Fates Parallel Chapter 346 - Assassin

Even with her thoughts being accelerated by Absolute Awareness, Yoshika didn’t have a lot of time to think. The assailant was incredibly fast, and moved with grim purpose. Eunae was still deep in meditation, focused on her breakthrough, while Rika and Ja Yun had only barely started reacting to the man’s sudden appearance.

She flooded Jia’s meridians with essence, putting everything she had into her Lightspeed Traversal technique. Her body crackled with lightning as she interposed herself between Eunae and the assassin, cursing internally at how much essence the maneuver had cost her.

The man didn’t hesitate, swinging his sword at Jia the moment she appeared. The blade was imbued with a concoction of essence that was hard to read, and rather than attempt to parry the unknown technique, Yoshika slipped inside his reach and aimed to disable him with pressure-point strikes.

As the sword swept past above her head, the assassin let go, hurling the blade at Eunae as if that had been his plan all along. Yoshika cursed, aborting her attack and twisting her body to kick out behind her, knocking the weapon off-course.

Even off course, the weapon slammed into Eunae’s wards and detonated in a chaotic blast of essence. The wards held, but Yoshika could tell that the attack had taken a toll.

Finally, Ja Yun and Rika entered the fray. A wall of stone rose up around Eunae’s formation, courtesy of Ja Yun, to protect her from further attacks. While Rika’s doubles surrounded the assassin to pin him down.

He tried to flee through a small opening in Rika’s formation, but Yoshika was waiting for him with Eui’s body, where she cut him down with her destruction-imbued blade.

The fight had only lasted a moment, but Yoshika didn’t let her guard down.

“What the hell was that?!”

Yoshika ignored Rika’s panicked query and spread her domain as far down the mountain as she could, searching for any other disturbances.

“Stay sharp, there’s more.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before three more assassins made it onto the plateau. Each wearing the same black robes, bearing the same enchanted swords, and with their faces wrapped in black cloth to hide their sightless visage.

It wasn’t a coincidence, then—these assassins were specifically prepared to face Eunae’s power.

“Yun and Rika take the left, I’ll handle the other two. They’ll ignore you to go after Eunae—don’t let them!”

The assassins weren’t so courteous as to stand around waiting while Yoshika gave orders, but her friends weren’t stupid either. Ja Yun and Rika worked together to keep one of the assassins pinned down by surrounding him with doubles while Yun cast support spells to disrupt his attempts to escape. Yoshika met each of the other two with each of her bodies, forcing them into individual duels.

After seeing the exploding sword, she understood their technique a little better. It was similar to her Six Arms of Asura, but they didn’t have the same level of control. The blades were imbued with Destruction, but surrounded by a carefully crafted balance of other elements to keep it contained. The assassins used precisely timed pulses of essence to release small amounts of Destruction for moments at a time—or send the weapon out of control to cause an explosion.

It wasn’t a style that Yoshika would have expected from Qin’s cultivators, but she didn’t have time to analyze it any more thoroughly than that. The assassins had other powerful techniques enhancing their speed, strength, and reflexes, and they were difficult opponents.

On Eui’s side, Yoshika struggled to keep her opponent pinned down as he took advantage of her slower style to force her to either step back or let him pass. He refused to meet blades with her, knowing he’d lose the exchange, and instead allowed her to score superficial injuries in exchange for daring—borderline suicidal—pushes inside her guard.

Jia’s opponent, on the other hand, was all but ignoring her pressure-point strikes and using his destruction-imbued blade to ward her away from more serious attacks. She had him on the defensive, but she wasn’t able to gain any ground.

These assassins were good. Yoshika hadn’t been pushed this hard in a duel since her bout with Hayakawa Kaede in the grand tournament—a fight that she’d lost.

There was something else about them as well—something strangely familiar. They fought a lot like the Demon Hunters she’d encountered in Goryeo—the first people Jia had ever killed. The way things were going, she wasn’t going to be able to hold back against these ones, either.

Blinding light and deafening thunder shook the plateau as another lightning bolt struck Eunae’s formation. That was three—as many as Rika had faced—but Eunae’s wards still held as she meditated serenely within.

The blind assassins tried to take advantage of the confusion to slip past, but Yoshika was ready. Jia’s hand glowed the black and red essence of destruction, channeled through her Fist of Earth. The assassin tried to shoulder past her, expecting another of her pressure-point attacks, but her claws tore straight through him, tearing his arm out at the socket.

Eui’s opponent hadn’t been so reckless, but his attempt to hurl his sword past her was met by her own sword effortlessly cutting through the flying blade and forcing it to detonate well short of its intended target. The blast of destruction washed harmlessly over Eui, who’d tuned her mana shield in anticipation of the detonation.

Yoshika took advantage of the assassin’s shock to lunge forward with a deceptively fast lightning step and struck him in the temple with her Claws of Heaven, disabling him with the paralytic effects of her Lightning ki.

Unfortunately, Ja Yun and Rika hadn’t handled the distraction quite so well. The bolt had struck just as the assassin was feinting a strike towards Ja Yun. Rika’s copy was distracted trying to defend Ja Yun, and the assassin changed course the very moment the lightning flashed. Leaping high into the air and throwing his sword over Ja Yun’s wall.

