Saileri
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[TWS] Chapter 15 - Out of Time
🕑 Added 2020-10-23 13:28:10 +0000 UTCMiria watched as Ast desperately tried his best to fend off the ferocious attacks of the remaining wolves which slowly began getting up after the use of his concussion bomb. He was doing much better with her blades than she expected him to, parrying a lot of paw slashes and bites while sometimes even managing to wound the beasts back.
But, those were just blades in his hands, nothing else. The surface wasn’t covered in a strong poison, neither it was sharpened with mana. The cuts he left on his opponents' bodies weren’t deep enough to down them and Ast knew that perfectly. He was playing for time, waiting for Miria to recover from the paralysis. It was the only way they still could have a chance of overcoming their current predicament.
Miria observed his struggle anxiously. She cursed herself for her own weakness and inability every time Ast got injured by the wolves. If she had just trusted him as he trusted her, she wouldn’t make that stupid mistake to look back at him at that moment and everything would have followed a different path. She convinced herself more and more that it was purely her fault. She let him down.
She lied behind Ast, staring at his back and trying her best to move her muscles as much as she could to speed up the spreading of the antidote. She regained a bit of feeling and could move her eyes and mouth now. Five minutes passed since he administered the medicine. The wounds on his body were only increasing. She began formulating a plan on how to save him.
~Master, if you have more of those loud things, you should give one to me. I’ll detonate it when they get close after you ru—~
~Don’t you even dare!~
A reply came before she could finish her message. Miria could feel the strong emotions behind it.
~But, Master…~
~I’m not letting another girl sacrifice herself for my pathetic life! We either win together or die together!~
Asterios angrily slashed at one of the attacking wolves and beheaded it with a strong blow. He then glanced back at Miria and sent her a stern glare. She didn’t feel any annoyance or ire towards herself in it, no, it was all directed at his opponents, just showing Ast’s determination. She felt both happy and guilty at the same time.
The Bloodfang finally regained all its senses after getting hit by the shockwave from almost point-blank and howled loudly, announcing its annoyance. It stretched its legs to the sides and summoned a lot more of the crimson mist, turning it into three sizable blood spears. It launched them at Asterios.
He managed to dodge the first two in time, making them only graze his chest and back when he spun around, but the last lance was heading straight at him when he finished the previous manoeuvre. Not having any other options, Ast crossed the shortswords in front of him and supplied his arms with mana, which wouldn’t help much in terms of strengthening, but weaving pure energy through the muscles would lower the pain and allow him to muster up a bit more power.
The merciless projectile hit his guard like a flying log. He altered its trajectory just enough for it to slide by his neck, but the force of the impact sent him flying into the wall behind him and he crashed into the stone above Miria’s position, falling down onto her legs and dropping the swords. Miria recovered to the point where she could barely extend her trembling hand to grasp his wrist.
“Mas...ter…” She tried her best to show a smile.
Asterios raised himself up, locked his eyes with hers and brushed through Miria’s hair with a smile of his own. She could feel the warmth of his hand and smile even in her current state. It was painful. Ast took a deep breath and his expression turned serious again.
“Looks like we ran out of time, huh.”
He looked at the slowly approaching wolves. Just six of them were left, excluding the Bloodfang.
“Thank… you… it was… fun…”
He glanced back at her. “Fun… I guess it was.” Ast gave their opponents one more look and turned back to Miria, visibly hesitant about something. “Since the fun part is now over, I guess it’s time to get serious.” Asterios hoped that what he was going to try would be enough. He didn't practice a lot after the weird event with the bear, but he knew he now was able to achieve more than his past, weak self.
Miria furrowed her brows, sure that Ast had already turned serious long ago. It was not possible that he wasn’t trying his best to buy time for her to fight the Bloodfang and then for her to recover, so she wondered what he meant.
Ast rummaged through one of his pouches and brought out a round vial with some black liquid. He stirred it a bit and glanced at her again.
“Hold your breath for thirty seconds.”
Without waiting for a response, he uncorked the small bottle and splashed its contents in front of them, creating an arched line from one side of the wall to the other and then threw the container at the Bloodfang. The wolves started yelping instantly while trying to cover their snouts. Even their leader, in front of which the vial shattered, was pushed back. The smell was truly awful.
