To make me drop defense, Bey needed to show me a chance for victory from my side. But he naturally understands that if he just opens up for my strike, I'll objectively suspect a trick. So, he needs to heat up our clash to make me think in the heat of battle it's just a lucky chance to attack. And that's exactly what he did, escalating our fight to a hotter phase.
"Tch, think being a sturdy turtle will save you from my attacks? What if I go back to your girls and drag them into our fight? My minions and the landscape will hold you for now!" Bey decided to unbalance me with incitement, adding actions to words.
"Dark Demonic Lake!" He cast second step High-level shadow element, shrouding the ground under me in darkness, from which multitudes of clawed grotesque hands started crawling out, trying if not to tear me to pieces, then definitely hold me in place. The shadow demons also switched from somewhat calculated attacks to berserker tactics, rushing at me en masse. Naturally, I couldn't ignore that.
"You have no honor, damn assassin! Want a real fight? You'll get it! Summon!" Inflating anger emotion with spirit element in myself so it looked authentic on my face, I switched two of the three spell slots busy controlling the ice octopus to casting summons for Bul and Pikachu.
In flashes of silvery light, my pets finally entered our world, emanating peak Mid-Commander aura. But by my spatial senses, Bey, instead of fear, just smiled in anticipation. Apparently, everything was going according to his plan... as well as mine. Now we'll see whose plan survives reality, and whose shatters under the weight of the other's power arguments.
After my order, Bul and Pikachu scattered in different directions from me and deployed their water and lightning domains, covering Bey's entire Sphere together with me. Now he couldn't hide from us! True, due to imperfect vision through elemental particles, distinguishing his figure from the hundreds of shadow demons here would be hard... But not impossible. Just disperse all his minions, and he'll be alone!
I decided to stay on the ground, holding back the spread of the constantly reaching shadowy clawed hands toward me and my appeared pets. Switching two more spell slots to octopus control, I grew two dozen more tentacles and, not sparing mana, started shredding shadow demons and drawing the claws' attention to myself.
My pets took to the air, striking opponents outside the area. Very soon we dispersed all shadow demons in Bey's sphere. Our kill speed was so high they couldn't reform and return to the fight. In the end, only one figure remained in our "vision" field; trying to attack it just redirected the strike a couple hundred meters left. Gotcha!
Though Master Bey was found, now we needed to pinpoint where to hit to land solidly. For that, my pets started sending a sea of weak attacks without sparing energy, hitting every corner of Bey's Sphere. And a couple hit the assassin, helplessly shattering against the artifact armor appearing around him. Now to press the advantage!
The key was not to let Bey restructure his chaotic labyrinth, so that we could attack him. To do that, we needed to urgently occupy his attention with something. And that something had to be a fairly strong and relentless attack on him personally.
Pikachu, understanding me from half a word, immediately unleashed a lightning energy beam at the point we'd found, powerful enough to seriously injure a junior Commander-in-Chief. But it merely harmlessly spread across Bey's artifact armor, which was clearly, just like the cursed blade before it, an artifact at the peak of High level.
"Ha-ha-ha! Useless! I'm about to fly out of here and head straight for your girls! You can only blame yourself for finding a weakness in my magic but failing to exploit it!" Under Bey's hysterical laughter, artifact wings unfurled behind his back.
Well, instead of restructuring his chaotic labyrinth, he's wasting time on taunts and deploying an artifact. Bey is clearly begging me to hit that point with something stronger. Preferably something that uses up all three of my spell slots, leaving me defenseless... Well, let's not disappoint him.
"Scum, you're not getting away!" I began charging three spells at the fourth step of High level simultaneously, launching them at the clearly flying-away-too-slowly Bey. And naturally, my impenetrable defense finally dropped at that moment...
With my spatial senses, I caught the corners of this killer's lips curling upward, and the seed of darkness in my body swelling, preparing to burst open and release my doom... Got you! No way you'll restructure your labyrinth the moment you're busy activating the killer in my shadow!
On my hand, extended toward the point leading straight to Bey, an artifact bracer appeared in that instant, sealed within it a Supreme level curse element spell "Extension of Ten Thousand Accusations," which I'd gotten from the previous raid on the Black Church. Its time had finally come.
"Forbidden element - shadow!" After activation, the dark world around me shuddered, beginning to disintegrate. But the main thing - with my spatial senses, I felt the chaotic labyrinth around us vanish. Heh, fused elements have significant downsides along with the obvious upsides. Forbid one, and the second disappears with it.
Not wasting precious time, I mentally ordered Pikachu, and he vanished in a yellow flash, reappearing right next to Bey. Heh, wind is considered the best element for fast movement besides space only because a human can't turn their body into lightning to move at its speed. Pikachu has no such limitation. He is lightning itself!
While the stunned Bey was still realizing what had happened, my pet was already beside him and knocked him from the sky to the ground with a concentrated lightning strike. Who knows what kind of wings he had and their real speed. If basing it on the level of his other artifacts shown, I wouldn't have caught him if he'd decided to fly away. So preemptive measures to prevent escape are the best. I couldn't afford to let him slip after chasing victory over this killer for so long.
Jumping to the crater from Bey's fall, I swung my leg and delivered a guillotine kick, knocking the rising killer back down. Without letting him utter a word, I summoned my artifact dagger and fed it several Servant souls and even one Pack Chieftain soul, activating a full-charge necrosis attack all at once.
Even so, hitting his armor, it only punched a fist-sized hole over his heart, barely grazing the skin. Who the hell sponsored this bastard with such artifacts? Even after all the hits it took, it had enough durability to tank a point-blank strike like that! Luckily, such a hole was enough for me.
Sharply thrusting my hand in and yanking it back, I ripped out the heart of the dazedly staring Master Bey. It all happened too fast for him.
Here he was, finally about to finish me off by activating the shadow assassin in my body, which can dull the sense of danger so much that artifact armor simply doesn't notice its strike and doesn't activate automatically. And the next moment, his Sphere of Chaotic Darkness collapsed, and he was knocked from the sky to the ground. Not enough? A second later, his heart was ripped out! What could I say to him? Life's unfair. Do better next time.
"Nothing personal, kid, just business. Salan asked me to say hi." With a blank face and holding his heart at arm's length, I said to Master Bey. His eyes widened in shock at the sight, and a second later he collapsed dead on the asphalt. And so fell the century's most talented assassin. In an abandoned city, on a ruined street, at the hands of a university student. Almost sad how it ended.