The device had all sorts of vision-related applications, and she was grateful for it. She examined Ulrok, noticing that he was already spiraling his gray-green madra to his sword. The signature Forger technique of his Path, she was sure.
Mercy smiled and dipped her head to him.
Northstrider waited a moment longer, then raised a hand. “Begin!”
Ulrok’s blade whipped in a slash in front of him, Forged madra surrounding it in a ghostly echo. The gray light passed over her.
Mercy covered herself in crystalline armor.
The Ghost Blade technique crashed against the amethyst plates and broke, while Mercy raised Suu. The staff was already in its bow form, its draconic head glaring from the center of the staff, a string of sticky black madra connecting the two ends.
She raised it in gauntleted hands, Forging her String of Shadow into a rigid arrow. The technique was normally a flexible rope of darkness and force, but with practice, she could use it to make arrows.
A Striker technique howled at her like a phantom, and she let it splash against her armor again.
The Akura bloodline armor was well-known and had well-documented weaknesses. It put great pressure on the spirit of the user, it was difficult to control, and repeated attacks could force her to use madra to reinforce it.
Unhurried, she layered another technique onto her arrow. The Enforcer technique from her second page: Dark Tide Incantation.
The light dimmed further and a shadow clung to her arrow, though it was barely visible. This technique carried both spiritual and physical weight.
Ulrok dashed in, closing the gap, slashing with his saber. Not only that, but he had begun gathering the sword and death aura in the air to a point beneath her.
Mercy leaped up and back, spinning away from his weapon, keeping her concentration on the arrow.
This was all textbook for fighting an Akura. Rapid, agile movements were difficult in the armor, and executing them took extra madra. Keeping the armor up at all was a burden, and it became more so as her defense took a beating.
The plan was to keep up a barrage of weak attacks to force her to exhaust herself with her own defense.
But since those weaknesses were so widely known, any Akura at the Lord stage regularly trained to overcome them.
Her Puppeteer’s Iron body made controlling her body effortless as she twisted again in the air, avoiding more Striker techniques. Long practice and training kept her spirit composed as she layered on her third page technique: the Nightworm Venom.
The tip of her arrow took on a dull green cast.
A screaming geyser of green-and-gray madra pierced up from the ground where she was about to land, but she’d seen the Ruler technique through her lens before it formed.
She landed with the geyser an inch away from her face, pulling back her bowstring and taking aim.
As Ulrok dashed in, she layered a final technique onto the arrow: the Shadow’s Edge. Harmony’s favored technique.
More techniques formed inside Ulrok’s spirit, and he charged her like a bull. He was only three feet away, swinging his saber, when she released her arrow.
He gave her a feral, painted grin and unleashed his own prize from the tournament.
A network of bright orange spots bloomed around him, connecting with fiery lines. A matrix of protective madra.
Mercy knew about it already.
Though it was an Archlord instrument, it was gentle enough to be handled easily by Underlords. However, its output scaled down to the power of the user’s spirit.
The arrow, seething with four shades of darkness, punched through.
As expected of an Uncrowned King fighter, he reacted in time, moving his saber back to catch the arrow.
The impact punched his weapon back into his own chest, throwing him back twenty feet.
The arrow melted into him.
Mercy let her armor fade away into essence as her combination of techniques squirmed inside him, making him scream, disabling his spirit and eating away at his madra channels.
She winced at the sound and wanted to apologize. It was a competition, so she had to try her best, but she knew from experience how painful that was. She would have preferred to win in a gentler way.
Her bow shifted back to a staff, and she held herself with poise as she waited for him to die. Constructs would be watching her right now, and she had to do her mother proud.
Mercy had to defeat Sophara, and it would help the family if she looked like someone who could do it.
The gold dragons had gone overboard in preparing Sophara for the tournament. Too far. It was as though they’d crammed every enhancement they could think of into one body.
Mercy didn’t know how Sophara could possibly control so much power. There had to be drawbacks.
And if the dragon won Penance, she would use it on Akura Malice immediately. Her great-grandfather would make sure of it.
Mercy worried for her mother, of course, but not too much. Even knowing the danger, she found it hard to bite her nails and fret about the safety of a woman who could literally scoop up mountains in her hand.
She was far more frightened for the rest of her family.
Malice would choose to die rather than leave the world, Mercy was sure. And with her dead, Fury and Charity would take over, but Fury was uncontrollable and Charity unknowable. They would have to allow the Dreadgods to invade the Blackflame Empire as Reigan Shen wished, and though they would evacuate as much of the populace as they could, thousands of miles of territory would be destroyed.
And without a Monarch of their own, the family would become easy prey for the others.
Just like House Arelius.
She calmed herself, steeling her nerves against the screaming that had faded to whimpering. Mercy wasn’t like her mother, born to the battlefield. But she was good at competitions.
And she would do her duty.
The roof of shadow madra split enough to allow her to hear the Ninecloud Soul declare, “Victory!”
Mercy raised her hand and smiled to the crowd.
5
The nighttime streets of Ninecloud City didn’t differ much from the daytime. The surrounding towers and buildings were all brightly colored and many of them glowed, so the rainbow radiance didn’t dim so much as it softened.
Lindon stood in front of the Sundown Pavilion, a wide four-story restaurant lit by shining red-and-orange constructs. Hanging gardens spilled out the front of every window, dotted with burning flowers that gave off strong fire aura.
[You know, showing up early just means you have to wait,] Dross observed.
Lindon would have traveled from the Akura guest tower with Yerin, but Eithan had insisted they meet at the restaurant. He still wasn’t sure why.
At least Eithan had provided reasonable clothes. They were elaborate multi-layered robes in a style Eithan liked to wear, more suitable for greeting a respected visitor than for fighting, but they weren’t in the bright colors Eithan preferred.
They were primarily black, highlighted with decorative red scripts that glowed scarlet. On the back, where Lindon had expected the symbol of the Akura family, was a snarling dragon-turtle that also glowed red and orange.
They had clearly been designed for Lindon, and he hadn’t questioned why Eithan had them. Or why they fit perfectly.
Sometimes he just didn’t want to know.
Lindon’s hair had been brushed and oiled, and a team of Akura servants had applied some kind of cream to his face. He felt like he had layers of paint caked on his cheeks, but he only looked impossibly clean.
He was keeping his spiritual perception tightly restrained, trying to avoid sensations from everyone and everything on the street, so he didn’t notice Yerin had arrived until he heard her low whistle.