89 A clash of sorcerer's 2/2

Standing calmly, I got into a stance I practised with Diarmuid before activating both Noble Phantasms.

Now holding two glowing spears, I simply waited for Aoko to make the first move.

"Having weapons won't help you." she said as her arms began to glow, surrounded by blue and pink light.

In an instant she launched her body forward and appeared right in front of me, her fist clenched and coming in the direction of my chest.

"I disagree." I replied, narrowly dodging her attack by moving to the side before thrusting my golden spear forward, successfully making a small cut on her arm.

Aoko jumped back and looked at her wound for a moment, before her eyes widened slightly.

"What is this..." she muttered, staring at the bleeding cut on her left arm.

Taking advantage of her momentary distraction, I jumped forward and thrusted my red spear in her direction.

Aoko raised her right arm to block it and, just as I predicted, she increased the magical energy around it to avoid a wound, unfortunately for her though, that was a terrible plan.

My red spear made its way through her magical defence like it didn't exist and soon enough I had landed another hit on her, which meant that now both of her arms had small wounds.

"Come on now." I said with a small smile. "You are turning to be quite the disappointing sorcerer."

I already spent enough time acting like a young master, now it was time to be a smart person.

A vein popped on her forehead, meaning that step 1 of my newly crafted plan was on the right track, however it wasn't enough. I need her angrier, making bad decisions and stupid mistakes.

The wound on her right arm disappeared, clearly being healed by her without much trouble, however my two first attacks served their purpose just fine. Now she knows that if she wants to defend herself from my golden spear, which is dangerous, she will have to keep up the magical energy around her body as a defence, however my red spear will cut through that like it isn't even there, so she will have to fight while bearing more pain than normally and keeping up an imperfect defence.

"Let's see how long you can keep going." I said with a smile while jumping forward.

I didn't do much training with Diarmuid, only enough to actually know more or less how to use his Noble Phantasms, but I did do quite a bit of training with someone else, or should I say I spent a lot of time dodging her attacks while trying to land some myself to get some petty revenge, and as good as Aoko was... Scáthach was infinitely better.

Moving forward, I began thrusting and slicing Aoko with my spears, missing most of my attacks but successfully landing several with my red spear, which where followed by quick movements of my golden spear to make use of her momentary falterings whenever she got a new wound.

It was evident that Aoko was slipping, the sudden shift in the battle was slowly but surely getting to her. Not only did she have to focus on keeping up a defence that was only useful on one weapon, she also needed to constantly waste time and energy on healing herself, and as if that wasn't enough, it was clear that I had an advantage in terms of fighting range thanks to my two spears.

If she got close enough to actually land hits with her fists then my golden spear had a better chance of hitting her, however if she instead chose to keep a bit more distance and attack with kicks instead, then my red spear would prove to be perfect for the slightly increased distance.

The rhythm of the fight changed and began going in my advantage as I continued to make cuts on the sorcerer, but even then I wasn't exactly about to win. Her superior speed proved to be annoying, as even with all my advantages she still managed to land punches and kicks, which while ineffective in terms of actual damage, served to break the flow of my attacks.

Our fight continued in relative silence, neither one provoking the other as we instead focused on landing blows on each other, however that was about to change.

Crouching down, I avoided one of her many punches and moved my golden spear up, slicing her cheek, which wasn't protected, in the process.

"Tsch, your annoying speed just saved you form loosing your eye." I said with a slightly annoyed tone, however it quickly changed into an excited one as a smile grew on my face. "Let's see if you can avoid it again!"

Aoko, who at first was totally dominating the fight, was growing angry every time I landed a hit and every time she missed one her 'rightful' mask would slowly break apart, revealing more and more traits that I expected on a sorcerer.

It didn't help of course that I seemed to represent everything she hated, I mean it was obvious that for some reason this was personal for her, and I had absolutely no idea why.

Ignoring the fact that I kidnapped her sister and basically had her sent to certain death as crazy magus probed her brain for answers, I had done nothing to her, so this reaction was completely unjustified.

"Don't get so full of yourself!" she said loudly, clearly bothered by the new wound on her face which she couldn't heal. "And stop pretending to be human, you filthy monster!"

Sigh, this woman really is unreasonable...

Aoko's movements slowly began showing flaws, her attacks grew more uncoordinated with every new cut on her body and, while it wasn't nearly enough to give me an edge big enough to win, it was at the very least giving me a small advantage, unfortunately this didn't last long.

After exchanging a few more lows and having the small wounds on her body reach half a dozen, Aoko noticed she was loosing her cool and jumped back.

It took her mere seconds to regain her composure, but this time she didn't come to fight in close quarter again.

"You said before that I wasn't good at close quarters, didn't you?" she asked, a small smile growing on her face. "Well, I will show you just how bad I am at it."

A blue circle appeared around her arm which grew in size until it had at least 1 meter in radius. Energy concentrated on it and soon enough, it was glowing brightly, too brightly to even look at it properly.

