531 Taking Control [2]

'The chip inside of my head? …What is he talking about?'

I always used the chip inside of my head.

In the split second that 'Eyes of Chronos' was activated, I wouldn't have been able to think if it weren't for the chip.

Was there another function of the chip that I did not know about? ...If there was, I wasn't aware of it. 

It was then that the other me spoke. My attention once again shifted. 

'Pay attention one more time.'

With his words fading, the Duke's body stumbled backward.

This came as a result of the previous punch. 

As he stabilized his body, there was no longer any look of shock on his face, and in its place was an impassive and unreadable expression.

In front of the silent audience, he attempted to keep a straight face.

His figure disappeared once more as he expanded his wings, casting a large shadow over the arena. This time, his movements were clearly different. It was a lot faster than before.

But…

Bang-!

The results were the same.

"Huaaakk!"

Casually elbowing the right side, the Duke's body reappeared. It was only a casual elbow, but it was that casual elbow that caused his eyes to widen and his stomach to cave in.

A glob of spittle flew towards my face, but my face remained unchanged. 

'Did you manage to see?'

The echo of his voice reverberated throughout my mind.

Finding it difficult to digest what had happened, it took a while for me to answer back.

But I eventually did.

  '…I have.'

While the answer was quite easy, it was the concept that I found difficult to grasp. Or even accept it as something that a human was remotely possible of achieving... 

'Observe everything. From muscle movement to the direction that feet and bodies point, and eye movement. Connecting everything together...'

Lowering my hand, I pressed my thumb against the hilt of my sword.

The moment I did that, the Duke once again decided to move.

But…

Click-!

Shifting my body ever so slightly toward the right, a subtle clicking sound resonated throughout the arena.

Following the sound, the whole arena froze as the Duke's figure once again materialized in front of me.

A gaping hole appeared on the right side of his chest.

'...You will be able to predict their movements.' 

Drip. Drip.

It was only the sound of blood dripping on the ground that echoed throughout the arena.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Trying to comprehend what had happened, the Duke's head rose and fell repeatedly as he stared at his right chest.

Throughout the silence, my mouth opened. 

"…What a pity."

*** 

A fluke.

A simple and miraculous fluke.

'It's the only way to explain it…'

The Duke thought as he kept denying the reality that was presented before his eyes.

There was simply no way for someone whose rank was weaker than his to be able to hit him.

Impossible! 

Although he was suppressed, he was still a Duke-ranked demon.

A Duke-ranked demon!

An existence that was supposed to stand at the apex of all worlds. A figure who had the ability to squash Counts with a simple wave of his hand. 

…Or at least that was how things were supposed to be.

Drip. Drip.

But, as he heard the sound of his own blood dripping toward the ground, he started to question this notion.

'How is this possible?'

His only memory was moving one step before feeling a sharp pain on the right side of his body.

Raising his hand to cover his wound, Duke Azenoch raised his head.

"…!"

From that moment on, he could see all the stares coming from the participants above. They stared at him with obvious shock on their faces.

But that wasn't all.

While whispering among themselves, they also displayed a clear sense of disappointment.

"Is the Duke only this strong?"

"…Is he really weaker than that human?"

"He is playing around, right?"

They tried to be faint with their voices, but as the whispers grew, so did the noise, and their voices were heard by the Duke whose face twisted savagely.

'Shut up! How dare you!' 

He wanted to shout at the top of his lungs toward the crowd. But out of sheer willpower, he managed to stop himself. 

...The situation was still salvageable. 

As he raised his head to stare at his opponent, the Duke stared deeply into his eyes.

'Huh?'

But the moment their eyes met, the Duke suddenly felt a chill run down his body as he subconsciously took a step back.

There was no avoiding the audience's observation, who became noisier as the performance progressed.

"Did you see that? The Duke took a step back.'

"Is the Duke actually scared?"

"…This is pathetic."

The Duke heard more and more voices inside of his head with each passing second. All he could hear were voices at this point.

But despite all of the voices against him, Duke Azenoch's focus was somewhere else.

Staring at his trembling arms, he stuttered.

'A…am I scared?'

That sensation he felt when he looked at him in the eyes...

Was it really a fluke? ..Or was he just imagining things?

When he glanced once again at White Reaper, the sensation he felt before vanished the moment his eyes met.

'…A fluke.'

The Duke thought to himself.

Yes.

It had to be a fluke.

How could someone that wasn't even Duke rank scare him? 

Impossible.

'It's probably because of all the voices around me.' 

There was simply no other explanation. 

"Huuu…"

Taking a deep breath, Duke Azenoch calmed himself down. Drowning out the noise coming from the arena, he slowly started to channel his demonic energy.

'If Count rank doesn't work, I will just take it up a notch.'

Slowly adjusting his rank in an unnoticeable way, he took a step forward and his vision warped. Reappearing in front of White Reaper, he extended his hand and clawed his head.

