Whatever rhythm Grey was building up was immediately distorted, torn, and then ripped to shreds.
He dodged backward on instinct, but his head smashed right into the force field.
’FUCK!’
Realization that he couldn’t die here slammed into Grey all at once. He could only revive if Prometheus was equipped, and this damned place didn’t let him use any external items.
His head spun as his knees dropped.
The blade clipped his lip, ripping up his face and through one of his eyes, just barely soaring past. Grey had a fleeting thought that his skin was far more resistant than he thought it should be before he rolled to the side.
He didn’t pause this time. He realized he was fucking around too much, and now one of his eyes was ruined. It wasn’t a deep cut, but his cornea was definitely split to hell, and he couldn’t even tell whether he had gone blind or not because the blood gushing from his eyelid made the difference irrelevant.
The next blade was already coming and now a good fifth to quarter of his vision was nothing but a sea of black backed by a stinging discomfort.
Grey’s jaw set and Center of Balance activated, the world around him both slowing and calming. He chilled his emotions to the extreme, trying to focus on nothing but the rhythm the giant was projecting, its large strides echoing through his very being.
Through his Resonant Frame itself.
A sphere of gold radiated out from Grey as he side-stepped.
His body felt slower, almost like he was moving through a dense quagmire. No, it was deeper than that. It was like there was a different plane he hadn’t been aware of now, a void his body usually passed through easily, but now that he was aware of it, it had gripped him from every spot of surface area across his body.
Despite being slower, though, Grey could feel something he hadn’t spotted before: the guardian’s Resonant Frame.
It swallowed everything around him, pressing against the force field that surrounded the platform.
And that was when he heard it. The horns, so beautiful, so sonorous, so violent they made his blood boil. He almost felt like he was back in the gym, sitting beneath a knurled bar that was calling his name.
But it was also distinctly missing something.
It didn’t have any drums.
But he, he had the drums.
Grey’s eyes left trails of crimson in the air as he dodged to a side.
The music rose, reaching a fever pitch that roared.
Grey felt the peak coming and he feinted with his sword, slashing down at the giant’s leg joint only to pull back. He hadn’t experienced it before, but he was sure. That moment there the giant would have had complete immunity.
With a tap of his foot Grey shot to the side, dodging out of the location the giant expected him to be.
His blade surged and he cut into the enormous being’s side, his blade curving in an ’S’ pattern that followed the unique arcs of metallic plates that protected its torso.
Chi.
His sword exited through its side and ripped a path out, motes of light following Grey’s attack rather than blood.
The guardian almost acted like it hadn’t been cut at all, but Grey didn’t react with rage or feel it was unfair at all. He had entered such a flow state that both his eyes were closed.
Maybe he wouldn’t be able to do this with a normal person, but the giant Holy Knight was little more than a projection, an existence that didn’t have a rhythm itself, but was rather a slave to a rhythm that already existed.
And that made it all too predictable.
Its sword smashed into the ground and Grey timed the move of his foot so perfectly he used it as a leaping pad. The guardian pulled its sword back and up, but that only added to Grey’s momentum.
He spun and landed behind it, his long sword piercing into the behemoth’s back.
A faint thought of his blood slowing barely reached Grey, but he had already ducked beneath the guardian’s slashing blade, too occupied to care. The giant Holy Knight pivoted and slashed out wildly.
The more Grey listened to its rhythm, the more he felt it was lacking, the more inadequate and faulty he thought it was, the more holes he poked at it.
He danced around the creature, his sword guiding in what he might have thought was an elegant dance but was actually so direct, abrupt, and violent it matched the beating of the drums.
Every choppy cadence, every roll, and thump of the bass came with another sweep, another chop, another thrust.
Motes of light were cut away from the guardian again and again, following the movement of Grey’s sword in swirling cyclones of golden wisps.
A bloody grin spread across Grey’s face.
He clashed with the giant head on, the tip of his sword and its own meeting in perfect symbiosis. The difference in strength should have sent Grey flying, and yet the instant they met, there was just the slightest twist in his wrist.
His rhythm was simply better.
The thrust of the guardian shot forward and past Grey’s ear as Grey himself took the final step forward, his own momentum reaching a peak that went beyond just invulnerability.
It touched upon something Sacred.
PUCHI.
Grey ripped a hole right through the armor, his body glowing such a bright gold that he almost looked as though he had donned his own Holy Knight Armor.
BANG.
The guardian exploded into motes of light. Then the gold began to swirl, forming a huge point of suction that burrowed into Grey’s body.
Everything settled down and all that was left was Grey himself.
"Is that it?" Grey wondered, blinking.
All things considered, that was almost too easy. Well, he had almost lost an eye, but the moment he figured things out, everything came smoothly.
Grey chuckled, resting his sword hilt on his shoulder, just barely holding onto its pommel.
"Paladins are kinda weak."
The platform shook.