Last Born Of The Desdemona

Chapter 305: Chapter 305: Opening Ceremony [12]

Chapter 305 – Opening Ceremony [12]

Cassius’s left eye shifted completely into its draconic form.

He looked at Klaus and Love beneath him, still wondering about their relationship, then, with a wave of his hand, blood splattered underneath them, forming a protective dome.

He did the same for Georgina and Omm a little farther away. After that, he sent both domes as far as possible from himself and Copycat.

He glanced at his crystal, briefly regretting that he didn’t have a Shadow affinity. It would have been useful for hiding it properly.

He didn’t dwell on that thought long, though. He summoned thirteen crimson portals, positioned above and below the crystal itself. Crimson chains poured out, interlocking so tightly that the crystal disappeared entirely beneath a layer of them.

Next, the ground beneath the crystal burned to ash, letting the crystal and its chains sink down, before Cassius sealed it over with hardened blood.

The thirteen portals remained visible, but nothing else did.

That was the best he could manage. Now all that remained was finishing this Opening Ceremony.

"Let’s finish this." Cassius said to Copycat, who’d been confident enough to let him hide the crystal without interference.

Truthfully, Copycat didn’t care much about winning the Ceremony. For the second year, the rewards simply weren’t worth the effort of a Palatine, especially one like Copycat, who already had everything he wanted, thanks to his mother.

This whole Opening Ceremony was really just a minor event meant to build camaraderie between the first and second years.

What Copycat actually cared about, in that moment, was fighting Cassius with everything he had.

He wanted to know...

"...who’s stronger?" Copycat bellowed, his body tearing through the air with maddening velocity, the sheer force making the surrounding air ripple and shudder as though struck, closing in on Cassius.

Cassius reacted instantly. His thought process, essence manipulation, and lethality had all been sharpened to their peak, thanks to his left eye.

He raised both hands, palms no longer flesh and blood, but crimson fire, white flame, and hissing golden lightning wrapped around them.

Then, with all his strength, he clapped his palms together, producing a sound so loud and absolute it felt like the world itself had exploded.

An intense, blistering shockwave erupted from the impact, incinerating everything in its path, slamming into the speeding Copycat with the force of an oceanic wave in a raging storm.

The second-year Palatine was hurled backward like a flipped coin, spinning violently through the air, his body scorched red by the shockwave’s heat.

He clenched his jaw against the pain, controlling his body’s spin and forming a platform of bone in midair to catch himself.

He lifted his head, eyes widening as he spotted Cassius in front of him, a pair of white wings unfurled behind him, the sun’s light framing him like a descending angel.

But Bishop’s focus locked on Cassius’s hands wielding dual swords — one crimson fire, one white flame — cleaving down toward him with merciless precision.

Copycat’s mind raced. He borrowed Joykiller’s Skill to conjure two bone swords, shrouding them in his black flame.

He lightened both arms using Fat Bastard’s Skill, letting him raise and swing them fast enough to intercept the strikes, then reweighted them mid-swing to add stability and power.

The two attacks collided with a resounding clang of metal, Copycat’s arms strong enough that Cassius’s own arms rebounded from the force.

Cassius’s two swords were flung aside, spiraling through the air above him, his body staggering. Meanwhile, Copycat was already counterattacking, both arms striking together from the left, aimed at Cassius’s neck.

Cassius jumped, a burst of fire beneath his feet propelling him just as the two bone swords swished past below.

The maneuver left Copycat’s chest fully exposed.

Cassius flipped backward in the air, targeting Copycat’s chest with both flaming legs, then detonated the cluster of blood smeared beneath his feet on impact.

Copycat’s eyes bulged with shock and pain as his body was hurled toward the ground, blood spraying, his skin burned so thoroughly his bones showed through.

Cassius gave him no time to recover, summoning a crimson portal behind the falling Copycat. Chains spilled out rapidly, lashing toward the Palatine like a nest of snakes finally spotting vulnerable prey.

