on the ground. Hell she didn’t pop out from behind the rocks.
SWISH!
Tasmin materialized directly above Hana’s head... emerging from the microscopic shadow cast by Hana’s own floating white silk cloak.
"Looking the wrong way." Tasmin’s voice said from above!
Tasmin flicked her right wrist, launching her chained shortsword straight down at Hana’s shoulder and the blade crackled violently with dark shadow magic!
CLANG!
Hana reacted with terrifying speed, summoning a small, circular light shield over her shoulder to deflect the shortsword.
The void blade struck the light shield, bouncing off the surface with a loud metallic ring!
Hana sneered up at her.
"Ha! A small shield is more than enough to deflect your tiny daggers—"
"Heh..." Tasmin smirked mid-air.
Before Hana could understand what was happening, Tasmin’s fingers twitched!
’Chain Execution...’
SWIRL!
The Eclipse-Thread chain attached to the floating shortsword came alive like a living metallic serpent.
Super-heated crimson flames and shadow magic crackled along the metal links as the chain wrapped tightly around Hana’s light shield, her arm, and her torso in three tight loops.
"WHAT?!" Hana gasped with her arm pinned securely against her ribs.
Tasmin dropped down from the air, grabbing the main chain with both hands, using her body weight and momentum to execute a violent mid-air rotation!
"Here we go!"
Tasmin slammed Hana forcefully flat into the hard ground!
KABAM!
Hana’s body struck the soil with immense impact.
She let out a painful bloody cough with her fingers losing their grip on the Greatsword of Holy Light as the massive weapon tumbled away across the grass.
"Agh...! Why...?"
Tasmin landed gracefully on her feet, yanking the chain back to retract her shortsword into her palm.
Hana scrambled frantically on the dirt, summoning a light dagger into her hand as she pushed herself up.
"Come at me!"
Tasmin sprinted straight toward her.
"Sure..."
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The two women engaged in a high-speed melee clash at point-blank range.
Blades turned into continuous blinding blurs of white and dark-purple light.
Sparks flew wildly across the field as shortsword met light dagger in a rapid sequence of parries, thrusts, and counter-strikes.
They traded sharp biting taunts between every clash with their movements executing at such speeds that left the five hundred million viewers watching the stream in breathtaking awe.
SWISH!
Tasmin ducked beneath a wild desperate slash from Hana’s light dagger!
Finding a micro-gap in Hana’s frantic defensive posture, Tasmin thrust her left shortsword straight upward with terrifying precision.
The shadow-infused tip of the blade penetrated cleanly through Hana’s right eye socket!
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"