Chapter : 939
The spirit convulsed, its form swelling and reshaping. The bestial, piscine shape rose up, becoming humanoid. A being of liquid fury now stood where the shark had been. It was armored in plates of what looked like razor-sharp, magically hardened coral. Its head was a sleek, predatory helmet, its eyes the same cold, black voids. In its hand, it held a three-pronged spear forged from a spinning vortex of high-pressure water. This was the Water-Knight, a perfect fusion of man and monster, and its entire being radiated a single, focused intent: annihilation.
With a sound like a tidal wave crashing against a cliff, the Water-Knight exploded from its position, a tsunami of righteous vengeance aimed directly at the hovering, momentarily stunned Hornet warrior, Kael.
While the Water-Knight engaged Kael in a new and terrifying aerial duel, the second spirit, the shapeless, silent Doppelganger, drifted across the clearing. It moved not with speed, but with an unnerving, inexorable purpose, its target the massive, iron-scaled form of Kroth, Jager’s alligator.
Jager, seeing his partner under assault and his own spirit being approached by this shapeless anomaly, scoffed, a flicker of his old arrogance returning. “An illusion? A parlor trick? Devour it, Kroth! Erase this pathetic mockery from existence!”
The iron alligator roared in response, its massive jaws opening wide. It lunged, its intent to swallow the shimmering, formless entity whole. The Doppelganger did not evade. It did not defend. It simply drifted forward and allowed the alligator’s jaws to make contact.
The moment the real spirit’s teeth touched the fluidic essence of the mimic, a transformation occurred. The Doppelganger’s shimmering, semi-corporeal form latched on, flowing and reshaping itself with impossible speed. Its form hardened, expanded, took on texture and mass. Scales of spectral silver erupted across its skin. A massive tail whipped into existence. Red, spectral light ignited in two points where its eyes should be.
In the space of a single, horrifying heartbeat, the Doppelganger had become a perfect, shimmering, ethereal replica of the iron alligator itself. It was slightly smaller, its form translucent, but it was a perfect mirror, down to the last razor-sharp tooth.
Kroth, Jager’s spirit, roared in confusion and rage as it was met by the charge of its own spectral twin. The mirrored fight began. It was a brutal, primordial clash of iron jaws and soul-siphoning bites, the real and the replica locked in a savage, cannibalistic duel.
Meanwhile, the Water-Knight’s assault on Kael was overwhelming. Lloyd, now a being of pure, elemental water, was in his element in the pouring rain. He was a force of nature, his attacks a relentless barrage of hydrodynamic power.
“Water Gun!” his voice echoed, a deep, resonant sound like the ocean floor speaking. A sphere of hyper-compressed water, no larger than his fist, shot from his palm. It was not a splash; it was a cannonball. Kael, reacting on instinct, tried to block it with his lance. The water sphere struck the weapon with the force of a battering ram, the impact nearly tearing the lance from his grasp and sending a bone-jarring shock up his arms.
Before Kael could recover, Lloyd made a different gesture. “Mist,” he commanded. A dense, swirling fog of super-cooled water instantly enveloped Kael, the tiny droplets clinging to his multifaceted insectoid eyes, blinding him completely.
His senses screaming, his vision gone, Kael flew wildly, trying to escape the cloud. But he was flying blind, and he was flying into a trap.
“Drill,” the Water-Knight’s voice intoned calmly from the heart of the mist.
Lloyd’s spear began to spin, its three points rotating at an impossible speed, the water that formed it becoming a focused, armor-piercing vortex. He shot forward, a silent torpedo in his own fog bank. The spinning drill of pure, focused pressure struck Kael’s chitinous backplate.
There was a high-pitched, screaming sound of tortured metal and shell. The Crown-Rank armor, which could deflect a swordsman’s blow, began to crack, splinter, and then, with a final, explosive pop, it shattered. The Water Drill punched through, leaving a gaping, bleeding hole in the Hornet warrior’s back. The tide of the battle had not just turned; it had become a deluge.
