Chapter 262: Feel My Cruelty |
Xenia twirled her whip around her waist and spun her body counter-directional with a single spin ensuring it wrapped tightly around her. She then gripped the middle hilt of her double-bladed ki saber with both hands and stared Jarek down with daggers in her eyes.
Jarek couldn’t help but notice the usually garrulous Xenia oozing with salacious small-talk had turned quiet in a most unsettling way. He took the moment to prepare for her wrath, and as he powered up, the ground beneath his feet and even the air surrounding him began to tremble from his might.
Only seconds later, Xenia made her first move. Her speed made it nearly impossible to track her, and had it been anyone other than Jarek, her first strike would have gone completely unhindered.
Jarek raised his hand covered in a protective layer of ki and caught the downward strike of her saber. Xenia grit her teeth growling at him as she retracted her blade twirling it over her head before striking again. Once again, Jarek caught her ki blade, stopping it with a strong clasp of both hands.
Without hesitation, Xenia raised one hand at Jarek bloodbending his hands to the side of his body. She then forward thrust her saber directly at his abdomen. BloodBane sizzled as Jarek’s layer of immense ki stopped the progression of her attack.
However, Xenia was undeterred as she applied more and more force inching her saber blade slowly but surely into and through Jarek’s layer of defensive ki. However, just before reaching his skin, Jarek cried out and broke the bloodbending of his arms. He sent both arms forward clapping them inches away from Xenia’s head.
The shockwave of his powerful clap sent her flying back ten feet. Xenia had little time to gather herself as an energy blast immediately followed. She dropped BloodBane instinctively bloodbending the hilt to her lower back, and she raised one hand to nullify his attack.
With a snap of the sound of energy dispersion, Jarek’s ki energy ball dissipated into the air.
Jarek still had Perfect Warrior active meaning even if he took an attack, he would gain more ki from it; however, he also knew he had all the power he needed, and gaining more power would come at the expense of his functional body.
Knowing she couldn’t maintain such a state for long owing to the dangers of lingering in a different dimension, he continued to attack her translucent silhouette despite the apparent ineffectiveness of such effort. Xenia walked closer and closer to Jarek until she eventually walked right though his body like a ghost.
Jarek felt an indescribable feeling as his body went cold, frighteningly cold. It was as if he had just been dunked in the middle of the arctic ocean. His limbs went stiff, he fell to one knee, and his breath vanished from his body. The sensation only lasted for a few seconds though Jarek knew a battle could be decided by mere seconds and dually noted mentally to himself to avoid even her silhouette while in the void.
He quickly turned around only to be met with a beam of red ki fired directly at his face. He raised both hands blocking it just in time. Xenia had returned from the void and held the beam attack directly on him, and Jarek continued to block it.
Jarek thought to himself, “She understands the principal of Perfect Warrior, so why is she empowering me with a ki attack for me to absorb?”
Jarek happily absorbed a fraction of her ki careful not to overdo it. The ability to absorb a fraction of ki from a hurricane of ki without enduring the pain of the full force of her attack was a skill with little margin for error.
Suddenly, her attack let up. Jarek felt his hands burning and looked down to find them black and charred, a price he was willing to pay for more power.
Xenia stood in place and finally returned to her usual self as she cracked a faint smile, “Very impressive, Master Heraklinos. Very impressive, indeed.”
Jarek stood across from her, even more powerful than when he commenced this fight. He took a deep breath and returned her stare silently.
She began to walk in a circle around him from a distance, “You are quite powerful Jarek. It’s hard to impress me, but I am very impressed. Power alone has served you well, but power alone cannot defeat me.”
Jarek tracked her with his eyes and slowly turned his body to stay squared up to her as she walked circumferentially around him.
Xenia had her hands behind her back as if she were taking a stress-free stroll through a museum admiring the art, “You are one dimensional. You have ki and lots of it. But that is all. I don’t mean to sound so demeaning, especially not to the man who is the peak of his kind. However, the fact of the matter is, achieving the status of the most powerful one-dimensional ki warrior in the land makes you only one thing to me… A very impressive stud for me to enjoy.”
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Xenia stopped and turned her shoulders towards Jarek with a devious smile, “I am invincible for a very good reason, Jarek. I am multi-dimensional.” She smiled to herself and laughed, “Figuratively and literally, I guess.”
Jarek maintained a state of readiness knowing that even though her light-hearted, self-ingratiating, and meaningless small-talk had returned, she was still a most worthy opponent not be underestimated under any circumstances.
“You see, I also have an immense amount of ki. However, I can also manipulate the void. I am a master of all weapons, BloodBane and Blood Scourge included. I can heal so miraculously that I can control death. And lest we forget, a BloodStar’s favorite ability, bloodbending.” Xenia raised her hand and subtly bloodbent Jarek against his will as she sent the blood coursing through his body faster and faster while also constricting his blood vessels.
The result was that Jarek could loudly hear his own heart pumping and his own blood flowing through his body in a surreal and off-putting experience.
