SSS-Rank Harem Sword: My Lustful Life With Legendary Maidens-Chapter 108: Royal Rumble - Part 5

Adonis had chosen Agility as the main factor to help him react faster, Strength as the second factor to allow him to intercept her attacks with raw force, and finally Intelligence in order to process each strike and predict their trajectory.

Overall, his raw power was now close to that of a level 40 prodigious Swordmaster.

But if compared to ordinary Swordmasters, he was at least at level seventy, though most of them could never reach that level in their lifetime.

---

Swish!

Alina moved again, launching into another dash with the same fluid motion as before.

Her expression was almost bored, like the look of someone performing a task so far beneath their capability that the mind had long since stopped engaging with it fully.

Her darkness dagger carved through the air toward him in a clean arc.

However;

Clang!

The sound rang out across the silent arena like a temple bell.

Her dagger had stopped.

Alina blinked, just once.

But for a woman of her composure and experience, that single blink communicated more surprise than most people expressed in an entire lifetime.

She looked down at the point of interception, then slowly back up.

Adonis’s Soul Sword, Vexa, was pressed firmly against her dagger, edge to edge, holding the strike with a speed that had not been there sixty seconds ago.

His footing was planted. His grip was secure. His arm, the same arm that had been half numbed by her dark energy transfer only moments before, was holding without trembling.

And he was smiling.

Not the pained, stubborn smile of someone enduring more than they should. Not the brittle bravado of someone pretending to be fine.

It was something else entirely.

Blood still trickled freely down his cheek from the earlier cut, tracing a thin crimson line along his jaw before dripping quietly onto the arena floor.

He did not wipe it away.

"Like I said, we are just getting started."

What had he done to become strong all of a sudden?

This question wasn’t just on Alina’s mind, but within all the spectators’ minds as well.

They couldn’t fathom the level of mystery happened here.

If they knew Adonis had stored 1000 attribute points just casually lying around, their jaws had been dropped onto the floor.

Alina pulled back from the interception and reset her stance.

Her calm eyes reassessed the young man standing before her. Something had changed. She could feel it in the resistance of that single block, in the quality of the force that had met her blade. It was not the same body she had been cutting apart thirty seconds ago.

She moved again.

Swish!

This time she came from the right, low and fast, her dagger angled upward toward his ribs in a strike designed to slip beneath a defender’s guard.

It was a movement she had used a thousand times. It had never failed.

But—

Clang!

Adonis’s body twisted at the last possible instant, precisely reading the angle of her shoulder a fraction before her arm committed to the motion.

Vexa came down in a sharp diagonal intercept and met her dagger with a force that sent a visible shockwave rippling outward from the point of contact.

Clang!

Crack!

The stone floor beneath their feet cracked in a spiderweb pattern, thin fractures spreading outward in every direction from the epicenter of the clash like ice breaking under sudden weight.

The nobles on the platform above grabbed their railings.

Alina smiled, "It’s getting interesting."

she pushed off and vanished.

She reappeared behind him, already mid-strike, her dagger aimed at the base of his neck with the quiet certainty of someone who had never been followed through a repositioning that fast.

"Indeed it is."

Adonis was already turning to meet her fave to face.

His speed was something different now, something smoother and more instinctive.

His muscle memory processed the incoming trajectory before his conscious mind had fully caught up to it.

He ducked low beneath the slash, felt the dark energy trailing from her blade graze the top of his hair, and drove Chaos Sword upward in a deflecting arc that caught her dagger from beneath and sent it wide.

BZZZZZZ!

The force of the deflection this time was considerably greater.

Alina was pushed back three full steps, her boots scraping against the stone floor and leaving deep gouges where the pressure had forced her heels down.

Her eyes widened by a fraction.

The section of floor between them had fared considerably worse. A chunk of stone the size of a large shield had simply shattered outward from the impact, fragments skittering across the arena in every direction.

A deep crater marked the point where the deflection’s force had transferred into the ground.

"1 minute 20 seconds... "

She came again, faster this time, genuinely faster, shedding the last remnants of her earlier indifference like a coat she no longer needed.

Left. Right. Low. Overhead.

