197 Chapter 197: Back to the Basics

I watched Hades cautiously, my eyes tracking his every move. Above my shoulder, a green ball of mana coalesced and slowly took form.

"Green Dragon. I'm counting on you."

A chibi Green Dragon appeared and curled on top of my shoulder, nodding his tiny head. Following which, verdant mana began suffusing my whole body, as well as my two swords. A line of petals began swirling gently around me.

Hades watched me as well, his caution understandable for this was his last life. He wasn't stupid enough to recklessly charge in.

However, his patience wasn't infinite. When he saw that I wasn't going to attack, he sprang forward and raised his Annihilation high up to crush me.

I smiled and waited for him to get within range. On top of my shoulder, Green Dragon stirred and lifted his head to watch the advancing enemy.

"Wind of Fragrant Pollen."

I swung Gan Jiang with my right hand. A huge wind, filled with the sweet scents belonging to a thousand different flowers, blasted the charging Hades and caught him by surprise. Hades began choking when he inhaled the myriad microscopic pollen that was carried aloft by the wind, the overwhelming scents sending his olfactory senses into overdrive and causing him to feel dizzy. His eyes watering, Hades began sneezing uncontrollably as the innumerable pollen seeped into his nose and lungs, giving him a mild hay fever.

But that was not the true power of the Wind of Fragrant Pollen.

The Fragrant Wind gently enveloped the sneezing spirit. The warm air current began wrapping around his body.

"You think this can stop Hades?" Selina demanded, amused despite the stupid sight of her contracted spirit sneezing unceasingly. "It's a simple matter for Hades to suppress the pollen in his nose. In fact…" she frowned as she reached out to mentally link with her spirit. "He finds your little wind very comfortable. Like a warm, gentle breeze on a sunny day. Is that supposed to be an attack?"

I smiled and shrugged. "Well, it's supposed to do that."

"Hah!" Selina snorted derisively. "It's supposed to make your opponent comfortable? Have you lost it?"

At her beckoning, Hades took a step forward.

"You might not want him to do that," I warned.

"What?" Selina snapped even as Hades stalked toward me.

Blood began dripping from the giant's mouth and nose. Stunned, Hades lifted a hand to wipe it away. Selina gawked at her spirit.

"When…?"

"You heard it, didn't you?" I grinned evilly and turned away, ignoring Selina. "The gentle song of the Fragrant Wind."

Blood began spurting out of several dozen wounds on Hades' body.

"GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUARGH!" Howling in agony, Hades fell to his knees. Throwing his hands out to support himself, the spirit began vomiting huge volumes of blood.

"Even upon your death, you're still enveloped in the comfortable embrace of the Fragrant Wind," I explained poetically. "Be thankful, for this is a merciful technique. But after the fleeting sense of comfort comes the grim reality of suffering and dread."

Hades grunted as he forced himself to his feet, blood running off his body in streams. Black purplish mana flared up all around him, destroying everything in his proximity.

"DESTROY THAT BRAT!" Selina shrieked, all dignity lost. Only fury remained, taking over her humor. She realized that she had played around for too much, and her fear was bubbling just beneath her usually calm exterior. She was frothing in her mouth, though I doubted it was because Anastasia had cut her. "KILL HIM!"

I sighed and swung Gan Jiang again as Hades barreled toward me with a roar.

"Kaleidoscopic Flower Barrage."

A rain of flowers, each from a different species, spiraled around Hades, sparkling wildly in a myriad of colors before barraging him from all directions. The razor-sharp petals drew even more blood despite Hades blasting them away with his raging demonic aura.

I didn't take it for granted that he would die from this. Instead, I nodded at Green Dragon before assuming a second stance. Taking a deep breath, I didn't wait for Hades to break out of the barrage before I executed my next technique.

"Green Dragon's Petal Dance."

Thousands of petals danced across the entire crater, the storm comprising of different varieties and colors. As if they were taken from the pages of a vividly illustrated art book or a painting, the vibrant petals of various shapes and sizes literally came to life, swallowing up the wrathful spirit. The flowers were split apart by the swirling black purplish mana that shrouded Hades, only to divide into even more razor-sharp petals in order to inflict maximum damage.

I watched as the cloud of vibrantly colored flower petals danced around in their full glory, eating and slicing into Hades. Despite their breathtaking beauty, the lovely flowers concealed a ruthless deadliness within their soft petals – just like how every rose would have its thorns. The maelstrom would never cease until it sliced its victim into oblivion, or until I called it off.

However, I knew the battle wasn't over yet. My Green Dragon techniques might seem overwhelmingly powerful, but they were probably of the same level as my most powerful Constellation magic, barring my Strategic-scale spells.

As expected, the storm of petals could not hold Hades off for long. The berserk spirit broke free of the cloud and struck me with Annihilation. I parried his vicious blow by crossing Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, but was thrown several meters back. My feet screeched as they slid across the ground, leaving twin trails of broken concrete. Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to a stop, only to catch sight of Hades descending upon me. I quickly raised both swords to ward him off, but the earth beneath me split apart from the sheer force of his attack.

