Chapter 217: Battle for Salvation (XI)

Ishiki sprawled on the broken chair with his head facing upwards and looking as the dragon descended down like a meteor.

He kicked the ground with his legs and pushed his body back through the wreckage of the chair’s back, pressing his back into the floor as the dragon’s heel came down with the force of a meteor.

BOOOOM!

An explosion occurred as the dragon’s foot touched the chair where Ishiki’s chest had been just seconds ago.

The impact sent a shockwave rippling outward in every direction, cracking the ancient chair and the golden tiles in a starburst pattern three meters wide.

The Berserker’s Effigy took the edge of it. The black armor’s spikes caught the displaced air and several cracked at their tips—not the armor itself, but a clear indication of what a direct hit would have meant.

Ishiki rolled from the rubble of the chair and came up some distance away, legs immediately moving.

’SCREW IT! I almost died…’

He didn’t stop to assess damage. There was no time for assessment.

The dragon turned from the crater his heel had made and looked at Ishiki with those golden eyes. His whole body faintly glowed with golden luminance and his body vanished from sight, leaving afterimages behind.

The distance between them became irrelevant in under a second. Ishiki’s Ghost Blade caught the shift just barely and he twisted at the last possible moment, letting the dragon’s forearm crash into the side of his armor, saving his neck.

The blow connected with the Berserker’s Effigy’s shoulder plate instead, and Ishiki spun with it rather than against it, using the rotational force to carry the scythe around in a horizontal sweep aimed at the dragon’s ribs.

The blade drew a second line.

Thinner than the first. The dragon’s body had shifted before the attack connected properly, accommodating the cut with the infuriating natural grace.

Golden droplets of blood dropped from his fist as well… which had been penetrated by one of the [Berserker’s Effigy]’s spikes.

Ishiki stopped skidding just an inch away from from the wall on the other side. He looked a little confused. The dragon was injured… and yet he was not using his ability to heal himself.

From their earlier showdown, Ishiki knew that the dragon could heal himself.

’What… don’t tell me he is trying to make it fair by giving a disadvantage to himself. What a fool! ’

His shoulder felt wrong where the attack had clipped it. It was fortunately, not broken. [Berserker’s Effigy] had absorbed most of the force and even provided some boost to him.

He flexed his fingers and took stance once again.

The dragon looked at Ishiki and opened his mouth once, but said nothing and opened all four of his wings in all its glory. It was not a small flex like earlier when he had fluttered upwards to avoid the scythe.

He rose from the ground, just barely and suddenly the throne room that had felt large earlier, now felt like a small place inside of a lantern.

The walls seemed like they were glowing and under the glow that eliminated all the shadows, the dragon’s flying form looked like something that could only be described as surreal.

And for the first time since coming to this place, Ishiki found himself drowning in a shadow.

Ishiki’s jaw tightened inside the mask. He was at a disadvantage this way. He needed to do something about the latter’s flying ability.

He willed the Divine Blood from his left hand and turned it into a wide sheet, a flattened wave of black liquid that expanded outward like a striking cobra’s hood before hardening into a curved blade the width of a door.

He sent it spinning toward the dragon not as a thrown weapon but as a held one, keeping the thread of connection between it and his body, rotating it from some distance away like a compass needle.

The dragon caught the wing of air it created, let it redirect him sideways, and came down from a different angle entirely.

His fist hit the Divine Blood blade before Ishiki could recall it.

The indestructible material held — but the impact carried through the spiritual connection into Ishiki’s arm like a hammer striking an anvil, and his feet left the ground for the second time. He hit the wall between two pillars hard enough to drive the air out of him, the Berserker’s Effigy’s back plate cracked at three points simultaneously.

It was only a rare rank vestige after all. It could not block the attacks that came from someone at the level of almost a God.

Ishiki dropped to one knee… but pushed himself up.

The dragon was already there.

A hand closed around the upper edge of the Berserker’s Effigy’s shoulder plate and lifted.

Ishiki left the ground entirely, dangling.

For a fraction of a second he was held at arm’s length, and from this distance, he could clearly see the dragon’s handsome face to even count the wrinkles around his eyes.

He willed the Divine Blood into a spike directly into the dragon’s wrist.

The dragon released him as the spike penetrated deep into his forearm. He simply opened his fingers and Ishiki fell.

But Ishiki smiled as he was falling down and suddenly the dragon’s balance faltered.

He crashed into the ground some distance away in a pool of golden blood.

His eyes were wide with shock.

He had lost two of his wings!

Ishiki had already turned the plate back into the scythe and let the dragon believe that he could not use it anymore, by letting him catch him. This way he also closed the distance between them and found the correct angle to let the scythe do its work while he fell.

And, he didn’t fight the fall. He pulled the scythe handle to maximum extension and planted the base against the floor on the way down, using it as a pole, converting the drop into a vault that carried him backward.

His legs were shaking.

He noticed this and told them to stop.

But, they didn’t.

He took stock with the brutal honesty that staying alive required. The back of the Berserker’s Effigy had three cracks. His shoulder joint from the earlier clip was hot and swollen inside the armor.

Both of his arms were absorbing the feedback toll of maintaining the Divine Blood at the range and intensity he’d been pushing it. Ghost Blade was running constantly — the mental overhead of maintaining perfect spatial awareness of something that fast, in an enclosed space, was a compounding drain.

Overall he could not let the battle go much longer.

But now that the dragon had taken a serious hit… they were finally equal.

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