Devourer Of Destiny - Chapter 145
No one was more surprised by that laughter than Ebon Dirge himself; the clownish poseur’s declaration had struck something inside of him that he usually kept under wraps, and he could not help but erupt in mirth at the idiotic display. Of all of the things someone could be arrogant about in front of him!
The good news for everybody in the vicinity of Ascension City was that he was the one facing this buffoon, not Threnody. Dirge could already see it now: an invocation of the Blood Devouring Universe’s World of Blood, a sarcastic rant, and then probably just smashing the whole thing into the fellow. That she would have wiped out the audience, staff, and who knows how many more in the vicinity of the arena would have just probably elicited a comment about how hard it was to keep score.
Restraint had never been one of his partner’s notable traits.
Luckily for everybody for miles around, Dirge’s own reprisal for this idiot’s presumptuousness would be limited to the man himself.
“Ah, so you think this is funny, do you?” the would-be “King” remarked from inside his red-tinted bubble. “Chuckle away, scrawny. I, Dagrus, will have the last laugh!”
Dirge, reasserting his self-control, stopped himself from an exasperated shake of the head. Looking at the situation more clinically, he really should be grateful to the man. Since this guy indulged in blood sacrifice of some sort, he should be a plentiful supply of nutrition.
Dirge flew up into the air and matched Dagrus’ altitude, standing meters away. “You’re very proud of your little bubble there, aren’t you? Quite the interesting stance for a fellow who would call himself King.”
“Either you can break through or you can’t, little boy,” Dagrus replied with a smirk. “You smashed up that baldie pretty good, but do you really think you’re good enough to face me?”
Dirge understood what the fellow wanted, of course. The main characteristic of that shield wasn’t in being some kind of impenetrable defense. Instead, would-be assailants risked having their blood drained as soon as they made contact with the sphere; breaking the thing with sheer brute force was a folly unless one possessed overwhelming strength.
Dagrus clearly was one of those who kept track of the various contestant records. Since Dirge had dominated all of his opponents so far in close-ranged clashes using his hands, the man probably assumed that the shield would be the perfect counter.
Dirge sauntered through the air for the rest of the distance. He wasn’t in a hurry to end this; this fellow deserved a thorough shattering of his delusions before being sent to Hell. A quick death was too merciful for flaunting this kind of presumption in front of him.
Once he was within arm’s reach, Dirge halted, looking the wannabe royalty right in the eye. He could see the excitement, the tensed anticipation, as the blood-drinker wanted nothing more than to have his opponent make contact with the red-tinted shield.
“This is an arena fight, not a staring contest, kid,” Dagrus taunted after a moment. “Either break the shield or admit defeat already.”
“Funny that you think you can set the terms of this engagement, Clown Prince,” Dirge replied with a dull monotone. “Since you want nothing more than for me to touch your little draining barrier, allow me to oblige you.”
Inside the shield, Dagrus’ brow furrowed. That his opponent knew the nature of the shield was probably a little alarming, although the blood clown quickly recovered and his sneer deepened.
Dirge reached out with his right hand and touched the barrier. The surface rippled and undulated like water as his fingers made contact, but nothing else happened. Dagrus’ sneer slid off his face as he realized that the shield was ineffective. Even if his opponent had a counter for the shield, it shouldn’t have protected them so absolutely.
Slowly, deliberately, Dirge ran his fingers down the surface of the sphere. A cacophonous squeal filled the air, a combination of nails on a chalkboard, pigs in a torture chamber, and the worst violin factory ever all sounding at once as the surface of the bubble trembled.
Then it popped.
Compared to the hellish squealing before, the destruction of the barrier was utterly silent. Its master, though, wasn’t. With a muffled oath, Dagrus shot back in the air, immediately lengthening the distance between him and his opponent.
Dirge could have caught the man and wrung the life out of him then and there. He could have immediately followed and done the same. He did neither, though, just standing in the air watching the self-proclaimed blood royal’s moment of terror with amusement. “So then I guess I win, right?”
Calming his sudden heavy breathing, Dagrus’s features contorted back to its default sneer. “Hardly,” he spat out. “Congratulations on making it through the preliminary though, tiny. Now the real battle begins.”
Seven points of sanguine light lit up in an arc behind Dagrus’ back, materializing into sharp meter-length prisms of blood. With a cry, they shot out, all aimed directly at his enemy.
With a gesture, Dirge halted the projectiles in the air in front of him. “How adorable,” he mused out loud, and then flicked one of the missiles with a finger. It soundlessly shattered into nothingness, its neighbors joining it with six more flicks of a finger. The old devil sniffed at the air, noticing something distinctly wrong about the supposed blood-forged weapons.
The smell was sweet, saccharine. It was a pleasant scent, a sugariness one could indulge in and even get drunk on. This was the aroma of a pastry chef’s kitchen, the perfume of a den of high-class prostitutes.
