Chapter 773: Tasmin Vs. Brida

Chapter 773: Tasmin Vs. Brida [Bonus Chapter]

Brida came in a straight line with her boots tearing up the ground like a battering ram that had decided to run.

WHOOSH!

Tasmin came as a streak of darkness, her shadow stretching underneath her as she swallowed the thirty paces in the blink of an eye with her body leaning forward at an angle that didn’t look possible.

...They met dead in the center of the ring.

Neither of them bothered with a feint as both of them threw their right fist with everything they had... Tasmin’s shadow-wrapped punch met Brida’s crimson-charged one knuckle to knuckle.

KA-BOOOOM!

It sounded like a cannon going off inside a closed cellar.

A ring of force burst out from their fists and blew the falling snow into a white whirlwind.

The shockwave tore across the arena floor, scraped the sand down to the roots and slammed into the front of the stands, whipping back the hair and cloaks of everyone in the first rows.

WHOOOSH!

In the middle of the ring, the difference between their builds showed right away.

Brida’s Unyielding Bedrock Body swallowed the impact.

Her bones groaned faintly under the strain, but her back foot only slid three inches through the sand before it locked in place like an anchor as she didn’t even blink.

Tasmin on the other hand... took the full recoil.

Her arm shook from her wrist all the way up to her shoulder, and she was knocked backward with her boots skidding across the sand as she staggered three long steps.

SKRRRT!

’Damn, that hurt,’ Tasmin thought, shaking the sting out of her knuckles. ’It’s like punching the side of a mountain...’

Across from her, Brida flexed her fingers and looked down at her own fist, then back up at Tasmin with a slow hungry grin.

’She flew three steps,’ Brida thought. ’And I barely moved... This is going to be easy.’

"Ha! That all you got, shadow rat?!" Brida bellowed, already lunging after her to finish it.

Her right arm cocked back, blazing with fresh crimson mana, and she threw a huge overhand haymaker straight at Tasmin’s jaw.

WHOOOM!

The fist ripped through the air with a heavy whistle, it was obviously the kind of punch that ended fights however Tasmin smiled.

She’d fought beside Brida for longer than she cared to count so she knew that haymaker.

She’d seen it flatten orcs, crawlers and one very unlucky door, and she knew that once Brida threw it, there was no pulling it back.

’Right where I want you, idiot...’

The stagger hadn’t been an accident... She had ridden the recoil on purpose and let Brida’s own momentum drag her forward.

The instant the fist came at her face, Tasmin’s body seemed to lose all of its weight.

She twisted like a snake and slipped under the punch by a hair, so close that the wind off Brida’s knuckles ruffled the silver in her hair, and the punch hit nothing but air.

SWISH!

Brida’s whole body followed her fist forward and Tasmin struck... She drove her left palm into Brida’s floating ribs like a piston!

SMACK!

"Urgh!" Brida grunted.

Tasmin didn’t give her a second to breathe.

She pivoted on her heel and drove a sharp right hook into the side of Brida’s neck, then snapped a rising elbow straight into the point of her chin.

CRACK!

Each hit sounded like a hammer striking stone.

Brida’s dense bones and hardened muscle soaked up the worst of it, but the sheer speed of the assault rattled her teeth in her skull.

She was forced back a step, then another, as her arms flew up into a tight defensive guard.

’Don’t give her room,’ Tasmin thought, her feet never stopping. ’The second she gets those arms around me, I’m done...’

She kept hammering at the guard as a storm of short sharp strikes came from every angle at once and Brida’s forearms shook under every single one of them.

Brida gritted her teeth and tried to answer.

She threw a short hook through the gap in her own guard, quick for someone her size, aimed right at Tasmin’s temple.

FWUMP!

Tasmin wasn’t there anymore... She had dropped under it so low her knee nearly brushed the sand, and she came back up with a fist buried in Brida’s stomach.

THUD!

’Stop moving, damn it!’ Brida thought, the air rushing out of her nose. ’Stand still for one second and let me hit you!’

Tasmin, as always, did the exact opposite.

