YoTS January ~ 50!

CHAPTER 50

Damage dealt: 19.45 Piercing damage. (critical multiplier: 1.5) Major bleed debuff added” -50 health per second!

Grant pulled back his sword and cut his way out of the thin metal. A strange, pained warble could be heard from where he had attacked. Slashing an opening, he pulled himself up onto the platform with Lord January. Blood was pouring out of the huge man, but the wound was getting noticeably smaller even as Grant looked on.

Not wasting another moment, Grant drove his sword deep into the mountain of flesh sitting before him.  Again, and again, deep wounds were torn open across the Lord of the Month’s back.

Damage dealt: 19.65 Piercing damage. (critical multiplier: 1.5) Major bleed debuff added” -30 health per second!

Every hit was a critical hit. On his final attack, Grants drove the sword far enough that it slammed into something solid, and stuck. His hands slick with blood, Grant’s sword slipped from his grasp as he tried to pull it back.

“What do you want, brat?” Lord January had turned his head so that he could see the young man stabbing him. “Are you tired already?”

“H-how are you not dying?” Grant’s words were a whisper, but might as well have been a shout in the dead silence that had overtaken the parade grounds. “Fatal wounds are fatal wounds!”

“A follower of tautology, are you? A thousand years of physical cultivation, eighteen hours a day. You do the math.” Lord January actually paused to let Grant do the calculations.

“S-six and a half million hours of cultivation? You have a quarter million points of health?” Grant couldn’t think of anything more to say.

“Close enough that it literally doesn’t matter.” Lord January sighed and looked at the sword that had gone through his chest and pinned his plate to the table. “With your ability, you could carve out my heart, and I’d still just grow a new one before I died.”

“Are you not even going to defend yourself?”

“There’s what my apparently useless guards and Vassals are meant for.” Lord January looked around at the people closing in, and casually waved them off. “Now, answer me. Why are you doing this?”

“I… I want to live.” Grant admitted as he reached forward and grasped the handle of his blade again.

“Not always what it’s cracked up to be.” Lord January spat a mouthful of blood to the side.

“I have a quest to heal the world. I think… I’m pretty sure it would drop the barriers.” Grant’s words made Lord January blanch, and pure fear could be seen in his face; the first time in this exchange that his face had shifted at all.

“I could be free again?” The whispered words were completely outside what Grant had been expecting to hear. “I’d never survive… not like this. But if you’re here… that means the barriers are failing either way.”

“What do you-?”

“Who do you think designed the framework for adapting a Leap Sorcerer spell into a workable format for that Regent?” Lord January snarled even as his hands reached for food to calm his mind. He stopped as if he had been shocked. “No… my training needs to restart immediately. This… one way or another, I’m a dead man if I stay like this.”

“How could anyone kill you?” Grant looked at the flowing blood that had stanunched itself in the few moments they had been speaking.

The words reminded Lord January of their current predicament. He looked down at the gaping wound, and sighed. “Every four years, for a thousand years, someone has come after me with this stupid sword. Every time, they die before I ever see them, and this thing is tossed in the vault until the end of the year. It really is a cursed blade, you know. If you don’t pass it’s ‘tests’, it will turn on you and kill you on its own.”

The offhanded explanation shook Grant, but he knew that he had passed at least one test of the sword. “I need you to submit to me, Lord January. I’m going to do whatever it takes.”

“Why?”

“My quest. I need to kill, or defeat, all the Lords and Ladies of the month before the end of the year. If killing you is out of the question…”

“Ah… the sword steals our fragment? That must be the case. How else would you move through the barrier?” Lord January mused as blood pooled on his table, following the sword from the torn chest and along the blade. “I don’t know if you have what it takes… but I don’t care too much. Have a proper fight with my Prime Vassal, and if you win, I’ll concede to you and go into secluded training for the remainder of this year. Do you accept?”

“I don’t have a choice.” Grant yanked on his sword, pulling it free with an organic *slurp*. “I accept.”

The young man looked at the parade grounds, and hopped over the low wall, landing on the grass near a few guards that were still wondering if they should skewer him.

System Sanctioned Duel! You have accepted Lord January’s offer of a duel against his champion! If you win, you will have defeated Lord January, by his own terms. If you lose… no terms have been set! Any outside interference or attacks on the opposing party will be returned to the attacker, and result in an instant loss for the side of the interferer.