He then turned to Miria and shoved his coat to the side, grabbing his vest and shirt and also hastily getting rid of them. Miria was confused. She didn’t know what to think while she stared at his muscular torso.
Before her thoughts wandered too far off the rails, she saw Ast bring out the ornamental knife he used during their contracting ritual. He clenched his left fist and his teeth and started literally carving some kind of a magic circle on his skin, just above his heart. He had to stop a few times to shake off the pain while groaning.
He kept glancing back to check on the wolves and finished hurting himself after a minute of cutting his own skin. A quite complex circular structure was now visible on its surface. Trails of blood ran down his chest. He dropped the knife and moved closer to Miria, kneeling by her side.
“Master?”
Asterios wrapped his right arm around Miria’s back and supported her to lean onto his chest. It was warm. She still couldn’t move her head so she could only stare at his chiselled body as her face was pointing a bit downwards. He then gently opened her mouth with his right hand and brought his forearm closer to it.
“Drink it.”
He didn’t have to explain what, it was clear after Ast pushed his arm against Miria’s sharp top canines which sank into his flesh. He grimaced a little but didn’t hesitate even for a moment. Two trails of blood soon ran down into her mouth and he lifted Miria’s chin so that they could travel to her throat. Her confusion was growing with each action Ast took, but she listened to his request and gulped as much of the hot, scarlet liquid as she could with her current control over her muscles.
Satisfied with the amount, Asterios took his arm back and ruffled through her hair with a wry smile. She did not miss that detail.
“Try not to tear my body into shreds, okay?”
He patted Miria’s head a few more times, leaned her against the wall and backed off a bit. She had no idea what he meant with those words. She wasn’t able to lift an arm so how was she supposed to even scratch him?
Asterios pulled out another crystal, but a dark crimson one this time. None of the previous ones looked this ominous. It was of the size of his thumb and of the shape of a rhomb or a long diamond. He squeezed the gem in his right hand and sighed heavily.
What he did next, took Miria completely by surprise and her eyes widened in shock. Asterios drove the crystal into his chest, piercing his flesh exactly in the middle of the carved magic circle. He instantly groaned in pain, directing his head to the not visible sky. Veins started bulging out around his whole body and his eyes went almost completely bloodshot, with his pupils turning red again. This time, his hair turned white too.
Miria began feeling some kind of a pulling force in her mind while she watched the screaming Asterios try to fight over the pain from the weird effect of the crystal or the circle, she wasn’t sure. He soon shook his head, picked up both of her shortswords and began walking towards the wolves.
After he took three steps, Miria’s vision swirled and everything blurred into black. A moment later, she was looking at the still yelping wolves from quite the higher perspective than her lying body could assume. She suddenly noticed an immense wave of scorching hot energy coursing through her body.
No. It wasn’t her body. When Miria tried looking at her arms, her head and hands moved according to her wishes and she saw Ast’s posture in front of her eyes. She quickly glanced back and saw herself lying against the wall.
“Go.. get them…”
She heard her own voice come out from her body’s mouth. Looking at her or rather his hands again and seeing the weapons in them, she concluded that they somehow switched bodies. It must have been thanks to that weird crystal and magical circle. She could see the gem sticking out of Ast’s chest when she looked down. Miria closed her eyes and focused her senses on examining her new body.
The sheer potency of the mana inside Ast’s body shocked her. The blazing energy that emanated from his spiritual circuits was truly immense. She felt like she could crush boulders with just her fists. Miria wondered why Ast had so many issues in the past if his potential and mana were this unbelievable, but now wasn’t the time to theorize.
Miria focused her mind on taming the turbulent energy and checked if she could use any of her abilities or techniques in Ast’s body. Somehow, it looked like she could as she felt the Physical Strengthening activating. The effectiveness of it surprised her. Miria’s temporary body suddenly felt as light as a feather, similar to the day when they used Haste sigil.
Next, she tried coating her blades with mana, and again, the result completely shattered her expectations. The air started shimmering around the weapons’ edges, but it extended far further than just over the physical blades. The shortswords now became longswords with invisible extensions. It could be noticed only from the blurry air extending from the tips of both swords.
