Chapter 208 - Doing Things Her Own Way (1/2)

Of the countless memories she had, there were only a few of them that had not yet faded away into obscurity over the endless passage of time.

One of these rare, special memories for her was the first time that she tasted the metallic flavor of iron in her mouth. The throbbing, sharp pain from having a tooth broken and the warm flow of fresh blood in her mouth — it was a memory not so easily forgotten...

It was the taste of her first failure and by extension, the first time she had been punished.

She had failed the trial that she had been assigned to complete — to hunt a jasper-tailed hummingbird, reknown for its extraordinary speed and shyness.

More than anything, it was a tender, reserved creature that hid away from the world, only showing itself to feed and find a life-long partner during mating season when it entered a.d.u.l.thood.

Finding a jasper-tailed hummingbird was not an easy feat even for experienced hunters, much less a budding amateur like Lu'um at the time. It had taken her four days to find a single nest, and another two to approach it without alarming the s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e hummingbird couple that called the nest their home.

Her task had been deceptively simple, to steal an egg from the hummingbirds and bring it back home. But doing so would rob the hummingbirds of their child, a terrible thought that Lu'um felt deeply conflicted.

She had still been a relatively normal child at the time and had not yet undergone the tribulations that would later shape her identity.

In the end, she was unable to do it; she could not bear to tear that tiny family apart and returned home empty-handed... and failed her mother for the first time in her life.

Words could not convey what Lu'um felt when she tasted her own warm blood as a result of Shaali's punishment. But Lu'um knew that although it was a painful and terrifying experience...

She had not felt guilty about her decision. She felt happy that she had done the right thing.

That she had done something she decided for herself, not something she had been ordered to do.

Only the ear-piercing roar of two blades colliding with one another filled the silent arena once the match began. The crisp sound of their blades striking each other was terrifying to behold both in terms of sight and sound.

Though the obsidian blades they had been given did not have any Anima capabilities, they were artificially reinforced to be virtually unbreakable. The edges of the blades had been sharpened down to a hydrogen atom's width, making them sharp enough to cut through just about anything ever made.

So, every time these two blades clashed, an explosive flash sometimes filled the arena — the unintentional fusion of lighter atomic nuclei and brief ignition of the surrounding air.

Many were used to the usual grudge match that the mother and daughter would have once a decade or two, but they quickly realized once Lu'um and Shaali started fighting that something was wrong.

There were no longer any loud, rambunctious cheers or playful jeering from the crowd once they witnessed their furious blows. No one had the guts to speak, much less utter a word of concern over the fact that the duel had very clear turned into a fight to the death.

Most of the audience actually had a hard time following the fight, truth be told. Not that they did not understand the fight — they were all warriors — so following the trajectories of their strikes and parries was not difficult...

But visually perceiving the fight was another story. Most could hardly see the blades themselves as they clashed against one another.

The apple did not fall far from the tree, as was to be expected from a sub-branch family reknown for its martial prowess and extreme physicality.

A millisecond was enough time to contemplate a dozen different potential actions, but it was still not enough time to deflect the lightspeed strike that was coming at Shaali's throat. In fact, the only reason Shaali barely parried the blow was because she had correctly predicted where the strike would land.

Even amongst the greatest warrior families, the Shaali's lineage was cultivated and refined with the blood of inhuman berserkers, genius warriors, and the like from a thousand different alien races over the course of an uncomfortable number of generations. This refinement was naturally also compounded further through careful genetic editing for maximum effect.

Thus, the amount of time, effort, and planning that had been put into Lu'um, by extension, was mind-boggling to contemplate. Creating the perfect warrior had not been a simple undertaking; it was an unprecedented project that spanned the cosmos in terms of time and scale.

In contrast, the work Dragoncrest family had done in Mulia seemed infantile compared to the work that had been put into Lu'um. They were separated by a hundred orders of complexity and effort.

Another stroke of Lu'um's blade came at Shaali's throat again, even more heavy-handed than the previous strike. This time, even with a precisely timed block, it had not been enough — the sheer force of Lu'um's strike blew her away and she flew backward into the bedrock of the arena.

The ground shook with fury as powerful shockwaves spread out from the epicenter, causing many in the audience to frown deeply. Not because of the damage caused by the collision, but because of the worrying display of strength Lu'um had demonstrated.

They'd all known her for millennia and had never seen her seen display this level of strength before in their lives, which could only mean two things to them.

Either she had been hiding her real strength for an unknown amount of time, biding for the right chance, or... she had undergone some kind of transformation to warrant the exponential growth she had just demonstrated.

In the eyes of the audience, they were both equally possible conjectures, but it quickly became obvious to Reed which one they felt was more likely to be the truth.

When Reed felt the probing gaze of a few key members of the audience, he burst a small fit of laughter as he struggled to contain his mounting irritation.

To be looking at me as an answer for this development... How audacious a thought it must truly be that the strength she dug out of herself was a product of her own effort.

That sort of condescending sentiment was not foreign to Reed, as someone who was well versed when it came to being treated as a lesser person and a sore thumb. Perhaps because of the same reasons, but the general sentiment was more or less the same...