Chapter 226: The Project (3)

Perseus POV

So this is one of those fighters who sacrifice their real arm for metal prosthetics, depending on the grade of the prosthetics, you can turn your body parts into literal destructive weapons, it's even enchanted and everything. Of course, your body gets upgraded every time you level up, but there are more benefits to using these kinds of prosthetics, your regular body can't really take long-term enchantments without having some sort of organ at the spot of the enchantment being messed up, but these prosthetics can get past all the problems.

Both of this guy's arms are made of these enchanted materials, I can see that these arms are the only ones so I don't have to worry too much about his other body parts, his arms are also channeling mana at a super fast rate, almost as fast as that weakened demon lord.

He channeled fire and where our hands made contact exploded. I got out mostly scot-free, but damn, this guy is serious. I then got out my lightest blade and started to channel the sunlight to clad around my blade, as the smoke faded, I can see him silently charging at me with a lot of mana gathered in his fist.

I turned my body into light particles and ran super fast, in one quick cut, I sliced his arm off, right at the shoulder.

In terms of quality though, I should lose as long as I got my gears with me at all times, he ran to pick his arm up and attached it back and it started to like mend and attached itself when it made contact, great enchanter to work on that arm, must have been super expensive too.

"You, can I get the name of your enchanter?" I asked

"I got this custom made and sent to that hidden village in the southern continent through the black market, that's all I know." he replied

Damn that village, they're fucking good, I should maybe take Zach out for dinner just to curry some favors or something. I snapped my finger and swords made of light appeared all around us and with another snap of my finger, they all flew toward the man in front of me at high speed.

My tactic for this round is the get the referee to interfere and give me my win, the match ends automatically if the referee deems it so, that's why people of that position need to be checked over and over for tampering, their family members as well, and that caused people to trust the ref since they passed the dozens of tests and background check to be here.

The guy in front of me is still radiating that weird and familiar energy, I smell trouble, so my current attack isn't going to necessarily kill him, but I'll make it look like so, so that the ref can jump in and announce my victory even though the guy would have lived and continued. it's a dirty tactic, but I don't really care.

Even I can tell that the guy can't summon a barrier in time as my attacks flew at him, but, just as the swords of light got within a close range, he did summon a barrier on time, just not a barrier anyone was expecting.

A swirl of white rose petals appeared right beneath his feet before they quickly turned into white particles and formed a barrier to protect him.

White rose particles...? I don't sense the white rose nearby, so this guy couldn't have had outside interference helping him, and what's more, I'm sensing the power emitting from him. But this guy ain't the lord of the white rose...

It can't be...the fake rose project? Trevor initiated that project and after the deaths of like 40,000 test subjects, he stopped, he went insane, but even he knew not to waste any more precious materials, and the participants, some were prisoners on death row and some were volunteers, either way, he deemed it impossible.

It was a project done in secret and hidden even from the gods since he assumed that gods wouldn't like seeing people creating imitations of their older siblings, even they were scared that even the demon goddess wouldn't back them up if the other gods got involved. The amount of lives required for any chance of success is a lot too, they need to forcefully extract mana in a pure state where the person involved needed to be heavily drugged to not feel pain...they do this in hopes of creating a spirit like the rose guardians.

They need a lot of mana to be able to produce one based on Trevor's diary, even if there's an improvement, to see whether it's successful or not, they need people to merge with these roses and see the side effects, though most of them died

"How many lives were taken until you achieve success?" I asked

"Why would you want to know?" My opponent asked "The roses approved of this and since I haven't been struck down by the great goddess, it seems that I can do whatever I like with this."

"How many?"

"I don't know nor do I care to question orders given to me." he chuckled and created several white lances and shot them at me, I summoned blue rose petals and formed a barrier, and it didn't take long to know that the original is better.

His was strong, but not strong enough to overpower the original. But that's not the problem here, he now has another power to back up his magic, and that's terrifying, this power was made to be mass-produced, and if this guy is showing off that he has this, it means that there's a couple more behind the scenes as well.

Dammit, I'll need to confront Lilith and that demon lord after this.

My opponent then clad the white rose petals with mana and send a storm of them at me, I then took off at top speed and it home after me with great speed as well, though it can't really catch up t me as I quickly cut off both his arm this time, it didn't stop him from controlling the rose powers with his mind though, it should be more taxing without the arms.

Time to test the extend of how strong the fake is compared to the original.