Chapter 223: 221 – Combat Chess

The same arcanist called out again, first in Kargarian, then in Ikesian. 

“Cease all active magicks and shake hands!”

Zelsys nodded in acknowledgment and stopped pointlessly expelling huge amounts of essentia, sliding her hands into her pockets as she began to slowly walk towards Arnys.

---

A slow, tense approach, each woman exuding a monolithic presence in her own right. 

An exchange of firm handshakes, neither feeling the need to exert excessive force in a petty gesture of dominance. 

Another callout: “Three steps from the center!”

Thusly, they did. 

A countdown came next.

“Ready!”

---

Zel restarted the Breath Engine, and in the same vein, Arnys drew in a deep breath. Drums began to resound once more, accompanied by the monotonous droning of Strol’s throat-singing alongside that bowed instrument.

“Three…”

Both women shifted into their preferred stances. Despite how exaggeratedly low and wide Arnys’ stance was, it was still quite obviously southpaw. While countering it by going southpaw herself was an option, Zelsys decided that it would make for better spectacle if she just used her usual stance and pulled unusual counters seemingly out of nowhere.

“Two…”

Zel began stockpiling essentia whilst funneling marginal amounts towards very visible muscle groups. Not to use Thundercharger, but to fake it, to make it look as if she were preparing to take a low straight. In order to contribute to the deception, she even had the Primordial Self fake subconscious muscle spasms and bodily micromovements. In reality, she was stockpiling aether within entirely different muscle groups to prepare for a low kick on the other side.

“One…” 

Arnys smiled at her. She smiled back.

GONG

Zel surged forward, turning her right shoulder into the motion with her arm pulled back as if she were going to throw a casting punch. One third of a second passed, and she set off the payload, pivoting on her back foot and bringing up her left in an apparent low knee, only to fake it and snap her armored shin upwards into her opponent’s shoulder.

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The action imbalanced her, but she had accounted for this, intending to use her left hand as a pivot point to flip backwards.

By the time the split-second two-layered feint took place she already knew Arnys had dodge somehow, only the very top of her foot having made contact, and even then only briefly. While flipping through the air Zel caught a glimpse of that red attire, only to realize that Arnys now stood at the other side of the oval, rolling her shoulder while a projection of red veins pulsed over it. 

Grimacing, the Kargarian began slowly closing the distance: “Dear me, what terrible speed, and exclusively using indirect force multiplication! Going by your body language, I could’ve sworn you were going for a punch. I must commend your snap decision making.”

Zel grinned, also beginning to approach her opponent once more. Good. Arnys either hadn’t figured it out, or wasn’t confident enough in her hypothesis to call it out just yet. There was no way to be sure whether the merchant-woman was lying; as far as Zelsys was concerned, someone like Arnys would inevitably be able to fool far more precise means of lie detection than superhuman instinct.

“Next time I’ll get a direct hit, and that’s a promise,” promised the beast-slayer.

“Truly? Then show me!!” the Kargarian’s face lit up, her hair growing fluffy as hair-thin strands of yellow lightning leapt around her head, the self-same yellow swirling within her eyes and overtaking their natural purple. 

---

In an explosion of dust and lightning, they rushed towards each other. To the casual observer, a relatively simple chase through the oval - to those possessed of superior senses, a confusing, zigzagging game of cat and mouse, Arnys zipping about with zero outwardly visible effort while Zelsys ripped channels into the ground with the sheer force of her dashes.

Contrary to the apparent skill difference, it was Zelsys who moved more methodically of the two, intentionally moving to where Arnys had been after she had already left that space to disguise the fact she was unraveling the pattern in Arnys’ faster-than-sight movement and progressively growing closer to being in the right place at the right time to catch the matriarch.

A few seconds to an observer was a protracted battle of wits and raw ability, one which ended when Zelsys finally understood.

It ended when, at last, she had placed herself where Arnys was going before the matriarch arrived there, and delivered a mighty right hook straight to the ribcage. Only… Immediately after impact, she felt her arm seizing up as a surge of foreign Fulgur flooded in. Despite being able to break it down and metabolize it, the influx of foreign essentia took long enough to resolve to disable her right arm for the duration, opening a hole in her guard.

This hole, short-lived as it was, Arnys made good use of. As the dust settled, Zel felt a pair of fingers pressing into a soft spot on her right side, just between two sets of muscles, right over an intersection of several nerves. Wrenching pain flooded out from the point for a moment, at first paralyzingly intense, only to suddenly become bearable. 

Thoroughly unpleasant, but bearable.

She smiled and quickly lowered her heretofore stunned hand onto the back of Arnys’ neck whilst grabbing for her opponent’s right arm with her own left. The Matriarch had not accounted for the possibility of whatever she was doing just not working.

---

“Well now, isn’t that an unpleasant sensation?” Zelsys laughed, not only not trying to get away, but gesturing in a manner that only made Arnys’s finger grind even further into the pressure point. “I take it this is supposed to cause such intense pain as to stun an opponent, is that right? C’mon, tell me. In return I’ll let you guess why I’m doing this thinly-veiled gloating routine - hell, I’ll even tell you the correct answer if you guess wrong!”

A grin spread over Arnys’s face in turn as she searched her opponent’s form for the signs of potent alchemical painkillers, and found none. 

“Go on. Throw me,” thought the merchant. “Full force, no holding back.”

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