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

"Get off me!" Brida growled, sweeping her thick forearms outward to swat the smaller woman away.

Tasmin saw it coming a mile off and she stepped right into it.

As Brida’s arms spread wide to grab her, Tasmin drove both fists straight up between Brida’s forearms like a wedge.

SMASH!

Brida’s guard burst open.

Both of her heavy arms were knocked out to the sides, leaving her broad chest completely bare, and for half a heartbeat she just stood there with a very surprised look on her face.

Her eyes flicked from Brida’s chest to her shoulders, and an idea lit up in her head.

...Tasmin didn’t waste the opening on another punch.

She dipped her hips, pushed a burst of dark mana into her calves and sprang straight up off the sand.

FWOOSH!

She landed right on Brida’s broad shoulders, wrapped her thighs around Brida’s thick neck and locked her ankles together tight behind it.

CLAMP!

’Got you now,’ Tasmin thought.

She dug her heels into Brida’s collarbones and threw her whole upper body backward and to the side, twisting with every ounce of strength she had.

She meant to rip Brida’s balance clean out from under her and slam her headfirst into the frozen ground but it didn’t work.

Tasmin’s whole body strained... Her thighs burned, her back arched until her shoulder blades nearly touched, and Brida simply stood there like a pillar holding up a temple.

It was like trying to knock over an oak tree with a silk ribbon.

Brida’s Unyielding Bedrock Body held firm... Her core locked as hard as steel plating, her legs drove even deeper into the sand, and she took the entire twisting force without giving up a single inch, hell her neck didn’t even bend.

Tasmin was left hanging off her shoulders at a very awkward angle.

Under her, Brida rolled her shoulders once, as if she were adjusting a backpack that was a little too heavy.

’Cute,’ Brida thought. ’She actually thought that would work.’

"Is this supposed to be a choke, Tasmin?" Brida mocked through her teeth, her eyes burning crimson. "It feels like a wet scarf!"

Tasmin’s eyes went wide.

For the first time since the fight began, a flicker of doubt crossed her face.

’Tch! What the hell is her center of gravity made of?!’ Tasmin cursed, clawing at Brida’s auburn hair just to keep her grip.

Then she felt it... Under her thighs, Brida’s neck muscles shifted, and Brida grinned.

Before Tasmin could let go and jump clear, Brida bent her knees, dug her boots into the sand and launched herself straight up and backward.

FWOOM!

She threw her whole heavy body back through the air with terrifying force, aiming to land flat on her back and crush Tasmin underneath her like a bug under a falling boulder.

The ground rushed up at Tasmin’s spine... If she took that landing with Brida’s full weight on top of her, every rib she had would snap like kindling.

’Shit, shit, shit...!’

Two inches before her shoulders hit the sand, Tasmin activated [Shadow-Submersion Drift].

Her body turned into liquid darkness... It slid clean out of the hold and sank straight down into Brida’s own falling shadow.

For a moment, there was no up or down.

There was just cold quiet dark, pressing in on all sides like deep water, and the faint muffled thunder of Brida falling somewhere far above her.

’Too close,’ Tasmin thought, her heart pounding even here. ’Way too close...’

SHHHK!

A split second later, Brida’s back slammed into the arena floor.

KA-THOOOOM!

It hit like an earthquake.

A web of jagged cracks shot out across the packed sand, and the shockwave hurled dirt and loose stones high into the air while the roots beneath the floor groaned in protest.

Brida had crushed nothing but sand.

Her landing had been perfect... The angle had been perfect, she had felt Tasmin’s legs around her neck right up until the very last second, and then she’d felt nothing at all.

She knew it the instant she landed.

’Fucking hell.’

There was no crunch and no body either.

Her amber eyes snapped wide, and she rolled onto her stomach with surprising speed, shoving herself up off the ground to scan the ring.

’Where’d she go?’

For a long second, the arena floor was nothing but a swirling cloud of dust and snow.

Twenty feet above it, the shadows gathered.

