Child of Destiny

...…

Morrissette was leveled as one of the best young assassins in the Roku Prefecture. And even just graduated as a trainee just recently, she immediately got a number of missions which she completed without having any problem.

That was the main reason why she got selected for this current mission. And for this mission, she was thinking that it was going to be a walk in the park since their main job was quite simple. They just needed to eliminate the younger generation of the Aristocratic Families from the Military Circle of the Soaring Continent.

But the supposedly easy mission became a very tricky one the moment a group of youngsters got in their way. And these kids were not ordinary ones, they were a bunch of young monsters just like them.

Realizing the strengths of their enemies, Morrissette became very frustrated; she felt that it was very unfair – how come such young people were as strong as them despite not undergoing a hellish training in a hellish environment.

She felt that then Heaven was very unfair. It only favored the people who had already been gifted by their respective family backgrounds.

Bang! Bang!

And at this point of time, she was currently fighting one of those young monsters. Moreover, she seemed to be at a great disadvantage against this girl.

Even though Morrissette possessed a very fast speed, Lorraine was still able to keep up on her movements and even firing at will.

No matter how hard Morrissette tried, she still couldn't shake off Lorraine away from her. The latter's eyes were totally locked on her as well as the aim of the guns on her hands.

At the start of the battle, she was originally the one who had the advantage; she forced Lorraine to keep on running away from her with her overwhelming speed. But after a few moments of exchanges, she suddenly noticed that the latter seemed to be unreachable.

No matter how fast she was, Lorraine was always keeping her in bay with her precise and perfectly timed shots. And every time Morrissette was about to reach Lorraine with her daggers, the latter's body would always turn illusionary and which made all of her strikes to pass through it and totally missed their marks.

It didn't take long for Morrissette to figure out what that technique was. It was an ancient military-arts used by the soldiers before.

It was a technique to keep their distance away from their opponents.

This technique was used to lure the opponent to a certain distance by leaning their bodies forward before quickly pulling it backwards right before their opponents threw their attack at them.

It was a simple technique at first glance but it was actually quite tricky to execute. And if the user of the skill messed up the timing even for a little and failed to pull their bodies backward in time, then the consequence was going to be very deadly – the price for messing up would even result in their own death.

This was also the very reason why this technique was rarely used at this point of time. Only soldiers with steel-like nerves were the ones who dared to use such a double-edge technique.

Meanwhile, Lorraine kept on cheesing Morrissette with this very technique. And when the latter realized this, she became even more frustrated; she felt that she was being played by her opponent.

Given that, she immediately released her Natural Force and Evil Powers to further increase her speed. And with that, Morrissette was confident that she could break Lorraine's technique.

But that thought only lasted for a moment before Lorraine pulled her back to 'reality'.

Every time, Morrissette was about to land a successful hit at Lorraine, the latter would always block her daggers with the barrel of her guns before quickly moving away to create some distance from each other. 

Morrissette wanted to chase after her. But before she could even do that, Lorraine would always fire her other gun towards her direction with a very precise timing to force her to abandon her thoughts and quickly dodge that shot.

This cat and mouse game lasted for quite some time which practically built up a lot of frustrations on Morrissette's side.

From what she could see, Lorraine was only expanding a small amount of Internal Qi while executing her movement techniques to create the distance in between the two of them. So, Morrissette knew that she was going to become exhausted first if this chasing game continued.

But when she was thinking about that, she suddenly noticed that Lorraine started firing her guns continuously. And when she saw that, she finally remembered that her opponent was only using a pair of guns.

She got blinded by her frustrations to the point where she overlooked such critical information. After all, she was supposedly the one dictating the rhythm of this fight since she had a higher Martial-Art attainment. So, she got carried away by her anger and pride to forgot about the fact that her opponent was only relying on external tools.

But no matter how powerful those guns were, they were still a pair of tools that needed to be loaded by bullets. And as long as Lorraine exhausted all her bullets, the result of this battle was pretty much easy to decide.

