Chapter 106: Intense Battle!

The seven Ravelhorns attacked at once, but Damian did not cast another spell in response.

Instead, the Longtian Sword dropped neatly into his right hand as his feet shifted across the ruined earth, his entire posture changing from that of a Mage preparing another barrage into something considerably more direct.

If blasting Ravelhorn from range meant wasting Spell Slots upon illusions and teleportation tricks...

Then Damian would simply stop giving him range!

His current physical Attributes were already absurd for a Mage.

STR 25.0.

DEX 34.4.

AGI 28.2.

CON 31.3.

Those were his base values before <Guidance> added another 15.5% across everything, while <Athlete> halved the physical burden of every movement he made.

<Martial Adept> reinforced compatible physical Skills using the average of STR, DEX and AGI, <Dueling> tripled eligible damage from the one-handed Longtian Sword, and <Perfect Combat Instinct> tied his ridiculous physical hardware together into something capable of actually using it.

Even before <Battle God> began warming up again...

Damian was a fucking monster!

BOOM!

He launched forward, the nearest Ravelhorn sweeping one hand outward and releasing a spray of silver blades, but Damian disappeared before they reached him.

<Misty Step>!

Greyish-purple light flickered.

Another chunk of nearly 15 Mental Energy vanished as Damian reappeared directly beside the Satyr.

Ravelhorn’s eyes widened as Longtian passed straight through his torso.

PUFF!

Purple flowers exploded outward as the duplicate collapsed.

Six bodies left on the field!

Damian did not stop.

His foot touched the ground and his body rotated immediately into the first turn of his Sword Art, Longtian whipping through another approaching duplicate before its spell could finish.

PUFF!

Five now.

A third Ravelhorn appeared behind him and thrust both palms forward, but Damian’s <Divine Sense> caught the movement without his eyes ever turning.

He vanished again.

<Misty Step>!

The spell passed through empty air as Damian appeared above the clone, body already rotating from the spatial relocation.

Longtian came down.

SCHLICK!

PUFF!

Four remaining.

"Oh? So the Mage has finally decided to become a swordsman?" Ravelhorn’s amused voice echoed from somewhere among the remaining copies.

Damian landed and grinned.

"It’s called Multiclassing, you goat looking motherfucker."

Then he disappeared again!

To an ordinary observer, <Misty Step> was teleportation meant to help squishy Fey and glass cannon casters escape engagements.

Damian though, was using it as if it were Flash Step!

The moment Ravelhorn attempted to create distance, Damian simply erased it!

Whether twenty or two hundred meters, it made no difference.

One moment he was standing beside a shattered tree, then greyish-purple light flashed and he was suddenly inside Ravelhorn’s casting range with a sword already moving.

The remaining doubles tried fighting back.

One formed a magical blade and met Longtian directly.

CLANG!

Damian’s superior strength smashed its weapon aside.

Turn.

A horizontal slash bisected the clone.

PUFF!

Three left now!

Another disappeared through its own Fey teleportation and emerged behind Damian, but Damian followed it with his own <Misty Step>!

Ravelhorn appeared from the void, but Damian appeared right there with him.

"What?!" Ravelhorn’s clone exclaimed with shock, but was cleanly split from head to groin with a single slash.

SCHLICK!

PUFF!

Two bastards left now.

Damian laughed.

This was much better!

All he had to do was just close distance and cut the bastard!

Another clone tried to retreat while firing a green beam of sickly magical energy.

<Ray of Sickness>!

Damian twisted aside, accelerated after it and allowed the first movement of <Seven-Turn Sword> to carry naturally into the next.

Slash, Turn, Thrust!

The duplicate barely parried before Damian shortened the thrust halfway through, rotated his wrist and converted the entire movement into a rising cut.

PUFF!

Now, there was only one.

This naturally meant that only the real Ravelhorn remained.

Damian’s grin disappeared and became a malevolent glare.

"Now, it’s just me and you buddy."

Ravelhorn stood beside his original stump with both hands raised, the pleasant mockery finally replaced by genuine attention as Damian rushed him directly.

Longtian rotated and made its first turn as Ravelhorn retreated.

The second turn followed, but the cunning Satyr slipped sideways.

The third turn was next, and Damian used its flow to accelerate rapidly!

The fourth turn and Longtian carved through the stump Ravelhorn had used for years as though it were rotten fruit!

The fifth, and due to lack of space, Ravelhorn was forced to use <Misty Step> to escape and create distance.

Damian’s eyes flashed as he did so as well!

Two bursts of spatial light appeared almost simultaneously!

Ravelhorn reappeared seventeen meters away while Damian materialized barely an arm’s length from him.

The Satyr’s pupils contracted.

The sixth turn!

Longtian swept across, forcing Ravelhorn to bend backward in an unnatural way as the blade passed above his chest by a hair, but Damian had already committed to the final road.

