Chapter 310 310 – Ken & Tiara vs. Anwar 2/2
"Let's see you dash through these, hahaha!" Anwar laughed loudly and pulled out his hammer, his favorite weapon.
Ken looked around him at the many translucent bubbles formed by Air Qi before returning his indifferent gaze back to his enemy. With his mask on, he could only see prey in front of him.
"Cheap tricks," Ken said and swung his sword down.
'Slash, 81 in 81.'
'One Step.'
Executing those two techniques together, Ken dashed forward. Each slash took down one bubble, clearing his path to his enemy again.
Tiara did not stay idle either. With a graceful pirouette that captured her enemy's attention, she raised her arm, making the man's eyes follow its movement with unfocused eyes. As soon as her arm reached over her shoulder, multiple icebergs also came out of the ground, trying to impale her enemy. The only direction free of icebergs was the one Ken came from.
Sensing the immediate danger, Anwar awoke from his stupor, and his face revealed a hint of dread when he realized Ken was ready to attack again. He brandished his hammer, and a blast of air in the hammer's back made the weapon fly at incredible speed as if he were wielding a light sword.
His technique was not over, and twelve ethereal hammers appeared around him, rotating at a high speed before being shot away when the centrifugal force could not keep them in their course anymore. Nine icebergs and the hammers destroyed each other, while Ken had to face the weight of the remaining three.
'Cloud Running.'
He switched movement technique and his body twisted like a snake's, dodging two hammers just barely while leaving him in front of the third. Luckily, at the fifth stage, he could use his Qi much more freely thanks to the support of the nascent soul.
He did not bother to execute a technique and waste large amounts of Qi for a single hammer, and just hacked it with his sword, cleaving it in half. Looking forward, he saw that their opponent already pulled back, opening distance between them to allow himself breathing space.
"Argh, you will pay for this, bitch!" Anwar barked at the seductress, frustrated by the fact he fell for her charm. In his trance, his reaction was delayed, and an iceberg pierced his calf.
"Your attacks are like poison, it's lowly!" he said as he isolated the Ice Qi in his veins. He was already busy suppressing Ken's raging Sword Qi, and now he had more trouble to worry about.
"Do you need help?" Vivienne asked him from behind, mainly for formality's sake. A short glance at her revealed she already pulled a comfortable chair out of her storage ring.
"No, I just underestimated them. I will go all out now," Anwar growled. He held his hammer in two arms and brought it down, hitting the ice so heavily that cracks formed in a radius of over a hundred meters.
'Land of Geysers.'
Steam blew out of the ice cracks, prompting Ken and Tiara to step back while looking around them cautiously. The ground trembled, and the two felt condensed movements underneath their feet.
"Dodge."
Ken and Tiara jumped to the side when multiple geysers burst out of the ice, sending a violent stream of water and hot steam that reached the sky.
"These geysers have Hammer Qi imbued in them, be careful," Ken warned his partner as the two jumped on shards of ice. The ice plain had melted, and hot water kept being generated underground before shooting a new geyser that could break half of their bones upon contact.
"What's the plan?" The icy princess asked. Her Ice Qi was spreading out of her body constantly, fixing the ice and allowing her to slide over it in a beautiful dance as she dodged the incoming attacks.
"We can engage him. He is only at the fifth stage, his mind has not been strengthened yet, which means his concentration and thinking power are limited. He has to isolate our invasive Qi, stop his blood from draining out of his body, and prevent his intestines from falling through the hole in his stomach," Ken pointed out his observation.
"Then it means that such a big attack needs a lot of concentration as well, and he can't do much more beyond that. I guess you could call it a mind game, let's overload him," Tiara smiled under her veil when she understood the right way to battle their enemy.
Ken was still holding back, keeping his Bloodlust techniques secret. If he so wished, he could inflict an additional deep wound on his enemy by taking him by surprise with the Paralysis technique, however, he preferred getting used to working with Tiara as a team.