Noticing that this was going to turn into a long range battle now, I decided to switch weapons and take out a more functional Noble Phantasm.

While Aoko was chanting something, I placed both spears back n my chest and pulled out Excalibur Morgan, quickly raising it above my head.

Aoko's chanting speed was the fastest I had ever seen, far surpassing Lorelei's or even my own, so it took her barely a second to finish her chantings, which was about the same time that it took me to pull Excalibur out and raise it.

The blue light on her magic circle glowed even beyond what it used to, reaching levels of brightness that felt like I was staring directly into the sun.

On the other hand, the glow of my sword consumed that blue brightness in its black light, creating a clash of colours that couldn't even be appreciated properly because of the sheer brightness it caused.

Aoko finished her chantings and for a second, despite the absurd light around us, we made eye contact for a moment.

"EX..."

"Snap!"

"CALIBUR!!!!"

A ray of blue light, surprisingly similar to a bullet, clashed against the beam of black and red plasma of my sword, and for an instant time stopped.

It was as if the world itself was broken apart by the explosion created and I found myself lacking the means to avoid the explosion, which engulfed me completely.

Resurrecting myself was child's play, but once I did I found myself in the middle of a desolated battlefield that sued to be a forest, face to face with Aoko, whose wounds from the explosion where disappearing.

For a moment, we simply stared at each other in silence, neither one commenting on the miles of barren lands we created during our fight.

Our momentary silence as quickly interrupted when, on the distance and as if to match the spectacle of colours and destruction we caused, a pilar of golden light crashed against a black ray of energy similar to that of my sword, and created a similar explosion.

To me, it was beyond obvious who caused the ray of black light, what wasn't obvious however was the reason. I also couldn't help but wonder about the pilar of golden light. The logical answer was that Aoko came with someone else, which made sense, and that person was fighting Artoria, however the confusion on her face indicated otherwise.

"You were not alone..." she muttered with slightly wide eyes, which helped me believe a bit more that she indeed came alone.

What didn't help me relax was the ray of golden light. Artoria was supposed to be chasing the girl with her body, and a small malnutrition kid shouldn't be able to create such a thing or cause any sort of trouble to my wife that would require her to use her sword.

Trying to go over the memories I read on Bersac, I remembered seeing the girl had a mystic code. I didn't go to deep into that and instead focused on where she ran off to, but that attack was most likely the mystic code. Though it was slightly strange, especially since that golden light looked more like the stories Artoria told me, the stories about...

"Rhongomyniad..." I muttered.

That kid had my wife's lance!

My instincts flared up and I found myself being hit by a glowing fist, which made me crash against the now ashy floor of the former forest.

"I'll see what is going on there after I finish you off." said Aoko, coming closer in my direction with her magic crest activated, her fingers pointed at me like before and a blue circle of light surrounding her arm.

It was pretty obvious what was going to happen now, and honestly I wasn't too keen on repeating it.

My crown had disappeared with my death, and honestly I wasn't exactly planning on summoning it again. Instead, I chose to use one of the alchemies I didn't normally use.

Clapping my hands, I placed them on the floor and all around us, countless firearms appeared out of the ground.

Aoko, who had finished her chanting stared around with an annoyed expression and muttered a single understandable word.

"Draw!"

"Fire!" I said loudly, and the hundreds of firearms around us immediately opened fire, launching countless bullets at Aoko.

I barely managed to see some of the bullets pierce her before my body disintegrated under her spell.

As annoying as it was, her magecraft was truly powerful. I was pretty sure the temperatures her spells reached where far beyond anything anyone else could produce, and because of her true magic it must have been pushed even further.

Reforming my body, I looked around the battlefield, where the ground had pieces of glass as the ashy floor got exposed to the absurdly high temperatures. Looking at Aoko, I found her healing the countless holes in her body created by the bullets.

It was pretty obvious we could do this all day, and I wasn't exactly happy about that. The forest around us was completely destroyed, and only after miles of barren lands would you see trees, which also had fallen victim to the attacks, but were still standing.

Taking advantage of the momentary pause, I activated my own magic crest.

I hand paid much attention to it in this past few years, instead I focused on improving my fighting skills and alchemies, but now there was one spell in particular that might be very useful.

"Huitzilopochtli!" I said, activating the spell that made old wounds appear back on the body of everyone in the vicinity.

Right now, the only person close enough was her, and luckily for me she had received a lot of wounds in the last few minutes of our fight.

Aoko's eyes widened momentarily as the bullet holes she had just closed reopened, followed by the burns of the explosion we caused. Lastly, the cuts from my red spear, which she didn't worry too much about blocking because she could heal them, reappeared on her body.

Of course doing this wasn't easy, I was using enough magical energy to fill at least a dozen grails and the only reason it was even working was because the wounds where done minutes ago.

Besides, I doubt anyone else in this world would be able of doing this, seen as if it wasn't because of my nigh-infinite amounts of magical energy I would have been out of it in seconds of activating this spell on someone as strong as her.

