Supreme Swordfiend

Leon waited, watching the Infernal Rex.

The tension built ever higher, as thick flames fell to the floor, the lizard content to watch as well, both parties waiting for an opportune moment to strike.

From experience, he knew he could cross the gap between them quickly, within fifteen seconds, maybe less, if he didn’t need to dodge.

The problem was the fireball.

On the periphery of his vision, he saw the blue hellfire still burning from the initial strike the beast had launched. Unlike the napalm of the Flamma Tyrannosaurus, these flames were odourless.

Yet they burned incessantly, without need for fuel. The hellfire feasted on only the air and grew hotter, the forked blue tongues rising higher as the seconds ticked by.

Turning back to examine his foe, Leon held little confidence in directly piercing its scale armour. This required finesse, not brute force.

The temptation to draw Wavecutter was high. Leon subdued the urge, his mind already analysing potential weaknesses in the armour, planning his attack run.

He respected this foe; for it was one capable of rousing his fighting spirit, his swordsman’s pride.

A twitch of the despot’s snout was all Leon needed to spur him into action, a sudden fireball ejected from the monster’s mouth with little warning, streaking past him as he raced towards the beast’s legs, another splashing against the blood-soaked dirt behind him a tandem roar, from the flames and their creator.

Throwing all his weight into an upward cut, Leon stamped the ground to arrest his momentum, his crimson blade failing to draw blood as it broke through the beast’s scales, only to be stopped by its rock-hard skin.

The beast’s stomp sent Leon backwards, a spin from the lizard forcing him to roll under the tail, unable to even retaliate in passing as he struggled to get a stable footing.

Pivoting back to face him once more, the Infernal Rex did not appear enraged. An oddity, as most of the tyrannosaurus species were prone to anger when such a small creature proved able to resist their onslaughts.

Arrogance.

A surety that it would win was what Leon saw in the foolish monster’s eyes, as it spat another ball of azure flame his way, the swordsman forced to charge again, executing a move he had written off.

Slamming the flat of his blade into the T-Rex’s jaw, Leon sent the next fireball streaking wide, a tree in the distance bursting into flames as the hellfire set about consuming all it touched.

Leon followed up with a flurry of slashes, aiming to damage the beast’s throat and inhibit its fire-spewing capability.

This time he drew blood, the armour weaker on the beast’s underside, though before he could inflict any lasting damage, the monster’s latest trick forced him back.

Instead of a fireball, it opted for a flamethrower, a jet of blue flame erupting forward, forcing Leon to abandon his position.

It had failed to catch him with the fire and once it realised this, a trace of annoyance passed over its reptilian features. The light in its throat now building towards a higher peak, its open maw aimed at Leon.

Retreating as fast as his legs would carry him, Leon put what he assumed was a safe distance between himself and the attack he knew he wouldn’t be able to dodge or endure.

His bloodline grew increasingly unhappy at this perceived retreat, though did not begin inflicting pain upon him, presumably able to detect the difference between an out-and-out retreat and a tactical repositioning.

Pressed against one of the surviving trees, Leon saw the beast twist its head to face the ground before letting loose with a beam of blinding light, a trail of brilliant white fire just missing Leon thanks to his use of cover.

The beam continued, blasting a burning hole through the woods, the ground and trees alike reduced to blackened waste by the attack. Worse, the Infernal Rex appeared untaxed by the powerful move, roaring in anger once it realised it had missed.

Resuming its bombardment strategy, Leon charged, utilising the divot created by the white hell flame beam, dodging as more fireballs splashed down around him, his training to use his air detection the only thing that kept him from being cooked.

Throwing himself at the monster once more, this time Leon wedged his blade in its throat.

It reared up, lifting Leon alongside it. One of the swordsman’s hands clasped around his weapon’s hilt, the other hammered a gauntleted fist down on the pommel, driving the sword’s tip deeper and deeper into the beast’s gullet.

The screeches of pain were the only indicator of progress, though he failed to stop the hell flame production as more blue flames dripped from the scale onto his armour.

The globs of fire failed to adhere to the enchanted metal, a fact Leon couldn’t appreciate in this desperate struggle.

Growing agitated at the pain it was experiencing, the rex slammed its own throat into the ground, crushing Leon and knocking the air from his lungs.

He held on to his blade, using his other hand to pummel the scales that trapped him, their dripping flames burning his skin.

Had he any air in his lungs, he would have screamed.

Mercifully, they were empty.

Raising itself off the ground, Leon moved to avoid being hit by a second ground slam, planting his legs against the scaled throat and kicking off, unsheathing his blade from the gory scabbard he’d lodged it in, rolling backwards as he landed before bounding upright, wary of another fireball.

Dark crimson blood dripped to the ground, flowing from both the open wound on the dinosaur’s throat and from the tip of Leon’s sword.

So great was his focus that the swordsman neglected to heal the charred and smoking skin or the cracked bones he’d incurred after the slam.

The endorphins and adrenaline would keep him from collapsing.

The throat was out as a target- too risky. Next up, the legs.

