How can a retired savior be considered retired if his price drops to 40,000?

Chapter 399: Fight! (?)

This was a duel that Maxius could hardly imagine. Even though it was happening right in front of the Ultramarines, his definition of this scene would still be "hard to imagine."

Those are simply actions that no living creature can perform.

Both Akuldona and the Eldar aliens maintained a speed that Maxius, a Primaris Space Marine whose senses and reaction abilities had been enhanced by bio-alchemy, thought was difficult to keep up with. The dust that had not yet completely fallen surged like waves between the blades they controlled, and was dragged into the killing by the air currents that were frequently cut off and changed. The dust that should have fallen went up again, and the dust that should have flown away was knocked back. The floating dust could never settle, and even made people watching the battle between the two have the illusion that "time has frozen here".

But time did not freeze, and was even cut into small pieces by the swords and sabers that flashed rapidly between Akuldona and Lailis. The silver light left by the edge of the sharp blade in the air remained in the vision, as if weaving a fine net, charming but deadly. Maxius initially wanted to support, but when he saw everything clearly, he had no doubt that this battle really could not allow any outside interference: in front of him, it was obvious that there was only the possibility of the battlefield spreading to other directions with the two people fighting. Anyone who wanted to intervene, even if it was just a bomb, would be crushed by the sword light before they could successfully get close.

The Ultramarines were speechless in front of such an unimaginable scene. What frightened him even more was that this was obviously not the full strength of the two warring parties. Even though their dodging and swerving figures had become a blur of light and shadow, and even though the endless sound of sharp blades breaking through the air had formed a wild storm, Maxius could still be so sure. Because apart from that, there were no angry roars or shouts on the battlefield. The sound of weapons knocking against each other seemed sparse compared to the density of the sword light, and even the breathing of both sides was almost inaudible.

This round of overwhelming confrontation was just the appetizer. During the brief separation and regrouping, both Akuldona and Lylis kept their breathing steady. This round of probing made them understand each other's strength to some extent, and began to recognize each other as a real opponent. Akuldona gently turned the blade, making the dangerous and difficult-to-control bend at the front of Shanabal's long sword point to a more threatening angle to the enemy; and Lylis began to feel excited about this unexpected and equally matched opponent. Even for her, the task that Aidalad had originally entrusted to her had become unimportant in such a wonderful duel that was bound to continue.

"You are the 'Emperor's Son'." She walked slowly and lightly among the dust and blood with a frivolous smile. "I heard that under the command of the Lady of Thirst, there is a man called 'Lucius the Undying'. I am curious, who is more powerful between the two of you?"

This was a clear provocation. Lyris knew what the Emperor's children looked like after falling into Chaos, and she knew that her opponent was not tainted by the filth of Paradise. But those with outstanding swordsmanship rarely do not want to compete, and Lyris herself was the same, so she knew that such comparisons could easily anger her opponents and disrupt their pace and strategy.

In the past, when she brought up the topic with a sense of superiority, she would always imagine that she was throwing poison into the calm water. She was willing to appreciate the ripples of the other party's emotions and the dark colors caused by the poison, but this time, she only felt that her poisonous words were thrown into a bottomless well, without any feedback she expected.

Akuldona did answer, but he was calm when he answered, and the Eldar's senses could not detect any fluctuations in his emotions: "If we are talking about the same Lucius, he used to be quite talented. Unfortunately, it seems that he has never changed his self-pity. Even if he relies on external forces to push himself to a high enough height, he will never be able to reach the real top of the mountain."

The hidden meaning behind these words made a chill run down Lyris's spine - not out of fear, but excitement. She had never successfully fought with Lucius, but after the test just now, she subconsciously believed the other party's hidden meaning of "Lucius is not as good as me". She did not show this, but deliberately questioned with a sarcastic attitude: "It sounds like you know him well?"

"I can't say for sure." Akurdona laughed dryly, "At least I can't say for sure now."

The Space Marine still showed no sign of being offended, and Lyris only caught a fleeting sense of disappointment. But before she could confirm whether it was her illusion, Akuldona's blade flashed in front of her again with a sound of breaking through the air.

It was nothing. They were not standing here to chat. Besides, for fighters like them, talking with swords and spears was far better than any words. Lalis dodged lightly. It was not difficult for her to avoid the attack. She danced her body and limbs gracefully while dodging, and the two short knives in her hands and her flying long hair attacked her opponent together.

