strong semb slash

Adam’s hand dropped instantly to the hilt of the sword I made appear beside him and I saw power gather. His Aura, a bright red-white, seemed to pull in energy from its surroundings, leeching tidbits from the air, the earth, and anything else it could touch, building steadily even as he channeled his own power. The length of his sword glowed as if it had shed its own form and become nothing more than burning, writhing energy.

I stood in front of him without moving, staring at him calmly and unconcerned. I waited as he gathered his power, noting his improvement from the rising glow. Truthfully, he’d improved greatly over these past few weeks, partially because of the stat increases, but also because of how hard he’d pushed himself during the nights of constant training. Even if it allowed him to sleep throughout the day, his training regime was pretty ruthless to a person whose biology was still mostly normal, going all out the entire night. He emptied his Aura, exhausted his body, and repeated the same sword strokes hundreds of thousands of times.

He’d come a long way. I just had no idea whether or not it’d be enough.

But this was as good a time for a status check as any, I suppose.

“Ready?” I asked as I saw a slight tension in his shoulders, a sign of his preparations. When he didn’t answer but just watched me steadily, I smiled and shrugged. “Aim…F—”

Adam finished drawing his sword and slashing it long before the sound of the word had much time to travel. Before my eyes, it was a burning red slash that cleaved the space between us, wickedly thin, impossibly sharp, and holding nothing back.

Flashing a smile, my arms snapped up of their own accord, rising to block the oncoming attack with my forearms. I felt most of the attacks force halt before it even truly reached me, leaving a fraction of its power to crash against Midgardsormr’s Skin. Even so, that fraction was still part of an attack that could cut down a herd of Goliath’s and I felt the whole of it focused into an area too thin for a normal blade to achieve. Too either side of me, unhindered by anything in its path, the rest of his attack blew past me and crashed into the walls of our room at have. The mighty stones were torn apart as if they weren’t even there, destroying our room and continuing on a path of destruction that cut through Haven like an invisible giant’s sword. Blowing a path to the surface in any instant, a flash of red continued into the sky, clipping off the top of a building as it passed and then opening a trail across the sky.

I held on in the wake of that force, feeling its pressure against my skin even as it drove me steadily back across the ground. When I felt the ground beneath my feet vanish away, I pushed against it with my mind instead, forcibly keeping myself from being blown away like a leaf in a storm. Something to keep in mind in high-level combat was that however powerful your Aura made your body, it didn’t necessarily make you weigh more. Even an attack that couldn’t harm you could blow you away if you weren’t careful, because ‘harming’ and ‘lifting’ were two different things. I didn’t away that to happen, but…

Certainly, the pressure was a bit impressive. After a second, I felt my skin crack as the strike broke through my reinforced flesh. Though it didn’t show visibly, I could feel the attack grind a ways into my skin, leaving edges that were too rough and broken to be human—and my smile widened.

“—Not bad,” I admitted quietly before planting my feet firmly on thin air. Letting my power unfurl and flow through me, I pushed harder against the attack, this time looking not to hold it at bay, but to overcome it. The edge of the attack bit deeper into my skin as a result of the opposing forces, but stopped against the bone. One of the improvements of Midgardsormr’s Skin over its predecessor was the depth of the transformation, which grew as the skill improved—and now I was adamantine down to my literal bones. Faced with the deeper, harder materials of my body, the attack’s advance halted and with a sensation like breaking glass, shattered outright. Throwing my arm to the side, I ripped through the projected energy as if I were brushing it aside, hand already clenched into a fist. “My turn!”