Kaiser of the New World

Time moved in slow motion as Ezekial's sword descended. Its light started to illuminate the cavern as it grew brighter and brighter, its raw power utterly destructive.

Soon, the entire cavern was engulfed in a blinding light. Nothing was visible, nothing could be seen.

But things could be heard.

A thunderous crash erupted from the middle of the bright light that reached the skies. A gargantuan cloud of dust shot outward as the light slowly dimmed, managing to conceal everything once more.

Ezekial, in the centre of the cloud of dust, let out a soft sigh. His body twitched, a side effect of the sudden disharmony he had caused, but that was it. The only consequence of him using such an incredible skill was a twitch of his body.

His eyes narrowed as he realised he had to find Castillian, and quickly.  The Plague Harbinger was not an easy enemy to capture, it took a lot out of Ezekial and he had to trick the beast, luring into the perfect environment.

So Ezekial knew that this would be a rough night.

Turning around, Ezekial crouched, getting to jump out of the cavern, when he suddenly heard a soft breath behind him.

It was incredibly faint, almost imperceptible, but he was sure that he had heard it.

Turning around, Ezekial looked around as the dust began to settle. He examined the area, which had been wrecked even more by him unleashing his attack.

But there was nothing there that could have let out a breath, no animals, no people...

No body.

Eyes widening, Ezekial lifted his sword up to protect his neck just as he felt something hit against it. He skidded backwards a few meters before steadying himself.

"Shit..."

Kai cursed as he deactivated his invisibility. There was no point keeping it active any longer. It was more of a one chance thing, as soon as Ezekial realised that he was invisible he would simply just nuke the whole area in Equilibrium or something, or he would maybe have a skill that countered something like that.

So sadly, the attack had failed, meaning Kai had to get back to engaging Ezekial in pure combat.

Ezekial stood still, blankly staring at Kai. The boy had blood trickling down his forehead, and his visible skin was caked in dust, but that was it.

Somehow, that was all he had suffered after enduring the full force of his most powerful attack.

Ezekial's eye twitched.

"You... how are you still alive?"

Kai grinned.

"You thought you could get rid of me so easily? Sorry Cotton Candy, but we're connected. It's fate, and ain't nobody escaping fat-"

"Enough!"

Kai stopped talking after Ezekial's sudden shout. He was a little disapointed, as he was about to explain how he would survived. It would buy him even more time to just have a conversation mid fight, so why wouldn't he?

To put it simply, the way he had survived was...

Chrome Skin.

To be more precise, it was because of one of the abilities of the Rare set of armour.

Because of the nature of the chrome that forms this armour, the wearer will be able to take 50% less damage from one attack. Cooldown is 24 hours from the moment the user selects which attack to endure.

It was a little bit of a shame that he had to use it so early in the fight, but he had no other option.

Even when he faced the attack, Kai had managed to deflect some of it at the last moment, but he still lost just over half of his health from that damned attack even after he had nullified 50% of it, meaning he 100% would have died if he tried to tank it normally.

Then, taking advantage of the chaos and dust, he made use of Esurient's single stored soul and turned invisible, attempting to land a cheap shot on Ezekial.

It had obviously failed.

And even worse, Kai was bluffing.

He only had a little under half of his health remaining, but he couldn't let Ezekial know that. He was pretending that he had a lot more left than he actually had.

And while he the only visible injury he had was the blood of his forehead, his body under his armour was wrecked. All of his bones, muscles, ligaments, even his tendons, all of them were aching horribly. It was like they had been whacked out of sync.

... Only further solidifying that Kai's theory about Ezekial was right.

"Enough of your tricks! I do not know how you are doing it, but I am done!"

Suddenly, Ezekial's body started to glow a putrid shade of red. Unlike the previous glows that felt comforting, even beautiful, this shade was... terrifying.

It was like it was gnawing away at Kai's soul just being near it, slowly weakening him.

It wasn't just his body that started to glow red though, even his pupils started to turn an ominous shade.

Kai had a theory about what Ezekial had done, but he couldn't be sure, not yet at least.

"What's with the red. Wait... don't tell me..."

A horrified expression crawled its way onto Kai's face. He lifted a trembling hand up to cover his mouth and said:

"Is your hair also going to turn red? No, you can't do that! What about your cotton candy hair? I don't think there's red cotton candy, so how about you just turn it pink instead of red? I promise it would look better. Plus, I already have red hair, so what if someone is watching this, how would they tell the difference between us, it would be way too confus-"

Ezekial snarled and launched himself at Kai, cutting him short. Panicking ever so slightly, Kai blocked Ezekial's attacks with Esurient, only to feel much more strength behind the blow than any previous attacks.

