The Exalt [Cultivation Fantasy]

Hundreds of thin, long needles poured like rainfall, darting through the air at great speeds that muted the sound of their travel. Santen's hands swept across and landed together in a clap, gathering all the needles and squeezing them between his palms. Letting go, he dropped a clump of metal that dissipated into nothingness as the Ein that formed them lost its power. He preferred calm and silence, eased by the moments of respite, but he found none here. Instantly, a scythe sang its song, the metal humming as it cut the air and slashed at him. Santen gave a faint smile and brought his hands together, clenching the sharp blade between his palms.

The smoothness of the scythe nearly stumped him as it nearly shifted through his defense, the tip emerging past his guard. Exerting more force, he firmly held the scythe in place as the blade almost reached his chest. Quickly, he knocked the scythe to the side before Lelith could act on the opening she forced. Santen lashed her with his firm, long arm with all of his might. However, Lelith swerved her scythe and brought it toward his attack in a frontal confrontation. Santen widened his eyes. Though he had expected it, seeing it happen was still shocking. The great scythe had halted his arm, and he could go no further.

The forces of their blows rebounded and slashed up and down. A thin slit formed in the ground between them, not enough to say it parted the ground, but still, it highlighted how sharp her attacks were. Santen shifted his stance and slashed with his other arm, aiming to cleave into her neck. Lelith, ever expressionless, spun her scythe and used the pommel at the end of its shaft, striking his arm from below to redirect it. Santen lunged in and changed his arm's course, slicing downward. But his senses picked up a danger from behind, so he hurried away in retreat, skidding his feet on the floor as needles stabbed the ground.

"What are your arms made of? My scythe can't draw out your fear if it can't cut into your veins." Lelith waltzed forward, her shoes tapping clearly on the floor. "And why can't I see you in the Prinstyct? You don't exist in it."

There was no point in conversing with her. Santen hastened his steps and closed in. Attacking from a range was futile as well since his arms and slashes were the most powerful on direct contact. Still, the fact her scythe easily stopped his attacks, which usually parted enemies in a single strike, was worrisome. He found relief in that he had sent Auren and the others away since he wouldn't be able to protect them and hold her off. His arms blurred and seemed to multiply as he struck in an onslaught, refusing to relent even a single second for her to counter. The clear sounds of swords clashing resounded one after the other in quick succession as her scythe blocked every single blow.

Santen gritted his teeth and pulled one arm back, thrusting it forward in a spearhand. He poured his Ein into his single deadly strike and landed right on the flat side of her blade, forcing her off balance. The chance finally arrived. His arm swept from the side. Spiked chains protruded from thin air, the links rattling as they coiled around his arm and tightened, trying to drive the spikes deeper to pierce his skin. Her personality and tendencies were truly twisted if these were her spells. Santen recalled the story of the Lord's wife he had learned in the forest from Avila, the unfortunate past of suffering under this one's heels. His anger flared, and he cut through the chains and hit her neck.

The unnatural sound of metal clanging against each other stunned him. His eyes fixated on his arm, particularly the place where his hand should have cut through her neck, but her neck was unharmed. Feeling the cold, metallic touch on the edge of his hand, Santen surmised that her neck was impossibly hard, but there was no sign of a spell or even a defensive Ein around her. She had taken his enraged blow with her body, nothing else. Was it all useless? He thought for a crucial second. A streak of light flashed past his sight, and Santen backed off, but the moment of shock and despair had cost him. Her scythe slashed and cut his shoulder, red liquid spewing from the fresh wound.

Santen gripped his wound and frowned, feeling the liquid escape his body. Lelith glanced over her scythe and traced her finger over the red liquid, rubbing it. Her words were of confusion, yet her voice lacked the emotion, "This isn't blood. And that is not flesh underneath your skin. I know the feeling, and you are not it. Rare." She allowed the liquid to trickle down her palm and plop onto the floor. "It is similar…to cutting into a golem."

