The moment Liro and Tyel entered the building, most of the prisoners in the garden had already surrendered, and others were doing so as well. Orechin was walking in front of the prison, looking down.
He was currently standing with his back to the entrance, looking up at the sky. "Mhmm, I can't get any further," he said while waiting patiently.
"But then, where will Liro and I come out?" asked Tyel. He had followed the entire plan made by Orechin and Syrmax and was now feeling tired, as midnight had just passed.
"We've thought about the main entrance… we don't know how many other exits there are in the prison," answered Syrmax.
"And that is what we wanted to ask you: do you think there is something for you and Liro to use?" asked Orechin. Tyel thought about it for a moment before answering.
"Sadly, there isn't anything for us. At all of the entrances there will be guards and… yeah, at the main entrance too," said Tyel.
"But if Corvinus is outside, no other guards will be at that entrance, right? Then it will be easier to escape," said Orechin, as he realized what it meant to bring Corvinus there alone.
"Then you know that you will not have any chance to hide, right? You will have to bait the guards and wait and hope for Corvinus to arrive alone," said Syrmax as he adjusted his monocle.
"I know…" Orechin was holding one of his green crystals, and as he realized what being alone there could mean, he held it tight. "But I can make him lose time…" With that, Orechin left the crystal on the table in front of him with a loud thud after his hand slammed against the table. "We already know who will be the main problem for us."
The moment he finished this sentence, the room immediately turned quiet. "We know… and it's sad that we need to be lucky with our plan," said Tyel as he looked down while gritting his teeth.
"It depends on whether he wishes to eliminate us now or wait for something else," said Syrmax. The others were confused. "But the problem is why he would wait…" At Orechin's question, no one was able to find an actual answer, and they remained like that for at least half an hour.
'I guess I arrived so late that the guards were already here…' thought Orechin as, the moment he turned toward the entrance, he was able to spot him.
From the entrance, a man with a crow mask emerged. Six floating blades behind his back were looking at Orechin in a threatening way. Corvinus had just come out of the prison and was looking at Orechin with anger in his eyes.
"You're one of the rebels… I was sure I would find one of you here." Corvinus moved his open hands to his sides and, rather than being on his back, the blades moved to his sides, all of them pointing toward Orechin.
"Mmhp, you're only one? What do you even hope to do against the number one subordinate of Ashikunz… CORVINUS!" said the guard as he closed his fist and pointed it toward the sky.
'Baiting him here was really easy…' thought Orechin as he smirked at the sight of Corvinus.
"Do you find it funny, rebel? Do you know that this is the last thing you'll see?" asked Corvinus as he took more steps toward Orechin.
"Mhm, yeah?" asked Orechin, as it was clear that he was having a lot of fun. 'I need to get as much time as I can… I don't know how long it will take the others,' thought Orechin with his hands in his pockets.
"I can't waste time with someone like you… Iron Verdict!" Suddenly, Corvinus stopped and, without losing any time, three blades behind him immediately rushed toward Orechin from three different angles.
One of them had flown above Corvinus and was swooping down toward Orechin, while the other two, from two different sides, were rushing toward Orechin at extreme speed.
The rebel remained still for a moment until a huge blue crystal appeared in front of him. "Still Prism." The moment this huge crystal appeared, which was the same height as Orechin but thinner, the reality around him started to move slower.
The three blades were rushing at him at full speed, but the moment they entered the crystal's range, the blades started to move significantly slower. "Tch, both Ashikunz and Zrelekai warned me how annoying you were going to be," Corvinus said, deciding to retrieve the blades, which returned to floating at his back.
Orechin remained silent as he watched Corvinus slowly getting angrier. "If I can't throw anything toward you…" Suddenly, Corvinus rushed toward the blue crystal and, with the movement of his hands, he was able to make the six blades behind him move and destroy it.
The moment something or someone enters the range of the blue crystal, they don't seem to notice that they have started to move slower. Because of this, while Corvinus thought he was moving normally, Orechin noticed that he was moving extremely slowly.