Besides, if he finds out later that he was over-reliant on the slave collar around Vivienne's neck and she had already managed to break out of it, it could be his trump card to take her down.
The woman was dangerous, even extremely so; when he was at the peak of the fourth stage, he barely managed to beat her when her power and senses were heavily restricted. Now that she was in peak condition, a fair fight with her almost seemed impossible to win.
"Exactly, let's go," he confirmed.
'Ice Shard Barrage.'
Tiara pointed her saber upwards and the mist coming out of the geyser turned into hundreds of tiny sharp ice blades. They rained down at her enemy, trying to puncture him until nothing was left.
"That's not enough to beat me!" Anwar spat and a few geysers rose in front of him, creating a wall of water that blocked all the shards.
"There's still more, don't celebrate yet," Tiara said viciously. Even her speech was meant to force him to speak. Every additional action he made came with the cost of his available concentration, also known as working memory.
"Bring it on!"
Ice shards formed from all his directions this time, forcing him to surround himself with geysers. He did not want to reduce the pressure on his enemies, forcing him to stand in place while he manipulated dozens of geysers at the same time.
Ken, not forgetting to fulfill his part in this battle, twirled as if he had no bones to pass through another geyser, and sent a heavy slash at the wall of water.
'Slash, 81 in 1.'
The attack cut through the water, creating a gap in the stream. Ken's heaviest attack was nothing to scoff at.
"Break!" the older man used compressed air to bounce his hammer at a rapid speed at the slash, meeting it head-on. A loud gong of metals clash reverberated around them, and Anwar was pushed out of his geysers' protection.
"Was that enough to beat you?" Ken said, his young voice serving to agitate his opponent further and make him act hastily.
"Damn it!"
Anwar had to stop the geyser behind him when he was pushed back toward it, but while he stumbled behind it, he pushed his palm forward and touched the water next to him.
"AH!" Two pained groans were heard almost at the same time. Anwar was one when multiple shards touched his skin. They could not penetrate his armor of condensed Air Qi, but their explosions scattered frost through his skin like toxic.
The other groan belonged to Tiara; when Anwar touched the geyser with his palm, six water shots were fired from the geysers, one from the tip of every finger and a bigger one from the center of the palm.
The enchantress couldn't dodge in time and two of the smaller shots pierced through her shoulder, leaving two bloody holes behind. Her left arm was hung from her shoulder, proof that the shot had hit the bone.
"Hahaha, there's going to be more of that!" Anwar tried to take advantage of Tiara's pain to continue his attacks, and with a clawing motion, tens of water bullets were discharged from the tips of his fingers.
"Nice trick, but it can't work more than once," Ken stood between them and his flexible sword jumped at a speed that even Vivienne could not perceive. The attack was weak, and its main purpose was to take out with its speed an enemy who wasn't focused on the battle because of sudden pain.
"I have already dispelled the foreign Qi from the first attacks on me, you're not going to have it easy anymore," Anwar threatened. He took a fighting pose with his hammer held in his two hands, ready to engage in battle again.
*SWISH!*
A sharp whistle passed right next to Ken's ear, and he felt coldness that froze the left side of his face in the split second it passed next to him. Surprised, he realized that Tiara had launched an ice attack with far more power than he believed she had.
'Intent! That's what she did during the bracket she stayed behind!'
The world seemed to move in slow motion, and everyone's eyes were glued to the captivating arc of the slash that came out of the enchantress' saber. Ken, Anwar, Vivienne, and the Four Seasons Sect members that surrounded them. Nobody could resist the appeal.
"No!"
Anwar saw an illusion in front of him; the attack took the form of beautiful rainbows in his mind, something that he must not harm or resist. However, he knew better than to succumb to beautiful fantasies.
When he snapped out of his reveries, he could only swing the hammer while coating it with as much Qi as he could muster. There was not enough time to execute a technique of his own.
The hammer and the long-range attack met each other, and the intent behind the frost covered the man in ice from toe to head.
"That's enough."
A beautiful figure with long platinum hair stood before the ice sculpture.
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