Chapter 312: Chapter 2.30

“Hey, do you know this one? An elf, a dwarf and a beastman sit on a tree.” I said while already chuckling about the bad joke.

“Said the fat elf to the tall dwarf: When did you learn to climb trees?” She knew the joke! Which could only mean one thing: She could read books.

“Oh, you are making this incredibly hard. How many books about jokes did you even read?” I asked in amazement. I seriously didn´t take her for the person to read such fabulous literature.

“One. What about you?” Hannah asked while looking towards me. There were just a few centimetres between our faces which were illuminated by a single magical lamp.

“Don’t tell me we read the same one.” I said. My hard labour in reading that book … completely wasted.

“Was it ‘A hundred slightly inappropriate Jokes’ ?” She asked, confirming what was already clear.

“Is there only one book about jokes on this planet? How cruel …” I muttered.

“Why did you read it in the first place?” She asked after several seconds of silence.

“To fit in … I have done so much shit in the last two hundred years, that I nearly forgot how it is to act normal.” I answered and rolled onto my back to stare at the stars.

“I see. And why are we laying on the grass again?” She asked shortly afterwards.

“Hmm … I don’t know? Thought you would like it. Anyways, completely off topic but even more important: Do you want to fight me?” I asked happily.

“Do I have a chance?” She grumbled unhappily, even though she hadn’t even seen what I could do.

“Depends on if you want one or not.” I told her. After all, I was pretty sure that I could beat her, but I also didn´t want to see her lose against one of my trump cards. That would be a bit unfair, wouldn’t it?

“In that case … do what you have to.”  She said and sat upright to stare at the man who stood several metres away, holding his ears shut and staring at a tree.

“Alright.” I said and stood up. After getting rid of a bit of dirt, I strolled towards Marc and tapped his shoulder. “Have you heard anything?”

“No. As you wanted, I kept my eyes shut and my ears covered.” He said unhappily. Truly, waiting for half an hour in front of a tree was something else, even for someone as loyal as he was.

“Can I assume you will not tell anyone about what happens in a few minutes?” I asked while smirking.

“You can.” He stated, his eyes burning with desire to find out what Hannah and I would be doing with the two black swords he had stabbed into the soft ground a few metres away from us.

“Great. And now go away.” I said and chuckled devilishly.

“What?” He asked, only slightly pissed off by my behaviour.

“Sorry my friend, but I do have trust issues. If you would be so kind.” I said and nodded in the direction of the camp in the distance. He immediately looked over my shoulder towards Hannah, but as she apparently didn´t give him a helping hand, he could only relent and walk back to where he came from. On the flip side, he wouldn’t need to interact with me anymore which certainly improved his mood quite a bit.

“So, how are we going to fight? No magic, no special tricks?” I asked while Hannah threw one sword over to me. I caught it out of the air, gripped the handle tightly and felt the weight of it. It was quite heavy to be honest, but nothing I couldn’t handle. The material did worry me a bit though as the blade felt sharp and all that, but it didn´t seem as if I was made out of iron.

“Best of three?” She asked while going into position herself. My sword swished through the air a few times as I tried to get accustomed to it. Especially the balance was quite good actually. Whoever made this was a master at his art.

“Kay. Start whenever you want.” I said and focused solely on her. She looked back, concentrated on my sword with all her might for several seconds. Even as I swung it to the side a bit, her gaze followed suit. A short time later, as I was back in a defensive position with the sword directly in front of me, Hannah sprang into action.

Dirt was flung into the air as she dashed towards me, her sword already in a predictable motion to strike my side. Surprised about her speed which equalled that of Aska, I could only move my sword to the left as I honestly didn´t expect it.

What I also didn´t know was that her sword felt more like a sledgehammer as she hit mine. I nearly lost grip immediately as my sword was pushed backwards until it painfully hit my chest. I could feel a few bones breaking as my shoes left the earth behind shortly afterwards and I was flung backwards several metres. Still in the air, I could only row with my left hand to hopefully land on my feet while dragging the sword away from my chest with the other.

Indeed, I did hit the ground with my heels, but my balance was impossible to recover. After sliding across the ground for a bit, I simply fell backwards, only held up by the tree that was suddenly at my back. Once more, every bit of air was pressed out of my lungs, but at least nothing metallic bored into my body.

I had to wait several seconds for my lung to heal properly so that I could laugh hysterically.

“Haha~” I spit out the bit of blood in my mouth and looked at Hannah who was still standing in the distance and couldn’t believe that she actually hurt me.

“Are you okay?” She asked while I stabbed the sword into the ground to steady myself. My upper body was still a mess at this point, but it did heal slowly.

“Yeah~ I´m totally fine~” I answered while looking down on the tattered dress. My skin was healing slowly, so it wouldn’t take long until I was back at full strength … which was surprisingly lower than Hannah´s.

“There is a bone sticking out of your arm.” She commented, making me look to my right arm which was still hurting quite a bit. I didn´t even know when the bone broke, but the splintered part had truly punctuated my skin.

