A Rat Trapped in a Cage (5)

As I gazed at her, she broke out into a smile and said to me, "Hey Igmor, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about the night class..."

I returned her smile and said with mockery, "Alright, well how about I give you an example. You should know my reputation isn't one of someone who is stupid, so let's drop the façade. I would rather just get this over with. So why don't I start? When did your lie begin? Was it during the coliseum battle or after that? Or maybe it started long before that."

As I was saying this I was turned around, secretly imputing some code into the console. I already knew she wouldn't say anything without some incentive. If she did then I wouldn't have to put in the effort of playing this puppet show. I was simply buying time before she caught the air that I wasn't here to talk.

She crossed her arms and asked me with furrowed brows, "How did you find me out? I've been doing this for a while and this is my first being exposed."

With my hands moving quickly, I answered her question, "Well it was actually very simple. I'm a skeptical person who doesn't take things at face value. I don't assume something is true only because someone else said it, that would be asking for betrayal. I only trust the logical truth, and your sudden realization of purpose was very suspicious to me. If you've been living without a purpose for years then it doesn't make sense for you to suddenly accept something as your truth without real action. There is also the fact that I'm a very observant person, and I was able to probe a myriad of reactions out of you."

She seemed unsold on my explanation, but just shrugged her shoulders and continued her line of questioning, "Since you seem to have this whole thing figured out, I ask you this. What will you do now? You're crippled. And now that you've figured out my identity, I can't let you leave. You're cornered. A bird trapped in a cage."

With my code finished and double-checked, I turned around to face Vernam, "Those are strong words for someone in your position Vernam. Hell, at least Fragitus understood what happened when she made a mistake, but you are just so confident in yourself that you have yet to comprehend the type of person I am. Do you think I entered this place without knowing you were following me? Do you think the area closed up out of coincidence? Vernam, it's a confrontation that I've been seeking."

With these words, I reached behind my back and submitted the code into the console. Suddenly, a slot in the roof of the wooden cube began to descend. In reaction to this, coupled with my menacing words, Vernam immediately tensed up, waiting for something to happen. But the slot only kept descending until it hit the floor, creating a wooden pillar. Once it hit the floor I reached out and placed two hands around the pillar. I tightened my grip and the pillar shattered into wood chips which peacefully fell to the floor, but my hands were still gripping onto something.

Around my hands was the handle of a sword, a longsword to be precise. The longsword was made of the same material as the surrounding wood: A light brown wood with dark brown patterns painted across it. The grip had just the right indents to make sure it wouldn't fling out of my hands, the cross guard was sturdy giving the feeling that it would never break off, and the blade itself was home to a strong base, a dexterous point, and an incredibly sharp edge.

Once the sword fell into my grip, two large walls of wood rammed at me from both of my sides. Once they hit me, instead of my body being crushed, it phased into the wood, and after a couple of seconds passed, the wall also crumbled into wooden flakes, leaving my body with a fresh suit of wooden armor. The armor gave a feeling of impenetrability, as though nothing in the world could break it. The strange thing was that, although it looked clunky on me and covered every inch of my body, I could see right through it and move as if nothing were on me. It was tough as steel, yet light as air.

When I was brainstorming the best way to defeat Vernam in a one-on-one fight, I had to take into account her Branch: the Lightning Branch. This was a branch focused on hitting hard and hitting fast, meaning that I needed a strong defense to get the better of her. I could have waited a couple of weeks and slowly saved up enough Genesis Orbs to do the same thing I did with Fragitus, but that plan would have some flaws.

Firstly, collecting that many Genesis Orbs would take way too long because of how busy I already was, and letting this spy roam free for that long would hamper my progress significantly. Secondly, even if I used them to their maximum I would only tie Vernam in power making the whole thing not worth the risk. So I came up with this plan. Instead of using my Magic Circles at max for offense, speed, and defense, I would only use it on agility, allowing me to need a lot less Genesis Orbs. Then I would use the tree itself for the other two bases I needed to cover: attack and defense.

I had been planning how to deal with a spy since Medisma told me I would have to do this, as it would make sense for her to mix one into the bunch. So after learning about the admin console inside AI Trees, I made sure to check it out as fast as I could. I found my opportunity after my talk with Hasrem and Beulus the other night and figured out how to use to tree in battle. The tree was already tamed by Inadere, so I only had to input the correct code. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to test out other things because of my request for Vernam's medical records, but I was able to figure out this much.

The sword was a blade that could cut through anything and everything while the armor was a suit of wood that wouldn't allow anything to touch me. The AI Tree is a Gold Class Tree, so anything created out of it was nothing to joke around with. It was unfortunate that it could only be used while inside the tree, otherwise I would have already taken over the sect. But this would still be a good use. Because of this, Vernam was my toy to play with, posing absolutely no threat to me.

