Chapter 652 Is chaos better than order? (part 7)
Chapter 652 Is chaos better than order? (part 7)
Naturally after realizing that the little girl he was chasing after to vent out his anger, wasn't as innocent as she looked, the enemy who had already left some distance between himself and Kana, retreated another few dozens of meters, given that earlier he couldn't catch up with her in the short run.
That wasn't all, he even took out his spirit weapon ahead of time, a one-handed long sword, which he prepared to use as he saw a detailed green jade bow appearing on the left hand of the blond little girl alongside a though light, solid looking piece of armor that protected her upper body, a wristband and a belt.
Kana's right hand approached the belt and swiftly pulled an arrow out of a compartment positioned at its right side.
The enemy frowned upon seeing the trident like arrow head at the frontal end of the arrow, which was now being pointed at him, unfortunately he didn't have much time to contemplate the arrow as it suddenly turned into a green flash.
"What's up with the speed of that thing, thought the enemy, he was facing a young girl who was also many realms below him and yet the speed at which she flew earlier and shot that arrow, was hard for him to follow.
That being said, he already knew Kana was fast which is why he took distance to have help him react to her attacks in time, just in case, which ended up being the right choice, with a calm expression, the enemy snorted his sword exploded in yang radiance as he slashed at his left where the arrow had appeared.
"Crack!", the sword made a half moon bright yellow wave as it cut the arrow in half, making the resulting broken pieces deviate from their original target, which was the enemy's chest, successfully intercepting the attack.
Seeing that Kana wasn't pulling out another arrow, a slightly cruel smile appeared on Matt's face.
"No matter how fast an attack is, there is no point if you are lacking in terms of power", he said only to be disappointed at the lack of reaction from the little girl.
"What, earlier you seemed really enthusiastic about being lectured, so why the serious face?", he added with a tinge of mockery behind his voice, only for his smile to freeze upon listening to Kana's answer.
"According to big brother, besides mom, himself or some specific older sisters, I
shouldn't listen to the lessons of others and anyone who tries to go against that will be personally beheaded by him", she said with a carefree voice, which made Matt feel a chill running down his back.
He couldn't help but spread his spirit sense, hoping to not see that monstrous bastard appearing, sword in hand while aiming at his neck, thanks to that he managed to see a smile appearing on Kana's face as she added.
"Speaking of lessons, one of the first ones I received from big brother was to... never let your guard down nor distract until you see the enemy perish, before she finished her sentence, Kana snapped her fingers.
Continuous "clinking" sounds filled the nearby area, as the broken halves of the arrow previously shot by Kana, exploded at both sides of the enemy, needless to say but Matt was taken by surprise and engulfed by dozens of metallic projectiles accelerated with wind spirit energy which were shot in every direction.
"Boom!", the small spiked projectiles which flew all over the area, impacted nearby floating rocks and other debris, making holes into them or exploding due to the impact, causing chaos.
Aster who was observing the battle, inwardly nodded.
'I didn't expect her to use a "Bombardment Arrow" that way, not bad, he thought, that was one of the ten designs he programmed into the arrow creating array engraved on the belt wristband he gifted to the little girl.
That design in specific was specially created for cases in which Kana had to deal with multiple weak enemies, like back then during their date when she was surrounded by the mob subordinated to the jungle lizard.
Of course, the concept itself wasn't anything new in the world of cultivation, however the way it was executed was a complete separate matter, while energy weapons which shot pure energy attacks did exist, they required large and complicated formations, hence why they were only used in big surface objects, like space ships, city walls, castles and the like.
Meaning that the only really long-distance weapons that were used by cultivators, were either bows or their cousins, crossbows, which in the market had many different types of arrows and bolts with special properties, among them one that shot many projectiles of course existed.
However, the design was childish from the point of view of Aster who came from world where modern warfare existed, now, Aster didn't have a military background, nor he was a weapon maker, heck he was an orphan, but unlike the blacksmiths of the world of cultivation, he could see things from a different perspective.
So instead of an arrow with spikes attached to its body, which were then spread by making the arrow explode, which was the basic dynamic used by practically everyone with some changed here and there, he used multiple stackable cylinders which were lined one after another and then encased in a regular looking arrow which was hollow on the inside.