It was at that moment Kai knew he was right, and it was all because of something that Ezekial had said back when he had been training him.

That his sword style relied on his body being in perfect harmony.

It also made sense with Equilibrium. Hell, the word itself meant a state of balance, so it made perfect sense.

But what Ezekial had done now, he had thrown away that harmony in favour of pure strength.

Raw, unimaginable strength.

Kai struggled more now to block than when Ezekial had the seven flames floating behind him. Before, he had been ever so slightly more predictable using his wonky future sight, but now he was a complete enigma.

And even worse, Kai had completly lost all momentum that he had when Ezekial unleashed that attack, and he wasn't able to gain it back.

Even though he had seen three possible outcomes of the future, Kai could accurately predict which one would happen because Ezekial had focused on ending the fight as quickly as possible, but that wasn't working anymore.

Because instead of Ezekial aiming to end the fight as quickly as possible, he was now aiming to cripple Kai as quickly as possible.

While it may sound like the exact same thing that he was attempting just moments ago, there was one stark difference.

One was Ezekial trying to cut his head off, the other was him trying to break all his bones, crush his lungs, snap his neck, gouge his eyes and a whole lot more instead.

Kai was instantly overwhelmed. His body and Esurient tried their hardest to hold Ezekial off, but they were both slowly failing, especially after he had tanked that Equilibrium.

Ezekial's sword had turned into a weapon of mass destruction, as if it hadn't been bad enough already.

Every single attack that Kai blocked made his bones grow weaker, made his breathing labour, made his body slowly start shutting down.

But he was still doing his job perfectly, by now, a whole minute and a half had passed.

Fuck!

Even though time was passing,it honestly wasn't passing quickly enough, especially now since Ezekial held such an overwhelming advantage against him.

However, all of that changed the very next moment.

Kai was pushed back by another one of Ezekial's attacks. This time, he actually skidded, having to dig his feet into the ground to catch himself.

It was then he noticed Ezekial crouching down, about to jump out of the cavern they had fallen into.

He had switched target. Fighting Kai was taking too long, so he was going to have to run away to find and protect Castillian.

Cursing, Kai watched as Ezekial jumped up. Shockingly, the blue haired swordsman was about to make it out of the cavern in a single jump, making Kai wonder what sort of stats you needed to pull that off.

Luckily, Kai didn't need stats to do that.

He needed a skill instead.

Gritting his teeth, Kai aimed himself at Ezekial and launched himself up. Using Flight to adjust himself, he collided with the swordsman mid air.

Gripping onto his waist, Kai braced himself as they crashed through one of the many windows of the castle.

Both of them rolled along the floor, crashing into a wall as a wave of broken glass descended on the.

Groaning, Kai ignored the broken shards of glass clinging to his face in favour of standing up. Ezekial had already gotten on his feet, glaring at Kai, his eyes turning an even darker shade of red.

Without warning, they lunged and slashed at Kai. Desparately, Kai deflected, managing to make Ezekial's sword slide of his own and embed itself in the wall.

Ezekial then punched the hilt of his sword, somehow managing to free the weapon instantly before continuing his brutal assault.

Kai managed to block every attack at the last moment, the volume of his groans growing with every passing second.

Soon, he had been backed up against the wall, nowhere else to dodge.

Roaring, Ezekial launched a downward slash on Kai, who had managed to block it at the last second.

However, because of that block, he had been forced to take a knee as Ezekial pressed down on him, his eyes shining madly as he grinned down at Kai.

Kai's own sword slowly got pressed further and further towards him, Ezekial's getting even closer to his neck.

Racking his brain for any way out, Kai...

Couldn't think of anything he could make use of.

So instead, he let it fall down to luck.

Temporarily letting go of Esurient, Kai rolled to the side as Ezekial's sword cut into the floor where Kai previously was.

Then, without hesitation, Kai stood up and-

Punched Ezekial in the face.

Quickly grabbing Esurient and hopping away, Kai hesitantly watched Ezekial as they stood compltetetly still.

A singular drop of blood trickled down their lip before it landed in the palm of his hand. Slowly, Ezekial lifted his head to look at Kai.

"You... did you just punch me?"

The red aura surrounding Ezekial got even darker, his eyes turning almost black.

Kai swallowed.

For some reason, he felt that their fight was going to get a lot more physical rather than relying on their swords.

*Author Note*

I've been thinking about this the last few days, so I decided to ask my incredibly smart readers.

As you are all aware, the early stages of this novel are not really that good, and it was in those early stages that I wrote the description of the story, the thing that is meant to catch people's eye and make them read.

But looking at it now... it doesn't look that good.

So I'm wondering should I rewrite the description or should I leave it as it is?