The rules of the Comorian arena are very free, and Lalith, who has been immersed in it for a long time, naturally has no rules for fighting. She tied her hair up high and almost dragged on the ground with several barbs at the end. All the enemies who were not vigilant about her silky long hair in the battle were pierced through the armor and their eyes were gouged out accurately by these barbs. Lalith's control is almost extreme among the Eldar, allowing her to even control her long hair. She danced and jumped in the swords and shadows, but she knew that this trick was just icing on the cake in front of the opponent in front of her.

The Xanabar has a rather awkward curvature in shape. This counter-intuitive design makes it difficult to control. When using it, swordsmen with poor skills will find that this unconventional blade shape makes it difficult to achieve the goal in their minds when swinging it, and in extreme cases, they will even hurt themselves. Similar counter-intuitive curvatures are also common on the swords of the Eldar, but there are almost no designs as extreme as the Xanabar. As time goes by, this weapon, which was once popular in the Empire because of its added value such as the status of the owner, has almost disappeared. Looking at the entire galaxy, it can only be found in the Eye of Terror, the former court swordsman of the Emperor's Children, and the current Flawless Blade. But even if it is the Flawless Blade, Lylith couldn't help but doubt it. I'm afraid it can't be like the opponent in front of him, who swings this long sword like a leisurely stroll in the garden at lightning speed. Not only is it not dragged down by the blade shape, but it makes excellent use of every bit of advantage it brings him.

The dance brought them too close. Lylith could clearly see all the details on Akuldona's armor - the Sky Eagle symbolizing the Empire, the relief symbolizing a certain battle, the lightning emblem symbolizing honor, but without the corruption caused by the blessing of Chaos. Lylith found it unbelievable: her opponent did not turn to Slaanesh, but was just a Space Marine, but he had such a perfect and perfect attainment in swordsmanship, and could even fight her in such a venue, and even gradually suppress her - you know, the length of the Shanabal longsword in such a corridor should make the swordsman wielding it feel stretched. Compared with Lylith holding the Hecate shortsword, Akuldona would be more restricted by the environment and more restrained in battle.

Since the two were evenly matched in terms of swordsmanship, they had to rely on some tricks to break the deadlock. She tried to use the hook at the end of her braid to attack the opponent's eyes in the gap between swinging her sword, but Akuldona raised his shoulder armor in time, so that the attack only left two ugly scratches on the golden wings carved out of metal and fluttering. She also successfully kicked the opponent's chest and abdomen, but in an instant, she realized from the touch that the opponent had removed most of her strength in an instant, so this was not a real hit, and naturally could not cause damage to the opponent that could give her an advantage. While approaching the opponent, she also used her sword handle to smash the fragments of the poison crystal stuck on the opponent's armor and left by the previous explosion into it, allowing it to pass through the armor completely and pierce into the opponent's flesh, releasing the poison. The structure of the poison crystal determined that it was very fragile, and it required a lot of skills to do this. Laylis did it, but she was not very optimistic about the effect of this little poison.

Lailisi was not discouraged by this. In the arena, she had long been accustomed to long-term melees. The current one-on-one situation was far from complicated and was not beyond her ability to handle. However, the failure of several attacks to achieve results did cause a crack in her originally calm and superior mentality due to excitement and expectation. In contrast, Akurdona's fighting style was quite stable - a stability that only he could evaluate in this way. In the eyes of others, even Lailisi, the unpredictable path of Shanabal's long sword would only bring people a sense of oppression surrounded by dangers. Meeting such an opponent who could match him was also a precious and rare experience for him. He also felt relaxed and excited about this challenge of walking on the edge of life and death in his heart. He still wanted to improve, and still wanted to use the opponent's attack as a mirror to find out his own shortcomings, but he did not forget his real mission at this moment. His every move, every attack and every defense, all came out of instinct, and were particularly fast because they skipped the stage of thinking. In the process, he did not try to over-force his enemies in order to achieve a quick victory, because in the current situation, he was really unwilling to take the risk of "accidentally letting the enemy surpass him."

His attention was focused on the opponent in front of him, so he was not very clear about what was happening behind him. The Dark Eldar's thin limbs contained unimaginable strength, and the opponent's treacherous tricks had to be guarded against. Under a relatively conservative strategy, Akuldona's long sword did slightly cut the opponent's kicking calf, but it was just a minor scratch, not a serious victory.