The chains surrounded him from every side, closing in like a spider’s web tightening around its catch.

But Copycat’s body vanished just before the trap sealed shut.

Cassius, still speeding toward where Copycat had been, widened his eyes at the sight.

He snapped his head left and spotted Bishop, wielding a two-handed axe forged entirely from molten rock, already mid-swing toward his neck, ready to cleave it clean off.

Cassius barely had time to raise both hands into an X-shape, blocking the strike with his bare palms.

He coughed blood as he was sent flying earthward at breakneck speed, wind howling so violently blood trickled from his ears.

Barely a second later, his back slammed into the ground with tremendous force, the impact knocking every ounce of breath from his lungs, choking him. His body sank into the earth, gouging out a crater, sending shattered rock and dust flying in every direction.

His breath caught, lungs fractured from the impact. He rolled to his side and coughed, blood and shredded pieces of organ tissue spilling from his lips.

The pain was excruciating, and for a moment, Cassius’s mind swam with dizziness.

Then he sensed something wrong.

He lifted his head and saw a colossal sword made of bone, so vast it seemed to swallow both heaven and earth, descending straight toward him.

’Queen...this fucking bastard.’ Cassius cursed, but attacked immediately.

He raised his right hand, pointing a finger toward the incoming bone sword. He channeled all the blood he’d gathered over days, using his crimson chains as a conduit.

The quantity was staggering.

He condensed it over and over, until the blood shifted from crimson to black. The air around him trembled under the sheer weight of power radiating from it.

But Cassius wasn’t finished.

He fused his white flame into the small ball of blood at his fingertip, blending black and white into perfect harmony.

Beautiful, like a yin-yang symbol balanced flawlessly.

Cassius had no time to appreciate this new level of control over his affinity before he felt the bone sword’s breath closing in.

Just as it was about to reach him, Cassius fired his fusion of fire and blood.

A thin black-and-white line flared from his finger, and the space around him took on that same black-and-white hue.

The temperature spiked to impossible heights, the very ground catching fire.

Before the two attacks even collided, the colossal bone sword began melting. But Copycat reinforced it repeatedly, layering bone upon bone, until the fire could no longer melt it.

Then the two attacks met.

A staggering shockwave detonated outward, hurling both Cassius and Copycat backward.

The two forces were evenly matched, straining against one another for several seconds before a victor emerged.

In the end, Cassius’s attack won out thanks ti the blood within the fusion exploding to feed the fire further.

The line turned pure white, tore straight through the sword, incinerating it into nothingness, then continued upward, reaching the sky.

There, a horrifying yet magnificent sight unfolded, as the clouds of the sky evaporated entirely and the sky itself seemed consumed by ravenous fire.

Across the battlefield, the temperature became utterly hellish.

From above, molten droplets of white flame fell like the sun’s own tears, scorching what little air and stubborn trees remained standing.

Everyone watching, inside and outside the battlefield, stared wide-eyed, sweating as though they could feel the heat themselves.

They couldn’t, not truly. Copycat could, but he didn’t waste time dwelling on it.

He pressed his relentless assault, forcing Cassius to glance down and notice green seeds tinged with purple sprouting from the soil.

’Laya’s Aspect??’ He thought, alarmed.

Then the seeds bloomed into flowers, each one centered around the small, weeping face of a green-purple child.

Cassius’s eyes widened as he scrambled to evade the maddened shriek erupting from the flowers, a shriek whose sole purpose was to amplify one’s deepest fears.

The Last Born was fast, but his wounds slowed him down, forcing him to bitterly absorb 90% of the attack’s effect.

His mind became flooded with images of his entire family dying in the most horrific ways imaginable.

The same way he’d once witnessed, back on Earth, while playing the game.

Then came the sight of Isolde, his magnificent wife, dead and forgotten within the Fractured Land of the Damned Village, her body half-devoured by black hounds with grinning, bloodied jaws.

Then thoughts of his family’s deaths back on Earth surfaced — his little sister, who’d had so much life ahead of her, taken far too soon, forever frozen young in his memory.

