Chapter 314 – Vs Lydia Augusta IV von Hohenzollern [Maximilian Franz IV von Habsburg POV]

“How did we get here?” Maximillian asked the princess of steel.

Lydia was pressed partly into the floor by the sheer might of his magic. The ruins around them acted like a stark reminder of a renaissance passed. A wonderful cathedral, that was what it must have been once. Two lines overlapping in the shape of a cross, a fundament of beauty with broken windows that fractured the light of the world into a thousand colours.

Through the open ceiling, rays of sunlight cut through misty air, creating pathways of light towards the sky that made it look like God himself was beholding what was happening. But there was no single, omnipotent god watching. Only powerful beings that claimed that title, rightfully so in Maximillian’s mind, and a single, even stronger person that had no need of being called such.

He knew that his fighting style wasn’t all that interesting to the crowd. Simply forcing enemies to the ground by increasing the gravity in the area several times over didn’t make for a great show. Best he could do is keep some motion in this by talking and walking, even if the audience couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“We could have tried being happy together; it’s really saddening that our visions had to be so far apart from each other,” he continued on his own, as the pressure on her lungs made it impossible for Lydia to answer. “What we could have built if we were unified… although I do appreciate the freedom of the single life. As you do, I assume.”

The king had lingering feelings for the princess. That was simply how it was when a woman of her calibre stepped out of one’s life. Maximillian had no illusions about himself; he was too proud, loved fancy get-ups and wasted money on parties others would have called frivolous at best. He was, however, also honest with his mistakes, a gentleman where the situation required it, and his understanding of economics was more than good enough to have money to waste.

So, he understood what he had lost in Lydia but also that there was no way to get back to these times, no matter how often he asked. If he could turn back the clock, he still would have stood his ground in that final fight. He was a monarch, the head of one of the most important houses in both real and Abyss history. His personal wants were second to that of the nation.

He was the state, his needs were not solely his own.

“Don’t you find this battlefield oddly fitting?” he asked. “Two paths crossing and diverging again, a ruin of the beauty that was.” He slowly walked rounds around the lying princess, careful to not step what he knew her zone of control to be. 

In just a few minutes, the rules of the tournament would decide this to be his victory.

“It’s like a metaphor for our relationship. Still, the remaining beauty is undoubtable. Whatever we make from here, even if we do it on diverging paths again, will ultimately lead to a better future. Don’t you agree?” he stopped and looked if Lydia at the very least nodded or shook her head to that.

All he was met by was the defiant glare of her grey eyes.

 “Always so focused, I admire that, Lydia,” Maximillian admitted. “I was honestly shaken when you managed to get the elector of Saxony to withhold his vote. Only by Romulus’ grace am I even still here. Politically, you are better than me, but the pe- Argh!”

A searing hot pain in his abdomen. Shocked, he stared at the piece of metal that buried itself there, just a single shard. ‘Impossible, I know her range!’ he said to himself. 

‘Obviously not as well as you thought,’ another voice, a deep tremor, answered drily in his head. ‘You underestimate her, then again, the same is true for her about you.’

“You still love the sound of your own voice,” Lydia squeezed out these words. With his concentration broken, she could move again, slowly only, but a creeping movement was still better than none at all. She reached into the mantle of her uniform and gulped down one of her mithril vials before Maximillian could apply the limb-numbing pressure again.

‘Shit!’ Maximillian thought and quickly changed his strategy. A reverse hail of rock was ripped from the ground and created a barrier between him and Lydia. The quickly erected curtain bought him enough time to free the area he stood on from the yoke of natural gravity as well and use it as a platform that carried him upwards.

He could feel the underside of that piece of ground getting chafed by the swarm of metal pieces that now had turned his first defensive reflex into nothing more than a flying mass of pebbles. ‘You got too close,’ he reprimanded himself as he adjusted the direction on which gravity applied to those rocks.

They fell sideways towards Lydia, who had no trouble defending herself against the assault. Her own metal swarm moved with stupendous speed, getting between the princess and the storm before it reached her. Maximillian dismissed them from his control once they had drummed on the quickly formed shield.

Having succeeded in getting further away, he pulled the metal in his body out and threw it away. Under normal circumstances, he would have just left it there to remove after the fight, but against a metal mage, that would have been just asking for a defeat.

‘The wound won’t matter,’ the tremor-like voice in his mind reminded him. ‘This fight is over the moment her boost runs out.’ 

‘But will I make it that long?’ Maximillian offered a counter question as the shield reformed into the shape of an oversized spearhead that was heading straight for him.

He had no idea what her maximum range was anymore. He thought he had known her base range and was proven wrong. Now that she had roided herself up, even that estimate was absolutely uninformed. For all he knew, her partial control zone could have been as big as his now.

As a gravity mage, his total control area was fairly small, but he was compensated with enormous range in the partial control.