Orechin waited for Corvinus's blades to crush against the blue crystal. 'I'll come for you now…' thought Corvinus as he looked at Orechin, who wasn't even trying to hide his smirk. Corvinus's blades crushed against the blue crystal, completely destroying it, and Corvinus could now move again without any problem.
"Chromatic Crystallurgic!" Suddenly, the moment Corvinus smashed the blue crystal, another smaller crystal appeared inside the wreckage. It was red, and the moment Corvinus hit it with his blades, the crystal didn't even shatter, it just vibrated for a moment.
'Huh? It wasn't here before?' thought Corvinus, stopping for a moment as he remained confused. Orechin took some steps back while looking at Corvinus and smirking. "It will not work!" shouted Corvinus as he started to destroy the crystal with his blades.
'He's so easy to bait…' thought Orechin as he stopped, realizing that Corvinus had started to hit the red crystal as hard as he could. With his right hand behind him, Orechin began a sort of countdown.
As Corvinus kept hitting, the numbers slowly went down. It started from three, then it reached two, and finally, it became one. 'And… now.' Suddenly, Orechin closed his hand and the crystal looked redder than before. 'It is sufficiently charged… time to explode.' The moment Orechin closed his fist, the crystal created a huge explosion.
'Eh? Why does it look like this…' Corvinus looked at the crystal confusedly, then suddenly looked at Orechin and realized that this crystal was a simple bait. It's exploding! he thought the moment the crystal blew up right in front of him.
"Raven Orbit!" he shouted as the red crystal exploded, and the six blades formed a sort of cage in front of him that was able to defend the general from the entire blast.
"I'll kill you now!" Corvinus was angrier now. The moment the blades returned to float behind his back, three huge blue crystals appeared all around him. 'Dammit, he got me…' thought Corvinus as he started to smash the crystals around him.
"Damn… keeping this many crystals active always consumes a lot of my soul…" whispered Orechin as he noticed that his whole body had started to bleed. As he looked at Corvinus, who moved slowly trying to destroy the blue crystals, he smirked as he felt some energy returning to his body.
"It's good that he hasn't noticed yet…" murmured Orechin when suddenly four blades started to fly up into the sky, all pointed toward him. "Iron Verdict!" shouted Corvinus. Suddenly, the four blades started to rush directly toward Orechin, who clearly didn't expect that.
'Hey, don't tell me that he doesn't need to see me…' thought Orechin, amused.
'He will never expect anything like this…' thought Corvinus as he remained with only two blades while trying to smash the blue crystals next to him. In fact, Corvinus didn't need to see the enemy or guide the blades himself; he could do that too, but the moment he thinks of someone, and this person is within his range of 65 feet, the blades, as long as the enemy is visible, will go directly toward him.
'Still, it doesn't matter how much I hit these crystals, I feel more of my energy being drained…' Corvinus had started to breathe heavily and his whole body had started to bleed too. Keeping the blades behind his back doesn't use a lot of soul, in fact, he could even keep them there the whole day without ever getting tired. But while the blades move without him guiding them, his soul gets drained more and more.
Suddenly, the blades returned to him and rushed at such a fast speed that they were able to destroy the huge blue crystals around Corvinus. The moment they shattered, Corvinus noticed something: inside the blue crystals, there were some green crystals too.
'Ashikunz told me about them…'
Corvinus was currently kneeling in front of Ashikunz, who was sitting on his huge black throne inside a completely black room. "I'm sorry, oh great emperor Ashikunz, the two rebels escaped me." This was the day Catripple had been able to escape from the city, and Ashikunz had just killed Eilwarin and finished his fight with Orechin too.
"Don't worry, Corvinus. If everything goes according to my plan, she will return with more people, and after the rebels are killed… we can think of invading other cities too," answered Ashikunz with a commanding tone.
"I'm sure everything will go as you wish, master." Corvinus didn't raise his voice, it always remained at the same pitch, and he always spoke with a respectful tone.
"Hey Corvinus, I want to give you a tip… do you know how the power of that person with multicolored hair works?" asked Ashikunz. Corvinus, still with his head lowered, shook his head. "I don't know."
