Chapter 950 (2/2)

A Valkyrie was born of that emotion, burning with the raw power of their belief. She raised her spear, considering the twisting and hideous visage in front of her.

Perhaps the most shocking part of this all was that even with her Perception Skill Hawkeye, Alana was unable to find any flaw with the illusion that Randidly had created. His image had become him, and it was out for blood.

We weren’t the only ones to learn in this challenge, were we? Alana thought sadly. Sometimes, things must be broken for us to grow. So let’s finish this. And hope that afterward… we can still speak as friends.

Above all, Alana had learned to rely on the basics while fighting. She had spent hours polishing her abilities in Donnyton, repeating the same seamless motions. Every blister was a hundred thousand thrusts, bound together and given a physical presence on her body. That was the reason that she had reached the apex of Donnyton. Alana Donal would not take shortcuts on the road to power.

So as she surged into motion, she combined her most reliable three Skills into her bread and butter attack: Heavy Blow, Herculean Strength, and Sun Strike. The spear became a flare and exploded into motion.

As though he was a terrifying inverted image of her, the grey wraith-like form of Randidly raised his left arm and met her attack directly on top of the of rubble the arena had left in the wake of its demise. At that moment, image and reality stopped mattering.

The terrible monster hated by nature was real. The determined valkyrie was real. Then those stopped mattering too, as they smashed into each other. What was left was only the thin boundary where their two existences encountered each other. The Valkyrie roared and the monster howled.

Both craved victory. But only one seized it.

Alana survived the first strike simply because the ground beneath her feet gave out almost immediately as they crossed spears. Instead of actually challenging Randidly directly, what ended up happy was she had thrown herself toward him like a baseball and he had smashed her backward.

BOOOOOOM.

As she straightened, stone support pillars collapsed around her. Even with her wings slowing her speed, it hurt to smash into the stands. Luckily they were completely abandoned at this point, but Alana rapidly realized that the hole she had created in the middle of them destabilized the structure more than she had anticipated.

Rather than ceasing after her momentum was dispersed, it appeared that the collapsing was accelerating. Soon, huge chunks of stone fell down toward her position.

Worse, when she blasted her way out of that death trap by rapidly expanding her wings, she found herself faced with a sliding and fractured battlefield. The concussive force of their meeting had cleared out a wide space that seemed relatively stable, but the rest of the island was suffering for it.

Behind her, the ground where the stands had pressed against the edge of the pond was already sinking into the water of the quarry. Cracks as thick as her fist crisscrossed the area in front of her toward that central area. Perhaps even more disturbing, the water of the quarry was… disappearing. The water level was falling at a visible pace.

Alana gritted her teeth. We aren’t just sinking this island. We opened up a fucking sinkhole below the whole arena.

But for now, she ignored this impending crisis. Instead, she lowered her spear and rushed forward. Energy began to howl through the connection Randidly had established with her all those years ago. As she advanced, Alana felt a Skill forming around her, coming into being fully formed: Valkyrie’s Charge.

Her arms began to glow with bright orange power. The layer of wind and dust around her thickened as she strengthened her image, bit by bit.

WEAK!

Their spears clashed again. The Valkyrie ran up the hill and cut with the broken wind of a wasteland while the crowned monster coldly regarded her approach. The dark hole of its mouth widened and tasted her fear and Stamina. Then it struck.

Alana survived the second strike because her spear snapped like a twig after only a split second of pressure from the wickedly long claws of Randidly’s hand. Both were surprised by this and sped past each before they could recover.

Or at least Alana had assumed so. The speed at which they were operating was far beyond any fight that she had participated in previously.

Yet as she straightened, her glowing armor flickered and shuddered. The thickness of her image dropped to the level that it only maintained its power a small distance away from her skin. In horror, Alana looked down and realized that her left shoulder had almost been torn off. The jagged marks of Randidly’s claw made it look like a shark had taken a giant bite out of her.

Thin lines of blood wound up the choppy ridges of her flesh and flowed down toward her twitching left hand.

Alana’s mouth firmed into a line. Even as the image she had inherited from the people’s will began to fall to pieces, she smashed those remaining prayers with her will and created a gleaming spear. Before she could regret it, her gaze found Randidly’s. Tangerine eyes locked onto dark empty sockets.

As she pressed further and further, the image around Alana recovered. A Valkyrie, but one questing with a very specific purpose. To guide the king who refused to die finally to Valhalla. The Skill she had previously used reacted immediately, rising to her need. After it evolved, she used Blitz of the Wayfaring Valkyrie.

Their spears met in silence this time.

If Helen’s image was the sea and Alana’s image was a suit of armor, Randidly’s image was a sharp blade bared to the sky. He had condensed it into a physical form. As they moved again to strike at each other, he easily cut through her orange winds and met her spear.

The Valkyrie started this journey at the behest of her duty, but now she simply sought to give this cursed king peace.

The monster was a child crying alone in the dark as the world burned to ash around him. The force of the impression hit Alana like a physical weight.

Randidly’s image was simple and vast. The child and the ashes of a collapsing world. There were no true answers in the image, but there were not questions that needed to be answered so that it could be understood. It simply was.

In the face of that powerful image, Alana couldn’t help but soften. Is bearing this horror the price you had to pay for your power? Randidly, I… I would...

That softness was the reasons Alana survived the third strike.

The quarry did not soften and therefore did not survive. Land and water were split in half and then sucked into the deep darkness of the Earth’s embrace.