The seventh turn!

Ravelhorn finally shifted exactly where Damian expected, where he had been funneling him to all this while.

Perfect!

Damian’s palm tightened around the hilt of Longtian as he initiated his Secret Art!

<Seven-Turn Sword: Reversing Current>!

The entire sequence reversed.

Longtian shot backward along the opposite trajectory with enough accumulated force to split the Great Fey from shoulder to waist.

This time, Ravelhorn had nowhere left to go!

Death was surely coming down for the Satyr this time!

CLAAAAANG!

Damian’s eyes widened, his sword stopped in place.

Ravelhorn stood before him with both hands gripping a long black shaft.

A huge curved blade extended from one end, its edge gleaming silver-purple beneath the false moonlight.

A scythe!

Longtian pressed against its crescent blade while sparks sprayed between them!

Damian’s eyebrows rose.

"...You use a scythe?"

Ravelhorn’s grin returned.

"Human, I have been alive since your great-grandfather was a mere sperm swimming desperately toward relevance." Ravelhorn mocked as his arms pushed against Damian’s sword.

"Did you truly imagine I spent all those years learning nothing except how to play music and annoy people?" The Satyr asked with a derisive sneer.

Damian said nothing, opting to simply attack.

CLANG!

Longtian snapped away and returned from another angle, but Ravelhorn rotated the scythe around his body and intercepted.

CLANG! CLANG!

Damian turned with the failed strike, converting it into another.

Ravelhorn’s scythe shaft slid beneath the sword and knocked it aside before the crescent blade swept toward Damian’s ribs.

Damian ducked.

WHOOOSH!

The blade passed over him and cut through three trees behind his body.

SHING!

The trunks remained standing for half a heartbeat.

Then...

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

All three collapsed!

Damian’s expression darkened while Ravelhorn laughed arrogantly.

Then both suddenly moved and the center of the glade erupted!

BOOOOOOM!

Mirelle barely saw what happened next.

Damian and Ravelhorn disappeared from their previous positions, only for the sound of steel to explode near the opposite edge of the clearing.

CLANG!

A crescent shockwave tore through the earth!

Another impact sounded thirty meters away.

CLAAANG!

A boulder split cleanly through the middle.

Then the two figures blurred across the battlefield so quickly that Mirelle began seeing afterimages.

Damian’s dark metallic-blue sword curved through successive rotations while Ravelhorn’s scythe moved completely differently.

The Satyr used the entire weapon, from blade to shaft, to the butt and even its hook.

He spun it through wide circular patterns, changed grips mid-swing and repeatedly used the curved edge to drag Longtian away from Damian’s intended line.

Damian answered with the Seven-Turn Sword, and every time Ravelhorn obstructed one road, another opened for him.

A blocked chop flowed into a backhand slash, a missed thrust became a draw-cut, and a parry turned into momentum.

Ravelhorn caught Longtian against the inner curve of his scythe and pulled.

Damian stepped with the force instead of resisting, spun around Ravelhorn’s body, and delivered a vicious kick!

BOOM!

Ravelhorn slid backward.

He immediately planted one hoof, twisted and swept the scythe horizontally.

Damian jumped, the blade passing beneath him and continuing outward.

SHINGG!

Six trees were severed in one line!

Damian landed upon one of the falling trunks, kicked off it and vanished.

<Misty Step>!

Ravelhorn turned sharply, but it was too slow!

Damian appeared behind him and slashed!

CLANG!

The scythe somehow arrived in time though, as Ravelhorn spun on the spot.

Damian ducked, the hooked blade scraping across the upper portion of his <Mage Armor>, causing the barrier to flare violently before he retreated half a step.

Then, they were gone again!

Mirelle crawled on the ground like a desperate rat instead of a lovely white fox.

She did not care about dignity anymore as she dragged herself toward Alfaro’s position while fragments of stone, branches and waves of displaced air crossed the clearing around her.

The golden <Glyph of Warding> reacted as she reached its edge, but nothing happened.

Mirelle froze, then slowly entered.

The barrier accepted her as she possessed no hostility toward Alfaro.

Thank the Moon!

Mirelle collapsed beside the unconscious Wolf just as another shockwave ripped across the glade.

BOOOOM!

The golden ward flared as a severed tree trunk smashed against the barrier, bounced away and shattered into pieces.

Mirelle stared through the protective light.

Outside it...

The glade was being utterly destroyed!

Trees older than several Human generations were falling every few seconds.

Deep furrows crossed the ground wherever Ravelhorn’s scythe missed its target, boulders shattered from stray impacts, and Damian’s sword carved long scars through trunks whenever a turn carried farther than intended.

And through all of it, the two combatants continued flashing from position to position.

Mirelle’s confusion gradually overcame her fear.

