Red Eyed Devils (3)

"... That's not bad actually. You're quite the schemer Quis... reminds me of my youth."

"Thank you, but it makes many assumptions, so I need to hear from you what's happening, as concisely and quickly as possible."

"I believe it should work. They attacked with a group of five, four 1st half and one 2nd half. Convir and Medisma got tripped up and accidentally let that one go, same thing happened with the Dark Branch guy. Right now we have eight Elders fighting off the other three. Convir and Medisma should be here any moment now, and I still have access to the Video Devices connected to the coliseum. And it's only been around five minutes since the attack began, so as long as Beulus is doing his job, they should all still be there, waiting. If you're confident in yourself, then I believe this is plausible."

"Good, Spiravit, are you sure that you're going to be able to handle your part?"

"I'm confident."

"Alright then, let's begin."

I turned around and focused my attention back to the two Devils that were interacting... Well, I'd call it more of an assault than just an interaction, "What's wrong with you?!! You're a Devil who can't get a human of the SAME CLASS, off of your trail?!?" She kicked the balled-up figure on the ground, "I'm sorry boss! It won't ever happen again!"

She turned to us who were watching the unique play and then kicked him again, "Are you happy now?! You just made me give the enemy time to plan and make our job less easy than it already was! Now listen here! Those two from before are going to be here at any moment! So you'd better make it up to me and yourself, and take out those three! Once the strong ones are gone, the rest will crumble. Now go. Let me receive my entourage."

In a flash, the man who was just in the fetus position stood up and soluted the female Devil who seemed to be the leader of the pack, and turned to us, "Now I don't normally get mad, but you've placed me into the bad grace of the boss... I won't hold back any longer."

Without taking my eyes off of the man, I commanded those behind me, "Alright, slight change of plans then. We'll take this guy out first and then continue on the set-out track."

"Sounds good to me!"

"Sure."

With that final word spoken, the man's legs turned hazy and he disappeared, 'A movement-based Magic Art? Makes sense since he follows the Dark Branch. But the question is what kind of movement was it? A speedy one, or a slow methodical one?'

I took a deep breath as I entered my Martial Art's stance. I closed my eyes and condensed the world around me into a one-dimensional line. My spear was one ray, and the Devil was a ray going in the opposite direction. His movements may be fast, and they may be confusing, but placed in the first dimension where right and left, and up and down didn't exist, there was only one place he would end up... In front of my bolt.

Swoosh!

With an explosive amount of energy, I pierced my bolt forward and as it went forward, a figure became visible to me. Barely stepping out of the way of my spear, the Devil became both visible to the light and flustered. From behind him, the Devil boss shouted, "Oh yeah, that one broke through to the realm of Basic Understanding, so you'll want to be careful around him."

Just at the tail end of her saying this, the old man smashed his wooden fists together and rammed himself into the Devil, tackling him to the ground. Then from above him, with my spear pointed straight down and the old man pinning him to the ground, I pushed it straight down, aiming to skewer his head. But just as my spear tip was about to press against his forehead, his upper body turned into the same shadow as before, and my spear went right through, piercing the ground instead.

'So it's not a movement type Magic Art, but something more unique... For now, I'll just define it as him being able to turn part of his body into darkness. It also seems like it takes intense concentration, otherwise, my almost hitting him wouldn't turn his legs back into a solid form.'

As soon as my attack failed, I jumped backward, and the old man did the same. Right as we both backed up, two spears of pure darkness busted through the ground and into where our groins would have been had we not moved fast enough. This was more difficult than I thought. He had means to attack close by and at a range... Devils really were more powerful than the normal human.

Boom!

The familiar sound of conflict sounded out from where the boss Devil used to be. I didn't have to look to figure out what had happened, it was obvious that the only people here capable of attempting to fight her were Convir and Medisma. Hearing them fighting focused me on mine. I needed to figure out a way to clean up this mess quickly, or else the opportunity I had would slip through my fingers.

The real problem that kept me from being able to kill the man from the few chances I had was raw speed. I had better technique and I had more experience, but without the power to utilize these traits fully, I wouldn't be able to beat him in time. There were then two ways for me to beat him. I had to either upgrade my speed or downgrade his. Although the ladder would be the ideal choice, I had to rely on the former due to the speed coming from him activating his Magic Art, not just his speed in movement.

How could I make myself faster? I was already using my magic circles to their maximum, so there was no budging with that. But the Firearm Branch was focused on the two ideas of attack and movement, so there had to be a way for me to use some kind of idea to make myself faster, if even for only a moment. Unfortunately, unlike when I was facing the boss Devil, I didn't have any time to brainstorm ideas. The man was already on his two feet.

Two of his arms suddenly turned into a shadow, raising my awareness as to what he was trying to do. But before I was able to figure anything out, I felt something touching my leg. I looked down, and out of the shadow from a nearby tree was an arm that was grabbing onto me. I tried my hardest to shake it off, even trying to stab it with my bolt, but it would only turn into a shadow, somehow still hanging onto me.

