vs. Minerva

My first course of action was to rush Minerva.

I raised my left dirk and struck at her.

Minerva lazily parried with her shadow axe. It wasn’t needed of course. My dirks might be of extremely hard Hirara alloy, the strongest metal known to man but this fact meant nothing to a Dark Lord’s invincibility field.

Nonetheless, it looked like Minerva wanted to humor me.

A second axe formed in her left hand as she moved to counter. It was ever so slightly bigger then the first one. The attempt was to catch me off guard but with my senses heightened to their very limits tricks like these won’t work. I evaded, ducked underneath and struck at her body. Minerva though was faster and almost cleaved my head in. I managed to jump away just a split second before the hit.

“Heh”, Minerva chuckled, relaxed, but not with a single opening. “Something’s different about you, boy. What did you do?”

“Training”, I responded curtly.

So, she noticed after just that brief exchange? But this was fine.

This was just phase one.

I need to fight Minerva alone, for as long as possible. Ideally until Ojou-sama would give her signal. We don’t know when that was coming. I need to preserve Femto as long as I can.

But stalling won’t work. Minerva would see through that in a heartbeat. I needed to be on the offensive.

My opponent, for that matter, seemed amused.

Currently she was bringing nowhere near her entire combat strength to bear. This was a tactical decision. Obviously, she wasn’t expecting me to fight a hopeless battle. I must have something up my sleeve. Regardless, she exuded the confidence of someone who could shoot down everything that might possibly be thrown at her.

I attacked again, I danced around her, tried to get inside of Minerva’s guard. Meanwhile, the Champion decided to focus squarely on defending. Her huge, bulky axes were woefully inadequate for the job and yet Minerva managed to create a sheer perfect defense, simply with her two axes alone.

I was certain.

This was Minerva fighting solely with her power as a human. As for why I couldn’t tell but because of this, it was simply physically impossible for her to defend forever.

Continuously pressing my attack, I was slowly making headway.

And finally...

Ding

I managed a hit on her stomach. I was hoping she might not have the invincibility field active out of pride but that hope was quickly dashed, The Dark Lord grinned down on me.

“Good job, boy. But playtime’s over.”

Finally, the Champion went on the offensive properly. I jumped back but it barely even mattered. She caught up to my position with astonishing speed. She was fast, but not quite as fast as Sylphid. This was still a level I could handle.

I avoided her attacks. Minerva still used only two axe’s. She was still trying to fight somewhat fairly. I would use this to my advantage. The longer I could draw this out the better. And so I bid my time, calmly weathering her onslaught, waiting.

And then it happened.

I misjudged a retreat and was put in a difficult spot with my back against the arena wall. I could still escape but Minerva was smelling blood. For the first time she committed both of her axes for a savage double pronged attack.

In other words, she was open.

Within a fraction of a second my mind concluded that this was too good an opportunity to slip by.

“Femto!”

The Devil appeared instantly. Not from the sides, the wall or a portal.

But directly underground Minerva! She used her time distortion power to slow the champion down and from the ground slashed upwards in one vicious strike.

It was a surprise attack from a blind spot with frightening speed while Minerva was locked in an attack. If it would hit, it would slice her up from groin to her chest. The damage would be enormous.

“Yeah right!”

A massive amount of black spears formed at the bottom of Minerva’s crotch and exploded downwards. Femto’s body was ripped to pieces just like that, leaving a crater of blood and gore.

“Good Day, Miss Devil. How nice of you to join us.” Minerva sneered downwards, woefully unimpressed, as her legs began to change. Her entire lower half became encased in what appeared to be dark metal, similar to her shadow axes.

…

Impossible.

There was no way she could have reacted fast enough.

Unless...she was anticipating this move.

...was she goading me into calling Femto?

Not just that but she correctly guessed that our attack would come from beneath her.

While I came to terms with the failed surprise attack, Minerva calmly surveyed the arena, sparing me little attention. If she surmised that much then she was obviously very well aware that merely killing a devil would not be enough. She was waiting for the next strike.

But now that Femto has shown herself the timer has begun. I need to distract her.

I attacked again. Perhaps more out of habit Minerva parried and that was when Femto showed up once more. This time she emerged out of the wall behind Minerva and went for her unprotected back.

And yet, once again the Dark Lord anticipated this. Another row of spikes exploded from her back, pulverizing that part of the wall without issue.

Femto however had already sunken in the ground again.

