Olem slammed his palm toward Cinder. "Row Atomic Blast." A wave of compressed and swirling energy came together into a beam of energy that defied all logic. It missed the flame mage, though, as Cinder used a Mana Step and dodged.
Cinder reappeared and raised both guns up, blasting out a wave of fire and ice. Olem thought fast and used a Mana Step to appear next to the remaining Ho's she had, then he picked them up and tossed them in the way of the attack.
"You fucker." Cinder scowled.
"It's your own fault." Olem snorted. "Don't feel too bad, though; most of ours are gone as well."
"Oh?"
Olem dropped the dead Ho's and folded his arms. There was a light clicking sound, and then suddenly he opened. Literally. His chest unfolded and jutted out, revealing the insides of his chest, which were completely hollowed out.
"You can open up?" Cinder asked, surprised.
"Martel was shocked as well," Olem grunted, and he began to fold back up. "The plan was actually rather simple. I just filled myself up with thirteen out of the fifteen Ho's. Olivia and Miranda both got a Super Ho each, and then we went to fight you. We knew you'd try to pick off the weak ones, so we needed you to fight Olivia since she had a surefire way of surviving and stalling you due to her ability to revive. We also knew you'd go after her since she's the weakest. All that was left was figuring out how to beat Martel. In a long fight, I could do that, but I needed to beat him quickly so Olivia could then teleport back to where I was, and I could face you. That's why I decided to sacrifice most of our Ho's."
"Most of your Ho's?" Cinder glared at the golem. "Explain."
"I filled myself up with the Ho's, and then once I fought Martel, I just opened up and told the Ho's to self-destruct. I'm durable enough to survive thirteen little bastards blowing up, but Martel? Well, you should have seen the look on his face. He went to stab me and then got blown up mid-swing. Poor bastard never even had time to properly defend with his mana. He went out like a light."
"Y-You blew your Ho's up?" Cinder's teeth ground together, and her knuckles turned white as she gripped her gun. "What a barbaric strategy!"
"I think the real thing you should be concerned with is why I'm telling you all of this."
"What?" Cinder took a cautious step back.
"Martel's down, Olivia still has her Super Ho, and she's currently heading for your crystal. You better hurry with me or else you won't be winning."
"Damn you!" Cinder raised her guns.
"Wait."
"What!" She demanded. "What else could there possibly be-"
"Martel went down."
"So!"
"So, our team got another Super Ho." Olem pointed a thumb behind himself. "This way is to your crystal. Behind you is toward ours. Guess what just showed up."
Cinder froze when she heard the sound of feet pattering, and she glanced down to see a pink Super Ho was now dancing next to her. "Don't you fucking dare-"
"Self-destruct."
The pink Ho stopped dancing, its body lit up with a white light, and before Cinder had time to move, it detonated with the force of a small bomb.
At the same time, in another tunnel, Ash stared down the approaching Miranda. He looked a little annoyed as he took stock of the silver-haired beauty. "I was hoping for Olivia."
"Well, you got me," Miranda said flatly. She reached up and began to undo the tie to her suit. "That won't be an issue, will it?"
"No. I'll just take you out here and now." Ash lifted his bow and pulled back a shot. "Vil Wind Eagle!" His magic compressed around his bow, and he fired his shot, the arrow expanding into a large bird of air that flapped its wings and blasted toward Miranda.
Miranda stared the attack down. She didn't bother dodging; she didn't even raise her arms up in defense. She just walked toward the attack and allowed it to slam into her. The entire tunnel shook, her jacket was blown to bits, and her skin was sliced open, but she kept marching forward.
Ash gave her a bewildered look, and he notched another arrow and fired again, this time using a basic wind spell to jam the arrow into her shoulder. Again, Miranda didn't bother to defend herself, and her speed began to get faster as she started to charge Ash. He backed up and shot again, nailing her in the side, but she didn't even slow down.
"Why the hell aren't you dodging!"
"Fuck you. Vil Memory Hunt!" Miranda created her scythe, a swirling pink blade of mana, and her speed only got faster as she plowed through the arrows.
Thou shalt not harm…
Merlin was such a softie. He was weak and pathetic. She hated that the two of them shared a body. She hated even more that he refused to harm his enemies. He was everything she wasn't. At the same time, he was still her, even if he was just a reflection. At day she existed, and at night he came out, yet their Cores and Souls were virtually identical.
Just like Merlin, she was weak. That was why she had her own Vow. One that was more suited to her than Merlin's weak pacifist powers.
Thou shalt not yield…
One of the arrows formed into a thick beam of energy, which slammed into the side of her head, but Miranda just laughed, and as blood flowed down the side of her face, she lapped at it with her tongue as she finally reached her prey and raised up her scythe. Ash panicked and lifted his bow, using it to block her swing, but she just kept coming, again and again, leaving herself wide open and ignoring the blows he would jam into her. Ash even tore an arrow from his quiver and slammed it directly into her stomach, but that only made her faster!