I was completely stuck, and at the next moment, a black sphere appeared near the hand. I already knew what this black sphere was capable of, so it's safe to say that I was trying my hardest to get myself out of the situation. I knew that just moving around wouldn't do anything, so I had to come up with something fast.

'None of my attacks have worked so far, so what is something different that I can try? Well, the main problem is that this guy is constantly turning himself into a shadow, which probably means that his Magic Art has a lot more to do with defense than anything else. Every defense had a weakness, so what is his? Light? It wasn't a bad idea in theory, but to pull it off would require a light strong enough to counteract his darkness, and I couldn't rely on Onvima right now.'

I couldn't come up with anything fast enough, and time was up. The black sphere bloomed into tens of huge spikes that poked out, piercing me in my thigh, stomach, and shoulder. I was able to move my body well enough to dodge the shot to my head, which was the only reason I was alive. And now the hand was gone. I jumped out of the ball of spikes and used up a healing Fruit. My wounds closed up and left me as good as new, but I was feeling even more on edge now. I had used healing Fruits a lot during this time, and I wouldn't be surprised if I was reaching my limit.

Once the spike ball of darkness shattered out of existence, I looked around carefully to try and get an idea of what was happening now. I looked at the old man, and he was fine besides for a few cuts. I then turned to Spiravit only to see that the Devil was fighting with him. A large tree was sprouted beside him and a ball of leaves surrounded him and he barely dodged the Devil's attacks. This was my chance.

I looked at the old man and made a gesture to him meaning don't move as I began to brainstorm how I could move faster using the philosophy I had learned just recently, 'The Firearm Branch is known to have high attack and movement ability. I already understand the attack process to involve the idea of one-dimensional motion, as that is what a firearm was in its simplest form. But what is movement in the definition of Firearms? How can I move myself faster than ever before?'

Spiravit was now losing leaf after leaf, almost getting to the point where he would be skewered, 'Attacking with a firearm is using some sort of force to accelerate an object as fast as possible. In this case, the beginning of this force stems from me. But where is the movement in this? It's in the object being thrown is it not? There are two parts to a firearm, the thing that starts the force and the thing that is the thing being forced, and I've always been the thing giving a starting force... but what if instead I was the thing being forced? What if I was the object being thrown?'

Suddenly an idea came to mind and I prepared myself to save Spiravit from his current danger. As much as I would love to pretend I couldn't come up with an idea fast enough and have Spiravit die because of it, I couldn't. If it would be a simple stain on my track record then it would be worth it, but I wouldn't be able to because of the old man. If I didn't do this then he would prevent Spiravit from dying at the very least, and since that would happen either way, I would be the one to take the credit. It would make the next part easier.

I took a deep breath and got ready. To be the object being thrown, I needed a force hitting me in the direction of where I wanted to go, and in the one-dimension, that would be directly behind me to move myself directly forward. So the question was what could be that force? Well, this was tricky unless you accepted the idea that multiple of the same Fruit could activate and be in activation at the same time. And so, with my Martial Art still activated, I ate another Bed Crossbow Bolt Fruit.

The power leaped itself into my left arm, and I brought it back until the three latches unlocked themselves. Then, I let it go. My arm was moved forward along with the rest of my body due to the extreme force that the bolt had in it. But instead of fighting against the bolt, I let it propel me forward with a limp body. Like a bolt, I flew through the air at a speed faster than I had ever reached before. The force that was put behind the bed crossbow bolt was no joke, so this wasn't an unexpected result to me.

The Devil turned around and looked at the bolt being fired at him. He just scoffed at what seemed to be a futile attempt and turned the lower half of his body into shadow, letting the bolt go right through him. But this was just what I planned. Not only was this move able to make my speed much higher than possible with my own muscles, but it also faked out the opponent. And this was extremely effective on this Devil specifically.

Something that I noticed quite quickly was that at the maximum, the Devil only turned his upper half or lower half of his body into a shadow at a time, making it seem to me that he couldn't make his entire body into a shadow. Perhaps it was because something that powerful lay within the realm of Spells, or perhaps it was because he didn't have enough concentration to do that, but either way, it was working in my favor.

As soon as the bolt went through him, I, the second bolt, entered his vision. His eyes enlarged as I enclosed him at a velocity so fast, that he wouldn't ever be able to move out of the way quickly enough. I had already aimed my bolt right at his head, so I pushed it forward just as we were about to meet.

Pop!

Like a watermelon under just too much stress, his head popped, sending chunks of red, pink, and white all over the area near his death. His body stood straight up, blood gushing out his neck, creating a fountain of blood. A second later though, he fell over and had one last splatter before his life officially ended.

Once confirming his death, I turned my attention to the titan's battlefield.

'Great. Now that distraction is gone, we can finally get this impromptu plan over with. All it'll take is some patience and smart time... and then not only with the Devil be dead, but so will Spiravit.'