“Tsk”, Minerva gave an annoyed grunt. “Are you devil or mole?”

For phase two we concluded that hit and run tactics from Femto would be the most successful approach to this fight.

As long as she travels underground there was no limit to the positions the devil may suddenly attack from. Minerva might anticipate some attacks but never all. That was a tremendous advantage to have. And with her ability to slow down time, the devil would prove to be a frightening adversary.

I rushed her again.

Minerva paid me no attention and instead focused entirely on spotting Femto.

Which is why the Dark Lord was caught off guard when the devil appeared right next to me and we attacked completely in tandem.

And this time she struck true. Femto managed one long cut across Minerva’s back with her claws. The Dark Lord grunted in pain.

We struck the first blow.

And yet, Minerva calmly let her spike explode once more. I had to retreat or get caught in the crossfire. Femto sliced her back clean open. Against a normal opponent this would already be a mortal wound but against a Dark Lord it was nothing more then a scratch.

“Not bad, Devil”, she praised while laughing. “Pretty annoying powers you got there.”

“Love a good review!”, Femto gave back with a jovial smile. “I’m free to hire after I’m done with my current job...but then again your probably not in any position to hire me once this one is over.”

Minerva chuckled and then, slowly, began encasing her entire body with the same armor that was already present at her lower half.

Unfortunate. The armor would certainly slow her speed down. But it also meant Femto won’t be able to inflict anymore damage on her with hit and run tactics.

Once everything except for her head was protected, Minerva threw her axes.

I immediately dodged them, but already two more were forming.

...

Is this her axe storm again?

Femto attempted another hit and run attack but as predicted her fast attacks weren’t enough to penetrate the armor.

Meanwhile, I was too busy with evading her axes to do anything else.

In response to that, Femto opted to go for continuous close quarter combat. Thanks to her time powers, the devil had the speed advantage, but Minerva was not engaging her. She simply evaded any strikes to her head and slowly increased the amount of axes. If her armor did get cracked it was seemingly an easy enough matter to repair it.

Meanwhile the axes were quickly getting to the point were I would get overwhelmed.

“Sheesh!” Femto realized the issue and let up from her attack on Minerva. Instead she focused on the axes and used her claws to destroy each of them in one single swoop.

Minerva was more then up for the challenge though and generated more axes in the blink of an eye.

But this was still within our calculations. Femto was fast enough to destroy the axes immediately, preventing Minerva from increasing their count. Some of them even hit Femto, but any damage the devil sustained was healed instantly.

And since Minerva wasn’t increasing her limbs it appears this was as fast as she could create them. This went on for quite a while, neither side willing to give in. A complete stalemate.

But we could not afford a stalemate.

I started attacking the axes as well.

Minerva itself might been off limits, but my dirks were quite capable of destroying her shadow axes. I ducked and weaved through the destructive whirlwind.

I really have to thank Sanakia for these new dirks. I do not think my old one would have been a match but with my Hirara dirks I managed to destroy a single axe in one fell swoop. They are sharp but not particularly sturdy.

With my help and thanks to Femto’s time distortion we not only managed to keep on top of things but also slowly whittle the amount of axes back down.

Finally, realizing that she was outmatched, Minerva stopped. The whirling axes all came flying back into the Dark Lord but instead of doing damage they simply appear to be absorbed. All but the two in her hands.

Both Femto and myself faced her again.

“Not bad!”, Femto whistled towards her opponent “Pretty neat party trick you got there! Shame it didn’t work out, eh?”

Minerva didn’t even acknowledge the taunt. Even with being shown that we are quite a match for her, the Dark Lord did not seem worried in the slightest. “Wonder what this devil had cost you, boy. Couldn’t have been cheap.”

I used this opportunity to take a deep breath. I wasn’t feeling tired, but the disadvantage of my Queens hypnosis was that my body did not give me any warning signs. I had to stay on top of things manually or I would risk simply collapsing at any point.

We manage to keep up with Minerva so far. This level of intensity was doable. Even if she would double her arms we could keep up.

If only we could keep doing that. We could simply deplete Minerva of her mana, just what Valkyrie intended to do.

If only we had infinite time. But since we don’t, it begs the question.

Did I perhaps already made a huge mistake by calling for Femto this early?

I was calm and collected. Thanks to my Queens hypnosis I was not even allowed to entertain the notion of defeat.

But.

Taking a look at Minerva’s confident, self assured face, the deepest recesses of my mind were starting to express their concerns.