Tasmin burst out of them in midair with her black leathers snapping in the wind and her arms spread wide like a hawk about to dive onto the brawler below.

She saw Brida’s head snap up... She saw the crimson flare in her eyes and the way her knees bent, and she knew exactly what was coming next.

She was counting on it.

’There you are,’ Brida thought, and her grin came back.

Her Bedrock Body had shrugged off the landing like it was nothing as crimson mana roared through her thighs, and in a single flash she shot straight up off the ground.

BOOM!

The wind screamed past her ears. The ground dropped away below her boots.

All she could see was Tasmin’s wide-open chest getting closer and she met Tasmin halfway.

Brida’s right fist drove forward like a battering ram and caught Tasmin square in the center of her chest before she could bring her arms in to guard.

WHAM!

The punch knocked every last bit of air out of Tasmin’s lungs with a sick hollow thud.

Another ring of force exploded out from the point of impact and tore through the falling snow.

BOOOOM!

"Agh!" Tasmin choked with her back bending around Brida’s fist.

Brida’s face split into a huge triumphant grin.

"Got you, you little—"

The rest of the sentence never came.

Under Brida’s knuckles, the body she’d just hit flickered... It went thin and see-through, then broke apart into wisps of cold black smoke that slid right around her arm.

FZZT!

It was a shadow clone.

The moment Tasmin had come out of the drift, she’d activated [Phantom Blitz] and left an illusion of herself hanging in the air for Brida to punch.

...The real one had never been there at all.

Brida’s grin stayed on her face for one more second... it had turned into the grin of a woman who had just realized something very bad was about to happen to her.

’Behind me! No, no, no, how?!’

Every hair on the back of her neck stood up at once. She started to twist around in midair, swinging her heavy arm backward to cover her blind side however she was far too late.

The real Tasmin rose out of the blind spot behind Brida’s left shoulder, and her dark eyes blazed as she activated [Shadow Strengthening].

’Got you.’

The shadow beneath her snapped upward and poured straight into her body.

It soaked into her muscles, her veins and her bones, and in an instant, every stat she had doubled... A black haze spilled off her skin like smoke off a fire.

Tasmin whipped her right leg around in a perfect roundhouse kick, and her boot slammed into the side of Brida’s ribs with the force of a falling meteor.

KRAAAAACK!

The impact cracked across the arena like thunder, and the wooden posts around the ring shook.

Brida let out a choked grunt as the doubled force punched straight through her guard.

It was nothing like the hits from before... Those had been stings, annoying little bites she could shrug off.

This one went straight through her muscle and slammed into the bone underneath, and for one split second, the Unyielding Bedrock Body felt very yielding indeed.

’What the...?!’

For the first time all morning, her feet left the ground without her permission, and the titan went flying sideways across the arena like a thrown stone.

WHOOOOSH!

She hit the sand once, bounced, hit it again and rolled with her heavy body tearing a long furrow across the arena floor until she slammed into the wooden wall at the edge of the ring.

THOOM!

A cloud of sand and snow drifted slowly down over the spot where she’d landed.

Tasmin dropped back to the ground and landed light on her feet, the black haze still curling over her shoulders.

The sand hissed softly under her boots where the shadow touched it.

Her chest still throbbed as the clone had taken the punch, but the shockwave hadn’t cared which one of her was real.

Her right arm was still buzzing from that very first collision, and her thighs burned from trying to twist a woman made of bedrock but none of it mattered.

For a moment, nothing in it moved then, slowly, a thick arm pushed out of the sand.

A hand found the edge of the wall and gripped it so hard the wood creaked.

CREAK!

Brida dragged herself up onto one knee, spat a mouthful of sand to the side and pressed her other hand against her ribs.

Every breath sent a hot jab of pain through her side.

Something in there was definitely bruised, and maybe cracked... Her auburn hair had come loose from its knot and hung over her face, and through it, her amber eyes were burning brighter than ever.

’That bitch,’ Brida thought, and she started to laugh.

Tasmin rolled her neck, and a sharp breathless grin spread across her face.

’I really need to beat the shit out of this bitch.’