[F-02] [SP] Hunting Poison <<The Venomous Warg>>

[Tsurei 0]

She didn’t try to receive Rei’s strike head on with just her gauntlets, even she felt that it would be a bad idea to take a chunk of damage unnecessarily, and even if she blocked it, the man behind her would hit her in the back.

Throwing herself to the side, Rei’s blade swooped through thin air, reaching the time limit of his Art, Rei gasped as he felt the energy drain from his body, the penalty for missing a sword art meant he would be momentarily paralysed and vulnerable, this situation made him curse opening up with his strongest and longest attack sequence yet, the stronger the art, the bigger the vulnerability window, as he feared the counter attack, Yuta covered him, using his dagger and martial arts to keep the girl at bay, letting him recover.

Jumping away to create distance, the fight stood still as she sized her two opponents up, Rei and Yuta shared a glance as they moved to stand beside each other, their weapons pointed towards the woman,

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“So? What the hell’s going on here?” Rei’s serious expression dissipated as he glanced over to his friend with a exasperated look, “Did you make a move on her or something?” he made a joke in combat to hopefully dull the nerves, he already knew it wasn’t the case. He hoped.

“Of course not!” Yuta cried out, his composure nearly breaking as he seemed to stumble physically as if hit by the sudden question, he looked over to his best friend in a near pleading look to not take it the wrong way, “This girl suddenly started a fight with me!”

“In a safe zone? It was a duel or something right? Why did you accept?” Rei looked over at him in confusion, glancing back at the girl and being at least thankful that she was still sizing the situation up instead of attacking,

“It was but I pressed the wrong button!” Yuta cried out, he gave Rei and expression that really showed his guilt and sheepishness,

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“You what?” Rei couldn’t help but lower his katana, looking over at Yuta incredulously,

“I… I know! I know! Don’t look at me like that!” Yuta stammered out, turning his reddening face to the sided, using his hand to hide himself, “My hand slipped and I pressed a button at random too quickly! I didn’t read it properly,”

“Ugh… what’s the rule?” Rei groaned, staring down the girl and looking through the crowd for Takuma and Kenji,

“…To the death…” Yuta’s voice came out in a near whisper, but Rei picked it up,

“What!? … Are you serious?” Rei cried out in shock, he marched over to Yuta and lowered his body slightly by leaning forward, to invade Yuta’s personal space a bit and to look at his downward facing expression, emphasising his annoyance with those last words,

“Y-yeah…”

“Bloody hell…” Rei sighed deeply, slapping his own face hard in a facepalm,

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“W-what do we do now?” Yuta glanced worriedly over at Rei and back to the girl,

“I can only hope there’s a way to cancel a duel,” Rei groaned as he looked over to the girl, lowering his sword and walking over casually with his arms spread, hoping she could take it as a sign of peace, but even though the girl didn’t seem to budge an inch, Rei hoped this would work, “Look, this is all just a big accident, can you cancel the duel? We don’t want to kill you.”

“Tch, says you,” the girl spat back at him, with clear hostility, glaring at them with an intense stare, it was alarmingly clear that even 2v1, this girl had no intention of backing down,

“Oi, what the hell did you do!?” Rei looked over his shoulder at Yuta, his voice full of burning accusation,

“Nothing!” Yuta cried out, throwing his arms up in a desperate protest, his eyes were wide and truly full of confusion, the emotion spread over to Rei as he watched,

Edited March 11, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

There’s no way Yuta would do anything to warrant a girl wanting revenge on him to the point of murder, something was wrong here,

“Why do you want to kill him?” Rei decided to ask  the woman directly, they would get nowhere taking guesses in the dark,

“You know why.” The woman snarled, rushing forward towards Rei at alarming speeds, giving him barely enough time to raise his weapon to parry the next attack, with a loud, crunching clang of steel, Rei felt his entire body shudder from the thundering impact, if he wasn’t careful, that one strike could’ve blown him off his feet, he quickly discarded his sheath, he would need both hands on his katana if he didn’t want to lose it.

A sequence of blows followed with Rei on the backfoot, each step backward was accentuated by booming strikes as the girl’s golden fiery gauntlets, emitting a crimson flame from a deep red ruby socketed into the backhand of the gauntlets slammed into his blade with every strike, each time he would use his katana carefully, it was a game item, but even that still had durability, even if it was more than reality, it was still lower than other weapons, he had be careful to not overwork his weapon.

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 He was sure it was a visual effect like the water from his sword, but the heat felt very real. As the fire touched the sprays of water causing steam to sizzle into the air, it felt like a battle between fire and water, two opposites.

Rei eventually worked up the tempo to the woman’s blow, parrying her blow for blow, the parries were a perfect blend of defense and offense, not just aligning his blade to absorb the impact, he was actively swinging his sword to strike at her own blows, the added force allowing him to knock the attacks aside.

There was a rhythm to combat, like music of steel and heartbeats and in this moment of a few seconds that were drawn out like minutes, Rei could clearly feel that connection, like entering a trance he nearly stopped thinking entirely, moving his body according to the flow, originally on the back feet, he was striking blow for blow now, if she didn’t hurry and change things up, she knew she would be pushed back.

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With a sword art that encompassed her leg like a glowing blade of fire, she swept out leaving arcs of flame, aimed down low to take out Rei’s lower body. When at first every strike was aimed for the upper body, this change stopped the music of steel. The focus, concentration and deep trance he was in lost, Rei hurried jumped back to avoid it, that lapse of action allowed the girl to leap through the air with a second sword art, martial arts had good chain potential since most of their attacks were quick one hit sequences, that near useless, or too late informative trivia floated in Rei’s mind even as he watched the girl let out a war cry and throw a fullpowered punch to his face.

There was nothing he could do as the blow landed, throwing him spinning and flying through the air several feet away, it was all he could do to land on his feet, but then due to his posture, his knee hit the floor and scrapped along painfully on the cobble stone, he looked up just to see that Yuta had taken his place, desperately distracting the red haired girl who just seemed more motivated now that there were 2 of them.