Chapter 292 – The Duel

Emily drifts backwards until her back meets the thin shell that remains of Elwaine’s barrier, where she stays, fighting to keep her eyes open and slowly circulating the remaining drops of her mana to draw in more. Her gaze remains fixed on Silvia walking through the vacuum to meet her foe.

Yorn’s qi thrums with activity as she approaches, the thin film wrapping his exposed bones ballooning up to form illusory muscles. He raises his skeletonised arm with straight fingers and slashes towards her with it, using his bony fingers like a blade, flooding them with crushing intent.

Silvia sidesteps the blow, moving at a languid pace but still managing to avoid the attack entirely, dodging the included gravitational pull and putting herself outside of striking distance.

The half-dead man thrusts his other arm towards her chest, using less qi to achieve the same force as his first attack and barely looking at his target. Silvia bats his arm aside, ignoring her wrist snapping from the force of the collision and stabbing into his elbow with the sharpened bloody claws wrapping her other hand. His innate barrier offers little resistance, and she tears away a chunk of flesh before leaping back and looking down at her claws with a frown.

Her crimson weapon is splattered with fresh blood, drinking it in almost without thought, but Yorn’s blood is tainted with faint green streaks: the acid from Emily’s warhead.

“Ha… ha… ha,” Yorn laughs in a strained hiss, using qi to reconstruct his throat as much as he’s using it to broadcast his voice through the vacuum. “Can’t… do sh… shit… if I… spoil… can… you… leech!”

He lunges forwards faster than Emily would think he was able to in his ailing state, driving his ruined fist into Silvia’s stomach. She folds around the blow, shooting back towards Emily but never reaching her as she straightens and balances out with a light burst of qi, the force behind the attack a far cry from Yorn’s peak.

“You’ve doomed yourself,” the vampire states calmly, a hint of disappointment clear in her tone. “Circulating acid like that… you’ll die even without my intervention.”

“Maybe…” Yorn sets his stance, raising his skeleton hand like a sword once again and glaring straight ahead with his single eye. “But not before… I take… you with me!”

Silvia shoots forward to meet him, dispelling her bloody claws and clenching her hands into fists before wrapping them in a thin layer of crimson armour. She twists around his opening slash and drives a fist into his still fleshy side. Yorn doesn’t flinch, though his qi levels decrease by a drop, and he pivots to cut at her throat.

Silvia weaves back and punches the underside of his arm, forcing the blow to swing wide. Yorn lets the momentum of the blow carry through, pivoting and driving his left elbow towards her solar plexus. She crosses both arms in front of her, soaking up the impact at the expense of her blood armour and twisting through space to slam her toes into his gaping jaw, knocking his head back.

Yorn still doesn’t move an inch, his feet firmly planted in the vacuum. The vampire tries to capitalise on his vision leaving her, driving a fist towards the side of his whole knee, but his innate barrier is thicker around his legs, and she fails to break through without the aid of her still-reforming armour.

Yorn’s arm swipes down faster than his head moves to follow, catching Silvia’s shoulder and gouging a deep wound from front to back. She doesn’t react to the injury, pouring a large chunk of qi into her opposite arm and driving it into his right leg, hitting the qi muscles and exposed bone while detonating her own energy. Her fist erupts, the skin peeling away as her blood bursts outward to reveal the bone of her knuckles, but the blow severs Yorn’s already ruined joint, sending his lower leg drifting off into the void.

Yorn lets out a warbling howl as his stance falters, clasping both hands together before driving them down towards Silvia’s head.

Emily watches their brutal exchange entranced. There isn’t a single trace of Silvia’s usual grace, and the dance-like combat trance she’s used to observing is absent too, replaced instead by a focused malice and visible frustration.

While Yorn’s attacks wildly strip chunks of flesh from the vampire with no clear aim, Silvia only seems to target his joints in retaliation, favouring his fleshless limbs in an attempt to cripple the man. She breaks the hand he’s using as a blade in exchange for a gash down her side and cleaves the wrist above it at the cost of her own breaking once again, the bone jutting through her skin this time, ever so slowly righting itself at a snail’s pace.