Then there was the fact that she was actively countering the spell by healing herself almost as fast as the wounds reopened.

While maintaining the spell active, I decided to make the most out of the momentary advantage I had and jumped in her direction.

It was pretty obvious that things would take too long if I jut focused on destroying her body, so it was time to go after her soul.

Appearing in front of her, I tried to place my hand in her forehead, however she blocked it despite having to place most of her attention on the wounds, which were undoubtedly causing her pain.

And so we began fighting, this time simply using hand to hand combat on which I definitely, undoubtedly, sucked.

It was easy to see that she was winning despite my advantages and she managed to land several hits on me, however that was for nothing.

After several more hits, I finally managed to place my hand on her face, and instantly I activated my third true magic and scanned her soul. As soon as I did, I found myself at an advantage, as instead of focusing all her energy on healing her wounds that constantly reappeared, she had to focus most of her magical energy on keeping her soul safe from me.

If I had to compare it to something, I would say that humans are like a computer. The soul is the internal workings of it, the programs in the computer that make it actually work properly, and I was like a virus, attacking every single one of those programs on her.

Now and for the first time since the fight began, things were finally moving towards a proper conclusion as the combination of my soul and physical attacks began exhausting Aoko, who didn't have the means to properly defend her soul besides just overflowing it with her own magical energy to counter mine.

My hand began sinking in her face as I gained more and more access to her soul.

Her movements began to change, and now instead of being proper martial arts they were more like the attacks cornered beast makes when desperately trying to get rid of someone else.

As I gained more terrain in her soul, Aoko grew desperate. The combination of excruciating pain caused by the countless wounds which were constantly opening up in her body along with the invasion on her soul would have been enough to drive anyone insane, but she wasn't a sorcerer for nothing.

In a final attempt at getting rid of me, Aoko decided to forgo healing her body and even lowered the amounts of magical energy she focused on her soul to protect herself, instead she activated her magical crest.

Seeing the blue circle of light appear on her arm, which was in direct contact with my body, I knew I wouldn't be able to avoid it, and without a doubt she would manage to free herself with this attack before I could destroy her soul, so I made the best choice and changed my strategy.

Grabbing her other arm with my free hand, I secured her right next to me and inserted my hand into it with my third true magic, grabbing a hold of her soul.

Instead of focusing on destroying her soul, I decided to destroy her magical circuits, that way she wouldn't be able to cast her spell. This however proved impossible as the spell was already active and her chanting began, her magic circuits were overflowing with her magical energy, which protected them far better than I expected.

Upon realising that it wouldn't work and that stopping the attack would be impossible, I decided to simply take the most for the moment. I had mere seconds before she finished, and there was one thing I could still focus on, her memories.

"Magic Blow!" screamed Aoko, hitting me with a blue, glowing bullet on point blank.

This attack, unlike the previous ones, was a desperate one, fuelled with the desire to survive in the face of certain death, and it proved a good gamble for Aoko.

Our destroyed battlefield, which already lost any sort of resemblance to a forest, turned into an absolute wasteland.

I reformed my body, resurrecting myself after her attack, and the only thing I saw was miles and miles of absolute dead lands. In a way, it was closer to hell than it was to Earth. Countless flames burned in different colours, feeding off the new substances created on the ground. There was radiation and toxic fumes flowing out of the earth and into the atmosphere, corrupting the borders of the forest, and all around me laid nothing more than the residues of what once was a beautiful place.

An old memory resurfaced, something Kiritsugu said in fate zero, and despite how much I disliked him, I had to agree.

A battlefield is hell itself.

"But even then..." I muttered, staring at the couple of ash that arose from the ground and began covering the skies, like towers of smoke. "Even if I have to go through hell itself, as long as I win in the end, it will be worth it."

Turning around, I stared at the pieces of flesh on the ground and the arm on my hand.

That woman... she really tore off her own arm to run away huh. Even going as far as ripping off the parts of her face and skull I was holding on to with my other hand. The pieces of bone, muscle, skin and flesh in the floor were prove of how desperate she was to get away, going as far as to leave even an eyeball behind as long as it meant she would survive.

I wasn't sure how she managed to disappear, but in a way it made sense for her to have a way to leave should she find herself on the loosing end, especially since she came alone.

"Sigh, it is a bit sad that I didn't manage to get rid of her right now..." I muttered in a sad tone, however it quickly changed into a happy one as a smile grew on my face. "But I won this time."

She now has only one arm, the other one won't come back regardless of how much she tries to regenerate it because I kept the piece of her soul that was a part of that arm. She will have scars on her face form having her soul ripped apart by me, and even if she tries to heal herself they wont go away, the same goes for the injuries I left on her with my golden spear.

And finally... I got a part of her memories!

Memories are always useful, but this ones where on another level entirely.

"HAHAHAHHAHA!" I laughed like a madman before placing my hands on my face and covering the crazy smile I had. "So the path to the Fifth Magic is on your family lands huh?!"