“Oho? Well then…” I giggled loudly as I pushed the bone underneath my skin again. The wound healed within a few seconds again, taking all the fun I had with it.

“How did that happen?” Did she mean the bone? Or how I was flung backwards by her simple strike?

“Well, you were stronger than me?” I asked in confusion.

“What level are you?” She asked in wonder.

“Zero. Have always been and will always be.” I said and finally pushed myself away from the tree again.

“I´m level 304 … how is it possible that you haven’t levelled at all?” Oh, just because I lived with the system as long as she did, it didn´t mean I was actually participating in it.

“Hmm … imagine that freaking system as a magical circle, leeching off on my soul. It uses me and so I am part of it. Have you ever seen a magical circle capable of altering itself?” I asked. Magical circles were all static. You make them once, and they will always produce the same results. They do not change. And in a sense, I was part of one as an unchanging component, at least in regards to the system.

“No?” She said while thinking about what I wanted to convey.

“Precisely! I am the only intelligent being on this planet who cannot level at all ... so I am more like an unintelligent beast … what a bad comparison ... I´m the artist, and every intelligent being is my painting. Well, because my soul only runs the system and isn´t in control of it, I cannot fiddle with it too much either. The most I can do is show everyone a false status screen and … well, you will see eventually.” I concluded and smiled wryly.

“So that means you are weaker than me?” Well, strength wise without relying on a few nasty tricks … yes.

“Yup, yup. You are even a bit stronger than Aska is …” I said unhappily.

“I am stronger than a god?” She asked herself. Naturally, that wasn’t the case at all.

“Ehh … you are stronger than his vessel, which doesn’t mean much, does it? He will just create a new one on Elysium, the home world of the gods, and snip with his fingers to deal with you, if you manage to kill him in the first place which does requires a special weapon impossible to create on this world. The god’s strength usually doesn’t lay within their visible bodies, but rather in the power they use subconsciously.” I explained while thinking back to the hundreds of times where I managed to ‘kill’ him. He always pieces himself together without fault.

“Where is it that mysterious power then?” That was quite hard to explain. I closed my eyes for a second to think about a great example and then smiled brightly.

“Hmm … can you create a bit of electricity on your index finger?” I asked swiftly.

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“Sure … Lightning Bolt” Lightning erupted from her fingers, spreading through the air beautifully. Truly, her magic was quite strong as it licked even the ground a few metres away from her. Thankfully, she was still a bit further away than that.

“Woah! You just conjured a part of the god of lightning, Lightning McQueen!” I said happily about the presentation.

“I don’t get it.” She said after cancelling her magic once more.

“Everything you see, everything you cannot see but is still there is part of a god. You angered the god of time? Well, sucks to be you because he is the only one who can let you age thousands of years within a second. You blew out the beloved candle of the god of fire? The heat in your body will increase within seconds, cooking you alive. Whatever you touch is part of one or more gods. You are part of a multitude of gods with your vitality, your desires, with your everything.” I explained, just like Aska told me all these years ago. “But don’t worry, just like your own cells, they won’t control you personally.”

“That is not what the church preaches.” No, it wasn’t. The church preached that the god of time was an unfathomable being which created time, but that wasn’t the case. He was time itself, which also made it incredibly hard to do anything against him, or his peers. Even if you somehow do manage to murder the god of time completely … time will cease to exist, which honestly sucks.

“Because it is easier to sell the people that the gods are like them and that they aren´t literally everywhere.” I told her a bit frustrated about the fact that I couldn’t stop the gods from playing with me because of that.

“So … the dead animal you felt earlier was Askatesh?” She asked surprised.

“Yup.” I said.

“That´s weird.” Yeah, yeah it was. Especially because I loved to feel him.

“What´s even weirder is that my own soul consists of death and death alone.” I said while smiling bitterly. The connection between me and Aska was quite hard to ignore, no matter if I looked at it from a behavioural perspective, or from a different angle.

“Does that mean you are part of him?” She asked even more surprised.

“Hmm … hopefully not. I managed to lock even the gods out of my soul and … and if I were a part of him, you would be a part of Irminsul which she denied time and time again. Let’s just conclude that it is complicated, okay?” I said as I failed to grasp everything about the gods as well.

“If you say so … second round?” She asked. I smiled devilishly, picked up the strangely undamaged sword and hold it in front of me again.

So, how does one beat a stronger, slightly faster opponent? Well, obviously through exploiting every weakness they had. And Hannah´s was her technique which was to be expected. If one only slaughters monsters for two hundred years, it is to be expected that fighting against a humanoid like me will be different.

Her technique was still better than others, don’t get me wrong, but humans relied too much on their sheer strength these days. Well this way, they were certainly more formidable enemies than before thanks to the system.

Time and time again, I switched the sword from my left hand to the right and back, waiting for her to make a move. Once again, Hannah dashed towards me at breakneck speed but this time, I was prepared. Her gaze followed my sword as I swung it towards her approaching blade. It clanked loudly as the edges hit each other and my sword was flung backwards once more, but this time, I didn´t even bother with it. I tilted my own head to the side as far as I could and went on my knees while letting go of the sword. Her gaze still followed the blade as it was flung away by the sheer impact, giving me enough time to do whatever I wanted.

