Strike…
"The one who knows your limit is you …only you"
Strike…
"Nothing in the world is impossible, keep reminding yourself that"
Another strike…
"Never forget your purpose"
August held the dark blade of a fallen star in his hands while remembering what his father had taught him.
Just like always, the blade tried to conquer him by meddling with his emotions.
"What do you feel?" his father asked.
"Anger," he replied.
"Good. Now try to drive your anger towards your target,"
"Drive your anger towards your target"
"...towards your target"
After August exposed the creature of darkness that was hiding among them mimicking a maiden, maidens of the night unexpectedly charged at them.
The maidens of wind were all in turmoil, confused about the situation. Firstly one of them turns out to be a dangerous creature and then one of the strongest factions was suddenly charging at them.
Has the night faction betrayed them?
"Come to your senses," the saint shouted, "it is not the night faction but the creature. It's trying to meddle with our brains."
The night maidens approached the saint from within the darkness. Suddenly a torrent of darkness flowed towards her aiming to take her life. It was faster than she could have reacted.
However, the attack never reached her but stopped midway as August was done severing the head clean of the attacking the night maiden. Then he moved with precision and killed another.
His blade moved like wind itself in the depths of eternal darkness. He lunged at one then on another after quickly killing it. Since he was fighting in true darkness, August was not relying on his sight to perceive the enemy but his other senses precisely told him just the places, he needed to strike.
The dark blade of the fallen star did nothing but meddle with his emotions, which made him angry and August being trained to control just that took out all his anger on the creature before.
The maidens and the Saint all stood motionless watching the scene before them unfold.
Not that they were getting a good look though, since the fight was happening in darkness.
Only screams were coming out from within the dense night.
August felt like he was facing a swarm of dark creatures, each of them were dangerous enough to kill him with a scratch.
One lunged at him from the darkness trying to bare its fangs onto his skin. However the attempt was proven futile when his sword answered the fangs of the creature in his stead. Then another attacked him from behind, he took care of it too.
In the next moment the whole swarm seemed to be trying to get a piece of him. August dodged various blows and bites, struck the blade whenever and wherever his senses told him to.
Then an enormous form seemed to be taking shape in the darkness. Various nightmaidens and one of the wind seemed to have also taken form somewhere within the darkness.
At last the creature assumed its true form deep within the darkness. August could tell that it was strong by just looking in the direction of the creature. The reason he came to the conclusion that this creature out of the three might be the main unit was because when August looked at it, the abomination of darkness also looked back at him.
August knew in his current state, he could never win against a creature like that. Fortunately August wasn't alone.
A torrent of darkness was suddenly displaced by a gust of wind forming a giant hurricane and trapping the huge beast deep within itself.
Maidens of the wind jumped in the darkness and engaged into a fight with the rogue night faction and the swarm of darkness from before. Now the only ones remaining were August and the main creature.
Without wasting a second August jumped at the colossal figure of darkness, aiming to strike it down with his blade. However, August's blade never met any flesh or even resistance. As it turned out when he got close enough to strike the abomination, the creature suddenly dissolved into the darkness and appeared somewhere else.
"You bastard,"August screamed, adrenaline rushing through his veins, "I know you have been following us this whole time."
He lunged at the colossal figure again but it simply dissolved into the darkness.
It appeared just behind August trying to intimidate him with its vile gaze. Unfortunate for the dark creature August was perceiving his surroundings by only using his other senses. Which meant his eyes were closed.
That's why he never looked straight in the eyes of abomination, preventing him any harm from the vile gaze.
"Come out from the darkness and fight me, you coward," he screamed under the influence of the fallen star which he successfully had aimed towards the abomination,
"If you won't. I will kill you."
August noticed the fact that while the towering figure of the dark creature was colossal, it was reluctant to engage in a direct fight with him. It did not attack the armada the first time either but killed a maiden to lay out its plan.
It wasn't hard to discern what kind of authority this creature had.
The law of wild, strong consumes weak in order to become even stronger. While the gaze of that vile abomination was powerful enough to make the lesser creatures of the dark shiver, that was all the vile thing had.
Of course in addition to its ability to create copies of its dead prey out of darkness perfectly.
In reality the colossal figure wasn't much of a threat but the creatures it had made out of darkness were. They were able to mimic the real strength up to a certain extent.
August had found its weakness, the only thing that remained was to look for a weakness.
August moved deep into the darkness, ignoring the colossal figure he lunged at the swarm of darkness. Killing them off one by one.