Lylis swung her two swords in a frenzy of dancing, trying to approach Akuldona from the side. This was a fairly correct strategy, because the Xanabar longsword in the hands of the Space Marines naturally had an advantage in length when the two sides faced each other head-on, but this advantage became a disadvantage when they changed direction and had to face the wall of the corridor. If Akuldona wanted to swing the longsword unhindered in this direction, he would have to retreat toward the wall on the other side. But he didn't do that. Instead, he turned sideways, put up his shoulder armor, and tried to use his weight advantage to knock the opponent away - even if he risked getting hurt, Akuldona couldn't allow the opponent to get a chance to pass him.

He was not hurt by the blow, as Lylith retreated quickly before his momentum. But the blow reminded the Dark Eldar of what she was supposed to do. In fact, she didn't care whether the thing that Eldar wanted to kill was dead or alive, but she realized that her opponent clearly cared. This was something she could use to her advantage.

Her retreat was not just to avoid this attack, but had another clear goal: the Wu Ling sisters, who had been beheaded before, naturally could not provide her with any help in the current situation, but the weapons they left behind could still be used.

Lailis stepped backwards over the blood and corpses, and accurately stepped on the hilt of a sword, causing it to bounce high from the ground. She then found the right angle, turned around smoothly, and kicked it in front of her - the distance between the lightning-like ray and Akultona was almost irrelevant, but it went straight to the back row, where Maxius had not let go of Fujimaru Ritsuka.

The Queen of the Arena, who fought her way out of the chaos, knew how to use the environment around her. Her assassination target had now become a simple resource that could deceive the opponent to return to defense with a high probability. The pair of short knives in her hands were ready to drink blood, waiting for Akuldona to turn the sword and thus fall into a disadvantage - but he still didn't do that.

The Eldar's keen senses made Lalith realize that at that moment, something in the atmosphere had changed.

The Emperor's Son barely moved, and the sword in his hand was still pointed in the direction of Lylith. He simply released one hand that was originally holding the hilt of the two-handed sword, stretched his arms back, and when the blade kicked by the Dark Eldar passed by him -

——He pulled out a second Shanabal sword from the void, and with the length of the blade, he caught up with the flying knife in an instant, easily knocking it down on the spot and stabbing it into the floor.

The Shanabal longsword is a very valuable masterpiece, a strange weapon that is difficult for ordinary swordsmen to wield. Even in the past Great Crusade, a swordsman who could own and wield one had already proved that he was no ordinary person; but Akuldona had two, and could even wield them at the same time.

This move caught Lyris off guard, but she had already rushed forward according to her original plan. The agility of the Eldar did not prevent her from completely stopping, but it was an indisputable fact that she had already rushed towards the tip of Akuldona's sword that was still standing in the distance. She clearly sensed that when her opponent swung his sword again, there was an undoubted fury in the blade. In the first instant, Lyris was delighted by this. She stopped, turned around, and gracefully raised her leg to kick the blade of the opponent's long sword away, intending to get a chance to prepare for the next attack - but in a flash, the other long sword in the opponent's hand had also been retracted to the front, and struck her in front of her with the force of splitting mountains and seas -

At that moment, she realized that it was almost impossible for her to dodge this attack.

Lyris enjoyed the thrill of dancing on the tightrope of life and death on the battlefield, but that didn't mean she didn't care about her life at all. She hadn't tried it, but she knew that in the past, even if she really died, with her status and position, the Haemonculi could use various means to recall her soul and make her revive in reality in pain - but what about the current environment? If she died in this space surrounded by black stone and almost completely blocked behind the curtain, could she be resurrected like that?
The surrounding black stone intensified Lyris's fear at that moment, causing her to retreat. At this moment, the desire to survive overwhelmed everything else. When the two swords in Akuldona's hands attacked her from both sides, she blocked one of them in fear, and then jumped over the blades.

With a "bang", the Dark Eldar's smoke bomb exploded in the corridor again. No one knew what happened, and perhaps even the parties involved could not fully understand it. But after more than ten seconds, the dust settled, and only Akuldona and a long wisp of red, flexible hair with a barb at the end were left in the corridor, which obviously belonged to Lalith.

"Is it over?" someone behind him asked in disbelief, so he answered, "Probably."

But in fact, there are still two things that Akuldona can't figure out: the first is where on earth could the dark elf disappear to; the second is where did she hide the smoke bomb?
(End of this chapter)