Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

It was an unexpected but not unwelcome chance for retribution. She could still vividly remember the feeling of shrapnel and bullets biting into her flesh. Maybe because she just had a fight that reminded her of the painful memory, but that didn’t matter. This time, it wouldn’t end like that. This time things were different.

After her loss, Minas Mar had asked her, just like the other losers, to stay at their rooms in the stadium until the finals began. It was for the voting, the chance to re-enter the battle. She had spent that time analyzing her fight over and over.

Dowloon had learned her lesson. She had been too arrogant when she first entered this competition. The preliminaries had given her a false sense of superiority. Her opponents had dropped like flies without her even showing a fraction of her abilities.

Things had changed after she entered the true tournament. Every opponent had brought her to the limit, forcing her to reveal more and more of her trump cards. She had even revealed her bug-handling techniques. She even used two of her Silver Sparrows. However, she didn’t regret it. It was all worth it as long as she won.

Hoping for that sliver of a chance to re-enter during the quarter-finals, she had looked into all her possible opponents, but Ibelin Godfrey especially. It was the reason she even got a new pair of daggers, retraining her dagger arts. It was the reason why she adopted the tactics of Urthan’s, doping herself before the fight.

She had not expected to use this strategy on the dragon knight first, it was actually the plan to overwhelm Ibelin if she happened to meet him. Although Ibelin had revealed his worrying holy lance in the battle with the light man, she didn’t waver.

Her unadorned daggers smashed into the invisible shield, creating huge spiderwebs of cracks. She knew that she was physically superior to her opponent, with the doping even more than before. This was why she was a little disappointed that it didn’t go like when she faced Caleb, where every hit was able to smash the barrier. She knew that her previous tactic of dissolving it wouldn't work. She had to do with brute force.

Still, the performance of these daggers was far above what she expected. She had asked for a pair of unadorned blades from the lady they called Jane and bartered several bottles of poison for them. Dowloon had never expected to get a pair of weapons that would be able to handle her poison Qi for this long. This meant they had to be at least earth-grade weapons.

She had been very depressed after her original was cracked and unusable after the first fight with Ibelin. Had she known she could get something this good she may have asked for something with more flair.

As she grew confident in the weapons, she infused more and more Poison Qi into them. The more she could put in an attack, the more would stay in her opponent's body. Injecting her spiritual power into him was her most cost-effective chance to win. Dodging the bullet storm, it was hard to hit the same place several times, as Ibelin’s previous opponent did. She also lacked the kind of defense to just ignore these feisty little projectiles.

No matter how hard-hitting the same place every time was, it was the only way she could have weakened the barrier enough. Despite her increased power, it was hard to keep up with these foreign weapons and the power overflowing in her body, because of the pills she swallowed.

Dowloon could barely control the energy coursing in her Qi veins, trying to eject as much as possible through the daggers. Had she maybe taken too much in preparation for this fight? This was probably the most she could take without- her mind halted for a moment as she had a realization.

At the end of this moment, this short hesitation, she suddenly stared down the barrel of the massive gun Ma Deus. The smaller roars had fallen silent, as a massive boom shattered her eardrums. There was no time to dodge, instinctively she just tilted to the side.

Searing pain filled her mind and numbed her thoughts. She could no longer feel the left side of her face. The pain, the hot streams of water flowing down her neck, the influx of cold air flowing through her cracked molars - She was probably missing half her face right now!

“Tsk, you shouldn't have dodged. it would have been a painless, a merciful, a beautiful death I could have devoted to god,” Ibelin scoffed disappointed as he moved the rifle to aim at her again.

Painless... Merciful... Her eyes regained focus and her mind regained clarity when these words sank into her consciousness and stoked a fire. Who wanted that? Did she ask for that? How dare he look down on her like this, to even stage her death!?

When he wanted to end this in a clean, and beautiful victory, she would do her worst to win as ugly and messy as possible. Her own ideal of the fight was gone. She struggled, tumbled, and rolled over the ground to evade the next shot, that drilled a hole into the metal plates covering the arena floor.

She let go of a dagger to pull out jade bottles and vials from her cosmos pouch. Pills and poisons were randomly shoved into her face. Dowloon had realized one thing, to win she didn't have to survive, she just had to kill her opponent before she died herself.

The pills and poisons liquefied on her tongue, fusing into her body and spiritual sea. Like a roaring river, the force pushed through her, wrecking her body, but bringing tremendous force with it. Her hand gripped the remaining dagger tight, her bones and sinews creaking under the strength.

Her eyes trailed over to the crusader, who was already aiming at her again. The moment he fired, she was gone. With explosive strength, she used her movement art to practically vanish from his sight. She strained her body and allowed the poison Qi to drill outward, through every pore of her skin.

She became a shooting star, with a trail of poison, cloaked in her own poison smoke. The dagger was now not just surrounded with poison aura, but dripping with liquid, materialized from her power.

With accumulated speed, velocity, and strength she stabbed the barrier moments after the third shot. There was an audible cracking, the tip of the dagger, at the center of a massive spiderweb of cracks, had pierced through!

Finally, she was able to break through the barrier.

Just the tip was inside the barrier, but that was enough, as the tiniest drop of liquefied poison Qi turned into a thick fog that filled the bubble of her opponent. Dowloon knew that her opponent seemed immune to poison, but she also couldn't completely believe it to be without effects.

She had watched the vision they called a recording of their last fight over and over. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she could swear, that Ibelin was not as unharmed after the bath in poison as it had seemed to her back then. Had she kept using her poison and not accepted a stupid duel, she may have still won in the end.

This mist was created from the utmost concentration of her overflowing Poison Qi. If this had no effect, then- A violent coughing from the inside confirmed her thoughts. She could feel her energy invading his body.