Reaper's Resurgence: A System Reset

B4 | Chapter 17

Alexia

I immediately start the battle against the Architect off with a bang. Literally. By striking him with lightning right away while teleporting up to him and slamming my scythe into his panels, fracturing them but not breaking them.

The Architect goes flying, and I teleport after him slamming my scythe into him again. But by now he's already equipping himself with his armor, following which he teleports himself and the reality around him behind me and slams his fist straight at my back.

I block the attack by teleporting in a way to reverse the way I'm facing while bringing up my scythe and taking the attack directly on the blade.

We then proceed to send one attack after another at each other, the two of us occasionally blocking the others' hits and occasionally taking them directly and reversing the damage. But this time around, I'm dealing a little bit more damage to the Architect than he is to me.

Unfortunately for me though, the Architect has more soul than I have. I think.

At least, that's what I've come to assume from our nine previous battles.

So most likely we're about even right now.

I keep up one blow after another, striking him with lightning from behind while swinging my scythe at him. Over and over again. Just tearing away at the man while occasionally switching my attacks up to charge my scythe with quantum lightning to perform a much stronger, sudden attack that shatters his panels and cuts clean through his armor at his flesh below.

And by now I've gotten used to most of his attacks, so he has no more surprises for me. At least, not during our back to back fighting.

Slowly we whittle each other away, draining at our souls until I find myself all the way down to a mere fifth of my soul left. At which point I teleport backwards in a rush while sending as much quantum lightning at him as I possibly can.

Then I close my eyes and focus solely on charging up my big finisher. Meanwhile I hear the Architect teleporting back and forth away from my lightning that's trying to keep him boxed in.

But it only keeps him in place for six seconds, after which he manages to teleport up to me and slam his fist into my chest, sending me flying for hundreds of meters before I slam into a cliff.

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Throughout the entire flight though, I keep my eyes closed, and continue forcing energy into my scythe as I resume the fluid movements of my scythe through the air around me even after being hit. With my role pushing me along despite the fact that I can feel my collarbone having shattered. And I can't revert it while focusing on my finisher. So it's just left to heal through soul instead, draining a good chunk of it.

The Architect quickly teleports forwards again before flying the rest of the way with his fist held back, but the moment it reaches about ten seconds into the buildup of my attack, I activate my ring, instantly slowing down time.

Then I quickly continue building up the charge in my scythe while fluidly moving around, swinging it around me without pause. Making the black energy within the purple and blue on my scythe grow by the second.

Five seconds pass with the Architect still moving forwards at an incredibly slow speed.

My eyes begin to glow straight through my eyelids, filling the area with light.

With four seconds remaining, I feel my movements begin to shift and slow down.

At three seconds, the Architect makes it within a dozen meters of me.

With two seconds left, my eyes begin to slowly open as my attack reaches its crescendo, with my scythe held downwards at an angle to my side and a powerful black and purple arc building up on it.

At one second remaining, the Architect reaches five meters in front of me with his fist raised ready to smash into me.

Then the ten seconds runs out and I swing my scythe straight at the Architect while his fist, covered in glowing purple energy and dozens of panels, slams straight into the edge of my blade and the arc building on it. Sending a massive shockwave outwards that destroys all of the area around us.

Whether it's reality itself, the ground, or anything. Everything is cut apart by waves of energy shooting out from the collision of our attack.

Black energy, purple energy, and blue energy.

My finisher arc tries to push against the Architect's punch and begins to get a little bit of distance on him, pushing him back a little. Only for his punch to begin pushing against me as well.

Until three bolts of lightning that were following after him strike him in the back, making him cough out a mouthful of glitchy purple blood.

I grin when my arc takes advantage of his wounded self to push back again. All the way till it begins to shatter every single one of the panels on him, followed by his armor, then his fist itself.

Every last bone in his body breaks at the same time, and his hand begins to crush inwards towards his arm. Then his arm itself starts folding and getting crushed, followed by his torso.

And at last, right before another explosion of energy shoots out from my arc, the Architect smiles at me for the first time and says, "You have-"

Only for his entire body to be sliced in half while the two remaining halves end up slowly falling to the sides of my remaining attack as it passes off into the distance. With both halves glitching apart while bits of it gradually disappear.

"-passed…" his final word echoes throughout the area as the last of his body glitches apart.

Then reality around me begins to fall apart before I find myself appearing in some sort of tomb in front of a grave.

Barely alive as I collapse to the ground.