As to why the enemy didn't see anything given he cut the arrow in half, that's because the metal cylinders didn't contain the projectiles, they became the projectiles, also even if the arrow was destroyed, it wouldn't activate unless Kana used the command in other words the wristband, to make it happen, also breaking the arrow in half like the enemy did, wouldn't stop its activation, because each cylinder had its own formation engraved,
so as long as one survived, then it will fulfill its function.
In case you haven't realized it yet, the inspiration for the "Bombardment Arrow" was taken from a modern missile, which even if accidentally fired could be deactivated via remote control.
Of course, in a modern culture, people in their right mind wouldn't be near a missile until it was disarmed properly, but cultivators don't have that mindset, which was the whole point of it, just like how Matt ignored the remains of the arrow after cutting it in
half.
"I broke it, so it doesn't work anymore", is the kind of thought that people from this world have and they are not to blame, since formations are known to malfunction with even a single line or rune on them, being disrupted.
Honestly, using just the ideas from his old world, Aster could bring a hellish revolution to the arms industry to the world of cultivation, which is why he is really careful at the
moment of integrating these ideas into his design.
This Bombardment Arrow took him months of trial and error through mental simulations within the mind space and even then, he only made the basic scheme of functionality, and a model, it was Eris the one who made its creation viable through her knowledge in rune mastering alongside Aster's observations on how it should work. Naturally it's not as if Aster thought any of the girls would misuse these creations, since all the ideas and schemes he had for the future were exclusively for the usage of his family, but some of them were dangerous enough in his mind, that not even exposure to it should be allowed for third parties, in other words they should only be used in a situation where there won't be any witnesses left.
Anyway, the arrows he designed for Kana weren't at that level, so what drew his attention wasn't the Bombardment Arrow perse, but the trident shaped arrow head, Kana used on it as that... wasn't the original arrow head he put on it, in other words the little girl purposedly changed the arrow head to one that drew the attention to it. "That freaking arrow, I purposedly didn't attack it head on, as that weird shaped arrow head seemed especially ominous, to think the real danger wasn't that, luckily it didn't seem to be an arrow developed to deal with a single strong target but multiple weaker ones", mumbled Matt as the dust raised by the many debris which was impacted by the projectiles, was dispersed to reveal his current state.
Though there wasn't any serious wound, he had many scratches and slight cuts on his hands and face, they weren't even bleeding as they weren't deep, but still, the truth is that he got taken by surprise and was furious about it.
Despite the deep hatred that having his face damaged, caused for a dual cultivator like Matt, he calmed down and decided to change his tactic, since giving this much distance was obviously advantageous for the little blond girl.
Originally, he took distance as he got to see one of his subordinates being melted by Vivian, so he thought Kana was also a poison user since she was paired with her, which
is also why he used yang radiance with his sword earlier, but he changed his mind now. With a "swoosh", Matt flashed appearing in front of the little girl, his sword suffered a change out of nowhere as it was cladded in the first level of intent, Ghost Sword to then
be swung at Kana.
"Humph, this can't even compare with a casual slash of big brother's sword", said the little girl as she snorted upon seeing the sword coming towards her, which though made Matt feel humiliated, he had no way to refuse.
After all, he could see the black-haired monster from earlier, slicing through hundreds of enemies just with his swords without using intent, which no one doubted he had given how high his battle prowess appeared to be, that being said, it didn't mean that Matt
couldn't get angrier at such insult.
What he didn't know is that Kana wasn't even referring to that, but to the fact that Aster's sword is "beautiful", since it doesn't seek to start conflict but solve it, sure it is fierce and extremely domineering, it's a sword that exists to protect, even if violence is
required for it.
Hence why Aster doesn't unsheathe his sword unless it is for a good reason, this was also
a lesson the little girl received from him, weapons are for protection not to flaunt, play
or brag about them.
Anyway, having seen the fierceness of Aster's swordsmanship first hand, Kana has been specially prepared to deal with sword users, another one of Aster's intentional preparations, for the little girl, since the sword is the most used weapon by both male and female cultivators, this remained true even at Divine Firmament level. Kana's little earns slightly twitched as she moved to the left, exactly thirty centimeters, perfectly dodging the sword's slash, including the invisible to the eye additional range added by the usage of Ghost Sword.
"What!, Matt's pupils contracted upon the sight of the little girl perfectly dodging his sword, as he couldn't detect any spirit sense coming from her.
