PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

660 Chapter 660 Fight Between Childhood Friends.

To answer Desmond’s question, how strong had the girls get? the answer was: very strong.

To the degree that all of them could fight against experts in the max-level one-star class equally. Cecilia could even overwhelm her opponents if she decided to use her bloodline. On the other hand, Sasha’s case was a bit exaggerated from Desmond’s point of view. The alchemist was brutally crushing even low and mid-level two-star class opponents.

Sasha had made her breakthrough to the two-star class some time ago, long before Desmond, so it made sense that her strength and dominance would be better entrenched. Yet, given her penchant for obsessing over the work in her lab, it was hard to see her as a fighter.

Now Desmond knew that underestimating Sasha was something only someone seeking their own deaths would do. With Sasha’s current raw power and now more refined combat prowess, even Desmond would be gambling with his life if he fought her with everything he had.

It couldn’t help it, Sasha didn’t have a single move in her arsenal that wasn’t certain death to hit. Desmond’s defenses would barely ensure his survival from getting hit a few times and since all those abilities had a large area of effect, it was almost impossible not to get hit.

When all was said and done, Sasha wasn’t the only anomaly. Cecilia’s defenses were so absurd that Desmond even felt sorry for someone when he saw someone break their wrist by hitting one of her barriers directly. Though unorthodox and a bit too artistic, Revna had become deadly and unpredictable in close combat despite specializing in the assassination.

Claire was even stranger. Desmond simply didn’t understand how the new abilities she used worked. From a bystander’s point of view, it seemed like she was just another martial artist, but Desmond knew that couldn’t be the case.

Desmond could only assume that Claire had found a way to discreetly use some sort of telekinesis-related ability that allowed her to imitate a martial artist, but the details eluded him.

After the girls’ fight with some pretty decent opponents, an idea began to take root in Desmond’s mind, one that he couldn’t get out of his head; he wanted to fight.

.....

Of course, Desmond would have preferred to continue resting and watching if it had been any other scenario since he didn’t feel the need to compete with anyone or prove anything; he also had nothing to gain from this event.

However, Desmond simply couldn’t wait to have a friendly fist bump with his girls. For the first time since he had met them, Desmond saw a real challenge in them. Perhaps Desmond had underestimated them before, or they hadn’t had the right environment to flourish, but that had changed, and Desmond wanted to prove it firsthand.

It should be noted that Desmond never believed that any of the girls had been useless or anything similar in the past. On the contrary, he had always been very aware of their strengths and admired them for them.

The truth was that Desmond had always been too strong by comparison, simple as that; love and respect had nothing to do with it. Desmond loved and respected the girls, but he had never felt the need to fight them like now because he had never seen a challenge from them, not in this sense.

To be fair, Desmond never thought it was necessary for girls to be obsessed with combat like he was. Since everyone was different, he believed it was cruel forcing them to be a certain way. Cecilia wasn’t built for combat, and Sasha basically ignored it. That had always been fine with Desmond, but seeing them show off in the arena had brought out a playful and competitive side in Desmond.

For the hunter, his current emotions could be summed up in a couple of simple sentences: he had seen his girls play without him, and now he wanted to play with them. It was a bit of a strange way of looking at things, but Desmond rarely followed the norm. Besides, he enjoyed fighting and competing when it wasn’t life and death situations.

Expressing his intentions to Kyuru, the faerie gave Desmond a small rebuke before stopping and sighing. “Forget it; you’ll do it anyway. Won’t you? Since you’re still going to do it, I better save energy and avoid the sermon. Just try to keep your identity hidden; I feel like the angel of love was right about what he said before. The current situation of the girls confirms it, don’t you think?”

Though slightly reticent, Desmond agreed to the fairy’s suggestion. It seemed that a time without him had taken a toll on the girls. Whatever their motivation, Desmond felt that he would interfere with their development if he were to appear before them.

Of course, Desmond missed the girls dearly and was itching to give them all the love he could and spend hours of nothing but quiet and cuddling, but he had to put his selfishness aside for the girl’s sake. Sometimes, that’s what love was about.