That smell wasn’t blood. Blood was coppery, a metallic stench that overwhelmed. Blood had the scent of a battlefield, the aroma of imminent death, the charnel house’s drenched chopping blocks.
Dirge’s contempt for this traipsing clown only deepened as he waved away the falsity in the air. This utter buffoon didn’t embrace the reality of his supposed path, and if he couldn’t do that, he would be forever stranded in his delusions. Saytel, who only possessed a fragment of enlightenment, understood far more of blood than this idiot. Even River, self-absorbed and pitiful as he was, knew better than to mistake the reality of the path of blood for something like this.
Dagrus, oblivious to the less-than-flattering comparisons he was undergoing in Dirge’s mind at the moment, theatrically outstretched his arms and two whirling cyclones of blood appeared, materializing into a pair of red-armored knights with sharp spires of crystallized red in their hands. Madness danced his eyes. “This is the end!” he shouted as he brought his hands together with a loud clap.
The knights of blood shot forward, thrusting their crystalline spears before them, directed at Dirge’s chest. Dagrus licked his reddened lips and cackled triumphantly as his summoned minions slammed into his opponent.
“Boring.”
Dirge’s voice cut through Dagrus’ laughter, and silence again reigned as the would-be blood devil looked on with confusion. “What?! Impossible!”
“Leave what’s possible or not to the experts, idiot,” Dirge replied. His hands grasped the necks of the summoned knights and he squeezed. The forms shattered into blobs of blood that hung in the air, wavering in an apparent struggle to return to their master.
“Give it back!” Dagrus shrieked. “Give it back to me!”
Dirge sighed audibly. “I think I’ve exhausted the opportunities for entertainment that you could provide me with. An amateur like you really shouldn’t be playing with this stuff. You clearly are an unsuitable jackass, only good for feeding others.”
Dagrus’ eyes bulged. Behind him, wings of blood sprouted, and a red sword materialized in his hands. “DIE!!!” he screamed as he shot forward.
“Blood Devouring Universe: Sanguine Ribbon,” Dirge muttered to himself, and the two masses in front of him coalesced into a whiplike strand that he grasped one end of. With a flick of his wrist, the strand of blood whirled and struck the oncoming attacker, swatting him from the air and down into the arena floor with a bang.
Dirge descended, blood ribbon in hand, and pitilessly regarded the moron whose own power had been turned against him. Dagrus was almost in as bad a condition as the barbarian had been. His conjured wings and weapon had already dispersed, and his pale skin was covered with rivulets of his own blood.
“Now it’s over,” Dirge mused as he stood over the defeated poseur. “But, just to be certain…”
“Blood Devouring Universe: Point Mass,” Dirge whispered. With a sucking sound, all of Dagrus’ blood — the whip, the layer coating his shattered form, and every drop remaining inside his body — all disappeared. All that was left was a desiccated, broken husk on the arena floor.
Sending the tiny red crystal that had just formed in his palm into his storage ring, Dirge looked up and around at the arena. All was silent for a moment.
Then the cheers came, at first just a few, but soon enough erupting into general applause.
——–
Jenna wasn’t sure what to say or think as the match ended. On one hand, Jet’s performance had left her absolutely gobsmacked. This was the first time she had, with certitude, seen him openly respond to magic with magic, but it was at a level she had trouble comprehending.
His destruction of the shield might have been attributed to some quirk of his brute force strength, but how he had stopped those missiles and utterly annihilated them and how he had shrugged off the attacks of those summoned knights, breaking them down and then turning the blood used to form them into a weapon against their summoner…
Magic countering magic was commonplace. Fires could be extinguished with water and ice, bulwarks of earth could split the wind… but what Jet had done, had that been a counterspell?
Using a counterspell in a live combat situation was unheard of. The art of counterspell was in reversing the process of a given spell, directly dismantling it. It was far easier to use other magic to block magic; to use a counterspell was, fundamentally, to counter magic with itself. It required an understanding of the magic used and its underlying principles, something that needed lighting quick calculation and precise control to pull off.
Jenna was also still confused about that final moment, though; was that a backlash, or had Jet done something? If it were the latter, then…
Those musings were interrupted as several of the girls around her erupted with cheers. Every woman in the Academy who knew of Dagrus loathed him; it was little surprise that they were ecstatic that he was finally taken care of. Jenna allowed herself to get caught up in the round of applause that infected the audience, seeded by those cheers. The technical display aside, it was an excellent fight and a well-deserved death.
To Jenna’s disappointment, Jet retired after that bout. She lingered after, lost in her thoughts as the fights she didn’t care about continued.
Jet had too many secrets, too much she simply needed to know. Somehow, she had to find a way to get those answers.