Circling wide, Leon once again played the world’s deadliest game of dodgeball, blue fireballs streaking over and around him, each one as deadly as the last.

Nearing his target, the leg he’d previously injured, the beast reacted violently. It whipped its tail at him, alongside a burst from its flamethrower breath. The spiked tail failed to pierce the metal armour, though Leon immediately discovered the rex did not develop these spikes with penetrative power in mind.

As they impacted against his chest, the cluster of barbs exploded, the momentum of the explosion alongside the tail’s own force sufficient to send Leon careening through the air, through the flamethrower the lizard had been spewing and through one weakened tree.

His flight stopped as he cratered into another tree. Circulating his energy, Leon healed the worst of his burns and broken bones, burning through nearly all his reserves to do so.

A necessary sacrifice. Without the healing, he wouldn’t have been able to keep fighting.

Resolving to sever the tail, Leon clambered out of the hole he’d made in another innocent tree and back onto the ashen ground. Immediately noting a brilliant white light, the swordsman executed another running jump as a second white hell flame beam tore through the tree he’d hit.

The rex snorted in displeasure, pausing for only a second, then resumed its fireball bombardment.

Forced to once again dodge or die, Leon was noticing a pattern.

One he was determined to break.

This time he was prepared for the tail, leaping over it with practised ease, as though he had trained for it, his blade tearing through the weakened scales, chopping off a quarter of the tail.

A roar of pain followed, one Leon had no time to savour as he launched a ballistic onslaught of attacks, his crimson blade stained a deeper red as he reduced the rex’s leg to a gory pulp.

He had failed to reach the muscles.

The beast still stood, though it was not standing strong.

Blood and fire covered the ground in near equal amounts, the beast’s arrogance gone now that it had realised the human was not an easy foe to best.

Leon’s frenzied bladework continued as he beat through the rock-hard defence of the fiery king through the sheer quantity of blows he unleashed.

His muscles burned.

His scorched skin burned hotter still.

Hottest of all was the roaring flame of his pride, his unwavering desire to see this overgrown gecko dead.

How much of the obsession to win this fight came from his bloodline he would never know, so consumed in launching reckless slash after slash, he hardly noticed his own shifting mental state.

Roused to lucidity by a shower of blood from the beast’s stomach, Leon noticed his cuts were tearing into a tender and weak area.

Before it could react, Leon lodged his sword in the creature’s underbelly, repeating the strategy he’d used on the throat, slamming his blade in deeper even while hanging on for dear life.

This time, he hit something important. Something in the way the flesh parted as the blade’s tip sank in let him know the rex would feel that one, the lack of resistance as clear an indicator he would get.

Kicking free, Leon was in turn kicked by the furious tyrannosaurus, sent tumbling across the ground, able to right himself in time only by plunging his sword into the earth, the blade ripping a jagged line through the weakened earth, stopping Leon just in time for him to dodge the third and hopefully final hell flame beam.

The Infernal Rex was showing signs of exhaustion, its scales no longer leaking flames, its blue fire dimmer and its bulk vastly reduced. Using its trump card repeatedly had taken more out of it than it had first appeared.

The two locked eyes, the tyrant lizard’s aura a pale imitation of what it had been.

Leon had not escaped unscathed, his armour dented and charred, the Infernal Rex had cooked any exposed skin with its flamethrower attack and a few of his ribs were screaming thanks to the explosion he’d endured.

The next round of attacks would be the decider of this duel.

The fireballs were slower and easily dodged, Leon felt confident in aiming for the throat once again. Dragging his blade along the ground as he ran, he unleashed a roaring uppercut, stunning the tyrannosaurus long enough for him to get to work.

Digging his blade into the open wound, Leon remained on the ground, cutting back and forth, his blade slowly widening the wound, a shower of blood soothing the swordsman’s skin.

Before the beast could launch a final desperate attack of its own, Leon plunged his blade skyward, a mighty Heaven Skewer ripping through soft internal tissue, the blade tip piercing the brain and stilling the beast.

“You have slain a Level Twenty-Five Infernal Rex!”

“Level up! You are now a Level Twenty-Four Swordsman! +2 Power, +2 Speed, +2 Constitution!”

He scarcely had time to read the notifications as the dead monster collapsed on him, forcing Leon to claw his way out from under the titanic corpse. Pulling his sword alongside him, he climbed atop the dead monster’s limp head and surveyed the damage.

Three beams of white hell fire had torn impossibly long tracks through the woods, alongside the multitude of craters left behind, the scores of trees that the stray fireballs had immolated, and the poor tree that a beam attack had incinerated.

The landscape was a vision of hell, ash, blood, and devastation. The dead monster and the sword-bearing man atop it only solidified the image.

Strangely, all the fire had extinguished alongside the Infernal Rex’s life.

Leon recalled the System telling him the creature had command over flame- perhaps it had been sustaining the fire through its mana?

Setting aside these questions and his sword, Leon pulled a comically large stack of pancakes from his storage ring, the leaning tower of fluffy delight his post-victory meal of choice.

The last level he needed could wait- he would savour this victory alongside his pancakes and then he would throw himself into the nearest river he could find.