If getting out of range was not a feasible option, Maximillian simply had to throw as many distractions at Lydia as possible. First, he had to dodge this enormous chunk of metal coming his way though.

The platform he stood on quickly turned upside down, with him on it. To pull off that stunt he needed to not only rotate the gravitational pull of the platform but also make it so his shoes were subject to force in the different direction with equal or greater magnitude.

A gust of wind ruffled his upside-down clothes as the spear passed under his feet, above him. Years of training had made him adaptable to changes in direction, so he had no need to take a pause before unleashing his counterattack.

‘Behind you,’ the bass-heavy voice warned him, and immediately, Maximillian dropped downwards, freeing his shoes from the magical influence. The swarm of metal returning to Lydia would have pulled right through him if he hadn’t done that.

‘Thank you,’ Maximillian answered as he slowed his fall by using counter magic on his clothes. He couldn’t use his magic on his own body directly, robbing him of the ability to fly freely without something else to attach too. Even only this much caused his clothes to become stiff and rigid, turning them more into an obstacle than help.

He landed and was immediately subject to another attack and this time he knew it wasn’t going to end well. Managing to block the initial wall of swarming pieces of metal by erecting yet another curtain of rock, Maximillian now found himself at the centre of a cloud of scrap.

Thin sheets, buttons, rings and everything else the princess could have possibly carried on herself to bring into the battle, all of it had been coldly reforged to become some sort of blade. With desperate waves of his arms, Maximillian started to rip the ground apart, throwing it between himself and the terrifying singing of metal cutting through the air.

‘It seems you will need my help,’ the tremor commented as Maximilian was hit by several pieces of metal weaving through his defences with nimble movements. Such finely tuned assaults should have been impossible at this range and while controlling this many pieces. He managed to make them subject to his own powers split seconds before they cut him, but each time he did that, he expended more power than Lydia.

To wrestle control of an object from another mage was hugely taxing, especially as he was using a whole different school. Each time he had to resort to that, his defences at large became weaker.

‘No, she must be about to run out of power!’ the king didn’t want to use him, his pride forbade him to. 

‘Will you win or will you be shamed?’ the question came. Before Maximillian could answer that, his defences were finally broken. His chest rocked backwards to the side, and finally, his shoulder turned, under three separate impacts. ‘Some people have already seen me.’

The world slowed down as the remainder of his walls fell and he could clearly see his demise coming for him from all sides. There was no other way now. ‘Do it, Hawpler,’ he resigned himself.

A sphere of dark violet and black appeared above Maximillian. All of the loose objects, from the remaining rocks to the swarm of metal, were pulled towards that sphere as a heavy gravitational pull was exerted on everything.

Maximillian breathed heavily from all the wounds, but he was still standing. Same could be said for Lydia, but all of her weapons were now bound to a single point and refused to move more than an inch away from the sphere. It wasn’t until her mithril induced strength finally faded, her body nearly collapsing under the sudden fatigue, that she allowed herself to ask, “How is this possible?”

The sphere renounced its power on the object around it once Maximillian had limped away from underneath it. Cluttering sounds could be heard. “This is my elemental, Hawpler,” Maximillian answered. It was useless to hide now.

Hawpler was nothing more than a light swallowing hole radiating a purple glow. A dot of pure black in everyone’s field of view. His powers were minimal in every normal setting, unable to be of great help. However, when he was unleashed, his powers upon whatever matter, organic or inorganic, he chose was like the pull of a black hole once the event horizon was passed. Inescapable, to put it bluntly.

Of course, that wasn’t true for everyone equally. Maximillian had no illusion that this power wouldn’t work on the true monsters of this world. Also, it wasn’t the only thing Hawpler was capable of doing; there was something else incredibly important that he was able to do.

“Your elemental…?” Lydia was stunned, for good reason. 

“Yes, I never went ahead with the fusing,” he exerted his powers on the princess and forced her to the ground. It wasn’t hard considering that she was already exhausted completely.

Bleeding, he himself leaned against a broken pillar and slowly slid down until he was sitting on the ground. 

“I know what you must be thinking,” he said in a self-mocking tone. “That traditionalist, Maximillian Franz von Habsburg, he of all people refuses the ritual that has been practiced by our culture for hundreds of years? Yes. I refused it.”

“He didn’t want to become someone else,” Hawpler added, the purple radiation flaring like soundwaves as he spoke. “I would not have been against becoming one.” 

“Go away you floating physics tumour!”

“He says that, but he likes me,” Hawpler’s tremor like voice was filled with amusement.

‘Yes, I do not want to become someone else,’ Maximillian thought, closing his eyes and cursing his arrogance for not bringing any potions.

 ‘I will never bleed!’ Hawpler reminded him of what he had said to impress that stupidly hot Asian MILF on his team. Not like he had any chances with her, according to Alexej’s background check.

“I look forward to the press conference after this,” he said unironically. “At least this will be fun to explain to the world.”