23 The Duel of the Depraved

Persephone hurriedly pulled her hands upwards, launching both her own and Lucia's chaos smites into the ceiling, blasting a hole in the roof. Using this moment of confusion to her advantage, Persephone hastily fired two weak chaos smites both of which exploded into two mini explosions of light, revealing the nearly transparent crimson-red barrier protecting Lucia.

During the course of the fight Persephone discovered the surprisingly wide arsenal of hatred magic Lucia has access to. Apart from the normal chaos smites she can also quickly project a barrier around her body and she can also fire the beams from her eyes. Although it can be projected quickly Persephone found that the barrier wasn't really that strong, not really meaning much in the face of her hatred magic but is strong enough to deflect throne rocks or weakly charged chaos smites.

The eye smites on the other hand, was a constant threat to deal with. Although weaker than traditional chaos smites it seems to be a lot more accurate. One thing it did share with chaos smites though was how telegraphed the attacks are. Lucia's tactic of relying on nothing more than pure blunt force wasn't helping her either.

Persephone quickly moved both of her hands to her face while charging two chaos smite. With a small flash of light, the thin strings of red light dissipated before her red balls of light. Despite what others may say about her intelligence, Persephone actually had natural talent for battle. It was one of the many reasons that she wanted to live up to her father's name, and now, those talents were being truly put to the test.

In the past she only practiced her magic against non-moving target dummies that couldn't even fight back so she was never able to truly test her fighting ability while the chaos beasts were although ferocious were simple minded and as such, actually relatively easy to deal with, especially with the help of her fellow students and professors. Although she was currently facing a life or death battle, Persephone found she actually enjoyed herself.

After all, she finally got a chance to truly test herself. As the horrors of battle that embedded itself into her memory melted away from her mind, Persephone once again felt a great sense of euphoria as she now faced a truly worthy opponent.

"Ahah... ahahahahahaha!"

Trying to find the source of the laugher Persephone's eyes stared at the only other person in the room, Lucia. However, to her shock, Lucia was not laughing at all, instead written on her face was a look of genuine disdain and anger. Her bloodshot eyes twitched while she bared her gritted teeth.

Persephone instead found that the source of the laugher, was none other than herself! Surprised by her actions Persephone tried to keep her mouth closed... but she just can't help laughing! She was having fun! Unlike before where she had to fight to save others and care about their lives, she found that fighting for the sake of fighting was actually quite fun! She doesn't even remember why she started attacking Lucia, she just knew that now she had to defeat the black haired bitch.

Unable to tolerate Persephone's laughter, the previously frozen Lucia burst into a shout.

"You dare make light of me! I came here out of the goodness of my heart and you laugh at me! You dare! YOU DARE!"

Charging two chaos smites in both of her hands, Lucia roared as she clapped her hands together, compounding the power of both balls of crimson light into one.

"I tried taking it easy on you! You think this is all a joke!"

As the blinding red light and crackling red lightning filled the room, Persephone's eyes were filled with awe as she saw what could possibly be one of the strongest magical attack's in history. [Wow she's really putting her all into this one, I wander how much mana she would have left when she's done?] While Persephone felt that it was atmospherically and visually impressive it still held many of the same flaws as the chaos smites, in fact it's flaws probably increased in proportion to its destructive power.

Instantly realising the weakness of the terrifyingly powerful attack Persephone smirked as she fired a weak chaos smite into the large ball of light before Lucia even had the chance to fire it. The ball exploded into a brilliant array of red lights and strong gushes of wind rushed down Persephone's face and blew her hair. As the shockwave subsided, Persephone looked forward to find Lucia on the floor, a look of utter terror written all over her eyes.

Persephone started to stroll forwards toward Lucia who in response, started to crawl backwards. Seeing that Persephone started charging a chaos smite within her right hand, Lucia started her desperate plea.

"Why? Why are you doing this? I'm... I'm your friend..."

"If you're my friend, we wouldn't be in this situation now would we?"

"Those words? Why do they sound so familiar? I've never heard anyone else say it before..."

"Don't know. Don't care. I hope you enjoy being blasted into oblivion."

"No... NO! This isn't how it was supposed to be!"

While desperately trying to crawl away from Persephone, Lucia charged up another chaos smite aiming it at Persephone's face. The brilliant flash of red light was easily deflected by Persephone's own unfired chaos smite.

Despite this Lucia fired another beam, and another, and another. Every successive attempt was just as successful as the last, not a single beam was able to touch Persephone. It didn't take long until all that appeared from Lucia's hands were nothing more than small sparks of red light.

"Ohhhh? Out of mana are we?"

Lucia's face froze in fear in the realisation that she's running out of options. Her eyes frantically scanned the room before her attention was drawn to the red ball of light put directly in front of her face. Persephone grinned as she revelled in Lucia's fear, however as she looked at Lucia's terrified face she found she was unable to commit to her actions.

What especially surprised her was Lucia's eyes... more specifically what her eyes showed Persephone. Illuminated by the crimson red light, a image was projected in the reflection of Lucia's eyes. The very same image of when Lucia was standing over Justicar's body but instead of Lucia standing with sadistic glee over her victim... it was Persephone.

The sight of the sadistic smile etched onto her own face greatly shocked Persephone, causing her stagger backwards and misfire the chaos smite onto the floor. Falling to her knees, Persephone took the time to process what she just did and what she was about to do.

It seemed that Lucia was doing something but whatever it was, did not register into Persephone's brain. As she blankly stared forward she suddenly remembered the rest of the pills she had in her pocket. Instantly swallowing them, she felt her mind instantly calm down thanks to the rejuvenation qualities within the pills, thanks to Kathina of course.

Feeling herself again, Persphone glanced at the person she nearly murdered in cold blood. Expecting Lucia to have already prepared for a counter attack Persephone instead discovered that Lucia instead curled up into the fetal position... crying...

As she listened to the voice repeating the same three words over and over, Persephone was greatly confused by what was going on.

"All my fault... All my fault... All my fault..."

Whatever that meant, all Persephone knew was that the ferocious monster she just fought was reduced to nothing more than a sobbing baby.