Who knows, perhaps Marcille was even more impressive than the gentleman. Not playing fan favorites or anything. But right now Arthur was in the lead.
In the blink of an eye, he instantly wiped out most of their forces. Yor counted them in her head to be at least 70 gone, before they got the chance to drag their wet carcasses over to them.
Every single one that had made it to the shoreline lay in pieces of rotting flesh, the smell coming out of their bodies made that apparent. They were like zombies in a sense.
They emitted guttural sucking sounds and they moved slowly inside the black lake. It was a different story when they got out.
Yor thought back to her sparring match. If Arthur had fought her seriously back then or fought her to the death, then she would have been cut down before she even blinked. No question about it.
The praise and faith the twins gave Arthur made Yor exhale a breath. She felt her fear slacken. Maybe…just maybe, they were not doomed after all.
Watching Arthur command the shoreline with such precision almost made her believe he could handle the entire swarm on his own. And based on what she was witnessing right now, that seemed to be exactly the case.
When the hordes of Fallen Souls lunged forward with their scuttling limbs, Arthur stepped a few centimetres from the black water. The surface hissed as his vibrations enhanced blade sliced forward. A wall of spray erupted and four creatures fell in pieces before they even realised what struck them.
“Spirit Flow Art: [Ten Step Confusion]”
Afterimages of himself shattered across the shoreline with each shift of his foot. Dozens of Arthurs blurred to the left and others to the right, scattering across the entirety of the shoreline.
The Fallen Souls screeched and snapped at air, swiping at phantoms. While the gentleman cut through their confusion with arcs of steel.
One by one, two by two, four by four, their bodies collapsed into heaps. But still, more bubbles churned in the lake as more shapes rose.
And what’s even worse was that the creatures were adapting.
While some slowly strode to their deaths, several remained in the shallows, thrashing their elongated limbs through the water like clawed whips. One of them nearly sliced his head clean off, until he pivoted. He swept low and cleaved through the limb mid whip.
The severed appendage writhed before dissolving in the surf.
“Spirit Flow Art: [Five Step Confusion]”
With the earlier one already wearing off, Arthur activated a lesser version of it. He blinked to the far end of the shore as his image exploded into shards again.
From there, he cut down another cluster trying to crawl onto dry land. The sound of vibrating steel against chitin rang out again and again like the bowstring of some macabre violin.
Arthur was surprisingly handling himself quite well, even without the help of Agnes. Where the heck was that unruly woman?!
As well as he was doing, Yor doubted that he would last much longer, especially against this endless horde of enemies. How many of them were there anyways and how deep was this lake to contain so many of them?
As more of their brethren fell, they grew frenzied, crashing against each other in their desperation to reach the shore.
It was at that moment that Yor realized what Arthur’s strategy was.
‘On the black water they move slower, but the instant they touched the ground that’s when their behavior becomes unhinged’
So, he planned to keep them from getting out of the water. That way they would be more manageable to deal with, turning the shoreline into a line they could not trespass.
‘But how long can he keep that up? At the end of the day, Arthur is still human, err…superhuman. Still, he didn’t have unlimited stamina.’
Arthur’s Sealed Technique allowed him to manipulate vibrations, turning them into sharp blades that could cleave enemies apart effortlessly. The Condition to use it was admitting inferiority.
In other words, even he believed he was out of his depth here.
Yor looked beyond the ever increasing swarm of monsters, directly at the chapel of St. Vicar. Even now, Temperance, Marcille and Tobias still have not returned. She began to wonder what kept them.
Her chest tightened when she returned her attention to Arthur, who was still cleaving through waves of Fallen Souls. She wanted to believe in him the same way the twins did, but deep down, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had to do something.
There had to be a way she could help. Her greatest asset right now was her perception, perhaps that could be useful here.
Her eyes darted over the battlefield. Maybe she could find some flaw in their endless tide of bodies. A pattern in their movements or a trick to why so many came without end. But the swarm was exactly what it looked like. There was no weakness or flaw they could exploit.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
No matter where she focused, there was always another claw, another maw and monster crawling closer.
Just as she feared, it finally happened. Arthur staggered for a fraction of a second. The wound on his arm he had sustained fighting the gatekeeper came back to bite him. And a Fallen Soul seized the chance.
Its clawed limb lashed across the gentleman’s chest and blood sprayed in crimson arcs under the moonlight. The blow threw him backward, however his feet carved trenches into the sand, not allowing himself to fall.
Panting and blood dripping down his midsection, Arthur straightened his back and without pause, he dashed forward again. He shredded through another cluster of monsters as though his body wasn’t screaming with pain.
“H-he’s not going to last. We have to do something!”
Elias’s voice cracked.
“Don’t be stupid. We’d only get in his way if we try something”
“Yeah, shut it. Uncle’s got this”
Seth added, though his words didn’t have the same easy confidence as before.
A few moments ago, Yor would have agreed. Arthur was incredible without a doubt. He was holding the shoreline by himself. But now, the twins’ voices didn’t sound like admiration anymore. They sounded as if they were trying to convince themselves of their words.
And that made Yor nervous again.
“No…no, I can’t just stand here and do nothing!”
As she gritted her teeth, another strike landed against Arthur that forced him to spin aside with blood trailing from his mouth. At that moment, something clicked in her.
