While Quinlan was busy getting tended to, or more accurately, pampered to oblivion by his lovers, Iris was in the middle of conducting the harshest duel of her life.
Similarly to Quinlan, when she signed up for the challenge she wasn’t making a very well-informed decision, it was more so her extreme ambition flaring in her chest.
The scum who tortured and killed Damian, her elder brother who gave his life in exchange for hers back when they were little children, was still alive. Any second he spent breathing was a second Iris hated from the bottom of her heart.
She was in a rush to bring his reign to a miserable end, and she thought that gaining lots of experience from this woman called Azura would be the smartest choice she could make given the circumstances.
That seemed to be a mistake.
Azura was quickly proving to be a lot more collected and level-headed than the overly arrogant Kael, she was not a hopeless yapper. She didn’t even part her lips, save for the times when she intoned her next ruthless spell.
Iris didn’t know if it was just this woman’s nature or if she watched Kael’s utterly miserable demise and steeled her resolve, but the only thing that really mattered was the fact that Iris was getting pummeled.
She’s already used her three charges of self-debuff in exchange for increasing her stats. Iris hoped that doing so would allow her to climb the large wall that separated her from her enemy, but…
Azura’s sword danced through the air like a deadly shark in the waters – it was unpredictable and lethal.
Every strike she made was precise, each movement was a potent display of expertise that forced Iris further onto the defensive. The sound of clashing blades echoed across the arena as Azura’s elegant strikes met Iris’s desperate parries.
Iris gritted her teeth as she dodged a horizontal slash that would’ve cleaved her in half, rolling to the side and summoning the painful power that made her class infamous, besides its horribly cruel unlock requirements. Your next read awaits at empire
“[Agony’s Imbuement]!” she roared as the blood from a deep, self-inflicted gash on her arm ignited into a fiery aura that wrapped around her blade. Her speed surged as her own pain became her greatest ally.
With the momentum of her spell, Iris lunged forward, aiming to pierce Azura’s chest. The sudden burst of speed would’ve been impossible for most to react to, but Azura wasn’t like most.
Her blade flickered like a phantom, intercepting Iris’s strike with a loud clang that reverberated through the arena. The fiery aura flickered as if it had met an immovable wall, and Iris stumbled back.
Azura didn’t give her even a moment to collect herself. Her counterattack came instantly in the form of a rising slash that forced Iris to leap back, followed by a spinning attack that sent a crescent of wind slicing toward her. “[Agony’s Barrier]!” Iris intoned, plunging her blade into the ground. A crimson shield of raw pain manifested around her, absorbing the wind strike but leaving her gasping for air.
“You have my respect. You make excellent use of your sad class.” Azura whispered. It was the first time she had spoken, and her words carried no mockery, just an unshakable confidence.
She stepped forward, “But that alone cannot bridge the giant gap that separates us. You’re no Elemental Sovereign who could pull a new element from her ass when she needed it the most, you’re just a miserable existence who has to hurt herself for strength.”
“[Agony’s Lament]!” Iris cried her next spell. She wasn’t interested in holding a conversation.
Her blood boiled and surged with dark energy as her aura turned into something twisted, a malevolent force that lashed out at Azura like a raging storm. Her strikes came faster and harder as her blade became a blur of crimson light.
Azura, however, was unshaken. Her blade danced through Iris’s onslaught, deflecting each frenzied strike with an insulting ease. Her footwork was flawless and her counters so precise that Iris’s attacks began to seem wild and uncontrolled by comparison, despite the many times she trained her body until fainting from total exhaustion.
With a masterful parry, Azura sent Iris’s blade flying wide, creating an opening that she immediately exploited.
A slash tore through Iris’s shoulder and she winced in pain before staggering back as blood dripped from her wound.
Azura didn’t press the attack, stepping back instead and regarding her opponent with complete detachment.
“You wield pain as a weapon, but you’re just too outmatched.”
“I thought…” Iris gasped between labored breaths, “that you were not a loser yapper like Kael… You quickly proved me wrong…”
Iris’s whole existence ached as she struggled to stay upright. Her body was battered and her blood stained the arena floor, but her resolve burned brighter than ever.
She knew Azura was right – she was outmatched in every way.
But she couldn’t back down. Not now. Not ever. For Damian, for the promise she made to herself, she would keep fighting, no matter the cost.
However, she was not the princess of a fairy tale. Reality was a sadistic, cruel mistress ever since she could remember. Princess…? No, she was just an irrelevant side character with her own little problems that mattered not in the grand scheme of things.
This sentiment was immediately proven to be true by Azura’s retaliation for her mocking words as she was sent barreling towards the arena’s walls just like Quinlan, though in her case, she was not thrown towards the sky but towards the sides.
She crashed headfirst into the sturdy arena wall, suffering a horrible concussion as a result. Her mind became hazy and she struggled to even keep her eyes open, let alone stand to mount a response to the approaching Azura.
Azura dragged the edge of her blade along the arena floor at a slow, measured pace as she walked up to her, causing the sound of steel scraping against the earth to resonate ominously in Iris’ ears as a means to convey the rapidly encroaching doom that Azura turned out to be.
The woman wasn’t rushing to finish the fight. She didn’t need to – for she had already won. There was no question about it. Iris was a broken, bloody heap against the wall that was barely even conscious.
If Azura rushed for the finish, then her victory would be hollow. A shameful elder who went all out just to bully the children. The three Eclipse Enforcers were not here to win but to win in a way that made a strong statement.
As she’d said before, Iris was no Elemental Sovereign. She was just a self-buffer who could gain stats and powers that should be beyond her current means, but that was it. There was no [Magma Burst] in her arsenal that could cause a fiery explosion to obliterate all her problems like they never even existed in the first place.
Iris’s head dropped to the side as her vision swam. Her ears rang from the impact her skull made with the wall, and her body screamed in protest with every shallow breath she took.