Ravelhorn’s strength made sense as he was a Great Fey.

A Satyr was already born physically superior to a Human, and by the Age of Understanding, one could possess multiple Attributes in the double digits before proper advancement even began.

Then came levels, Feats, enhancements, and centuries of accumulation.

Ravelhorn was secretly a Master on top of everything else!

His important physical Attributes being somewhere in the mid-to-late thirties in each value would hardly surprise Mirelle.

But Damian was merely a human!

The human race baseline was brutally ordinary.

Five points in an Attribute represented the peak of average mortal development, while most newly qualified Classes began with important Attributes somewhere in the single digits.

More importantly, ordinary progression did not magically erase that racial foundation.

Before Legend, a Human gained only 20 free Attribute Points from normal level advancement.

A Fighter started with 7 STR, so if he dumped every single available point into Strength by level 20, the peak of Master, the result would only be 27 points!

And then his Dexterity, Agility, Constitution and everything else would be miserable because he’d sacrificed all balance to reach it.

Yet Damian was not behaving like someone with one absurd Attribute!

He matched Ravelhorn’s strength, he matched his speed, his hands were faster, and his balance never broke.

His Constitution allowed him to absorb shockwaves that would turn ordinary Humans into paste, while his sword precision remained terrifying even during full-speed movement.

Mirelle’s heart began pounding.

No, this couldn’t be impossible.

Unless...

Her eyes widened!

Could Damian’s physical Attributes also be somewhere in the thirties?!

The thought made her fur stand on end!

Impossible!

According to his talk with the four women during the day, he was supposedly Level 11!

That was merely a beginner Adept!

There simply were not enough ordinary Attribute Points available!

Yet right before her eyes...

CLAAAAANG!

Damian and Ravelhorn collided again, the ground beneath both shattering like glass!

Longtian pressed against the scythe as Damian physically held back a Master-tier Great Fey, and neither immediately gave ground.

Mirelle stopped trying to rationalize it.

This Human was wrong, completely wrong!

BOOM!

The two finally separated.

Damian slid backward with both boots digging trenches through the earth before Longtian stabbed into the ground and stopped him.

Ravelhorn travelled farther, one hoof gouging a long line through the moss before his scythe hooked into a boulder and arrested his momentum.

For several seconds, neither moved.

The glade around them barely resembled the place where they’d spoken earlier.

Trees lay everywhere, cracked stone littered the earth, the old stump was gone, and deep scars crossed the terrain in overlapping lines.

Yet despite how violently they had fought, neither man was breathing heavily.

Damian flexed his fingers.

His muscles felt warm rather than exhausted, <Athlete> proving its worth beautifully by cutting the physical expenditure of the entire ridiculous exchange in half.

His Mental Energy was another matter, as repeatedly abusing <Misty Step> like discount Shunpo was expensive as hell!

He had entered this stage with roughly 135 Mental Energy remaining from his original 150, and repeated relocations had burned through a horrifying portion of that reserve.

Around sixty remained.

Tsk!

Teleportation was sure was amazing, but it was also apparently a direct path to magical bankruptcy!

Then Damian felt his divine enhancements fade, naturally.

More than 16.8 seconds had passed in their fight.

He raised two fingers.

"Maior et Fortior!"

<Guidance> returned.

"Resisto!"

<Resistance> followed.

Golden power spread across his body again.

Ravelhorn watched the brief ritual with a mocking smile as he rested his scythe across one shoulder.

"You really are a fascinating little creature." Ravelhorn remarked, his eyes glittering.

The Satyr shook his head with amusement. "A Mage who fights like a swordsman, a Cleric who only uses divine magic like a buffoon, and a human whose body apparently missed the meeting where your species agreed upon sensible limitations."

Damian rolled his neck. "That’s rich coming from a goat-man who spent half his life pretending to be weaker so a Goblin could maintain emotional stability."

Ravelhorn’s eye twitched. "He was very emotionally invested."

"I can tell." Damian retorted with a snort.

Ravelhorn suddenly laughed. "Good! Very good! I was afraid discovering my true strength would make you cautious."

Damian raised Longtian. "Who said it didn’t?"

The Satyr paused.

Damian smiled. "I’ve just ’cautiously’ decided I need to hit you harder."

Ravelhorn’s grin became vicious. "Then go ahead and try!"

Both vanished!

BOOM!

Damian used <Misty Step> first, but Ravelhorn anticipated it.

The Satyr twisted before Damian even fully emerged, his scythe already moving through a vicious horizontal arc.

Damian’s <Perfect Combat Instinct> screamed.

Too close!

Too fast!

Longtian was on the wrong side of his body!

The crescent blade crossed the final meter toward his waist, carrying enough force to cut through the trees behind him without slowing.

Damian’s pupils contracted as the scythe came for him!