Tables were overturned into barricades to exchange firepowers from two different sides; the New Destiny members and the unnamed attacker, presumably a group of mercenary, yet there were too much of them to be just another random group.

Floorboards cracking under the weight of bodies, glass and metal and bone colliding in the dim orange glow of burning wine.

My armor stank of smoke and oil, making every breath coming out of my mouth hot and metallic. Lady_Valerie stood across the debris, her cloak tattered and half-charred, her eyes locked on me like a hawk, still deciding to conceal her identity and nerfing herself I see.

I lunged first.

The chair leg in my grip was a weapon as it was splintered at one end and slick with oil. I swung and jabbed fast, stabbing toward her shoulder, trying to keep the tempo up so she couldn't build the momentum for her god damn combos.

She tapped my wrist away with her forearm, countered with a knee that barely brushed through my ribs, then she spun low, her elbow cutting toward my throat. I ducked, caught her arm mid-spin, and pushed forward, slamming her toward the nearest table.

She flipped with the motion, rolled across the tabletop, and kicked a mug of wine straight into my face. I staggered back, blinking hard as the alcohol burned my eyes.

"FUCK!"

I swung blind and missed.

Her elbow crashed into my temple with a hollow crack and my world flashed white.

Just as I planned.

My knees buckled, but I wrapped my left leg behind and around around her knees before she realized it.

Normally, a woman my age leg-locking would be for breeding purposes, but here, I plan to take her down.

This is what we called "Hit-trading", where you take a hit to land a hit, quite a prominent concept in VR where fighting was just slightly different from real life.

I yanked hard, and she slipped, because I picked a spot where the floor was soaked with wine, the boards squeaking as her heel skidded out and she fell hard, one arm catching the ground to break the impact.

I didn't waste a second, immediately I snatched a lantern from the wall and SLAMMED it at the floor between us. The glass shattered, the flames spread, racing through the alcohol.

"?!!!"

Lady_ Valerie immediately panicked, she rolled up to her feet and dashed away before slapping the fire, still adament on keeping the cloak on for some reason… It's not like I haven't seen her before, maybe she was hiding from other people?

She landed in a crouch, half a dozen feet away, wiping soot from her cheek. Her cloak burned at the edges.

"You're doing it again." She commented, with anger in her voice, "Still not playing fair."

"Heh~" I smiled back, chest heaving. "I'm having fun, aren't you having fun? What's that about me getting rusty again?"

I glanced over the two at the doorway, they were now busy keeping other members of New Destiny from exiting or entering… Now that I was confident they wouldn't interfere, I grabbed another lantern, popped it open, and poured the oil over myself.

My armor glistened under what's left of the moonlight and flames of the tavern, every movement I made sent reflections dancing.

"You can't grapple me by holding onto my armor now."

And if things caught fire, well, my plate could take more heat than her cloth could.

She looked at me like I'd lost it, and maybe I had.

We came at each other's throat again, and I could see the faintest smirk from behind that cloak of hers… Despite literal feature-darkness covering it.

The fight raged on around us as we circled, the place were so loud, filled with so much screams, spells, and clashes of steel that I could not hear myself think at times.

A stray lightning bolt shattered the table right in front of me as I ran, forcing me to dash to the side to avoid the exploding splinters. Then, a man crashed into Lady_Valerie's side, forcing her to dodge it and missed a beat where I was lowering my guard.

I couldn't see my scythe or her broadsword among all these loud distractions.

Valerie made the first move.

She darted in, feinted high for me to miss my stab, then swept low at my calf.

I jumped despite my arm was still raised from that stab and I didn't have a chance to retract. She caught my chestplate yet slipped her grip as expected.

I landed right behind a stool, so I used my knee to slam it toward her face. She deflected it with her forearm, but it threw her positioning off just enough for me to jab forward with the chair leg, scraping along her ribs. Valerie hissed and countered with a palm strike to my jaw.

My head snapped sideways, I stumbled, spat blood, and swung again, the wooden leg cracked against her hip with a dull thud.

She took it like nothing happened and drove her knee up into my stomach. I reached upwards, barely managing to catch her wrist before she could finish the follow-up strike. Her skin slid off my oil-slicked gauntlet, grip failing, and I used the moment to shove her backward into a chair.

The chair shattered and she rolled off it before I could pin her.

Before she got up, I ran back inside, passing multiple fights and blades that was going all over the place near my neck. I ducked behind the bar counter, kicking bottles off the shelf.

Glass shattered, spilling more wine across the scorched floor, I snatched two of them, ripped out the corks with my teeth, getting a little alcohol in my system of course, and threw them as improvised molotovs after igniting them using an already burning spot just arm's reach away.

One exploded near her feet; the other burst against the far wall, igniting the spilled alcohol into another line of fire.

She dashed straight through the wall of flame as I was dashing away towards the other direction, spriting for the entrance.

I glanced behind and spun my body around to face her when I saw that she just jumped off a table and was on my ass, I raised my arm just in time to block a punch that would've crushed the back of my skull. The impact sent me sliding backward, boots grinding against the floorboards.

She pressed on, elbows and knees flying in rapid rhythm, each strike perfectly placed, forcing me to defend without pause.

I threw the chair leg at her mid-combo. She swatted it aside, but that half-second gave me room to breathe. I dropped low, grabbed the stool from the ground, and smashed it into her shins.

Take that, Wally fucking West.

She fell to one knee, I aimed a kick for her face.

She caught my ankle, twisted, and threw me backward into the ninety-degree angle corner of the bar, my spine cracked against the wood.

If I didn't feel pain, I would be crying right now.

But my body screamed in protest as it felt heavier, a signal of my lowered health bar and stamina. My breath ragged, but I pushed off the counter and charged again, she was on her feet already, blood dripping from a cut on her lip, her expression wild and focused all at once.

I swung with everything I had, though bare fists now that the chair leg was long gone.

She dodged the first, blocked the second, parried the third with her forearm, then hit me with a rapid combo that put dents in my armor.

I ducked under her next punch and rammed my shoulder into her chest, slamming her into another support beam of the in-mountain tavern. The wood groaned and cracked under the impact. Above us, the ceiling sagged slightly, bits of dust and debris raining down, creeping into my neck.

We synchronically paused just for a breath, just two steps away from each other, listening to the crackling overhead… Where there was another group fighting for the barrier nexus right now.

Then she grabbed a handful of broken glass from one of the lanterns and flung it at me. I raised an arm to block, shards bouncing off my gauntlet, slicing through the gaps at my wrist.

Blood ran down my fingers, mixing with oil.

I swung again, wide and clumsy, but it hit as she staggered and I followed with a headbutt that connected with her cheekbone.

She stumbled back, spitting blood, and I didn't give her a chance to recover. I grabbed a half-broken table leg from the floor and hurled it at her head. She ducked under it just in time, but it hit the lantern behind her, and the flames spread even faster.

Half the tavern was burning now.

Someone screamed in the background, someone else shouting about getting out, others still fighting like maniacs. The sound of crashing beams filled the air, drowning out everything else.

Valerie looked around briefly, the chaos flickering in her eyes. Then, she grinned, wiped the blood from her mouth, and raised her fists again.

"You're still holding back," she said.

"Am I now?" I smirked, breath hitching, my vision swimming. "Said the one covering herself with a cloak and barely any armor."

And we clashed.

We slammed into another table, rolled over it, both trying to get the upper hand. My gauntlet caught her shoulder, her fist caught my chin, and for a moment, neither of us could tell who was winning or losing.

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