"A one-on-one battle against one of the 10 Great Weapons is suicide."
Mori quickly dodged the other arrows, but the damage had already been done. Osprey's strongest attack, "PIERCER," had torn through his body. He fell to his knees, holding the hole in his chest.
"Osprey, the perfect sniper. A body built on decades of specialized long range combat and practice. Someone who awakened his dormant genetics when he was only a child. His white hair is a testament to his ancestry from the legend, Simo Hayha, also known as the White Death."
Was...
Disappointed?
Osprey narrowed his eyes, feeling the feedback from his finishing attack."That shot should've hit his heart. Even my Piercer wasn't perfect. The compressed wind pushed it off course a little, and it missed his vitals."
"I won't be able to hit Piercer like that again. I caught him off guard by letting him think I missed my opportunity. If I fire another now, he will see it coming and dodge. But how? How can he dodge my arrows? It doesn't make sense."
Without hesitation, he fired sixteen more arrows.
Mori, breathing hard and wheezing from the lung wound, moved quickly. Despite the pain, he dodged every arrow. Four more arrows slammed into the wind barrier and failed to get through.
A twitch of disbelief crossed Osprey's face. As if he'd seen a ghost, he came to a stark realization."Nobody can dodge my attacks. Not this consistently. Not even the boss..."
"But it's not possible to be aim dodging me unles—"
His saliva got stuck in his throat as he came to a grim realization."Can he see me?"
Unfortunately for Osprey, it was as if Mori answered that question the moment he asked it.
Mori's eyes snapped open. In one fluid motion, he hurled the God Stick southeast, toward Osprey's location over a kilometer away.
How would it reach so far?
Using wind energy, the God Stick propelled itself through the air as if it had its own eyes. It moved as fast as a fighter jet, slicing through the sky.
Osprey spotted it immediately and attacked the God Stick, his heart sinking in fear. But the weapon defended itself with massive blasts of wind. Osprey's muscles were tired. He didn't have time to use another Piercer to try to deflect the weapon itself.
That's when Osprey realized, "We had done this same silly charade our entire fight."
Realizing the attack was useless, Osprey switched targets, firing a storm of arrows at Mori.
Five arrows slammed into Mori's arm. Two more struck, one in the chest, another grazing his neck. The wounds were nearly fatal, but Mori twisted just enough to survive.
Then Osprey saw it, the God Stick, a red streak speeding through the air, closing fast at 300 meters.
Osprey's instincts screamed.
Run.
"Count Zer00," Mori whispered.
And then, detonation.
A cataclysmic shockwave erupted, flattening everything within a kilometer radius of the Riverlands. Trees collapsed. Earth cratered. Buildings crumbled.
It was the God Stick's magnum opus.
Even Aspera, 11 kilometers away, felt the tremor. She turned toward the distant chaos from atop a tall wall, eyes wide.
"Os?"
From beneath the rubble, Mori rose, caked in mud and dust. He wiped grime from his face. Extending his hand, the God Stick boomeranged back into his grasp.
"These Riverlands are filthy," he muttered. With a grunt, he pulled the arrow from his neck and cauterized the wound using the God Stick's heat, now overheating from sheer exertion.
"It was a well fought battle. As expected from Mr. N's right hand. You might have been right about surpassing the Elite Guard… conceptually."
He breathed, slow and cold.
"But with the technology I stole from Mr. N, my brain syncs with the God Stick on a level that borders on precognition. You never stood a chance."
Osprey lay lifeless underneath the rubble, his ribs, his arms, even his spine crushed.
To make things worse, half of his face was beneath the rubble, with a pole penetrating his organs. He couldn't move.
"We had done this same silly charade our entire fight."
Osprey choked, 'He knew Piercer was my strongest attack, and it used my fast-twitch muscles at their highest capacity, allowing it to reach speeds faster than Mach 50.
However, I needed at least another 20 seconds for my muscles to steady and recover before I could fire another one.
So Mori waited for the initial attack, got hit, then took the risk and used the God Stick offensively once, only once the entire fight.
That's why he didn't throw the God Stick at me from the start of the fight... because I would have deflected it with Piercer and killed him with normal arrows after. So he risked getting hit by Piercer first and in that 20-second interval attacked....
I got outplayed.
The light of life left Osprey's eyes.