However, his efforts were going to waste when after some time darkness surged and the creature he killed had taken shape again.
"So you can revive ha?" August gritted his teeth, "means I have to kill you faster."
Saying that he disappeared into the depths of darkness. He moved through the swarm of dark creatures than where the maidens were fighting with the rogue night faction. He moved his blade, the head of one creature fell, then another and another one after that.
As he moved across the battlefield the heads of the creatures fell like rain pouring down from the sky. The maidens of the false night faction had never seen him coming when he approached them like a bad omen.
His blade moved past the human flesh made out of darkness, severing the heads clean. Even at this speed he was able to strike precisely where he needed to, leaving the maidens of the wind confused on the battlefield.
While it was true that the false night faction showed more resistance and intelligence than the mindless swarm of dark creatures from before, however, they were mere copies of the original. The maidens of the false night faction were nowhere near the actual maidens.
Previously, while facing the dreadful horror Arachnid, August noticed something. When the giant monster called for the inferior of its species just so that it could feed upon them. Surprisingly enough the lesser monsters obeyed its command.
So what was the reason Arachnid was able to command its soldiers to their deaths. What gave it the authority over them in the first place? Why would some mindless frenzied monsters take orders from Arachnid or anyone at all?
The answer was quite simple.
Everyone is equal at birth. This was the absolute law.
Which meant the arachnid would not have simply been born this strong but climbed its way up in the monster horde. Just like a human could develop himself with the help of a core element the same was also possible for the creatures that weren't humans to begin with.
Humans had consciousness which provided them with the knowledge of knowing their position in space, in other words self awareness. This consciousness was the sole reason humans could take control over another. Meaning acquiring their core element. It came natural to them.
While the species, like monsters, had an inferior type of consciousness which limited their use of mana for one reason that they did not have the capacity to sustain another consciousness within them.
Therefore, species like those discovered another method to develop themselves. Which was more natural than that of humans.
It was consumption.
By consuming anything that was of greater capabilities or even not, could make the creature gain some of the abilities of its prey. Which meant in order to become the leader of the monster horde, Arachnid would have consumed the flesh of its own.
The example of the great monster Arachnid was of more relevance here when August was fighting with another creature.
While it was a creature of dark, a sentient being, however, in the end it was still of lesser consciousness than that of humans. That's why it was evident, —to fight with humans or for its safety in general, it had to consume other creatures.
That was how any creature would survive in the wild.
Judging from the situation, it seems like the dark creature was somehow able to consume many maidens of the night faction and when it saw the wind maidens fighting against other two abominations, the creature saw it as an opportunity to grow even stronger.
However, even after consuming the other creatures, it was reluctant to fight head on. That was the reason it took the false disguise of a maiden, perfectly mimicking the one who it had killed without anyone noticing. The creature did all this and waited for another opportunity on the way.
But when the armada did not leave the position, the creature grew anxious and decided to attack. It was confident that maidens would fall for it. The creature had observed them fighting beforehand after all.
However, there was something or someone it had not seen on the battlefield, therefore could not have expected.
August, who was observing the world solely with his other senses, felt something unusual. Even when there was no creature around he was still able to feel the presence of darkness within the camp.
At first he thought it might be the darkness surrounding them imposing, trying to reclaim the place of their camp but it took him some days to come to a realization that there was an unusual difference between the surrounding darkness and the darkness within the camp.
Moving through the darkness, August was killing the dark shades of the creature faster than it could revive them. August had figured out this was the only way to deal with this cockroach-like enemy.
He may have a way to kill the creature but as it turned out August was not fast enough to make his plan work.
He was almost done with the rogue night faction and was heading towards the beast of darkness contained in a hurricane by saint Aireen, at that exact moment he saw some of the creatures that belonged to the swarm of darkness had already come back to life.
Under the influence of the fallen star August's anger grew intense. However, he knew towards whom he had to direct the anger. August never stopped and jumped into the cold winds of the violent storm.
He had instructed the saint beforehand to contain the beast within the storm because for some reason the beast of darkness seemed weak towards this particular spell.
Now when he was also inside this deadly storm , not only he had to kill the beast of darkness here but he had to do it fast, battling against the violent currents of wind on top of all that.
August with closed eyes and steeled resolution, lunged at the abomination.
He was not anywhere near the bestial size of the dark creature. Perhaps he would have decided not to fight if he was able to see the towering figure of the creature with his own eyes, that was if there wasn't darkness all around.
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