Xenia smiled at him, “That is the sound of your mortality. Something I no longer fear. I am an empress, yes. But I am also a goddess now, yes.”
She then looked up at her BloodStar overhead, “And I haven’t even shown you that yet. Do you think you could survive it? I know you can absorb it, but do you really think that your body can survive the accumulated ki of the people of the Sage Empire capital city?”
She threw her head back in genuine crazed laughter, “Death by the very people you yearn to save! Imagine that!”
She gathered herself again and said, “Life is cruel. Or maybe I’m just cruel.”
Jarek began to gather a large ball of ki between his two palms. The ground beneath him began to shake as the ball of energy grew larger and denser with every passing second.
Meanwhile, Xenia raised her hand to the sky calling to her BloodStar, “Nuh uh uh. I wouldn’t be so quick to waste that sizable amount of ki so eagerly. You might… just… NEED IT!!!”
In the next moment, Jarek looked to the sky, and everything went eerily silent. He immediately reabsorbed his ki and assumed a defensive position as he realized Xenia was dead serious.
Lightning bolts intertwined with dangerously high levels of destructive ki began to strike the ground around him. Numerous lightning bolts fired down from the BloodStar overhead one after the other.
Bolts of lightning struck the ground around Jarek until finally one struck him directly. The power was too great to attenuate, and Perfect Warrior absorbed the entirety of the attack causing a burning rush throughout his body. Furthermore, the physical damage of the lightning bolt itself left his body momentarily paralyzed.
His body fell to the ground like a stiff board of wood, and he was awash in a sea of pain.
Xenia halted her lightning attacks and laughed, “Absorb my entire BloodStar if you can! But what good is power if you can’t even use it!”
She teleported on top of Jarek as he lay paralyzed and kissed him on the lips, “One kiss of pleasure from me before enduring my storm of pain.” She then stood up and teleported back to her original position, “Don’t worry, I won’t let you die. Not yet.”
She then raised her hand towards her BloodStar again and shouted, “Now feel my cruelty!!”
A lightning storm began to rain down on Jarek with successive streaks of red lightning bolts striking his body over and over again. Though each bolt served to empower his reservoir of ki, each bolt also served to damage his body with terrifying pain.
Xenia stood with her hand in the air fueling the lightning storm with a smile of enjoyment on her face as Jarek’s body twitched and jerked with overwhelming amounts of electricity and ki crashing into him.
She continued for a full minute with a close eye on his vitals though she wasn’t too careful not to kill him as she knew reviving him would be no problem. This carefree nature of attacking pushed Jarek to the absolute edge of pain as he clung to life.
Xenia had said she wouldn’t kill him; however, Jarek found himself doing all the work to stay alive and persevere through her cruel and dominant attack.
Then, as it quickly as it had begun, the lightning storm stopped. Jarek sat for a moment as the electricity ran its course through his body until he regained control of his own neuronal synapses. He looked to Xenia who had unexpectedly frozen in place looking in the distance towards Nero and Jacek’s fight.
She noted to herself, “A subtle third presence? Who would be so foolish as to interfere in a fight of that magnitude?”
Xenia began to hone in on the third ki presence to determine who it was; however, the assailant clearly intended to not be found, making the task slow enough for Jarek to recover.
Jarek stood with ragged clothing and a battered body. Xenia redirected her attention back towards Jarek, “Do you love me yet? Can we play already? Or are you hungry for more foreplay?”
Jarek looked to the sky and smirked, “Don’t tell me you stopped because your BloodStar is shrinking? Saving some for Nero, so he can defend himself against Jacek? I didn’t know your cruelty knew any bounds?”
Xenia scoffed with a slight laugh in response, “Bold words for a man whose body is ready to collapse despite being surrounded by immense ki. I never understood the point of Perfect Warrior. All that ki for offense but no boost to physical defense if my attacks land. Seems to me it’s Not-So-Perfect Warrior.”
Xenia then abruptly turned her head back towards the direction of Jacek and Nero with a frown on her face.
However, she was not given the privilege to study her concern more as Jarek yelled, “Don’t tell me you’ve lost interest!”
Jarek then exploded outward with a sphere of ki in every direction creating a dome filled with simmering ki which he maintained with the newfound power he had just absorbed.
Xenia raised a thin but powerful layer of defensive ki which she focused to maintain as she found herself submerged in a unique environment of hostile ki created by Jarek.
Jarek yelled, “The best defense is offense!” He knew so long as he could keep Xenia within reach of his sphere of ki which radiated from his body like a nuclear reactor, he could keep her on the ropes.
He grimaced as he thought to himself, “Come onnnnnn! You can’t hide in the void forever, and you can’t afford to not give me your full attention now!”
He shot a glance in the direction of Jacek and Nero and then looked back at Xenia thinking, “Do it! Do it! Xenia is much too powerful. Not even I am a match for the BloodStar heir of legend. Do it!”
Jarek then cried out as loud as he could, “DOOOOO ITTTTTT!!”