Both of their movements slow as they stack up injuries, but neither stops, both resolved to see their duel through to the end. Their qi reserves dwindle, approaching empty at a rapid pace, but while Silvia abandons her own healing and focuses her energy on her fists to deal as much damage as possible, Emily notices Yorn ever so slowly drawing the remaining dregs of his energy towards his Dantian.

He’s going to-

Emily doesn’t have time to warn Silvia as Yorn gives up on his defence and reaches out with his only surviving arm, latching onto her broken wrist and holding her in place.

“Told you… I’d take-” he doesn’t get to finish as Silvia floods her free arm with every drop of her remaining qi and drives it through his core, punching through flesh and bone and severing his connection with his energy-centre.

His exposed organs rupture as the last of his qi runs wild without control, bursting out into the void in a spray of gore that catches Silvia’s side. She pulls her arm free of his abdomen, shaking off the thin layer of crimson qi protecting it from his acid-tainted blood, before prying his dead grip from her other arm.

Emily doesn’t notice when the barrier at her back disappears as she forces herself forward with a light burst of mana, her reserves only just refilled enough to shake off the worst of her exhaustion, but she feels the energy-charged excitement from the watching ships wash over her as the crew celebrates a good show. Her gaze remains fixed on the back of the distant, exhausted and battered vampire staring at her old captain’s corpse.

Emily reaches her side and gently pulls her back, turning her to get a better look at the damage. She’s covered in an assortment of fresh wounds, but none other than the thin layer of hissing red and green coating her left side from hip to ribs are concerning enough to hold Emily’s attention. The acidic blood-mix is actively eating away at Silvia’s skin, but luckily it doesn’t appear to be getting further.

“I know your regeneration is good…” Emily mutters, barely lacing her words with any machina to save energy as she coats her palm in a blend of water and light mana before brushing it over the bubbling wound to clean it. “But I think that’s going to leave a-”

She doesn’t get to finish as Silvia wraps her arms around her and pulls her into a kiss that tastes faintly of iron. Emily freezes, her hand still pressed against the vampire’s side and her eyes wide with shock in stark contrast to Silvia’s half-lidded, distant gaze.

“I’ll live,” Silvia whispers after a few moments, breaking away and letting her head slump against Emily’s shoulder, her body going limp.

Emily recovers quickly, continuing to tend the wound as the vampire’s faint breath tickles her neck, letting her emotions run wild in her chest and simply refusing to think about them for now instead of wasting her sparse machina to crush them.

“I have to say,” Elwaine says, their tone a mix of exhaustion and amusement as they approach. “That was quite the display.”

The elf pulls a sheet of soft, shimmering fabric from within their robes and casts it out to wrap around Emily and Silvia, shielding their exposed bodies from view.

Emily turns her head to the side to meet their gaze, watching Rotwin step past the elf to sniff at Yorn’s still-warm corpse before turning his nose up in disgust.

“We should probably get out of here before someone arrives to check on the high-energy disturbance you three caused,” Elwaine continues. “I don’t know about you, but I feel like I could meditate for a week and not be recovered: you really gave me a challenge keeping that mess contained.”

“So, you’re sticking with us?” Emily asks with a raised brow, finishing her hurried healing job and wrapping her only still-functioning arm around the vampire’s waist to hold her steady.

“For now, at least. We can negotiate my terms for the retention of my position once our new captain there wakes up.” The elf turns their head to address Rotwin. “I take it you can handle gathering Yorn’s remains while I give these two a hand?”

The chimaeric hound nods before scooping up Yorn’s body with a net of qi and turning to follow his nose towards the rest of the man’s scattered pieces. Elwaine places a hand to Emily’s lower back before propelling the three of them towards The Mothership. They enter through one of the ship’s many airlocks and come face-to-face with a crowd waiting for them, staring at Emily and the unconscious Silvia with glowing admiration.