"Damn it!", with a loud shout, he released a rain of continuous slashes in a non-sequential order, right, up, left, right, down and the list goes on, just to see Kana perfectly avoiding his sword each time.
While Matt was going crazy not knowing how the little girl was doing it, Aster could perfectly discern what Kana was doing, Ghost Sword might be invisible by default and ethereal against objects that doesn't have intent or runes specialized to deal with it, but it is still solid and as such it produces sound when slashing. The little girl was simply listening to it and calculating the trajectory of the sword, it was as if the wind was "talking to her", a combination of the results of her training to get closer to the wind, her attribute and her contract with Esmeralda, not to mention that during their last date, Kana had decided to train in the soul path, so her senses were bound to become incredibly sharper without the need to use spirit sense.
'Let's see you dodge this!", inwardly screamed Matt, his Ghost Sword became visible, a
side effect of the usage of... second level intent, which happened to be the same type of Aster, Sharpening.
This was a situation caused by his obviously unstable initial stage second level intent,
given that he advanced in it, due to his recent jump in realm, a common thing about dual
cultivators is that while they often advance faster than others, their battle prowess is most of the times behind their peers.
However, while the strength behind his attack didn't increase as much as it would happen for skilled sword users like Aster, the property of Sharpening, did cause a major difference, his sword faced way less resistance from the air, long story short, the speed of his slash sky-rocketed.
Given the explosive increase in speed of his slash, Matt was pleased to see Kana not
reacting in time to dodge like earlier, just for the mile which was barely forming on his mouth to die the moment a metal colliding sound rang all over the place. "Clang!", the metal clashing sound as well as sparks were produced due to his sword
making contact with a pair of pretty green jaded gauntlets, which forcefully deviated his slash to the side.
Now imagine his expression when Kana vanished into thin air, to then appear at his right, with her little hand closed into a fist which then punched at his sides. "Gah!", Matt was sent flying a few dozens of meters before he could stop his retreat,
however a puncturing pain then invaded his body making him bent for a second before he flashed in random directions as he was reminded of how the little girl suddenly vanished out of his range of detection, taking distance once again.
While coughing due to the previous punch, Matt inwardly cursing at the fact that the
little girl turned out to not be weak in close combat, despite being an archer, courtesy of Aster and Esmeralda's training.
'Fucking hell... no calm down, I would have killed her if she didn't have those damn gauntlets, that bastard is surely filthy rich, perhaps I can exchange her corpse for some money from him, thought Matt as he recomposed himself.
In his mind, green jade gauntlets which Kana used were of course spirit treasures, given
how they could directly make contact with his sword which was cladded with first and second level sword intent and come out completely unscathed.
"Let's see you buy your way out of this!", Matt's body exploded in fire spirit energy, he
decided to change to middle ranked battle by continuously bombarding the enemy with energy attacks.
After all, he as a peak Star Tribulation energy path dual cultivator, naturally has higher
energy reserves than the little girl, not only because of his higher realm but also because dual cultivators are especially talented in the manipulation of spirit energy given how they deal with either yin or yang energies often, not to mention that his fire attribute
happens to be strong against wind, which happens to be the attribute that the little girl has shown to possess.
"Fire Tsunami!", all the spirit energy gathered by Matt, exploded in every direction
turning into a sea of flames that surged towards Kana, aiming to engulf and burn her to a
crisp.
"What a shame, I won't be able to thoroughly make her suffer, but I have wasted too much time and that white haired girl might recover at any second, so it's better to end
things and leave before that monstrous bastard comes this way, thought Matt as he injected more and more spirit energy into the sea of flames. "Whirlwind", a pretty mellow voice interrupted Matt's inner monologue, what followed was a large amount of green wind emerging from the center of the sea of flames, raising
high into the sky, then to Matt's disbelief, the sea of flames lost its bright orange tone before it actually died down in less than a second. "Impossible!", he exclaimed, it took him nearly a whole minute to gather the spirit energy
needed to use that spirit technique and while the whirlwind reached a big height, its width was of only around two meters with the little girl being at its center.
So not only the little girl protected herself with a wind attribute spirit technique against
a fire one, but she also overwhelmed it with way less spirit energy, which shouldn't be possible.
How could he know that a certain green haired girl living inside Kana, hated having her
wind looked down by fire cultivators, hence why she learned and trained in a way to deal with them.