The System cannot be tricked.

A discharge of lightning blasted past Grant’s ear as Lord January bellowed in fury. The massive man had barely been able to turn his sneak attack against the young man to the side. A guard that had come too close was hit by the lightning and instantly collapsed as a smoking husk. “What is this…? A duel? I was getting his guard down!”

Grant looked at the dead man, then back to Lord January, terrified of the power this man had just wielded against him. The Lord waved at the guards, looking at his food hungrily. “Someone get Randall over here right now. Someone else, get this food away from me. I said someone else!”

The strange orders were carried out as swiftly as possible, and not even an hour later Randall came running onto the parade grounds. The man was gasping for air, and he was frantic to learn what was happening. “My… Lord… the sword is gone! What’s… you!”

Randall had locked his eyes upon Grant , and he lifted a shaking figure to point it at the young man. “You stole the sword again?”

Grant carelessly stepped onto the grounds and started walking around. The people watched him moving around for seemingly no reason, Randall staring at him as if he were seeing a ghost. Finally, he felt comfortable that he knew the terrain well enough. “I’m ready.”

<you got="" grant.="" this=""> Sarge told him quietly. <you and="" die="" for="" it.="" mess="" this="" totally="" up="" won=""></you></you>

“…Thanks, Sarge.”

Randall looked at the expectant stares, “Wait, I was brought here to fight him? I don’t have my armor, or-”

“Now you’re worried about someone having an advantage of armor during a duel?” Grant scathingly called at his opponent. He leveled his sword at Randall’s heart, “That did not seem to be a problem earlier?”

Randall’s eyes flashed yellow, and he sneered at Grant with his stained teeth. “My Lord, do I have your permission to go all out against this brat?”

“I don’t even care if there is enough to identify him.” Lord January motioned at his litter carriers. “Get me back to the castle, now!”

The audience had no idea how to process all of these events. Lord January was attacked, didn’t destroy his attacker, and was leaving behind food and entertainment? A thousand years had passed since the last time an event like this had happened, and the sudden shift terrified most of them. Others got angry. One member of the crowd tossed an apple at Grant, but right before it hit him… the apple stopped in the air and whipped back at the man. The projectile impacted with such force that the offending hand was cleanly blown off.

No one else tried to showcase their displeasure by throwing things.

Grant had only taken his eyes off Randall for a moment, but was started into action by an inarticulate scream from Sarge. He dropped and rolled just as a broadsword sliced through the air where he had stood, and impacted the ground hard enough to send a pillar of churned earth into the air.

Now in a defensive position, Grant watched in shock as he saw Randall’s body finish becoming fully coated in a yellow light. Steam was rising off the man, and although he wasn’t moving any faster, he was clearly leagues stronger than he had been just a moment ago. “Oh, you’re alive.”

The casualness to the words made Grant want to run screaming, but he held his ground and hoped he could manage to fend off whatever this was. Randall stood to his full height, slowly straightening his spine one vertebrae at a time. “No one likes using this spell, Grant. But. It. Feels. Good.”

The huge man bent and stomped. Pure strength sent the man rocketing at Grant in a straight line, while a cloud of dirt showered the audience with rubble. Seeing that Randall would have no way to turn, Grant jumped and rolled to the side. He underestimated what the big man was able to do. Randall slammed his sword straight down, stopping his momentum and pulling to once more be moving through the air at his target.

Unable to dodge in his current position, Grant frantically blocked the sword coming at him. With a tremendous *clang* of steel, he went flying backward, and February Twenty Nine went sailing through the air.

Damage taken: 22 blunt/slashing! (9.25 mitigated.)

Current health: 88/184.

Grant looked at his shaking hands as blood poured down them. He probably should have waited until his health had returned to more than one hundred before joining combat. Where he had held his sword, his skin was torn and the flesh was deeply bruised. Looking up at Randall, he was startled at the changes in the man before him. The Vassal had shrunk, his total mass having decreased by at least a quarter since the start of the battle.

“Do you know why no one wants to use the elemental spell of Impure Earth?” Randall breezily mentioned as he crossed the distance and yanked Grant to his feet. “While it instantly triples our strength and defense, it wastes vast amounts of resources to make that happen. It’ll take me a year or more to get back to where I was. Even so… even so, it was worth it to ensure that my Lord’s concerns were laid to rest right away. We’ve had our fun. Time to die.”