Scarlet

After making a rather short and simple plan, we get right to it. Emily begins using her Viral Diffusion skill, sending a mist of viruses and illnesses that quickly goes through the window and begins to lightly coat the second floor of the tower.

We start with this because none of them – including Falling Sun – should be able to sense her magic usage out here, making it safe to use.

Then after she finishes diffusing it through the floor, I pick her up and quickly jump straight into the air and through the window of the second floor before landing on the ground in a room close to the stairs but not directly visible by them. I put Emily down and activate a myriad of skills, including blood sacrifice, pain diffusion, blood claws, and partial shift before having my blood shadow jump through the window as well, landing directly behind us. And to top it all off, I use blood armor to create five plates of hardened magical blood around my body, the limit to the skill having raised after it reached level five to five. The plates are located on my chest, stomach, neck, upper back, and lower back to cover all of my most important vitals that it is able to cover.

Unfortunately it can’t make a helmet yet, but apparently it’ll be able to do that at level ten. So I just have to be patient.

One complaint I have about the blood armor skill though is that it’s rather uncomfortable. My magi-tech gear already is a bit tight even after I changed out the top just so that it doesn’t shift at all, which is especially uncomfortable around the chest area. And the blood armor skill just makes that even worse.

Good thing discomfort is apparently included in pain nullification though.

I should remember that if I’m ever forced to wear a dress or something.

“You’d look nice in a dress though,” Tar suddenly says, complimenting me, but just the thought of wearing a dress has me shivering.

No thank you.

Anyways, I listen for Falling Sun’s exact position again to find him not having moved an inch before I nod to Emily and begin slowly making my way around the curved hallway we’re in towards the stairs. And right when I feel we’re about to get within sight of him, I jump at the wall opposite me, entering his sight in the process. Then I land on the wall and jump off of it straight towards him while using blood boil and life drain.

Emily also rushes forwards and uses her maladies skill along with the necrotic blades, a new skill she’d gotten called Mental Corruption, which basically just floods the target’s system with a type of poison that is very much like alcohol, just much, much stronger, making their responses sluggish for a period of time. And when I land in front of him, Emily uses Corruptive Sacrifice, causing all of the various illnesses that are in him to burn at once, which in conjunction with my blood boil and life drain have him dropping to his knees, his jaw tensed despite some amount of foam building up in his mouth and leaking. But before he can do anything, I reach forward and swipe my claws straight across his face and down his neck.

Right as I’m about to grin from how great that went, I see a shadow go up into the air and turn my head to find a large ball of magma having shot up from the ground into the air behind us.

“Shit, no!” I whisper shout, only for the ball of magma to suddenly explode, making me wince at just how loud the noise is. But pain diffusion makes it so I can tolerate the noise as I focus on Emily and nod my head. She quickly nods back, and I turn around to find Falling sun already vanishing, having died while I was looking at the firework of a ball of magma.

There goes any hope of surprising the other two as well.

I ignore the stream of blood I have flowing from the ground into my claws thanks to blood siphon as I run up the stairs with Emily behind me. And once we pass through the third floor and enter the fourth, we both quickly find Songstress and Ace standing in the room waiting for us.

Ace has short black hair with a set of stripes going down the side of his head, each stripe only being about half an inch in width and alternating between yellow, blue, and black, and is wearing a magi-tech set of armor made to look just like a tuxedo. Meanwhile, Songstress has long flowing navy blue hair and is wearing armor that looks like a long flowing black dress with a slit down one side of it to allow for movement. Although I have to question that since the slit is rather revealing. But it’s her choice what she wears, so not my place to say anything.

Both of them are also on the balconies overlooking the fourth floor from the fifth, the two not being directly combat related Guardians and therefore likely wanting to keep their distance.

“Looks like I really did underestimate you,” Ace says with a light shake of his head. He then looks at Songstress, the girl giving him a bit of a death stare as he does so. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. I should’ve done better as the leader.”

The girl just nods at that without saying a word before they both focus on me and Emily again.

“I know we can’t win this,” Ace says with a shrug. “Not against the Class I Solo Prime student from Lion’s Heart.”

“Then why don’t you just give up?” Emily calls out to him, making him laugh in the process.

“Give up?” he eventually asks before shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

Good. Would’ve made this a lot more boring.

And we should have plenty of time before Shifter can get here, so I can take the time to hunt these two before destroying their core.

Almost don’t want to destroy it though just to get the satisfaction of fighting Shifter.

Ace suddenly raises his hand, making a small deck of ten cards appear in front of him with mist covering the undersides of the cards as he says, “How about we get this game underway then, shall we?”