Chapter 21 – Cao Cao
As he said, Cao Cao is the descendant of Cao Cao from the Three Kingdoms era and the leader of the Khaos Brigade's Hero Faction.
He's a handsome young man with short hair and blue eyes.
He is a charismatic and manipulative young person, just like many others. He was able to convince many other people to join the Hero Faction, either from their own will or brainwashing.
He also believes that it is his responsibility as a descendant of a hero to destroy the supernatural beings like devils and dragons, to which he believes are a threat to humanity.
In other words, someone who was the mindset of a child and has naïve thoughts about omni-potence and world peace.
Due to being a descendant of heroes, and being chose by the spear, he believed that he was the chosen one by the world and the hero of the world along with his comrades.
But he is also flawed. He is cocky and arrogant and always believe that he alone is enough to face a god.
His thoughts weren't wrong however, since he did have the ability to back it up.
His longinus, the True Longinus, was indeed called the strongest for a reason.
It is an ornate spear with a dark-blue rod and features golden decorations in the shapes of arrow tips. There is a small silver stump which features four protrusions, two on the left and the other two on the right.
It can extend seemingly infinitely, has an abundance of holy power, and can release torrents of pure light from a distance causing massive destruction on impact.
And as long as it is a sacred gear, a balance breaker was not impossible, and for someone as talented as Cao Cao, it was already achieved.
The 7 orbs of light that appeared behind him is the subspecies balance breaker of the True Longinus, which creates seven orbs called the Seven Treasures, each having a different ability.
Cakkaratana – has the ability to destroy weapons
Itthiratana – can completely stop the special ability of women for a short time
Assaratana – has the ability to teleport a person the orb touches, and can be used on the wielder
Maniratana – can direct another's attack into a different direction
Hatthiratana – grants the user to lift up anything the orb touches
Gahapatiratana – creates warrior-like existences and acts like mini-clones
Parinayakaranata – launches a strong attack with high destructive powers, although there was some sort of restriction to when it can be used.
(A/N those names killed me)
They were quite the overpowered abilities, which was where his confidence came from.
So when he readied his stance, and offered his respects to her, there was the tiniest part in his mind that thought how he was still going to win. Although, he was confused at why he had such behaviour in front of her, but shrugged the feeling of.
Could just be her attitude influencing me...
In an instant, he activated multiple orbs. Artoria felt like her strength was reduced by a lot. She then found out that most of her extra abilities were sealed by some unknown force.
Hey, can you help?
(...)
Come on now!
(...Fine)
She didn't have more time than that to communicate, since he somehow arrived right in front of her with his spear extended towards her neck.
Without the aid of her skills, this was where years of pure combat instinct came in.
Teleportation? And some sort of sealing? Ridiculous...
To Cao Cao's surprise expecting her to dodge, he prepared another strike, but he did not expect her to parry the force of the impact with her Excalibur. It was not something to be taken lightly, since he built up quite the momentum with that swing.
But Artoria was one of the strongest servants after all. Even without skills, she was able to masterfully direct the seeping force within her like an ocean, with the martial prowess she learned during her younger years.
Then, refocusing the force into her hands, she readjusted her stance, her left foot stepped back, and after tensing her shoulders she suddenly burst out with strength and knocked the caught-off-guard Cao Cao a couple steps back.
He didn't falter a bit though, as he treated this as nothing and struck again. He tried to destroy her weapon with one of the orbs but as expected, it didn't work for a true divine construct.
He felt somewhat pressured however, as the sealed skills are just temporary. 10 minutes is all that it can manage before she is unsealed, which would definitely make the battle more strenuous and difficult.
Deciding to end it quickly he moved at a speed where aftershadows were visible.
Circling round to behind her he jabbed his weapon, attempting to disarm her weapon but instead of infiltrating through her flesh, he felt that his spear encountered something hard, and instead sent her flying tens of metres in another direction.
He looked at his hands, which were shaking due to the recoil before frowning a bit.
Meanwhile, Artoria was also quite shocked, since if it wasn't for Avalon, she may have been defeated.
Two weeks ago, Shirou visited the café saying that he wanted to return something. He was injured but then his injurues recovered unnaturally quick. It was only then that he realised he still had Avalon inside of him.
She was quite grateful for this act and treated him to some cake.
Anyway, Artoria was sent flying.
After gliding in the air for a few seconds, she managed to grasp her centre of gravity and positioned herself in a suitable stance.
Her sword was unconsciously drawing arcs of light in the air as she managed to say upright, and with a loud shake of the ground, she planted her foot firmly into the earth. But, this was still not enough to cancel the force, and it made her skid another 15 metres before coming to a halt.
The amount of friction lit the earth bright yellow, and sparks were coming of her shoes. Nevertheless, not a wince of pain showed on her face as she readied herself for another bout.
Crouching down, almost instantly she launched herself into the air carrying most of the momentum she built.
This broke Cao Cao out of his thoughts as he parried her strike before dealing a counter-attack of his own.
Thus, the both exchanged blows like the good-old fashioned way.
At first, he still tried various tricks with magic and his other orbs. For example, he tried to pick her up but to his surprise it actually didn't work.