Then his mother, a white woman who’d married a foreigner and been shunned by her own family for it.

And finally his father, a big, hard-faced man with a gentle heart underneath, who’d deserved rest, deserved the chance to watch his children thrive in a country he’d sacrificed everything for, to give them a good education.

But his sister never got the chance to grow into the formidable woman she could have been. His mother never lived long enough to see that she hadn’t made the wrong choices. And his father never got to see that he hadn’t failed as a father.

None of them did.

’None of them...’ Cassius croaked inwardly.

These thoughts flowed like water through a river. Endless, piercing straight through Cassius’s very core.

His one and only weakness.

Cassius began to stagger, swaying, nearly collapsing. His back curled inward as he gripped his own head tightly, fighting the urge to weep.

He knew it was all false. He damn well knew it.

But there were moments where truth and falsehood barely mattered. Where all that mattered was the feeling those words, scenes, and memories stirred inside a person.

Still, Cassius knew he couldn’t let himself be manipulated like this. So he gathered every ounce of inner strength, forcing his mind back under control.

Copycat didn’t waste the opportunity.

His body ravaged with wounds, blood coating him, flesh burned so severely his bones gleamed through it, yet he closed the distance and delivered a resounding kick straight to Cassius’s head.

Cassius gritted his teeth, forcing the memories back into the depths of his mind.

He raised his right hand, transforming it from flesh and bone into fire and lightning.

Copycat’s kick passed through it, his own leg scorched in the process. He groaned, screamed, and the Last Born used that opening to spin and deliver his own counter-kick.

It landed, sending Copycat flying.

But mid-flight, Copycat shot threads from his hands, wrapping them around a nearby fallen, still-burning tree, using his own momentum to twist in the air and swing it toward Cassius.

With his mind still reeling from Copycat’s earlier Skill, Cassius failed to react in time, taking the tree straight to the head, sprawling across the ground just as Copycat finally hit the earth too.

’Fucking hell.’ Cassius thought, head spinning, coughing blood. But amid the pain, he sighed in relief as the Skill’s effect finally faded, leaving his mind a semblance of peace within the chaos of agony.

He cursed again before forcing himself up, using his Bloodflame to heal the worst of his injuries.

His essence was steadily draining.

He finally managed to stand, glancing toward his crystal, relieved to see the thirteen portals still standing, untouched.

’That’s good—!’

Cassius barely had time to feel relief before Copycat’s voice rang out again, carrying an undercurrent of power that sent a shiver through him.

"First Ultimate Skill: The Scriptwriter’s Favorite Character Plot Armor."

Cassius snapped his head toward Copycat and saw the man barely standing upright, an ash-pink essence coating his body.

The pink essence gathered behind him, forming the image of a woman rendered so perfectly that Cassius recognized her instantly as the same woman tattooed on Copycat’s arm.

’Oh bloody hell! What...what is this?’

Copycat continued, his blind eye locked on Cassius.

"Plot Armor: No one on this battlefield can move for 1 minute except Alexander Bishop, for the sole reason that he is Alexander Bishop, the youngest and only son of Rose Bishop."

BADUM—!

’Queen’s breath!’ Cassius’s eyes widened, and an omnipresent voice suddenly boomed around them, female, oddly sensual.

"><The opponent is Cassius Desdemona, Last Born of the Desdemona. Time reduced from 1 minute to 5 seconds.>

And instantly, Cassius froze in place, unable to move a single fiber of his body, some authority pinning him down.

Copycat let out a bloody grin, "Ah, dear mother...more than enough." He said, then teleported directly in front of Cassius within a single second.

He raised his hand, pointing his index finger at Cassius’s forehead, then, in another second, gathered all the sweat the heat had drawn from him.

Copycat grinned at Cassius’s widening, dilating eyes.

Only 2 seconds remained.

"Atomic Sweat."

BAAAAAANNNGGGG!

—End of Chapter 305—