Compared to before, his movements were incomparably faster.

Within a split second, his hand was already nearing White Reaper's head. It was so close, just a couple of inches away, but…

The Duke's face sank as White Reaper managed to avoid the attack by moving his head back by a narrow margin. Even so, he did manage to graze him just a little bit as a red line traced alongside his cheek. 

Swoosh-! 

Feeling something hurl at him from below, the Duke twisted his body. He too was able to avoid the attack.

At the same time he avoided the attack, he raised his head and proceeded to sweep his leg in a whipping motion, hurtling it towards White Reaper's head.

Bang-!

His leg was connected. 

To the Duke's disappointment, his leg came into contact with his arm which was raised to block his head. 

The Duke gritted his teeth and tried again. 

"Huh?"

However, as he was trying to shift his body, the Duke suddenly found a hand grasping his foot. Without giving him a chance to react, an open palm came toward his head.

A sense of doom rose within the Duke's mind as he watched the hand reach out for his head.

Demonic energy erupted from his body as he twisted his body at a strange angle and swung his other foot toward his opponent's head with its back heel.

As he performed this movement, he made sure to keep his gaze focused on his opponent.

This led him to notice a slight change in White Reaper's expression, as his lips slowly curled into a grin and his left hand shot toward the side of his head.

'Fuck!'

By the time the Duke realized he had been baited into doing such a move, it was already too late.

Bang-!

With a loud banging sound, the Duke suddenly felt a hand grasp his other leg. Suddenly, he found himself being thrown up in the air before being thrown down with tremendous force.

Bang-!

Crashing into the ground, sand swept into the air as a crater formed beneath him. In addition, the Duke felt a great deal of pain running down his back as he struggled to open his mouth. 

The impact was so powerful that he didn't even have time to groan.

"Again."

A voice echoed in his ears. By the time he realized what his words meant, his body had once again been flung toward the air.

Bang-!

***

"It's not him…"

After staring at the white-haired figure in the middle of the arena for a few moments, Lightning Dragon came to this conclusion.

'It can't be him.'

It was hard to describe the scene that he was seeing.

If he had to use a word, it would have to be a...

One-sided beat down.

Bang-! Bang-! Bang-!

An ear-piercing bang continued to reverberate throughout the arena. It was the sound created by White Reaper repeatedly flinging the Duke's body toward the ground. 

How could Lightning Dragon think otherwise if that was all he heard and saw? 

With each swing of his arms, the Duke's body would come crushing down toward the ground, deepening the already formed crater formed from the first impact.

The sight.

It was something that was being deeply engraved in the eyes of all spectators present as an immaculate silence enveloped the arena grounds.

But that wasn't what concerned Lightning Dragon.

His concern was that the White Reaper on stage wasn't the one he had fought.

'His mana control, it's completely different from when we fought. In addition, he moves a lot more efficiently than in the past. Every one of his movements seems to be perfectly calculated, and...hm?' 

His thoughts paused for a second. 

Leaning his body closer, his eyes opened widely as he pressed his hand on the window to get a better look at the fight.

'Wait…'

His eyes slowly started to enlarge.

"That…"

Opening and closing his mouth, his face paled as he came to a sudden realization.

'He's standing where he was at the beginning of the fight.'

No, rather, he was only one step ahead of where he previously stood.

This…

Who in the world was this? 

Was he really the White Reaper he had once fought?

'Impossible.'

Lightning Dragon shook his head. The undeniable reality in front of him shook him to the core. 

It was at that moment.

"Enough!"

He was jolted out of his thoughts by a powerful voice that swept across the entire arena. In response to the voice, a tremendous amount of energy suddenly erupted from the middle of the arena, throwing White Reaper's body back before his figure soon crashed into the other side of the arena. 

Bang-! 

All the spectators clung to their necks in an attempt to breathe under the suffocating pressure.

Duke Azenoch's body emerged from the deep crater.

His eyes were a deep shade of red, and his body was all dirtied up and messy.

Glaring in White Reaper's direction, the aura coming out of his body, slowly kept on increasing.

It didn't take long for a Duke-ranked pressure to emerge from his body. Some of the demons' bodies burst into pieces after his sudden aura release. It was that oppressive. 

But he didn't seem to care as he slowly moved in the direction of where White Reaper crashed which was at the moment covered by a large cloud of dust. 

With a wave of the Duke's hand, the dust swept and White Reaper's figure reappeared. 

Swooosh-! 

Sitting on the ground with his back up against the arena wall, White Reaper's head was lowered. 

The Duke's body began to tingle with bloodlust as he stared at him.

He was going in for the kill.

However, what he didn't notice, along with the rest of the spectators in the arena apart from Lightning Dragon, was the upward pulling of the edges of White Reaper's lips. 

Opening his mouth, he slowly mouthed something. 

'Limit Breaker...'