"Ugh…" I grunted as Hades began to pummel me repeatedly with his halberd. Only my hasty defense with my two swords prevented a messy death on my part. On my shoulder, Green Dragon writhed restlessly, cowed by the devastating forces that detonated around him.

"Not looking too good there, are you?" Selina taunted from a distance. "That is a great pair of swords you have there. Under any ordinary circumstances, they would have broken under the force of my blows, but there's not even a single crack on their blades even after Hades has repeatedly hammered them."

"It just means that your contracted spirit is weak, doesn't it?" I pointed out wearily. Not good, I was beginning to sway from fatigue after summoning so many high-level and powerful Constellation spirits and Celestial Guardians.

"Shut up!" Selina shrieked furiously as she knocked Anastasia back. At the same time Hades slammed me away with another swipe of his Annihilation. I stumbled back, but he didn't give me a chance to recover. Another strike sent me hurtling into the air again.

I coughed out even more blood as I landed heavily on the ground. Opening my eyes, I weakly glanced up at the raging spirit.

His fist crashed into my chest, shattering my entire ribcage. I coughed more blood onto his face as the broken shards of bone pierced my heart and lungs, but Hades showed no mercy or hesitation. He repeatedly punched and slashed me, his arms moving like pistons as he practically pulverized me to the ground over and over again. I was unable to block any of his attacks for a brief moment, but I finally forced myself to defend myself somehow.

Gritting my teeth, I finally managed to somehow parry his Annihilation with Mo Ye, locking his dreadful weapon for just a second. Before Hades could react, I desperately slashed away with Gan Jiang and cut off his right arm.

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The monstrous giant bellowed in pain and jumped back, clutching his bloody stump with his left hand, even as his disembodied right arm and Annihilation dropped to the side uselessly. A few dozen meters away, Selina froze at the impossible sight.

"No way!"

I was already behind Hades, swinging Gan Jiang to behead him, but he ducked with surprising agility and slammed his remaining fist into my belly, swatting me away. I was flung helplessly off my feet before thudding into the side of the crater. Gasping in pain, I struggled back to my feet, only to see that Hades had already relinquished his Annihilation with his left hand and was heading for me.

Annihilation's menacing blade swung down on me. Time seemed to slow down as I motionlessly watched the blade inch toward my face.

I dodged.

Hades buried Annihilation into the side of the crater as deeply as possible, the tremendous impact sending cracks throughout the wall of concrete. Or earth. Or whatever it was roads were made of.

"Ugh!" he grunted as he tried to pull his demonic halberd out, but it held fast in the solid material.

I didn't waste any time, getting in under his defenses and severing his left arm at his shoulder. Hades howled in pain as he stumbled back, blood spurting from both stumps. The strength that he used to tug his weapon now turned against him, causing him to lose his balance and crash clumsily into the ground.

Without any hesitation I thrust Mo Ye at his heart, intent on finishing this duel once and for all.

Hades screamed, and accompanying his sonic assault was an explosion of purplish black mana that blasted me off my feet. I was hurled almost a hundred meters away from the force of the explosion before being rudely brought back down to earth again.

"Gah!"

I coughed out even more of that bloody red fluid that now filled my lungs. Just how much blood did I have in my body? I couldn't believe I still had so much blood left.

"I guess it's true when they told me that the average anime character has 47 liters of blood in their bodies," I muttered as I wiped the blood from my mouth and staggered to my feet. I watched as Hades sprinted toward me, bellowing incomprehensibly. The earth shattered explosively with every step that he took. Even though I had cut off his arms, I could see ghostly appendages growing and half-solidifying out from his stumps, composed entirely of the creepy black purplish mana that now surrounded him. I certainly didn't want to be touched by those things. I sighed as I watched my impending doom advance toward me. "Looks like I've no choice. Green Dragon."

"GGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGH!"

Hades resembled a berserk freight train that had derailed from its tracks, determined to run me over. However, I summoned Green Dragon to my shoulder again and drew strength from my Celestial Guardian, refusing to get fazed by the fearsome sight in front of me.

"Flower Frenzy: Green Dragon Overgrowth Maelstrom!"

A colorful maelstrom of flowers whipped around Hades in a frenzy, completely swallowing and overwhelming his black purplish aura. No, they devoured the demonic mana that had previously shrouded the berserk Hades, growing exponentially before exploding into countless flowery fragments. The innumerable flowery fragments in turn drank deeply of their victim's eerie mana before expanding rapidly again, only to once again blow apart into yet more fragments. An almost never-ending cycle that continued to unceasingly feed upon poor Hades' reserves of mana to reproduce infinitely.

"This is the most destructive technique of Green Dragon's, and also one of the most powerful. Second only to Green Dragon's ultimate attack, Blossom, Hundred-Colored Flowers."

I couldn't help but whisper to myself as I watched the effects of my spell. This was the first time I was using Flower Frenzy, after all.

After the storm died down, I leaped over and stabbed Hades right in the heart. There wasn't even anything left of him but a bloody skeleton that had been completely stripped of its flesh. Pulling my Gan Jiang out of the ruptured organ, which had finally stopped bleeding, I beheaded my opponent.

"That's the thirteen," I declared somewhat tiredly.