Having made up his mind, Desmond placed a mask over his face and activated his bloodline. Under the power of Lilith’s blood, Desmond’s body changed. His muscles became more ripped, his bones denser, his height increased an inch and a half, but more importantly, his hair turned white and his eyes red.

In an instant, Desmond’s body was filled with physical power that wasn’t befitting a mana user at all. Desmond was now more than capable of physically crushing an Aura user of his same level without a problem.

Once ready, Desmond walked without any pause or hesitation toward the fighting arena. Using his energy fluctuations to pressure others, Desmond got a free pass until he was on top of the fighting arena. Having no problem masking his voice convincingly, Desmond issued his challenge as he pointed at one of his girls.

After giving it much thought, Desmond had decided that he would fight only one of the girls since he had to minimize the time he spent in front of the entire group’s eyes.

Given how strong Sasha was, fighting her was not possible without revealing his identity, so Desmond immediately ruled her out. In Cecilia’s case, Desmond simply believed it would be more frustrating than fun to fight against that girl’s almost impenetrable defense, so he discarded her.

Revna might have been fun, but Desmond had already analyzed most of her new abilities and fighting style. She was still a challenge but didn’t pique Desmond’s curiosity as much as Claire did.

Claire had been Desmond’s childhood friend, then his adoptive sister, then his lover, and they had shared most of their lives together; however, she was currently a mystery to Desmond and he wanted the chance to solve the riddle in person.

Also, it would be an interesting experience to fight against an arcanist who fought as a martial artist, or so Desmond thought. To Desmond’s satisfaction, Claire agreed to fight him, having no idea that it was her lover Desmond who she was up against.

Once the duel was arranged, it took less than a minute for it to start. As soon as the fight began, Desmond pounced on Claire, eager to find out how she had managed to crush her opponents.

Desmond seemed slightly surprised when he first sensed Claire’s repulsive vector field, quickly understanding that this was probably the reason no one had been able to hit her until now.

Pouring all of his physical strength, Desmond managed to overwhelm Claire’s knockback ability, getting past her defensive barrier without being slowed as significantly. However, Desmond quickly ran into Claire’s second defensive measure: the same flow interruption Desmond used to use.

It came as quite a surprise to Desmond to see Claire use one of his own techniques against him, but what really left him speechless was that Claire had mastered flow interruption to an unbelievably high level. This could only mean two things: either she had trained like crazy to achieve it or it came naturally to her.

“Or I spend hundreds of hours watching someone practice interrupting the flow.” Desmond thought as he realized that this suited Claire more.

Still not trusting his mana, Desmond used nothing more than his absurdly strong physique to try to overwhelm Claire’s defenses, trusting that he would succeed.

Desmond mastered flow interruption much better than Claire. Also, that weird repulsion field had almost zero effect on him, so it made sense that Desmond would believe he could eventually get past her defenses and beat Claire, the same mistake that others had made before being defeated by her.

Desmond didn’t even see it coming. He was thinking about his next move, and how he needed to keep hiding his identity when his fist collided directly into Claire’s open palm this time. This time Desmond felt with absolute clarity that there was something off about the way his fist felt as if something had drained him of all momentum, like sinking into quicksand.

Desmond was still having a lot of fun testing Claire’s flow interruption, finally warming up, excited to continue playing, when she cut all the fun short with one sentence. “<Mirror of spite – Shattered Reflection>.”

The next instant, Desmond saw his vision blur and felt his back slam into a stone wall. Although he wasn’t really hurt, Desmond didn’t know what the hell had happened; he seemed to simply fly away. Seeing Claire still standing on the stage with her open palm pointed at him, Desmond remembered what he felt when his fist found itself in that palm of hers.

“Impact absorption… and impact redirection; no, it wasn’t redirection, that palm strike was much stronger than just one of my strikes.” Desmond muttered in a daze at having lost so abruptly and unexpectedly; he had been carried off the stage without actually getting to fight.

Little did Desmond know that as soon as she felt threatened, Claire decided to prioritize a quick and direct victory, resorting to using a hard-to-see move to knock Desmond out of the arena to win via disqualification, which also ruined Desmond’s fun and good mood.

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