Coming up with this conclusion, Morrissette immediately disregarded the idea of forcing a melee battle with Lorraine since it would naturally come as long as the latter ran out of ammo. And having this in mind, she immediately withdrew her Natural Force and Evil Qi to reserve her strength.

Naturally, Lorraine would immediately notice that. So, she quickly stopped firing before throwing a smirking look at Morrissette.

Seeing that Lorraine was clearly provoking her, Morrissette's face suddenly became even more solemn. 'You dared to toy with me? Let's see if you are not going to regret it.'

Having that in mind, Morrissette immediately kicked the ground and launched herself forward with a great speed. And when Lorraine saw that, she quickly raised her guns in front of her but she didn't immediately pull the trigger. She waited for a few more seconds before firing her shot.

Bang! Bang!

Right after she fired her guns, she quickly spun them with her fingers before putting them on their respective holsters. And those actions completely confused Morrissette but that only lasted for a moment as she suddenly wore a savage look on her face. "Run out of ammo already? Now die!"

Boom!

Morrissette immediately released her Natural Force and Evil Qi once again. And due to that, she quickly regained her insane speed as she suddenly started rushing forward.

During her dash, she swung the dagger on her right hand to deflect the final pair of bullets that Lorraine had fired. And while borrowing the momentum of her actions, she suddenly thrusted her other dagger forward.

It only took an instant for Morrissette to arrive in front of Lorraine. But even if that was the case, the latter was able to quickly respond in time and did an unexpected counter.

"Who said I am incapable of melee combat?" said Lorraine while quickly taking a sidestep towards her right, moving away from the trajectory of her opponent's sudden charge. And with a precise timing, she caught Morrissette's wrist with her right hand before pulling her towards that direction.

Morrissette couldn't change the direction of her charge due to the sudden burst of her speed. And if you add Lorraine's actions, there was to way for her to stop her charge at that very moment. Due to that, she couldn't do anything when Lorraine suddenly threw her counter.

While pulling Morrissette with her right hand, her other hand was already moving towards the opposite direction to hit her opponent's face with a powerful palm strike.

When she saw the incoming palm zooming in front of her eyes, Morrissette wanted to protect her face with the Natural Force that was covering her body. But before she could even do that, she suddenly felt that the grip of Lorraine's right hand suddenly tightened and squeezed some of the meridians on her wrist.

Due to that, the flow of her Natural Force was suddenly broken and made her only protection to disappear.

Bang!

And that was when Lorraine's palm strike directly landed on her face which made her a little dizzy. Then Lorraine quickly took advantage of that window to continue.

She let go of her grip on Morrissette's wrist but she quickly trapped the that arm under the armpit of her other arm before striking her opponent's face with another palm attack using her right hand.

Bang!

After that, Lorraine grabbed Morrissette's face with that hand before tripping the latter with her leg while throwing her on the ground.

Bang!

Those series of attacks were actually not that strong but their power behind them were more than enough for a Martial-Artist to become dizzy for a moment. And in that brief moment, Lorraine already bought herself a lot of time to complete all of her preparations.

Morrissette quickly recovered herself a second after being thrown on the ground. But before she could make any counter, she discovered that Lorraine was already standing a few meters away from her.

She wanted to give chase but quickly halted her steps when she noticed something unusual in her surroundings. And when she took a quick look on it, she immediately discovered that she was already trapped inside a Mentalism Formation.

Outside that formation, Lorraine was smiling at her while waving her hand. "Do you honestly believe that I am only shooting my bullets randomly? For all you know, those were actually special bullets with Mentalism Runes imbued in them. And when I trigger them after placing them in correct places, this formation is going to be activated."

"I don't need to say what is going to happen next right?" added Lorraine while wearing a smirking expression on her face.

She didn't wait for Morrissette to give her replying as she quickly made a snap with her fingers. And a moment after that, the entire formation suddenly lit up with a blinding light that devoured her opponent's figure.

What came next was Morrissette's cries of agony for being burned alive.

...…