The swordsman countered the strikes directed at him with relative ease, making use of subtle shifts in his posture and steps to redirect the force of each blow. His combat style was centered around minimalist movements to inflict maximum damage with minimum effort.
Deflecting a strike poised to rip through his throat, he sidestepped and countered, resulting in me raising one of the pair of swords to defend against the strike. He seemed almost at ease as he countered my strikes, as though now that he was almost out of soul-essence, he had reverted back to his most basic form.
He was now unveiling the true extents of his combat style.
My expression darkened.
Activating the photon absorption field, I surged towards him, expending more effort on deepening the darkness, and thereby increasing the rate at which my soul essence dwindled. I only had a few seconds left.
My face paled at the thought.
Almost the same instant I deepened the darkness of the photon absorption field, I drifted out of the swordsman’s line of sight. With the darkness now severely impairing his vision, I sought to capitalize on the few moments I had left.
I moved through the darkness, striking from the swordsman’s blind spot and retreating the next moment. With dark, surging vitriol, I quickened my pace, striking harder and more ruthlessly at the Awakened who was now finding it hard to defend himself.
After all, with his vision now greatly impaired, he needed to make use of his perception to find me within the absolute darkness. And, with the speed at which I struck and retreated, that wasn’t an easy thing to do.
However, at the same time, I knew I was literally burning through my soul essence. That was also why I never resorted to using this property of the photon absorption field.
But I had no other choice at this point.
In the next few moments, the swordsman sustained several debilitating wounds. Now forced to rely more on intuition, and less on his sight, he was driven to activate his gravitational compression, heightening the strain and pressure I felt to unbearable extents.
Yet the oppressive pressure was what I was after.
Utilizing the gravitational compression ability while having an almost-depleted soul core, especially since it was an area-of-effect offensive ability, and the likelihood of his ability being borne from an A-ranked soul core was quite low, he was most likely burning through his soul essence faster than I was.
...Gritting my teeth, I pushed through the unbearable pain of having my body slowly torn apart, my strikes becoming even faster, and my eyes turning red from the immense strain I placed on myself.
The swordsman raged in retaliation.
He lost his composure and effective battle style. However, he compensated for it with effective maneuvers. His strikes became swifter, faster.
Deadlier.
He was a good swordsman, and I knew I couldn’t defeat him in such a head-on fight, at least not before my soul core ran out of soul essence. So I compensated with madness.
We raged and howled, descending into a furious clash of steel, madness, and unbending resolve.
Step.
The reason for such a barbaric clash was quite simple.
We both knew we were running out of soul essence, which was why we were going all out, trying to end the other before our reserves went dry.
Yet I knew I couldn’t allow the battle to proceed in that direction.
I might be able to match a True Awakened as a Dormant Awakened, but that was, in all essence, due to the Dark Soul Core. Without its essence to support me, while I might still be stronger than an average Awakened, compared to a True Awakened, my natural stats would pale in comparison.
Blood drained from my face.
I had ten seconds left.
The swordsman sidestepped a cleave of my sword, elbowing with the back of his hand. The elbow struck hard and disoriented my vision. He stepped forward, attempting to drive his sword through my skull.
I regained my line of sight at the last moment, and slid across the ground, barely avoiding the devastating strike. I appeared behind the weary swordsman, and with a forceful turn, slashed down with the sword, aiming to cleave my assailant into two. However, unsurprisingly but frustratingly, he easily deflected my strike with a deft twist of his body.
We were upon ourselves once again. And I could feel it, I only had five more seconds left, at best.
My eyes turned red, howling as I darted around the swordsman, madness burning in my eyes.
Now that I was out of his line of sight, the swordsman grimaced as he clenched his hands, the gravitational compression intensifying before he turned and closed the distance between us.
He was preparing to end things!
I staggered, stumbling as he brought the sword down upon me. In that split second, I gritted my teeth and sent all the remaining soul essence, however little I had, toward my stomach, and stepped to the left, slashing forward with the sword in my left hand.
The swordman’s eyes blazed with insanity as he lightly twirled his hand, and just as I had gambled on, drove the sword through my stomach. The blade easily tore through flesh, however stopping short of cutting through bones. I grimaced from the pain, and in the next moment, a bright red light lit the darkness.
The swordsman, now nothing but a hollow corpse, slumped onto the ground.
"Hah... Hah..."
I fell to my knees, gasping for breath as I rushed toward the corpse.
Still bleeding and covered in one too many debilitating wounds, I groaned as I searched the corpses. Soon, I’d find what I was looking for.
I exhaled lightly at the sight.
And with a pale, bloodied face, crushed the device, the sealing space losing all effect.
A/N: Going forward, a few characters POV might be introduced in the story. For certain reasons, they’re pivotal to the story and their POV ensures a coherent explanation towards the development I have in store.