Thou shalt not harm was a Vow Merlin used, which gave him the ability to perfectly control his mana and use it to a degree that only captains or prodigies could normally do, such as casting a spell through another spell. The drawback was that he couldn't harm his enemies. His strategy was built around stalling and dodging, using memory magic to learn everything about the person he was fighting so he could wait for either his brother, Gormay, to arrive, or for it to become day, so Miranda would come back out.
Thou shalt not yield, as the name implied, was a Vow that made it so that Miranda was forbidden from yielding in combat. She couldn't run away, she couldn't block, and she couldn't dodge. All attacks were ones she would simply have to take head-on. In exchange for this Vow, her flesh became something akin to iron, allowing her to take one hell of a beating, and she gained a nifty little perk. The more pain she felt, the stronger she would become.
She was actually pretty proud of this Vow, as it worked perfectly for her style. She had no care for her own life and so didn't worry about dying, and gaining an enhanced body and power boost in the middle of a brawl was great.
That was until someone made an even better version of her Vow.
Davi flashed through Miranda's mind, and her teeth gritted as she swung her scythe down even harder and faster. In the middle of his training with Captain Laerton, Davi had come to her about placing Vows on themselves. At first, she tried to warn him of the danger, but then he went ahead and did it anyway. He sealed his Way of Self Iron and Old Bird's Flapping Wings skill, locking them away and altering them, but in return gained the ability to absorb raw mana from pain and turn it into power, which he would then compress down into another Core that he somehow managed within his body.
It seriously pissed her off because most people couldn't even come close to doing something like that. Her Vow just made her a bit stronger from the pain she was feeling, and she had to never dodge or defend, but his gave him a whole freaking second core that he could manipulate and do whatever the fuck he wanted! Davi was a prodigy when it came to the art of enchanting. What was worse, he was a prodigy who didn't know how amazing he was.
"It seriously pisses me off how much better some people are." Miranda rammed her head into Ash's face, breaking his nose and causing him to stumble back a bit. "Some people work like hell, constantly trying to improve themselves, and then others are handed an easy win." She smirked, and her scythe began to grow. "But you know, I recently spent a full month training someone who had practically no talent. She was utter crap with a scythe, and no matter what I tried, I just couldn't seem to drill it into her. See."
Ash tried to dodge, but his head was reeling from the pain, and the scythe blade barely managed to cut into his shoulder. Or at least, it should have sliced into him, but instead it just passed right through him.
Suddenly, the pain in his nose was nothing compared to the pain in his head. Ash's eyes widened, and his limbs shook. He nearly dropped his bow as a terrible ache settled behind his eyes. His skull felt like it was going to burst, and his brain was even worse, feeling as if it was about to swell and pop.
"W-What did you just-"
Ash gagged, and he saw Rosco? It flashed through his mind, a memory of an event he was sure had never happened because Rosco was brushing his white hair and saying how proud he was to call him his daughter.
Miranda just laughed and swung the scythe again, and it phased through Ash's chest. This time, he screamed and stumbled back, blood dripping out of his nose as more memories entered his head. He remembered staying up all night to practice his blood magic, constantly struggling to keep up with his classmates, and then being bullied by… himself? He saw a version of himself in the memories, calling him useless, insulting him for having a terrible type of magic, and beating him down every chance he got.
These weren't his memories.
They were Olivia's…
"My brother is soft." Miranda slammed her knee into Ash's stomach, nearly causing him to vomit. "He extracts memories of the people he fights. Learns everything he can about them. As a memory mage, we're built to hold a ton of knowledge. A normal mage, though? There is only so much information they can hold, and I don't like acting soft." Miranda gave a twisted grin and jammed her finger into her forehead. "There is this fun game I like to play. How many memories can I shove into a person until they stop being themselves? Will they have a total personality change, or will their mind give out and implode? Want to see what happens to you."
Miranda swung the scythe down again, but it was suddenly halted in place as Ash caught her wrist. Her eyes widened slightly as he held her back, and he caught his breath. Slowly, he glanced up at her and glared.
"That was a pretty dirty trick," Ash grunted. "But you know, you're not the only one who can play dirty."
Miranda gritted her teeth, but no matter how much she struggled, she couldn't force her arm forward. With a single limb, she was being held back by a mere squire? That shouldn't have been possible. Even without her buff, her strength had been far above his-
And then it suddenly hit Miranda. Her strength. Her arms were getting weaker, as was her breathing, and she felt so tired and exhausted all of a sudden. Her strength was fading, bit by bit. Her buff wasn't just gone; she had become dozens of times weaker.