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As her inhuman gaze crept back onto him, Santen swung his hand down, splattering the floor in the fake blood. He found no use in feigning pain and checked his supposed injury. His fast retreat prevented the worst case of his arm being severed off. Inside the wound, the red liquid stopped pumping from the exposed, thin, rubbery pipes that had been split open by the scythe as the valves inside automatically rotated to a close. Raising his arm and rotating his shoulder, Santen assessed his status and was relieved his range of movements had not been affected.

"Strange man of long arms. What are you?" Lelith asked, raising her scythe with one hand. The blade's sharp hum reverberated in the halls, the mere sound crisp as if a sword was at his neck. The weapons and blades of his previous enemies could not compare to the simple swaying of her devastating armament. It was no wonder she managed to pierce the hull of his armored body.

"I am Santen, the Third." Santen exhaled a puff of hot air out of his circulation system. Raising his hands, he clenched hard and formed large fists. Even if she was a Grade Nine, he had expected his attacks to at least wound her and slow her down from chasing Auren and the others. But he gravely miscalculated. His eyes locked onto her smooth neck with not a blemish nor faint bruise on it. Like himself, her body was unnaturally hard, not of flesh. But he knew for certain she was not the same as him. He chortled, his mechanical vocal cords clicking in terrible mimicry of laughter. "I could ask the same of you. Are you a human or not?"

The silence carried on in the hall, the statues their only witnesses watching with cold eyes carved from sapphire. Oddly, he could tell Lelith's indifference cracked for the first time; a dark line, barely discernable only to his capable glass eyes, creased her brow. Santen charged in and swung a straight punch toward Lelith's chest. For many years since his freedom, he had avoided using a clenched fist, favoring slashing his arms in chops and stabs. He hated the sensation of flesh on his knuckles and the sight of the enemy being turned into a bloody mess from the brute savagery of his fists. A simple chop cut them cleanly with no mess, which he preferred.

However, against this enemy, he couldn't let his bias and preferences hold him back. Chains dangled and chimed a clunky tune as the spikes clattered. His arms had been hooked and encased in steely bindings, followed by his legs, then finally his neck and waist. But he refused to be chained like an animal and snapped free from his entrapment, blasting the shattered pieces of the chains away in all directions. Not even a single moment had been lost, nor any force taken from his encroaching fist.

Lelith acted fast and precise in the short fraction of a second before his fist could land. Using her scythe as a hook, she secured Santen's arm under her armament and yanked hard with a staggering amount of strength beyond what should exist in those thin arms that held no spell for a boon. His fist drove in straight and true, not diverting from its initial path, unbothered by her useless attempt at deflection. Her forearm rose and shielded her body as Santen's fist bashed on it like a hammer on an anvil, two hard surfaces colliding. As his fist rotated and swerved upward, Lelith was flung away and launched straight up.

Several small glints floated in the arm around his raised uppercut, and a closer inspection revealed them to be fine threads, nigh invisible due to their thinness. Santen was dragged along with Lelith by the force of his own blow, the threads connecting to her scythe. 'They must have been placed when she hooked her scythe.' Santen thought as Lelith kicked and bounced off the air, pulling him in abrupt turns that would have broken the bones of an ordinary man. Santen stood firm, turtling with his arms by his head. Lelith brushed past him at a speed that escaped his sight, and dozens of slashes cut across his formidable defense in the short moment of contact.

Yet, his defenses held, and he remained unharmed. She far surpassed him in speed and use of spells and techniques, but his adjusted defense and power held the balance for now. Santen knew the worst had yet to come.

"I am losing interest. There is no fear to be drawn from mere golem." Lelith dodged his punch, but the simple shockwave that burst from its swing sent her away, and he was dragged along for the ride. The mark of a glowing crown emerged and shone above her forehead, shining with majesty and power fit for a ruler. The thread on his arm coiled tighter and scraped his arm, sharper than before. The Ancestral Mark had appeared. Lelith rushed straight back to face Santen. "I'll end this now."

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