She attacked in a rapid sequence, each strike flowing into the next without pause, her dagger a dark blur trailing tendrils of light-devouring energy as it cut through the air from every conceivable angle.

It was a combination that had dismantled level 50 warriors in under ten seconds. The speed alone should have been impossible to follow.

However;

Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Adonis met every single one with furious competence that was rapidly becoming something far more alarming than elegance.

His golden eyes moved with each strike, reading the micro-shifts in her weight, the subtle telegraphing of her shoulders, the angle of her elbow before her wrist committed to a direction.

His body followed a half breath behind his eyes and arrived exactly where it needed to be, each time, without fail.

BOOM!

The arena was being destroyed beneath them.

Every clash sent another shockwave rolling outward across the floor, and the accumulated damage was becoming spectacular.

Stone ground cracked and buckled and exploded into fragments under the repeated transfer of force.

BUZZ!

A long jagged fissure had opened across the center of the dueling space, running nearly ten meters from end to end, its edges sharp and uneven where the pressure had simply torn the floor apart.

Several larger slabs had been upended entirely, tilted at angles like broken teeth.

The walls of the lower arena were not faring much better. The shockwaves from their heavier exchanges had reached the nearest stone barrier and left a constellation of cracks spreading across its face, with one section near the base having partially crumbled inward into a pile of loose rubble.

Dust hung in the air around them in a thin, drifting haze, caught in the cold light of the arena and glowing faintly where Vexa’s chaotic purple energy bled outward with each contact.

Up on the platform, the nobles were no longer sitting. They were on their feet, pressed against the railings, watching with expressions that had moved well beyond shock into something closer to disbelief.

Whispers ran between them in rapid half formed sentences that none of them could quite finish because the scene below kept changing faster than their minds could process it.

Queen Eleanora’s composed expression had softened into something openly transfixed.

"This young man is unfathomable, dear." she said.

King Magnus had not moved from his seat. But he was leaning forward now, both forearms resting on his knees, his deep eyes tracking every exchange below with an intensity that had not been present at the beginning of the duel.

The earlier amusement was gone. In its place was something more considered, more serious, like the expression of a man recalibrating something important.

Mariana had stopped crying.

She was gripping the railing with both hands still, her knuckles still pale, but her eyes were wide and dry and blazing with something fierce and bright as she watched him move below.

She watched him intercept strikes that should have been impossible to intercept. Watched him hold his ground on a floor that was literally breaking apart beneath his feet.

"You’re doing the impossible, hubby. Father and Mother will definitely be impressed."

Claudia stood beside her with her arms folded and said absolutely nothing.

But the corner of her mouth had moved, looking proud.

"I knew you could do it, Adonis."

"Dear, that young man had already proven himself. The Executioner cannot even harm him. We should end this duel at once." Queen Eleanora said to King Magnus.

King Magnus turned as the corner of his lips curved.

"This is far from over, Eleanora."

"What do you mean, dear?"

"Do you know who killed that level 71 pirate in the Sea?"

"Didn’t he die by the Royal Guardians?"

"No. He was killed by her. Alina Harbinger."

Queen Eleanora froze. "You mean... "

King Magnus replied,

"She barely used her true power. How powerful she is, no one knows, including me. It’s good that the Executioner lineage has been loyal to the crown for centuries; otherwise, even I would have to be cautious of them from a possible takeover on the throne."

Understanding the gravity of the situation, Queen Eleanora couldn’t utter a response. She only looked at her daughter Mariana with quiet pity. Her daughter was unfortunately going to lose her first love.

Below, Alina broke off her combination and landed several meters back, although there was no visible sign of physical exertion since the duel began.

She looked at Adonis across the ruined stretch of shattered stone between them, at the blood still drying on his face, at the calm and burning gold of his eyes, and said nothing for a long moment.

Then, very quietly, she said, "You distributed attribute points."

It was not a question, of course.

Adonis rolled his shoulder back slowly, Vexa humming with restless purple light in his grip.

"Your guess is correct," he said coolly.

Hearing his reply, she revealed a creepy smile.

"Adonis, do you want to know how much power I used until now?"

"How much?" he asked curiously.

"10%," she revealed, and it dropped like a bomb on a quiet lake.