She brought one to her face and examined the technique. The created coating was much sharper than what she ever managed to achieve on her own. One of the remaining wolves lunged at her from behind, bringing Miria out of her amazement. She made a backflip to avoid the attack and slashed at the beast from above with a spin, landing gracefully on the ground.
“Eh?!”
The wolf has been split in a clean half. But not only the wolf. The stone floor also had a considerably long and deep cut in the spot where she sliced the beast. Miria stared wide-eyed at the crevice made by the invisible extension of her blade, which passed through the stone like it was tofu.
「I can win with this… No, I will win this!」
She regained her determination and took a step towards another wolf that was just lifting itself up. But rather than dashing or leaping to it, she appeared by its side with a loud boom from how fast she moved thanks to the strengthened muscles. She sliced through both the wolf and the floor like through butter and instantly closed the distance to another enemy.
In a few seconds, she cut up almost all of the wild beasts into pieces, not giving them a chance to even react in time. Loud thump accompanied each of her jumps. A javelin of blood suddenly flew at her face so she positioned one of the blades in front of it and split the lance in two as it hit the edge, without moving even a little. Miria glared at the Bloodfang.
“Wait for your turn.”
It was weird to hear Ast’s voice when she tried to speak. Nevertheless, she finished the last normal wolf and launched herself at the leader. She didn’t know how much time she had in Asterios’s body so she wanted to end this quickly.
The Bloodfang sent a wave of blood spikes surging from the ground at her, but Miria decimated them with a single cut which sent a wave of force towards the enemy. The beast dodged it barely in time and it hit the wall with a loud explosion. She didn’t waste any time and lunged towards the last remaining target.
Blood spikes began raining at her from above, but she dodged all of them with fluid steps and reached the wolf in a flash. They got entangled in a fierce bout. This time, the beast was the one being pushed back with each of her attacks. Just by barely grazing its fur, Miria was able to inflict deep cuts into its body so the Bloodfang had to focus on dodging and counter-attacking.
Not like those attempts could reach Miria with her current speed. She danced around the wolf, appearing and disappearing at different angles. Even with that, the Bloodfang was able to avoid fatal wounds. Its demise appeared clear to it though.
It knew it didn’t have a chance to run so the proud beast gathered all of its remaining energy and prepared to release the strongest ability. Miria could sense the mana condensing in its body and gathered her own in the legs. Soon, the scarlet wolf howled fiercely and gigantic spikes shot from the ground all around it in circles.
Miria pushed herself off the stone pavement so strongly that it cracked and she flew into the air, avoiding the giant and sharp tips with a flip. She landed on the ceiling in a crouching position, also shattering the surface. Something was telling her that she could use one of the abilities she never managed to succeed in completely performing before and she circulated Ast’s mana all around his body, crossing the swords in front of her with a determined gaze.
“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
She tensed her muscles and pushed herself off the ceiling, smashing it into bits, and started spinning while flying straight at the Bloodfang. The rotations got so fast that she created a small cyclone as powerful as a high-level Wind Lance spell cast by an advanced magician.
Surrounded by the sharp pillars of crystallized blood, the beast had nowhere to run so it tried to block the assault with one more summoned obstacle, but Miria drilled through it with ease and crashed into her opponent, causing a powerful explosion. Clouds of dust arose from the impact and covered the whole cave.
The obstruction soon fell down and revealed Miria with both swords stuck deep into the stone floor in the middle of a bloody puddle. To her left and right, front and back of the torn-into-two Bloodfang were lying lifelessly. Tens of cuts of various sizes were visible on the ground for like 3 meters from the center of the impact and most of the crystalized spikes were shattered into pieces.
Miria cancelled the mana coating and, out of habit, tried sheathing her blades behind her rear, but she remembered that this was not her body and there were no containers there. She looked down at Ast’s chest with the crystal and pondered if the power she exerted was his or hers. The abilities were definitely her doing, but she never could perform them at such a high level. She made a mental note to herself to talk with Asterios more about it, and more about everything now, and turned around to head back to her own body with Ast's consciousness.