She was already prepared to fight, evident by the armor of lightning covering her body. It was something similar to Iraspsit's Magical Art, except it embodied the attributes of the Lightning Branch, not the Fire Branch. This was a more common Magic Art called Attributed Armor, but it being common didn't mean it wasn't effective. Unfortunately for her, I had the tree on my side.

I activated my Magic Circles to their maximum in the agility aspect, using up almost all the Genesis Orbs I had saved up before, and jumped at Vernam. Suddenly, out of her lightning armor, nine bolts of lightning appeared and attacked me as I moved forward. They were faster than I could even react to, but that didn't matter. It was obvious she was still confident in her strength compared to mine because if she were smart she would have made an effort to evade instead of counter-attacking.

The 9 bolts hit me without any attempt of dodging on my part, and once they did, nothing happened besides the sound of a collision. Once she realized that her attack didn't have any effect, she understood that my defense was nothing to scoff at. But it was too late for her now. Before she was able to react, I was right in front of her.

I crouched down and turned my sword so that my right hand was opposite the direction in which I cleaved my sword and I moved my sword upwards. The sword moved through her armpit in a flash before she reacted and dodged out of the way, but once she was far away from me she realized she forgot to bring her arm with her.

On the ground in front of me was her entire left arm that I had just sliced off. I turned around and saw her gasping in pain as she reached for the bloody hole where her arm used to be. A second later she looked up at me and gritted her teeth. It was plain to see that she was mad at me.

She couldn't see my face, but I still made sure to smirk as instigated her, "Come on, don't tell me you can't beat a Dirt Class nobody. You'd better throw everything you've got at me if you don't want to be killed."

My words infuriated her further, but she was able to keep a cool head. Instead of rushing at me or something stupid, she kept her distance from me. It was actually the correct move. She was faster than me, so if I rushed at her she would just be able to move out of the way before I could attack her. I was hoping that she would be hot-headed, but considering her profession, that wouldn't make much sense. But I still had a backup plan in case this happened.

I began to use some of my Crossbow Bolt Fruits and launched them at her. The bolts were quick, but with no added boosts from the magic circles, they were only fast at the level of Dirt Class. As my bolts neared her, she easily dodged out of their trajectories. Suddenly the torrent of bolts ended and I rushed at her at incredible speeds while using Genesis Orbs to refill my Genesis Liquid. She reacted quickly, immediately trying to run away from my attack. But despite her commands, her legs didn't move an inch. She looked down and noticed that there were two wooden bracelets around her ankles coming from the floor that stopped her movement. She reacted quickly by sending lightning strikes at the bracelets which did shatter them, but it was already too late.

I was in front of her again and copied the same movement from before, but this time focusing on her right arm. I sliced the blade upward and it went clean through, chopping her last arm off. The arm fell to the floor with a bang, but this time she didn't run away. It looked like now that she understood that she wouldn't be able to beat me. Judging by her expression, she was going to make a smoke screen and try to escape in the time she bought.

She wrapped her legs around me and yelled out loud, "Combo-move: Lightning Cage!"

As she spoke these words, her legs stretched up and down, locking me in a cylinder of lightning. The hollow cylinder went all the way to the roof of the room, and as it did, it closed up, completely enclosing me in lightning. Once this finished, from the top of the trap, crackling could be heard just before a loud boom sounded out. Lightning struck my right on my head, one after another after another. After a minute of this, it suddenly came to an end, 'I'm guessing she's out of Genesis Liquid now.'

With that thought in my head, I wielded my sword and swung in a circle, slicing through the cylinder. Once I finished a full rotation, the cage shattered into pieces of solidified lightning which soon disappeared. Once the cage was gone, I looked for Vernam and found her sitting down in a corner with her two holes gushing with blood. She wasn't able to find a way out and succumbed to her loss of blood, along with her loss of Genesis Liquid.

I approached her slowly while giving a semi-sarcastic speech to her half-conscious self, "Sorry Vernam, but at your level of strength, it's impossible to defeat me. Of course if you just didn't follow me in here, this wouldn't have happened. You let yourself be manipulated, and the thought of you being controlled never even entered your mind. You are too self-centered."

I paused as I had gotten close enough to her. I turned my sword around so that the pommel faced her, and flung it into her skull with mediocre strength, but it was still enough for her to pass out. As she lost consciousness, I gave her a finishing remark.

"Of course, now that you know about this I can't just let you leave. You're gonna have a hell of a time coming up."