As soon as she was dragged down, she kicked the person and used his body to jump away, creating distance between her opponent. The man looked like a slave, constantly shivering and biting his own lip, but the posture of his body told something else. Confidence and calmness. Strong and stable stance with one leg in front and two knives in his hands.
No matter where she looked, the place seemed grey with no colors, even her own body was pale in her own eyes. She didn’t understand the assassin’s power, but she knew it wasn’t an attack-type gate since she wasn’t injured. Navia raised her daggers, ready to fight the man in front of her, but the voice was there to assist her. “Don’t fight him. You don’t stand a chance.” Even in a situation like that, her voice was calm and commanding, making her seem inhuman.
“Running away, it is.” Navia swiftly turned around toward the doors out of the arena. With that power, the man seemed slow, unable to keep up with Navia, so her only choice was to run away. Not wanting to lose the momentum, she dashed with her leg in front to kick the doors open. As she kicked them, they didn’t budge nor make a sound. As if she kicked a sturdy wall. Her wounds didn’t heal properly, and the blood burst out from the cut in her right leg.
Letting out an annoyed grunt, Navia used the blood that came out from the wound to create a bit of lingering armor on her arm. “He closed me inside with his power. Looks like I’ll have to somehow climb up with him in the way… I need to do it fast so he can’t react!” Navia dashed toward the slave, who didn’t budge at all since he trapped Navia inside the arena.
As she ran forward, Navia noticed the handle of an axe sticking out of the sand. She reached her hand to grab it and throw it at the assassin. Her hand wrapped around the wooden stick but with a jerk she fell butt on the ground. The axe didn’t budge at all, not moving for even a fraction of an inch, like it was made of stone and stuck to the ground.
Navia rubbed her arm with a strained muscle as she didn’t expect an outcome like that, running at full speed and tightly grabbing the axe. Looking back at her assassin, she noticed that he loosened up his stance.
“I thought you would be a threat to God’s will, but I think I don’t need to even lift a finger to kill you…” The man’s trembling voice slowly stopped, being replaced with a confident tone. His appearance also changed. The ragged clothes he wore turned black, the holes patched up themselves, and the shirt grew into a long black coat almost touching his ankles. Underneath it, a tight black shirt with a brown belt, many knives attached to it. Attached to his coat was a triangular cape which the tip of which touched his nose with a silver ring attached to it. The man’s face was hidden well under the shadow and black scarf, only revealing a bit of his tanned skin.
“What the hell does his gate do? Everything loses color, and some objects become immovable. I need to escape from this… Domain? It must have some kind of range limit…” Looking up for a second, Navia confirmed her suspicion, the ceiling above her with wooden beams still had its colors, which meant the range of this assassin’s power was limited.
“And I think I can win this fight without making a scratch on you.” Stated Navia with a light smile as she had some kind of plan ready.
The assassin’s confidence faltered as he didn’t know much about Navia. “I’ve seen her fight. She only has those blood weapons. Did she unlock a new gate that could injure me in a different way than the blade does? I need to be on the lookout for anything… This could go either way as we don’t know each other's powers…” His eyes were locked on Navia, but subconsciously, his gaze was looking out for anything unusual. “Unless she is bluffing. Which I cannot be sure of…”
The assassin was the first to make a move, taking steps toward Navia with his guard up. Navia took one step back as she didn’t expect that kind of approach from her opponent. That movement was enough for the man to make a decision. With the next step, it seemed as if he was about to fall; in truth, he was positioning himself for making a dash forward.
Navia brought her daggers down to defend herself from the attack down below. The man wasn’t much faster than Navia, but his precision was on another level. While one blade was blocked, the other drew a fine line on Navia’s thigh. While his left hand, which hit the mark, was moving backwards toward his body, the right blade moved along Navia’s dagger and lightly scratched her other leg. Each time, Navia was able to block only one knife while the other slipped through. The next cut appeared on her stomach and rib.
“He is a better dual wielder than I am… This won’t work. He’ll slowly slice me up. I need to change my strategy!” As the assassin was about to land another attack, his blade moved to the side as Navia’s left dagger turned into a small shield, and the other dagger became a bit shorter so the shield could get a few inches larger.
While Navia wasn’t used to that style of fighting, it was enough to improve her defense against the assassin’s precision. The fight turned into a stalemate as the man was no longer able to injure Navia, and she wasn’t able to push back. As the man jumped away, he threw small marble balls from under his coat.
For a brief moment, when the assassin jumped away, the colors came back, but Navia barely noticed that as she tried to follow the man’s movements. Lifting up her shield, she was ready to block the marble balls, not knowing if they were some kind of bombs or his power.
As the marble ball touched the shield, it made a hole in it, and cracks spread through it until it cracked into pieces. The other marble went straight through her thigh, and the third landed right in front of her foot, barely moving the sand as if it weighed barely a thing.
“How… It felt like… Like a cannonball was shot straight at me…” Navia couldn’t believe what the marble balls were capable of since she imagined everything else besides what had happened with her shield and thigh.
Navia sealed her wounded leg by patching the hole with hardened blood. She kneeled down and moved her hand around the pieces of shield to take back her blood, turning it back into a dagger. She closely observed the man for any signs of those marble balls.
“Still didn’t figure it out?” The man asked, his full confidence back after heavily injuring Navia with a simple marble ball. She only gritted her teeth and clenched her fists in desperation, unable to comprehend the power of the assassin’s gate. “With that one gate, I can kill you with a single drop of water.” Not leaving any more space for Navia to think about his power, he dashed toward her, throwing one knife.
It was just like a blink, but Navia saw it; the colors were back for a fraction of a second. Instead of blocking it, she evaded the flying blade and turned her dagger back into a shield. She met her opponent with one shield, and when he tried to attack with the other knife, she turned her other weapon into a shield as well.
“Did she figure out how the Monochrome Mirror works?” The assassin was surprised but wasn’t one hundred percent sure. To be confident in this theory, he jumped away and, with both hands, threw around ten marble balls, but as he did so, Navia turned one of her shields into a knife and threw it at the man. The assassin didn’t throw the balls with as much strength as he intended, letting them quickly fall to the ground. He avoided the dark knife and, with a drop of sweat, watched it go by him.
“So it works both ways…” Navia let out her satisfaction be audible as she figured out how the man’s gate worked. “The colorless world is a different dimension that can’t interact with the real dimension. That’s why I couldn’t lift up the axe, and when he threw the balls, they were thrown in real dimension, making them impossible to move or interact with in the colorless dimension. That’s why it effortlessly destroyed my shield and pierced my leg. If I throw something at the same time, it also becomes an unstoppable force. Seems like a simple ability, yet it is so strong. Now that I know how to fight it, I can survive!”