"Do you know what carbon monoxide poisoning is?" Ash pulled his fist back and swirled mana into it and then rammed it into Miranda's stomach as hard as he could, bringing her to her knees. "It's something that lacks color and a smell. It's kind of scary because it can cause oxygen to not reach your organs, and it will even start to replace the oxygen in your blood."
"Y-You fucking poisoned me?" Miranda's eyes widened in horror.
Ash shook his head. "No. I don't want to kill you. What I did do, however, is something similar. Those arrows you allowed me to place into you pumped my wind mana through your body. It wasn't long, and since you're strong, it won't kill you, but it did stop the body's normal flow for several seconds. You must be pretty dizzy, right? Here, let me get rid of your headache!" Ash brought his foot back and rammed it straight into Miranda's face!
He put his all into the strike, focusing his mana into a single point, and her nose was practically caved in. The force of the attack caused Miranda to be lifted off the ground, and she was sent flying through the tunnel, where she collapsed, totally unconscious.
Ash didn't smile at the win. He nearly collapsed but caught himself on the wall. He groaned and rubbed his head. All the Ho's he had were dead, same for the ones Miranda had, but since he beat her, that meant a new Super Ho would be spawning near the crystal.
He caught his breath as memories of Olivia's life kept flashing through his head. They were fragmented. Small bits and pieces, but they were still memories. He hated that he was having to see them. Hated that he saw himself in a bad light with each one even more.
Ash gripped his bow and placed an arrow into it. "Whatever. I don't have time to worry about this right now." He turned in the direction of his crystal. "I'm going to stop her."
Meanwhile, in the final crystal, Olivia was having a super easy time. She carried her Ho and rushed down the tunnel as fast as she could, not having to fight anything. For once, it felt like everything was going her way. The plan had worked. For the most part, at least.
Olivia came running out of the tunnel and found herself hurrying through a forest that looked similar to the one her team had spawned in. She knew it was a different one, though, because up ahead, there was a stone castle that had a blue crystal jutting out of it.
Also, guarding the castle was a blue Ho. A Super one at that, which made her pause. One being here meant the enemy team either left one of their strongest Ho's behind or it meant one of her teammates was defeated. Either way, that wasn't good.
Olivia set her Ho down and approached the other one. It turned to her and raised its shield up, but with a single swipe of her knife, she beheaded it, killing the enemy Ho. She had learned a lot more knife skills from training with Ghost than she had scythe skills from training with Miranda. The scythe was still good for stronger enemies, but now that she had this cursed dagger, she could use it with shocking ease, and she was starting to figure out a new way of fighting she could do.
"You ready?" She glanced back at her Super Ho, and it gave a little jig. "Alright! Then let's break this crystal!" The Ho walked up to it and let out a cheer, then brought its sword up-
An arrow flew forward and blew the head off the Ho right before it could even attempt to crack the crystal open. Olivia's eyes widened, and she swung around right as three more arrows launched at her. She dodged one, deflected the second with her knife, and her cloak flowed as if it were alive and jutted up, blocking the last one.
"A bow?"
"That's right." Up ahead, Olivia found herself staring at the one person she really didn't want to fight. "I've learned the way of archery." Ash finally had his smug smirk back. After months of it being gone, he looked the same way he did back in Fri. It caused Olivia's blood to boil. "Say, care for a sparing match, useless Olivia."
"It seems like I really don't have a choice." Olivia gripped her knife and entered a stance. Ash did the same with his bow. "This brings back memories."
"Bad ones, I bet," Ash mocked.
"Maybe. But they're my memories nonetheless. They made me who I am."
"And what are you?" Ash sighed. "A blood mage who can only cast up to three spells."
"I'm a witch," Olivia corrected. "And you know what witches do, right? They curse people. I'll curse you with my very blood and life if I have to."
Ash snickered and ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it up. "Well, let's see about that. We've had months to prepare. Phoenix Flight versus Pantheon. Wind magic versus Blood magic. Ash versus Olivia. Come on, Olivia. Let's tear each other apart and see how much we both improved! Let's show who we have become! Let's make it clear that our goal of getting revenge isn't some flimsy excuse! Fight me like your life depends on it, because if I find out you haven't become as strong as I have and aren't as motivated to kill those fuckers as I am, then I'll start the next stage of my growth with your life! Row Wind Eagle!" Ash notched his arrow and fired.
Back with Olem, he took a nervous step back as Cinder walked through the burning remains of the Ho that blew up on her. "I've had enough." Cinder tucked one of her guns away for a moment and pulled out an old white jester mask. "No more games." She placed it upon her face, and suddenly it shifted into a pitch black as a dark, fiery aura began to swirl around her.
Olem felt a wave of panic course through him as he saw that. "Wait! But that's-"
"Vil Flame-Ice Bolt." Fire and ice compressed together as Cinder revealed her Core Mask and launched her attack.