As soon as Arthur saw the stance the pair of masked people had taken, memories started to flash through his head. It was impossible for him to mistake them, as Arthur himself had trained the two of them in combat. He had fought them time and time again, hoping to improve their skills and also teach them what it meant to be a vampire.
"It seems you have grown even stronger since then. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would be placed in this situation." Arthur said with a pleased smile on his face.
This time, the first one to attack was Leo. He slashed vertically four times, sending out Blood swipes with his sword. As soon as they left his blade, all the shadow from the ground that was around it, started to move away.
Seeing this, Arthur understood that his shadow wouldn't work against this attack. He ran to the right side of the room, away from his position. It was the first time during the fight that he seemed to be taking the fight seriously, but the second he did move a large tunnel of ice was seen shooting out his way.
Seeing as this attack wasn't the same, Arthur thought it would be easy to use his shadow to block it, but he could see something that the ice tunnel was abnormal as well. Although his shadow didn't spread out, like it did with Leo's attack, he could see something else happening.
All the shadow that was touching the ice, was starting to be frozen.
'My shadow is actually losing out to the ice, this is certainly a first for me!' Arthur realised, if the ice tunnel touched him, he would be done for.
The tunnel continued forward and eventually ended up hitting the back throne room wall.
'These people, who are they? What are these powers and how are they actually fighting against the Punisher!' Prima was amazed but he knew that as the original Punisher, Arthur was rumoured to be as strong as any King, so he shouldn't fall that easily.
The next second, Leo started to move to a certain spot in the shadows. It seemed strange and Prima was wondering what exactly he was doing until Leo turned his blade... and stabbed into the ground underneath him.
Surprisingly, a clang was heard and the next moment Arthur rose from the ground, with a large sword in his hand above his head. Swinging it around he soon shifted the weight from Leo's sword, yet Arthur's appearance had slightly changed.
"I didn't think I would have to use this here, but it just shows how much the two of you have grown." Arthur was now wearing his full set of red blood armour, and at the same time, he also had unchained his sword that he had kept on his back.
Erin, looking at her sword, could see the ring was on cool down, so she was unable to use the ice tunnel skill again, but there were still the other two active skills she could use.
Arthur and Leo were now battling out with their sword skills, clanging against each other. The only problem was that Arthur was able to overpower Leo, even with the use of his Qi.
Leo had hoped that by striking with the small amounts of the third stage of Qi in spots he could harm Arthur, but each time, rather than blocking the attack with his sword, Arthur was parrying them to the side, preventing the Qi shots to hit his body.
It left Leo wondering if Arthur really knew the danger of Qi to a vampire, or whether he was just following some type of instinct.
At the same time, Leo was constantly making sure that his feet remained covered in the third stage of Qi, in order to block out the shadow from reaching him, otherwise he would instantly lose. Not leaving him much choice to do other things with it.
"I don't understand!" Leo spoke, trying to strike even harder. "Someone of your skill, someone as great as you, why did you do that to him? Why did you harm the boy?! As a teacher I can understand that you might have wanted to teach him, but what you did was far too cruel!"
Hearing this, Arthur swung his blade once more, only this time he used his Blood aura. The whole time he had refrained from doing so, so the sudden force strongly pushed Leo back. The Blind Swordsman covered himself with his sword but the strength was too much, the back of his sword had cut his own chest, though not deep enough to deliver a fatal blow.
"This world is cruel, though I don't think you need me to tell you that. No, going easy on him just because of his age, especially when I knew what he would face in his future, would have been foolish. I was…" Arthur stopped there, as he felt another presence approaching.
Erin was in the air, swinging her blade and as she did, the sword started to vibrate letting out a screeching sound. It was then that Arthur noticed that his weapons started to freeze over slightly.
'The first skill of the Demon tier weapon can still be used!' Erin thought.
Disregarding it, Arthur still swung his blade towards Erin's and the two of them clashed.
'Even with my power, and the Demon tier weapon... Our strength is equal!' Erin thought, but it didn't matter, for this was part of the third movement of her swordsmanship. The suppression chains that were usefully kept on her, were now tied around both of Arthur's forearms. The Dhampir tilted her sword to the side, and soon kicked off the side of her sword, flipping backwards, then pulled on the chains, she moved her body closer to Arthurs, coming for another attack.
Arthur was able to block them, but he also didn't have the time to remove the chains, because Erin would continually pull her body forward while displaying a great feat of acrobatics in the air, each time their sword clashed.
"Are you just going to watch?!" Leo shouted at Prima. "The two of us aren't enough to take him out. We will need your strength as well!"
This action managed to knock Prima out of his daze as he had stayed at the back, witnessing the fight. However, the Royal Knight didn't know how he could help. Unlike the fighting masked duo, he had no way to avoid the shadow on the ground.
While Erin was busy dealing with Arthur, Leo started to spread his third stage of Qi pretty thin, and now the shadow that reached Prima, had disappeared.
Not knowing how long the person could keep it up for, Prima gripped his sword and charged in. Silver ran in as well, she could at least do something, and attempted to tie up Arthur's legs while he was distracted.
'I have to wait for the right time, if I do that, I can use my soul weapon skill to make his attack stop. If all of us attack at the same time, we can deal a fatal blow to him.' Leo thought.
'Would you like my help.' A voice sounded in his head. It was coming from none other than Leo's familiar.
'You are our trump card, if I manage to create an opening, use that opportunity!' Leo replied.
Leo timed it perfectly, waiting for Prima to reach Arthur, Silver had tied up his legs, and Arthur was still busy blocking the attack from Erin. Until he could see what was happening and it was then that his grand sword started to light up.
For a second, Prima seeing this hesitated to charge in.
'A blood weapon?! But how did it activate without any blood?' Prima wondered, knowing something bad was about to happen.
The next strike from Erin, the sword exploded on impact, blasting Erin away. Quickly sticking the sword in the ground, something started to glow by Prima's feet and he was left stuck where he was, trapped by a certain ability.
The strings were suddenly cut by some type of invisible force, and now that left only one person the Punisher had to deal with, Leo. Arthur swung his blade across aiming to hit him, but he still had his ace up his sleeve. His soul weapon.
Using his soul weapon, he could redirect Arthur's attack to where he wished. Using all of his MC cells, Leo did that, trying to suck Arthur's blow into a certain spot, but Arthur's hand had only moved slightly before Leo's entire pool of MC points had been exhausted..
Leo immediately fell to the ground, almost collapsing and passing out from all the energy he had used.
'When using it against the leader of the Bloodsuckers it had worked, but this person….we…can't defeat him.' Was Leo's thought at that moment.
With Leo down, the shadow returned surrounding Prima's feet, slowing his movements. Although the trap ability from the Blood sword that Arthur used was no longer in effect, it didn't matter, for there was no way for him to avoid this blow.
A diagonal slash was made, going through Prima's body like butter, and the top half of the Royal Knight had fallen to the floor.
The next second, Arthur disappeared into the shadows leaving the others, with a whisper.
"Another one off the list, but there are still more to go."
The Royal Knight had fallen, the twelfth family's leader was dead, and the other three, although not left with any serious wounds, had been defeated in body and spirit.
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