The Saint's Gambit

The oppressive holy energy that had been a dull pressure on the horizon was no longer distant. It was close. In the deep woods before them, a single, brilliant point of silver-blue light had appeared. It was moving towards their clearing with a steady, unhurried, and terrifying confidence.

The debate was over. Their prey had arrived.

The clearing erupted.

A flash of cobalt light was the only warning. A blue sword shot past Marutur and Demidicus like a bolt of lightning. Demidicus’s eyes, however, remained locked on the masked figure standing calmly in the distance. The source of the holy power. The Saint.

“So that is what you look like, Saint…” the vampire noble whispered, a predatory smile gracing his lips. He dissolved into a black mist, flowing across the ravaged ground to close the distance, to strike at the heart of his enemy.

But as the mist reformed before the saint, a second blue sword shot out from behind her hood, a perfect silver-blue twin to the first, stopping his advance cold.

Demidicus materialized, his eyes wide with shock, but his interest was piqued. “I see…” he mused, his gaze darting between the two identical, humming blades. “Is that Ars Maren? Two of them? I was led to believe we were fighting Ars Caelus.”

Marutur had no time for such questions. With a guttural roar, he swung his big great axe in a monstrous arc aimed at turning the “Saint” into a red paste. But Anna, her newly evolved senses screaming at her, dodged with quite ease, her enhanced running helping her so much.

The battle was joined. The two Marens, now with a combined power of over 28 million mana, split their targets.

One sword engaged Marutur. It was a battle of raw force against perfect elemental counters. Marutur was a volcano, all brute strength and magma-hot rage, his axe shattering the earth with every swing. But Maren was the sea. She flowed around his awkward, strong blows like water. She called a stream of cold water that slammed into him as his axe glowed with heat, putting out his power in a cloud of hissing steam.

Meanwhile, the second Maren stayed with Anna, engaging Demidicus. He was a master duelist, he pressed his attack, and his centuries of battle experience screamed one, undeniable fact at him: this Saint has no idea how to fight.

He saw it in everything she did. Her footwork was clumsy. She relied on her innate speed to dodge when a simple parry would have sufficed. She left dozens of openings a true warrior would never expose. This wasn’t a Saint; this was a terrified novice hiding behind a legendary weapon.

Anna knew it too. She was a commander, not a soldier. As she awkwardly dodged Demidicus’s lightning-fast lunges, her mind was working furiously, analyzing his patterns, his feints, his rhythms.

“He favors a three-strike combo, Maren,” she sent telepathically to the sword fighting at her side. “Parry the first two, then disengage and strike his left flank on the third. He overcommits.”

Maren obeyed instantly, the sword moving with a skill Anna’s body did not possess. But Demidicus was too good. He saw the shift, adapted, and pressed his advantage. He feinted, forcing Maren to block high, and then used his mist form to bypass the sword entirely, his hand, now tipped with shadowy claws, shooting directly for her throat.

For a fatal half-second, Anna’s zero battle experience showed. She froze.

But in that instant, her raw, untamed power and her survival instinct kicked in. It was a pure, reflexive eruption of power. 

A physical shockwave that slammed into Demidicus with the force of a battering ram.

The vampire noble was thrown backward, skidding to a halt ten meters away, his eyes wide with disbelief. He had expected to meet the clumsy block of a novice.

He had not expected to be repelled by a tidal wave of raw, untamed, and utterly terrifying power. He now understood. The danger wasn't her lack of skill; it was the god-like power she wielded with no control whatsoever. “Vampire auto parry?” He questioned.

Demidicus reformed from the black mist, a trickle of dark blood at the corner of his lip where the raw force of Anna’s aura had struck him. The shock faded, replaced by a sharp, cruel smile.

“I must confess, I was expecting a high-tier Saint, a warrior of the heavens,” he drawled, his voice dripping with condescending disappointment. “Not some wanna-be, useless, zero-battle novice who can only lash out like a cornered animal.”

Anna’s jaw tightened behind her mask. He was right. And that made her furious. Direct confrontation was a fool’s game against a master duelist like him. But Marutur was not a master of anything but rage. He was a tool waiting to be misused.

“Maren,” she sent telepathically to the sword currently drowning the Horned General. “New plan. Disengage from Marutur. Fly directly over Demidicus’s position. Now.”

The Maren duplicate fighting the berserker instantly broke off its aquatic assault, zipping away in a high-speed arc. Marutur, roaring in frustration at his prey’s escape, only saw the blur of silver light. He didn’t see his comrade. He only saw his target, and he charged, his great axe raised.

“You brainless horned ape!” Demidicus shrieked, as he saw the two-ton general thundering directly at him.

Marutur literally swung his massive axe, not at Maren, but at the space Demidicus occupied. These two were not a team at all.

He dodged Marutur’s axe, the weapon smashing a deep crater in the earth where he had just been standing.

“Watch where you swing, you slobbering beast!” Demidicus screamed, his aristocratic composure shattering.

“SHE’S MINE!” Marutur bellowed back, already winding up for another attack.

And in that moment of distraction, the other Maren, Anna’s personal guard, saw its opening. The sword shot forward like a silver needle, aimed directly at Demidicus’s heart.

With a curse, Demidicus dissolved into mist again, Maren’s blade passing harmlessly through the black vapor and embedding itself deep in a stone pillar behind him. Maren went straight to him!

At the same time, the first Maren, having successfully completed its lure, looped back around, diving at him from above. He was trapped in a three-way vortex of destruction: a berserk and idiotic ally, and two identical, hyper-fast holy swords, all orchestrated by a silent, masked girl who hadn’t taken a single step.