The battlefield had been transformed into a chaotic, multi-front war, with two distinct but equally brutal duels raging under the sickly purple dome. The arrogant confidence of the assassins had been shattered, replaced by a desperate, grinding fight for survival.
Chapter : 940
The duel of the alligators was a primordial nightmare. Jager’s spirit, Kroth, was a being of pure, physical power and ancient malice, a King-Rank monster whose every bite and tail-swipe was a force of nature. The Doppelganger, its spectral twin, was a perfect mimic, but it was fundamentally lesser. Its Commander-Rank power, though formidable, could not match the raw, overwhelming force of the original.
It was a battle of substance versus shadow. Kroth’s iron-hard scales deflected the Doppelganger’s attacks with deep, resonant clangs. The Doppelganger’s ethereal hide, however, was torn and shredded by Kroth’s relentless assault, its semi-corporeal form flickering and destabilizing with every blow. It fought with a savage, mindless tenacity, a perfect reflection of the real alligator’s predatory instincts, but it was a losing battle. The shadow was being consumed by the thing it was mirroring.
Jager, watching the duel, felt a sliver of hope return. His mind, still reeling from the impossible appearance of the new spirits, latched onto this single, exploitable weakness. The mimic was weaker. He could win this. He poured his own fractured will into his spirit, urging it on, commanding it to devour the impudent echo of itself. "Tear it apart, Kroth! Show it the difference between a reflection and the real thing!" he roared, his voice a raw, desperate command.
On the other side of the clearing, the second duel was a masterpiece of elemental dominance. Kael, the Hornet warrior, was no longer a predator; he was prey. The Water-Knight was a force beyond his comprehension, a being that commanded the very essence of water with a terrifying, scientific precision.
Wounded and disoriented, his armor breached, Kael beat his wings furiously, trying to gain altitude and escape the Water-Knight’s relentless assault. But Lloyd, in his merged form, was the master of this fluid domain. With a flick of his wrist, he sent out a dozen spinning discs of razor-sharp, hardened water, like chakrams forged from a waterfall. They sliced through the air, forcing Kael to bank and weave, hemming him in, denying him the escape he so desperately sought.
“You cannot escape the ocean by flying, insect,” the Water-Knight’s voice boomed, a sound that was both a statement of fact and a pronouncement of doom.
He then unleashed his most devastating attack yet. He drove the base of his watery spear into the muddy ground. "Vortex," he commanded. The rain-soaked earth, already saturated, obeyed. A massive, swirling whirlpool of mud and water formed on the ground, its powerful suction pulling at Kael from below, dragging him down, threatening to pull him from the sky.
Kael fought against the pull with all his might, his wings beating at a frantic, desperate pitch. He was a fly caught on the surface of a draining sink. It was a battle of his aerial power against the elemental pull of the ground, and he was losing.
It was in this moment, as both battles reached a critical turning point, that the two forgotten guardians re-entered the fray. Ken and Habiba, who had been momentarily stunned by Lloyd’s insane, brilliant counter-attack, had used the precious seconds to recover. Their spiritual power was sealed, but their warrior souls were very much intact. They saw the Doppelganger faltering, and they saw their master dominating his own fight. Their duty was clear.
They moved with a silent, shared understanding, their target the real alligator, Kroth. They became the support that the spectral mimic so desperately needed.
Ken was the hammer. His body, even without his spirit, was a weapon of immense physical power. He charged, not at the alligator’s armored head, but at its thick, muscular legs, aiming to break its stance, to turn it into an unstable target. He was a battering ram of pure, focused force, his every blow a seismic event designed to create chaos.
Habiba was the scalpel. She moved with a fluid, almost impossible grace, her scimitar a blur of silver in the purple light. She was not strong enough to pierce the alligator’s iron hide, but she was a master of exploiting weaknesses. She danced around the thrashing beast, her blade darting in to strike at the vulnerable joints in its armor, the soft tissue around its eyes, the tendons in its legs. Her attacks were not meant to kill, but to hinder, to distract, to inflict a thousand small, agonizing wounds that would divert its attention from the main fight.