I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1364: Judgment’s Resolve

Jerimoth was disappointed, but he tried to hide it. He had genuinely thought Judgment would return the favor. He needed that knowledge. There were many parts of this blessing that Ul had bestowed upon them that remained a mystery, and understanding her talent could have helped him unveil how his own attribute was supposed to affect him.

But Judgment didn’t seem interested in sharing. Which meant he had nothing left to hold back for.

His gaze darkened.

”I guess I’ll go on to eliminating you now.”

He dismissed the shield, sending it to the depths of his soul. In its place, a longsword about eight meters long materialized in his hand, while the greatsword still rested in his other grip. Then the helmet of his armor appeared with a burst of sparks, covering his face. The obsidian helm had only a V-shaped visor, and through it, the determination in his eyes burned cold.

The atmosphere changed.

Judgment tensed. She knew with certainty that her opponent was going for a full offense, and the air around him felt heavier for it, like the man’s killing intent alone had weight.

Jerimoth moved first. He covered the distance in three strides, the longsword sweeping wide from the left while the greatsword came down from above. Two weapons that should have been too large and too heavy for any man to swing simultaneously, let alone with that kind of speed. But the blades cut the air like they weighed nothing.

Because they didn’t.

Judgment crossed both halves of her broken spear to catch the greatsword overhead while a tentacle whipped sideways to deflect the longsword. The greatsword slammed into her guard and she felt the weight of it shift the instant it made contact. What had been weightless a heartbeat ago suddenly carried the full force of its true mass and more. Her knees buckled. The ground beneath her feet cracked.

The longsword rang against her tentacle and was knocked aside, but Jerimoth let the deflection carry the blade around in a full rotation and brought it back from her blind spot. She threw herself sideways, rolling across the broken ground, and the longsword carved a deep groove into the earth where she’d been standing.

Jerimoth didn’t stop. He advanced with a fluid economy of motion that made his size and his weapons look like extensions of his body. The greatsword swept low, forcing her to leap, and the moment she was airborne the longsword was already coming down. She twisted mid-air and both tentacles shot forward, wrapping around the longsword’s blade to hold it in place.

The black flesh strained against the metal. Jerimoth pulled. The tentacles pulled back.

For a single second, they were locked.

Then Jerimoth released the longsword entirely. It went weightless in her tentacles’ grip, and the sudden absence of resistance sent Judgment stumbling backward. By the time she corrected herself, the greatsword was already carving toward her midsection.

She barely got one spear half up in time. The impact folded her arm and sent her skidding across the ground on her back, dust and stone spraying in her wake.

The longsword flew back to Jerimoth’s hand before she stopped sliding.

Judgment coughed and pushed herself up on one knee. Blood ran from her lip where she’d bitten it on impact. Her arm throbbed from wrist to shoulder. One of her tentacles hung low, sluggish from the strain of grappling the blade.

She grinned.

”That all you got?”

Jerimoth said nothing. He came again.

This time it was worse. He used the longsword’s reach to keep her at distance, its eight meters of blade sweeping in long horizontal arcs that forced her to stay low or lose her head. Every time she tried to close the gap, the greatsword punished her for it, its weight shifting from nothing to crushing at the point of contact.

But Judgment was learning.

She couldn’t match his power. She couldn’t match his technique. She had no training, no formal combat experience, no elegant swordsmanship to draw from. What she had was the stubbornness of something that refused to understand it was supposed to die.

Her tentacles moved faster now, not stronger, but smarter. She used them to redirect rather than block. When the longsword came sweeping from her left, a tentacle caught the flat of the blade and pushed it past her instead of trying to stop it. When the greatsword dropped from above, she didn’t brace for it. She dove forward, inside his guard, where the long weapons became liabilities.

Jerimoth adapted immediately. He let the longsword go weightless and whipped it back to create distance. But Judgment was already inside. She drove the sharp end of one broken spear half into the gap between his pauldron and chestplate. The tip bit into something and Jerimoth grunted, the first sound of pain she’d drawn from him.

He answered by slamming his elbow into her face.

Stars exploded across her vision. She felt her feet leave the ground and then the flat of the greatsword caught her across the ribs and launched her. She tumbled through the air, crashed through a slab of upturned stone, and came to a halt in the rubble beyond it.

Jerimoth pulled the broken spear tip from the gap in his armor and looked at the blood on it. His blood. He tossed it aside.

”You fight like an animal,” he said. His voice was calm behind the helmet. ”No form. No discipline. Just instinct and anger.”

Judgment pulled herself from the rubble. A tentacle pushed a chunk of stone off her chest. Her left arm hung slightly wrong. Blood traced a line from her hairline to her jaw.

She spat red onto the ground.

”And you fight like you learned from a book,” she said. ”Pretty to watch. Let’s see how pretty it stays.”

A third tentacle grew from her back.

Jerimoth tilted his head slightly, watching it emerge. He rolled the greatsword in his grip and shifted his stance.

The three tentacles fanned out behind her, weaving in slow patterns, their razor edges catching the dim light. She picked up the remaining half of her broken spear from the ground with her good hand.

They stared at each other across the ruined ground.

Then they both moved.

The collision was different this time. Judgment used the tentacles as independent fighters, each one attacking from a different angle while she worked the center with her spear. Jerimoth was forced to give ground for the first time, not because any single strike threatened him, but because four points of attack from four different directions demanded more than two arms could answer cleanly.

He answered anyway.

The longsword swept in a wide arc that caught two tentacles at once, batting them aside with a burst of amplified weight. The greatsword flicked out and slapped Judgment’s spear from her hand. But the third tentacle was already past his guard, its edge raking across his breastplate and gouging a bright line through the obsidian armor.

Jerimoth sent the longsword flying. Not at Judgment, but behind her. It circled like a predator and came screaming back from her blind side.

A tentacle intercepted it. The blade drove the tentacle backward, the black flesh straining and bending, but it held. Barely. The longsword shuddered and flew back to his grip.

Judgment was bleeding from a dozen places now. Her left arm was nearly useless. One tentacle moved slower than the others, damaged from catching the longsword head-on.

But she was still standing.

And she was still grinning.

Jerimoth stared at her through the V-shaped visor. For a moment, neither of them moved. His breathing was controlled but heavier than it had been at the start. Thin lines of blood seeped from the gouge in his breastplate and the puncture near his pauldron.

She’d drawn blood twice. No elegant technique. No masterful swordsmanship. Just relentless, savage pressure from a creature that treated pain like fuel.

”You’re going to die if you keep this up.”

Judgment wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The blood smeared across her cheek.

”Then kill me faster.”

Jerimoth was quiet for a moment. Then he exhaled behind the helmet, a sound that could have been a laugh, and raised both swords.

However, at that moment, the atmosphere between the two of them changed, not just the two of them, everyone started looking up, including Sael and the soldiers below.

A colossal ship, that seemed made out of stones than metal, was arriving through the air.