A few minutes earlier.
Oolacile, the Duel Arena.
The battle between Lu Xiu and Artorias had reached its fiercest, most suffocating stage.
Or, more precisely,
the stage where victory was a hair's breadth away, but she had to resist the urge to get greedy with another strike—
Artorias was leaping all over the place. By now, his attacks had lost every trace of a fixed pattern.
Put simply,
if someone had said Artorias was a player, everyone would have believed it.
At first,
he had followed a fixed pattern of two or three slams, then chained them into other attacks.
Now he might switch to a different move halfway through a slam.
It was ridiculous!
Lu Xiu was almost driven to activate Audience and trade blows with him.
But she thought of the cooldown and held back.
Artorias let out another indistinct roar and sprang high into the air, violent purple lightning coiling around his greatsword.
Lu Xiu prepared to roll clear.
But while he was still airborne—
Artorias forcibly twisted his body. The downward smash vanished mid-motion, and his greatsword carved a warped arc through the air, turning into a wide sweep!
He had changed moves in midair!
The feint was meant to bait her roll!
But Lu Xiu's reaction was just as absurd.
Halfway through her roll, she saw it. She wrenched her center of gravity around with the strength of her waist, planted the Loathing Halberd against the ground, and used it to slide and spin backward at the very limit of her reach. The black blade missed her by a hair.
Whoosh!
As for that—
the Nine Provinces' core players had gone numb.
This was a clash between gods.
It really was a clash between gods.
"Attack! He's almost out of health!" Cheng Xiu shouted. The