There was no time to think. Holding nothing back, Yoshika blinked across the plateau in an instant and caught the sword just before it was able to make contact with Eunae’s wards. Overusing Lightspeed Traversal left her a little drained, but she still had enough essence to neutralize the sword before it could detonate.

Now, with only one enemy left, she’d be able to focus on—

Another bolt struck—surprisingly soon after the last—and Yoshika didn’t have time to get out of the way. The tribulation struck Jia’s body head-on, and she felt a moment of panic as it vanished from her senses and fell to the ground, limp.

Yoshika accelerated her thoughts and tried to assess her injuries. She still had all of her faculties and her soul was in one piece, so Jia hadn’t died, at least. It was normally impossible for either of Yoshika’s bodies to be asleep while the other was awake, but the bolt had knocked Jia’s body entirely senseless.

She’d probably be fine once she got some healing, but there was a bigger concern—she’d interfered with Eunae’s tribulation.

Yoshika didn’t actually know what would happen. All she knew was that tribulations had to be faced alone and that attempting to intervene usually ended poorly for everyone involved. She braced herself for the worst.

As her thoughts returned to normal speed, Rika gawked at her with a look of horror.

“Oh shit—Yoshika, are you okay?”

“That remains to be seen, but I’m fine for now. The enemy?”

Rika nodded her head in the direction of the assassin, where one of her simulacra had pinned him to the ground.

“Stopped fighting after that last bolt—yours?”

Yoshika knelt down to check on the assailant she’d knocked out and frowned.

“This one is dead...I could have sworn I’d used a non-lethal technique, though.”

She ran over to check on the other, still missing his arm.

“This one too...it usually takes more than that to kill a cultivator. Keep a close eye on yours.”

Rika nodded grimly, and more of her copies piled on to keep their prisoner absolutely still. Ja Yun was shaking like a leaf, staring at Jia’s limp form lying next to Eunae, who still remained in meditation.

“Yoshika...this is really bad. You shouldn’t have taken that strike.”

“I know. Do you have any idea what’s going to happen now?”

Ja Yun shook her head.

“No. Nothing good, I think. You should probably go over there—the wards won’t stop you.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to make things any worse...”

“There’s no closing that door once it’s opened. Besides, half of you is already there and by the looks of it, Jia’s body is too injured to—”

Yoshika felt a sudden rush of all-encompassing dread, the pit of her stomach sinking like a stone. She grabbed Ja Yun by the collar and hurled her at Rika with all her strength, just in time for another thunderbolt to strike—this time directed straight at her.

She’d been too busy trying to save Ja Yun to defend herself, and the bolt slammed into her at full force. Her natural Destruction essence blunted the effects slightly, but the overwhelming power of the tribulation flooded her meridians and caused innumerable ruptures throughout her body and soul.

She fell to one knee and coughed up a mouthful of blood. Eui’s body had weathered the strike a little better than Jia’s, but she wasn’t sure she could take much more punishment.

Yoshika frantically circulated the healing power of Wood through herself as she looked up and cursed at the cloud overhead, already building up for another strike.

“Fuck, just how many of these are we supposed to take?”

As if in response, another bolt struck Eunae’s wards, causing them to waver dangerously. They were starting to fail. Before her eyes could even finish adjusting to the last one, another bolt landed—this time aimed at Eui again.

She raised her arms and let loose an unfocused blast of destruction—an act of pure desperation that just barely saved her. The bolt was partially dispersed by her essence, but what was left crashed into her nearly-defenseless body and wreaked havoc. The best she could do was protect Eui’s extremities from the worst harm as she fell into a convulsing heap.

She slowly worked to restore her drained essence in order to restart the healing process. There was nothing left now but to hope. If another bolt struck either of her bodies, she’d be done for.

The next bolt smashed through Eunae’s wards, but not before wasting the vast majority of its energy against them.

Eunae leapt to her feet and urgently took in the scene around her.

“What—?”

She didn’t have time to finish before the final bolt struck. And it had to be the final bolt. The tribulation cloud exhausted everything it had on one ultimate blast—aimed at Jia’s defenseless body.

Eunae didn’t hesitate. She threw herself over Jia and took the blast herself. The entire plateau shook from the force, blinding Yoshika and sending debris scattering in every direction.

As the light cleared and the dust settled, she saw Eunae hunched over Jia’s body, shaking and bloodied, but still breathing. Over her, stood a man clad in all black, his eyeless visage covered by dark wrappings. A final assassin, who’d stayed hidden until the last possible moment. He brandished his sword and shook his head.

“Impressive, demon. But this ends now.”

As he swung down, a lance of green flame struck out from behind Eunae and pierced his heart.

“Stop!”

At her command, the blade halted just inches away from her neck. She gently pushed it aside and rose unsteadily to her feet. She’d been changed by her trial. Five bushy fox tails fanned out behind her, joined by four more made of ghostly green fire. One of them was still impaled in the assassin’s chest.

The man struggled against his own traitorous arms for a moment before sighing and quickly reversing his grip on the blade, pointing it up towards his own neck.

“Don’t even think about it!”

Eunae’s words echoed through the plateau, and the assassin’s arms stiffened for a moment before falling limp at his sides and dropping the blade.

She collapsed to her knees and issued a sigh of relief before taking another look around the scorched battlefield that the Purewater Spring had become.

“Could somebody please fill me in on what the hell is going on?”