“The show’s over, back to your stations!” Elwaine calls with an authoritative tone. “We’re leaving once Rotwin reboards the ship. Wilder, you’re in charge of finding us somewhere to lay low while our captain recovers.”

“On it, boss,” the head pilot’s playful voice responds through a nearby speaker.

“Good.” The elf turns back to face Emily, quickly noticing her twisted expression. “Is everything alright? Do you need me to carry Silvia to the med bay?”

“No, I’m fine.” Emily waves off their concern, crouching down to tuck her deformed metal arm under the vampire’s knees. “I just wasn’t expecting such a… warm welcome after killing Yorn and essentially forcing everyone else to fall in line. I knew from my mental screenings that many wouldn’t have a problem with it, but I wasn’t expecting admiration.”

“Strength is to be respected. Though some of us may disagree with the base reasoning behind your mutiny, the results cannot be argued with.”

“What, trapping Yorn in a two-versus-one with other external helpers is to be considered strength?”

“You’re unsatisfied with your victory?” Elwaine questions, their tone devoid of judgement and brimming with curiosity.

“It’s… different to what I’m used to.” Emily shrugs, struggling to parse the twisted blend of emotions churning in her chest. “In most of my major battles to date, I’ve been the outnumbered party, even when facing those of a higher level than myself.”

“These battles were below the mortal limit, no?”

Emily nods.

“Therein lies your problem. It’s a matter of perspective you’re yet to adjust to. A skilled and prepared first circle mage could eliminate a careless fourth circle with a lot of luck, but you’ll rarely find a fifth circle mage who could defeat a sixth regardless of the circumstances. In the case of your battle here, Yorn had been at seventh phase for centuries and reached the upper limit of power within it, while Silvia, though vastly more talented, is only recently ascended. I’m sure you felt the difference yourself.”

“His qi reserves were just shy of double hers: it’s why she had me weaken him with my opening strike regardless of the material cost.”

“Exactly, and you’re two levels below them, realistically closer to one if we consider your dual nature, but still not their equal nonetheless. The fact that you were not only able to survive their duel but contribute meaningfully? None can call that anything but strength.” Elwaine comes to a halt before the med bay’s doors, turning to face Emily and giving her a respectful nod. “I shall leave you here, but you’d do well not to dwell on your past victories, lest they diminish your current success. After all, you were my deciding factor in choosing to remain.”

The elf turns to stride off without another word, leaving Emily to face the crew’s head healer’s scorn alone.

“Look at you two, do you have no regard for your bodies!” The med bay door slams open to reveal a translucent humanoid figure, their skin bubbling unpredictably with their frustration: Hipaepha, the crew’s only fourth circle healer and a super-massive slime mould. “The Vice – or should I be calling her Captain now? – was bad enough on her own. Do you have to follow in her footsteps? We have enough self-destructing idiots on this crew. We don’t need another!”

He pulls them into the stark-white room, filled with an equal blend of mana, qi, and neutral energy, and pulls away the fabric covering them to inspect their injuries.

“Argh, I don’t even know how to fix that!” the slime mould cries as he gets a clear look at Emily's mangled prosthesis. “Aren’t you mechanics meant to treat your creations with respect?”

Emily can’t hear any genuine heat behind the slime’s outrage and tunes his complaints out, following his request to set Silvia down on one of the bay’s beds before taking a seat on one herself. Hipaepha goes to treat her first, but she waves him off and gestures towards the festering wound on Silvia’s side instead, her gaze never leaving the sleeping vampire.

“Hmmm, that does look nasty… I’ll have to get Vrathorn to brew a soothing agent to counter the acidic degradation of her cells…”

“I can-” Emily starts, cutting off as the slime’s head snaps back a full one-eighty towards her and shifts to a pale red hue.

“You’ll do nothing! You are a patient, and I can practically feel the damage you’ve done to your magic circuits with that reckless crystal use from here! Now be quiet, rest, and let me work!” Hipaepha’s head turns back the right way, and the colour washes out of him as he mutters under his breath: “Damn battle maniacs’ll be the end of me…”