"From the fight I had today, I was able to understand that the red crystals can get charged up by your attacks, the blue ones will slow you down, while the green ones will slowly sap your strength. If you ever end up fighting against him, don't forget these things," answered Ashikunz.
"Oh, your tips, my emperor, are always the best; I will definitely keep them in mind," said Corvinus before returning to his feet and walking with his head lowered until he exited the black room.
'I'm sorry, Emperor Ashikunz… I completely forgot about your tips when I started to hit the red crystal, but now the enemy can't be alive anymore, I've killed him.' Corvinus felt extremely sorry to Ashikunz for forgetting one of his few tips. At first, he felt sad about this, but now that he was sure he had killed Orechin, he raised his head, proud of himself, until he suddenly noticed Orechin was unharmed.
"What? How can you be alive? I shot four blades at you when you couldn't have expected it." Corvinus was sure that no normal human who was unprepared for that would ever be able to dodge four of his blades when they couldn't see the attack coming.
"What can I say? Maybe I'm not a normal human?" joked Orechin, as the only cuts he had on his body were from the usage of his magic.
'I can't waste any more time…' Corvinus started to walk toward him in a threatening way with his head lowered. As he spread his arms wider, the blades behind him all pointed toward Orechin.
"You will not escape anymore…" he whispered, then suddenly raised his head and looked Orechin directly in the eyes. "Execution Formation!" Suddenly, all six blades rushed toward Orechin, but not to hit him, they started to spread around him until, after a few seconds, they formed what looked like a cage.
"And now… you can't escape anymore. Surrender or I'll kill you immediately!" shouted Corvinus with both an angry and commanding voice, but Orechin wasn't scared at all. In fact, he kept walking with his hands in his pockets.
"Oh yeah? Is that what you think?" The moment Orechin took the first step back, one of the blades rushed toward him at extreme speed, but it was nothing to him. Orechin was able to look at the blade behind him and move his head to the left so that the blade completely missed him. The blade then stopped mid-air and remained there.
'What? It shouldn't be possible… he must have some trick up his sleeve,' thought Corvinus as he started to analyze the scene. 'But I'm sure the blade was moving at its normal speed, it didn't change at all.'
"You can keep thinking as much as you want, but you'll never be able to understand what I'm doing." With that, Orechin started to move and took another six steps. During the first five steps, a different blade rushed toward him, and Orechin dodged each one without any problem.
'Wait!' Now, as Corvinus looked at all the blades moving together, he was able to spot it. Even if it was slight, the moment the blades rushed toward him, they would slow down a bit. Suddenly, Corvinus noticed that Orechin took the sixth step and smirked. "Oh well, even if they slow down, you can't do anything anymore."
All the blades started to move closer to Orechin, and the cage was becoming smaller. "So it wasn't only this, eh?" said Orechin, as he now started to sweat a bit, wondering if he would actually be able to dodge all of these blades together.
"You've lost." Suddenly, all six blades rushed simultaneously toward him. In the end, you've chosen death… thought Corvinus. The moment the six blades returned to him, he expected to find a lifeless body, but instead, he found Orechin with multiple scratches created by the blades on his body and his shirt cut in half.
"Damn… it's bad now…" he whispered as he started to sweat harder. From his shirt, a single blue crystal fell out. Corvinus, looking at that, finally understood.
"You hid that in your shirt…" he whispered. While Corvinus's body had started to bleed more heavily, Orechin's vision had just become blurred.
What Orechin was doing was using the small blue crystal inside his shirt to make everything around him slower. However, he couldn't hide a large blue crystal in his shirt, so he had picked a smaller one, the degree to which things slow down depends on the size of the crystal. This small crystal was the bare minimum for him to dodge most of the blades.
But it was impossible to dodge six blades that had caged him all together. Orechin was able to prevent serious damage, but now everything was becoming harder.
With some of the blades that had blood on them, Corvinus looked directly at Orechin, who was not far from him, and pointed his finger toward him. "You rebel, you've lost," said Corvinus.
'Please… don't take much longer, guys…' thought Orechin, as he didn't know what to do anymore while his body slowly grew tired.