He found that this was a mistake since she started to attack more ferociously. Not in the losing-their-mind way but a more dangerous way.
It seemed like now each of her strike had multiple hidden profound layers to it. He could counter a blow, but the residual force left would numb his arm. It was like facing something as unpredictable as the ocean. Although, he was a genius in his own way. Instead of trying to brute-force his way, he instead tried to adapt and copy her technique.
Even though it put more stress on him, he felt like he was slowly learning more and more, and eventually his combat ability unknowingly improved.
She wasn't shocked, but was actually very calm about it.
To be able to learn in this condition. Though your means of sealing my skills are not appreciated, I have to give it to you.
Smiling to herself she continued to attack...
And defend...
And attack...
And defend...
Before, it felt like even though she was handicapped, her technique and skills made up for it.
But now, despite the fact that she was still handicapped in some way, they were evenly matched.
He was still a beginner in this way of martial arts, but paired with his immense advantage in the battle, it was more than enough.
And he broke through.
Catching her off guard by using clones he impaled her in the chest, narrowly missing her heart.
But then, as if nothing happened, she just continued.
Not even I can ignore such injury. Her pain tolerance is on another level.
This event did have it's downsides for Cao Cao, since his position wasn't sufficient to take advantage of this injury.
He tried to pull the spear out, but to his absolute horror, he couldn't.
He looked up to see determination and experience in her eyes, as she clenched her chest muscles.
It isn't even budging. Just how strong is this woman?!
Without moving her body which was required to launch a powerful and efficient attack, she purely moved only her arm with Excalibur towards his neck.
Having no choice, he was forced to teleport away, as it was either giving up this round, or dying.
Appearing 10 metres away, he looked at her figure slowly twisting towards him.
Blood was pouring out of her chest and mouth, but she still stood unwavering.
Ow.
But unknown to him, the internal and external wounds began to close at an unfair rate.
He didn't see this because it was covered up by her also-regenerating armour.
"How good is your pain tolerance? To stand and shrug that off..."
"What is a knight without countless challenges?"
"Indeed."
A moment of silence passed before both mutually silently agreed to start again.
However, this time Cao Cao didn't take his chances with this risk, and instead used Hatthiratana to float into the air and start flying.
"Forgive me, but you are very strong. This is probably the safest way."
"..."
Safest way? You coward. Where was that vigour you showed before?
She still appeared calm on the outside, and moved her body to dodge the incoming spears.
He made use of the extension perk of the Longinus to attack her from the skies. He knew she could not fly, one because her skills were sealed, and two, no human can fly. Even if they were able to, it relied on some other exterior force. Even he had to use his Longinus to achieve this ability. Perhaps this is why he wished to prove that he is the strongest. If he could defeat devils and angels who could inherently use flight, then it would prove humanity to be superior.
But little did he know, that such a hit and run tactic was the most beneficial for Artoria.
How long left?
(...)
Hey!
(...13 seconds)
And she began counting down.
12...
11...
10...
It was at this moment that Cao Cao suddenly began to feel something that was anomalous going on with Itthiratana.
To his horror, even though it should have another 2 and a half minutes left, seconds were all that was left before it ran out.
What?! How did she...
In a moment of desperation, he gave up playing safe and rushed to her, even using teleportation to himself.
3...
2...
1...
The tip was just about a millimetre from her eyes, before the countdown ended.
Disappearing from her spot, she gave a blow to him but with he blunt side of her sword to send him into an imbalanced state of forced flight.
He couldn't cancel this force or redirect it somewhere else like he had been doing during previous bouts. Her sword had a golden glow surrounding it, which was probably the reason why.
Trying to get upright and touching the teleportation orb, he didn't get a chance as a flash sped past him.
A kick soon met his stomach as he coughed up blood and was blasted into a nearby mountain hundreds of metres away.
One entire side of it was obliterated, and Cao Cao was still recuperating from the previous injuries.
He thought that using the mountain as a shield, a few seconds could be bought to drop some phoenix tears onto him, but little did he expect that Artoria would just barge into it.
Literally, she used her physical body and charged face first into the rocks of the mountain.
Her pure brute strength paired with the mysterious golden energy surrounding her was more than enough to leave her unharmed after such a stunt.
Before he even realised it, his body was flung into the air again.
She swiped upwards beneath him, which he blocked with his Longinus, but the knockback was too much.
Being sent tens of metres into the air without even the time to breath or touch any orbs, he tried his best to survive.
On the ground, all the light focused on her legs before she flashed and disappeared from her place, leaving huge cracks where she stood.
"EX-"
In a matter of moments, her full figure in all it's golden glory was visible hundreds of metres away. Everyone there was already knocked out, including Issei. Poor guy couldn't even take the shockwaves of the battle.
But the dragon in the gauntlet was excused from this and saw everything.
Anyway, there was a barrier placed around the area, one even better than Georg, the wielder of dimension lost.
All Cao Cao saw during this moment was gold and light, before a blinding flash shone across the area.
A huge metaphoric image of a lion accompanied her human outline as she brought her sword down.
"CALIBUR!!!"