Immortal Swordslinger (Book 4)
Dante King
Copyright © 2019 by Dante King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
v001
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Want More Immortal Swordslinger?
About the Author
Chapter One
A fireball narrowly missed my left flank and transformed the sand into a razor-sharp patch of glass. I dived to the left as another red-hot burst of Untamed Torch shot toward me. I rolled to my feet, and a roar exploded from the crowd in the stands.
I adjusted my grip on the Demure Rebirth. It was the name I had recently chosen for the earth spirit weapon I had forged on our last mission. The warhammer’s weight had taken some getting used to, but after a few months of training in the halls of Radiant Dragon, the Immense Blade felt comfortable.
“What do you have in mind?” Choshi asked from within the spirit weapon. I had used her spirit to forge the Demure Rebirth after defeating the cultist Saruqin in Hyng’ohr City. Now, she was one of three spirit weapons I owned.
The skinny figure of Yo Hin flitted through the sky, borne aloft by his mastery of the Flight technique. Orange flame wreathed around his body as he raised his hands again. Another fireball exploded from his palm and raced toward me. I sidestepped the projectile, and it burst on the ground beside me.
“I’m going to use my new earth techniques,” I replied to Choshi. “The crowd will love them.”
I concentrated my Vigor through the familiar earth channels within my body and focused the raw magic into the Sandstorm technique. Choshi groaned softly in my mind as the power flowed through the warhammer and released a wide spray of sand into the air. Yo Hin somersaulted clear of the whirling dervish and countered with Untamed Torch. I leaped back to dodge the fireball, and Choshi cried out as it missed her haft by a few inches.
“I’m not ready,” she panted. “I’m an earth weapon. I’m not supposed to fight flaming birds in the sky. Can’t you hit him with something else?”
Yo Hin’s power had grown since I’d left Flametongue Valley, but he couldn’t keep up attacks like this forever. Flight was a difficult technique to master, and it burned through Vigor fast. Eventually, he would run out of juice.
“I’m working on it,” I assured Choshi. “Just stay calm.”
“I cannot wait to see what you have in mind,” she said.
Over the last few months, we had grown in power together, and she was now practically my own personal cheerleader inside the warhammer.
I spread a Sandstorm into a thin wall of tiny grains with a flick of my will. Yo Hin twirled his hands in an intricate pattern and shoved his palms outward to produce a fireball. The flaming projectile caught my grains of sand and turned them into brittle shards of glass.
“Come on, Effin!” Kegohr howled from the stands as the shards peppered the ground. “Bring him down!”
“He’s slowing!” Vesma added from beside him. “Wait for the right moment!”
Our journeys into the outer provinces and our battles against the forces of darkness had forged us into a team that could take down even the most skilled Augmenters.
I smiled at their encouragement before I dove clear of another flaming sphere. Vigor pooled within my internal channels, and I pushed it through my pathways of water and earth, using the condensation in the air to enhance my water technique. I smashed the Demure Rebirth into the ground and felt the warhammer tremble in my grip. The sand darkened, undulated, and surged upward into the Mud Geyser technique. Yo Hin gaped and flipped to avoid my attack, but he was too slow. Thick, wet mud splattered over his robes and instantly hardened into clay.
“Let’s see him stay in the air when he’s carrying all that extra weight,” I said.
Yo Hin clapped his hands together, and a spear of white-hot fire sped toward me. I pushed Vigor through my ash channels, activated Fire Immunity, and covered myself in charcoal-like armor. I wrapped my hands in a much thicker layer before I caught the fireball and tossed it back up into the air, almost like punching a volleyball. The crowd gasped before sighing as the flaming sphere disappeared into the heavens.
“Not bad,” I said to Yo Hin. “You’ve improved.”
“Thanks,” he said from above me. “But you haven’t seen everything yet.”
He tried to pin me with a Scorching Lance, a beam of white-hot energy, but I dove clear of it. Fire Immunity protected me from the worst of the heat as I hefted the Demure Rebirth up again.
Yo Hin narrowed his eyes and raised his hands to focus his power. I pounded the warhammer into the dirt, and another Mud Geyser discharged from the floor of the arena beneath him. I caught him halfway through casting his next technique and broke his focus. Clay baked itself around him in a thick shell, and the flames holding him aloft sputtered as they struggled to keep him up in the air.
Without the ability to focus and tap into his Vigor, Yo Hin couldn’t keep raining fire from above. I threw another Sandstorm at him. The sand crystallized around the last of the Flight flames and snuffed them out like a candle.
The crowd gasped as Yo Hin plummeted and landed awkwardly on the ground. Then, a crimson light burst from his chest, cracked the clay shell smothering him, and blasted it outward. I raised an arm to shield my eyes from the fragments and slammed the Demure Rebirth down again.
A Ground Strike shook the earth and flared out