I could see her sword flashing above me as Hannah tried to change course of it, sadly too late. It travelled a few centimetres above my head and only cut off a bit of my hair. As soon as she sword was to the side of my head, I sprung upwards again, my right hand racing towards her sword hand while the other aimed directly for her neck.

Sadly, only one of my attempts was successful. She twisted her upper body out of range away from me which coincidentally enabled me to grip her hand tightly. Despite the difference in strength, she didn´t manage to get rid of me as I gripped around her wrist tightly. Instead, she lifted up her left knee to ram it into my side which only earned her a sudden smile from my side. I let go of her sword hand immediately, grabbed underneath her thigh with my hand and supported her movement while stepping back.

She naturally used her free sword again to turn the blade around and tried to slash at my side, but her balance was already crumbling as I pushed her knee, now around my shoulders against her. Her sword painfully stabbed into my shoulder as she fell backwards uncontrollably, having only one foot to support herself.

She yelped as she fell onto her back and I followed up by stomping on her sword hand, but stopped before hitting it.

“I think that’s my win.” I claimed and turned away from her to retrieve my sword out of the forest.

“Shouldn’t have stared at the sword like an idiot …” She said after a little while as I finally found the sword again several metres away.

“Your reactions were good though … it is just that your plan of overpowering me with your strength wasn’t.” I claimed while pulling on the sword that was stuck in a tree.

“What about your shoulder?” She asked, probably not as worried as I hoped she would be.

“Non fatal. The blade stopped at my bone.” I said while pressing my foot against the tree and pulling on the handle with all my strength. Suddenly, the sword got free, making the tree tilt a bit in my direction.

“I see. Letting go of your sword like this isn´t exactly a bright move either.” She said unhappily.

“Not in battle, no. But in a one versus one when the opponent focuses on the blade instead of the wielder?” I asked rhetorically. The results were speaking for themselves after all. “Third round?”

“Sure … what if we go all out on this one?” Hannah asked while pointing her blade at me. Somehow, I got the feeling it would be pretty boring if I went all out.

“Do that. I´ll try to look what I can do against your magic.” I said, hoping for a tense battle where I would run through the forest while trees exploded left and right.

“I want to see what you can do.” She asked hopefully. Was it for her self esteem because she didn´t wanted to be loyal to a weakling, or because she desired to build her own future around me? I seriously didn´t know, but her desire to know what I learned in these two hundred years was genuine.

“Fine … give me everything you got.” I said and moved the sword into a horizontal position, aiming directly at her. My other hand went over the cold material until I reached the middle of the blade and closed my eyes.

“Lightning field.” I still found it laughable that she only had to name the magic by her name while my chants were sometimes minutes long if I didn’t want to brute force my way through the obstacles. Opening my eyes, I could see electricity crackling across the ground, expanding around her in a circular fashion until it was a metre away from me. She also let go of the sword and retrieved the magical dagger on her waist which I eyed suspiciously.

There was one question on my mind as I stared at it for a second. Trash tier or not?

“How do you want to lose? Sword at the neck or do you rather want to be unconscious?” I asked cockily.

“I take the sword.” She said while grinning wryly.

“Kay.” With my sword in my hand, I stepped into the lightning field, completely unaffected by it. She frowned slightly as she saw how the lightning apparently hit me, but didn´t do anything to me. And thus, I strode onwards through the lightning that tried to lick my skin, but didn´t quite make it. She immediately cancelled her magic and tried out another one while I was still strolling towards her leisurely.

“Lightning spear.” I understood her fascination with lightning as the spear indeed glowed in a beautiful orange as she threw it towards me, only to disappear inch by inch once it hit my clothes without doing anything.

“Wind Cutter.” From all directions, impossible to see compressed air was flung at me … probably. They all disappeared once they got closer to me than a few centimetres. As it was only a few metres between us at this point, she brought the dagger into position. It was completely clad in lightning for a few seconds in which I continued to walk towards her leisurely. She swung her dagger at me, but didn´t come that far as part of the lightning licked her fingers and went up her arm, which lead to a lot of pain and muscle contraction.

Slowly, I lifted the sword up, but she still hadn´t given up completely. With all her strength, she balled her hand into a fist and tried to ram it into my belly. Effortlessly, I grabbed her approaching hand and held it in place, exactly as I placed the blunt side of the sword at her neck.

“How …” She mumbled quietly.

“Well … because I am too good?” I giggled and brought the sword away from her to stab it into the ground.

“Lucinda …” She muttered while I tilted my head. So she really did want to know why she would never be able to win against me if she further went down the path she took in the last two hundred years.

“Okay, okay. Have you ever seen an artist dying because of work?” I asked while giving her a little challenge to understand what happened.

“No?” She asked bewildered by the question.

“Well, that’s because their working environment is very safe.” I said and chuckled happily. She didn´t understand it directly, but I was sure she would do so eventually. And thus, I blocked off her every attempt to get the truth out of me afterwards. She would find out on her own.

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