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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 141
🕑 Added 2024-09-12 08:43:40 +0000 UTCAt this point, as we were facing each other while Lavinia was giving me crazy eyes as we circled one another, changed our stances as we went along.
As Lavinia changed her stance high, I made my move and lunged forward, aiming for her “injured” shoulder, and threw in a few more probing strikes, but all of them were parried off easily enough with just her off-hand dagger.
So I once again started flicking my spear, making it bend while striking at Lavinia. This forced her on the backfoot while also forcing her to use both her weapons to parry my strikes, her dagger defending her head and torso, while her rapier defended her legs.
As my strikes continued, I could see the look in her eyes become more frantic, and just as one of my strikes went for her “injured” shoulder once again, instead of dodging, she ate the hit and dashed into my space, dropped her dagger so she could grab my spear shaft and stabbed at me with her rapier while pulling herself forward.
This forced me to let go of my spear and jump backward as the tip of her rapier was flying toward me.
But just as I thought I got out of stabbing range, I saw the blade of her rapier glow and rapidly extend toward my neck, I twisted my body to dodge the blade but still got nailed in the shoulder while dodging, making me spin in the air like I did to her in a previous engagement.
While I spun in the air, I used the momentum to draw my sword and ready myself. When I once again locked eyes on Lavinia, she had her back turned to me as she threw my spear off the wide stage as far as she could. She effectively took my spear out of the playing field.
As she was attempting to recover her dagger, I rushed Lavinia and slashed at her, forcing her to abandon her dagger and swipe her blade at me, but I managed to block the swipe and put my boot to her side, kicking her away and picked up her blade to sheath in my belt.
“What kind of enchantment is that on your blade? I have never seen an enchantment that extends the weapon before.” I said as I readied my guard again.
Lavinia just smiled at me and said, “Yes, it was specially made and enchanted by a blacksmith of some renown, but worry not, I have more surprises for you.”
As we closed into one another, I noticed she advanced with a lot more confidence than when she was facing me with my spear, that tells me that either she is confident in beating me because we will have to fight in closer range now, or because she thinks I use the spear as my main weapon and am not as proficient at the sword. I am going to have to show her that both reasons are wrong.
The engagement started once again with Lavinia testing out my sword skills with a few pokes, all of which I efficiently perry or blocked. But due to Lavinia having a lighter weapon and moving her rapier faster than I could with my hand-and-a-half sword, I could not afford to block with any big or extended movements and keep my sword as centralized and close to my body as possible.
I was just waiting for the moment she would be forced to make a big move when she could not get past my guard, and it did not take long. After close to a dozen strikes which I blocked, she finally went for the big lunge.
She started by striking high, followed by dropping down low, almost touching the ground, and lunging up toward me while her rapier tip went under my guard, headed for my chest, and I have no doubt that she extended her blade too.
To avoid this, I practically had to bend backward and do a rather clumsy one-handed back-handspring. Honestly, this is the most amount of acrobatics I ever had to perform in a battle without aura, and I am disappointed that I was not able to capitalize on her big move. But I got to say, that was a good move on her part.
We both got back on proper footing around the same time and clashed once again. As I crossed blades with Lavinia once again, I internally sighed, I never did like sparing with people who mained rapiers in my previous life, bunch of little shits being snooty because theirs is the only melee-armed sports in the Olympics.
When we clashed again, a few strikes in, I saw her rapier glow once again and prepared to bat away an extending blade, but what happened instead was multiple copies of her rapier manifested, all sprouting from a blurred and distorted overlapping hand holding the rapier.
She then lunged at me and the rapier copies sprouting from her wrist did the same, I counted five blades coming at different points of my body. I had an inkling of what this was, so I willingly gave ground by jumping back, but at the same time spinning my sword with little force behind it to catch as many of the five blades as I could.
And sure enough, my guess was right, my sword passed through two of the blades with no feeling of resistance, only to feel and hear the sound of metal on metal upon my sword hitting her rapier, “A mirage blade, is that another of your surprises? You are going to have to do better than that, I already know how it works.”
I broke the sword lock by pushing her sword to the side and using the momentum to deliver an upward slash, but she was fast and agile enough to bend to the side, avoiding my sword. That was a big mistake on her part, she should have backed away because she was now in grappling range.
I released my left hand from my sword’s grip and shot out to grab Lavinia’s sword hand. Using my greater strength and body weight, I jerked her forward and off balance before sweeping her legs with a kick, and when she was momentarily airborne, it was a simple matter of flipping her and slamming her to the ground. And before Lavinia could recover, I brought my sword to her neck, if this was a situation in real life without mana shields, it would have been easy to open up her throat with a simple movement of my sword.
“Do you yield?” I asked
“Marry me!” she said. And apparently, there was some kind of sound amplification enchantment in the Pit, because I was not the only one stunned into silence, all the audiences in the stands became silent too.
That was until some woman in the audience shouted, “That’s right, girl! Get that boy!”, then the people in the audience broke out into jeering laughter and cheering, and one of the VIP booths opposite me had a chair thrown through it to reveal a raving mad man being held back by soldiers. I am going to take a wild guess and say that is Duke Castilene, Lavinia’s father.
All I could do in this out of left field experience, was say, “What?”, as I looked around at the stands, the royals who were facepalming, back at Lavinia who had a stupid smile on her face, and then back at the referee who could only shrug his shoulders and say, “Winner… Luke Ironcrest?...”
Comments
Ryan Oakes
Good chapter. Maybe I'm spoiled or maybe the chapter was just really good. But it felt short to me. It's like watching your favorite anime on release day. The episodes are never long enough.
Thomas Corbin
hilarious!