She let go of Elias’ trembling hand, ignored his panicked plea and moved her legs before her mind could stop them.
Yor lunged toward Silas and ripped the dagger from his hand. And zipped past them before they could react.
“What the? Yor, what the bloody hell are you doing?!”
“Get back here, idiot!”
They shouted but Yor didn’t listen. She ran forward with all her might. Her body screamed in fear but she ignored it, refusing to stop. She raised the dagger in her grip and said.
“Sawatari, activate Guardian!”
Without missing a beat, Yor dashed headlong toward the hordes of Fallen Souls. Her only weapon being the on the spot dagger she snatched from Silas.
If you looked at it by the logic of her old world, this was a stupid decision.
It was like willing stepping into a den full of lions that hadn’t been fed for days with only a stick as your means of protection. It was dumb, suicide and most importantly, a calculated risk.
As Kobayashi Yuzuriha, she had run a multinational company for almost a decade. In all that time she made critical decisions under pressure where a wrong move spelled ruin, most of the time she came out on top, on some, not so much.
Of course, she did not dash out there without a plan. She knew better than to rely on emotions to make decisive decisions like this. That had been hammered into her bones long before she was dragged into this nightmare world.
So when she called out to Sawatari, she already knew what she was gambling on.
?? Confirmed. Now activating the function: Guardian ??
Not a second after she had commanded the Manifestation, she heard that notification. Her body went slack for a brief moment and rigid in the next. Her small fingers wrapped around the dagger and raised it like someone experienced.
Her speed began to pick up as she shifted into a run she could never have accomplished on her own. It was no longer the desperate sprint of a scared little girl. Even her expression fell flat, drained of emotion.
‘Now…let’s see what Sawatari can do’
Giving full control of her body to her assistance felt like moving over and letting someone else take the steering wheel to a car.
As freaky as it was to see her body move on its own while all she could do was watch, Yor couldn’t deny how excited and nervous she felt.
The exciting part was seeing what her assistance could do in real combat and the nervous part was diving head first into a literal sea of monsters!
When she broke across the shoreline, that was when Arthur noticed her presence. He turned for a split second to confirm if his ears weren’t deceiving him, blood still dripping from his chest wound.
“Ms. Drapes, stay back! It’s too dangerous!”
The gentleman’s concerns were well warranted, but they fell on deaf ears when it came to Sawatari. That included the panicked shouts of the twins and Elias behind her. They were all ignored.
A Fallen Soul closer to crossing the shoreline wasted no time in introducing itself. It lunged toward her with its maw unhinging in a wet screech.
‘Eeeep!’
Yor screamed internally, being this close, face to face with a real life monster was nothing short of terrifying. Even though she did not have vivid imagery of it, what she saw with her present vision still drew a terrifying picture.
Fortunately, that didn’t reflect externally, her expression was still emotionless.
Sawatari snapped up her wrist and the dagger met the monster’s mouth gaping midsection with a slashing arc. A thin spray of black ichor spat across her cheek.
However, the wound was shallow. Thankfully, the attack was enough to dissipate its momentum as it fell back on its back, landing in the black water.
‘Wait, did it actually feel that?’
She realized grimly.
‘No, it couldn’t have. That was nothing more than just a flesh wound. If it weren’t for Sawatari’s flawless precision knocking it off balance, it would have shrugged off the slash and I’d be dead for sure.’
That was a close one, but another Fallen Soul didn’t give her the time to ponder how close she came to getting eaten. It whipped its claws toward her and she quickly bent her body, ducking beneath the swing.
She then rose with the dagger tracing a shallow line across its midsection. Flesh parted, black ichor sprayed out but the damage was still just a flesh wound to them. It was too shallow to do any real damage.
‘This dagger can’t kill them. It’s useless!’
Her body twisted left to avoid another strike. Immediately after, the dagger carved across another clawed limb just enough to redirect it from her stained face.
As their forces increased, they were not giving her enough time to breathe. Her arm jerked as another claw swept down, raising the blade at the exact angle just enough to deflect it to the dirt beside her.
Physically, she wasn’t strong enough to stop their monstrous strength head on and Sawatari knew that. That’s why she kept deflecting attacks she could not dodge herself, and damn was she good at that.
Whenever a Fallen Soul reached at her with unnatural speed, she would waste no effort sidestepping out of the way and drawing shallow cuts that force them to recoil.
Another shrieked as she ducked under its whipping arms and thrusted her dagger into its ribs, tore it free and pivoted backward before its counterstrike could land.
Even though she did little to no damage, she did a good job in keeping them from crossing the shoreline. Yor was in awe at the way Sawatari moved.
‘It’s like watching a dancer with knives in a ballroom full of monsters’
It truly was nothing short of a spectacle. If only her life wasn’t at risk then she would have enjoyed this properly.
However, her grand performance was short-lived. It all came crumbling down when she made a mistake.
When she drove the dagger into the belly of one of the creatures, it got stuck. Its flesh clamped around it like tar. As Sawatari tried to wrench it free, that opened a fatal half second delay.
And just like with Arthur, they took full advantage of it.
Dozens of monsters already in her immediate vicinity lifted their claws high and those with gaping stomachs lunged in on her. No matter how skilled Sawatari might have been, even she wouldn’t be able to dodge it.
Yor glared at the hordes of monsters pushing each other to have a taste of her and concluded.
‘I’m dead’
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