"My, what a fierce wind', jokingly said Aster to Esmeralda who proudly answered. 'Of course, how does such a trash fire dare to look down on my contractor's wind, when
even spirit fires wouldn't dare to mess with me back then! Leaving the strangely enthusiastic Esmeralda, which Aster found rather cute by the way, this technique which Kana was taught by Esmeralda was both simple but hard, she swept away all the fire spirit energy in the vicinity which basically made the fire to loseNôv(el)B\\jnn
the material used to burn, thus making it easy for the wind to suffocate it, resulting in needing way less wind spirit energy to deal with a fire attribute spirit technique.
It doesn't sound complex, but the precision needed at the moment of manipulating the
wind was incredibly high, which reaffirmed the monstrous talent that the little girl had, given that she learned the basics of it in less than a month!
Sure, she had a literal incarnation of wind as her teacher and her wind attribute is by no
means normal, but still, it took a year to Esmeralda to bring this technique to a usable
point. Speaking of Esmeralda, she who had remained silent during the whole fight as it was a test of some kind for the little girl, spoke in a frequency that only Kana could hear. 'I get that you want to impress him, but you can't keep this level of battle prowess for too long, she said, to which the little girl pouted but ultimately inwardly nodded. 'Mm, I got a bit carried away, she mumbled, though Kana hadn't used her trump card, namely elemental synchronization, or her "older form" as she casually calls it very much against Esmeralda's wishes, as it makes it sound way less important than it is, given it is the expression of a contractor with a spirit element.
She has indeed used not only her special wind but also the jade change, which does put a strain on the little girl's body, it was perfectly understandable, let's not forget she is dealing with a peak Star Tribulation with a secondary body path, cultivator.
And she was completely suppressing him, without the need to use too much energy,
unlike back at Esmeralda's realm when she had to go all out just to punch Ley and not really wound him seriously.
Feeling satisfied with the results she had showed to her beloved big brother, Kana touched her belt and drew out another arrow, which made Matt who was previously frozen in shock, immediately retreat and rise his guard.
After all no matter how stupid or arrogant one was, after being literally lectured by at
little girl younger and technically weaker than him, about dropping his guard he wouldn't commit the same mistake.
Also, this time the head of the arrow had an irregular shape, it was a drill shaped one,
Kana's right hand was suddenly cladded in a pretty green jade gauntlet, as she placed
the arrow on the bow.
It's worth mentioning that while her left hand wasn't cladded in a jade gauntlet, it didn't
cover the arrow unlike what she did during her last date with Aster, since she half did it unconsciously. Just like using Ghost Arrow, Kana couldn't change the jade gauntlet into an attack at will, in fact she didn't even remember it and Aster reached the conclusion that neither him nor Esmeralda should tell her, to not pressure her, she was already jumping a few steps by using Ghost Arrow, and Esmeralda told Aster that changing the jade gauntlet into an
arrow could harm her if she did it without the experience needed to manipulate her jade attribute properly.
However, that didn't mean Kana didn't learn something new thanks to that moment of inspiration, she could now use both the jade and wind attributes simultaneously one with her right and one with left hands, as the green currents of wind that gathered on
the arrow suggested.
"Cyclone Arrow", with her mellow voice as its sign, the arrow left the bow and turned
into a horizontal tornado that flew at high speed towards the enemy who felt his body
being forcefully dragged towards it.
"Damn it", exploding in fire, Matt propelled himself to avoid the fierce tornado, he burned through a third part of his spirit energy reserves in a matter of seconds but ultimately managed to escape the suction of the tornado which flew past him. Panting but still satisfied after dodging what he judged to be the ultimate attack of the little girl, Matt glared at Kana to then say.
"The next time, ask your mighty "big brother" to teach you how to kill a stronger enemy in a sure way, specially if you are going to use such a large amount of spirit energy...", Matt's words died in his throat as he saw the tornado from earlier returning from afar. But unlike what he expected the thing passed at quite a long distance from his position,
as if it was completely ignoring him, to then dissolve into countless wisps of spirit energy that returned to Kana's body.
What's more, the arrow she shot gently landed on her hand to then be sent back into belt, before both her bow and chest armor disappeared.
"You little...", the sight of the enemy keeping her weapon, was the last strand needed for
Matt to lose it, it basically meant that he wasn't considered a threat anymore, but he was
perfectly fine, or so he thought because the next second, he realized that... he couldn't move his body.