A bloodbath followed Yor's wake as he mowed his way through the Inner Court, although the green flames blooming around him quickly erased the blood and its source with incomparable efficiency. No one truly expected such a devastating attack to spawn so deep within the Palace grounds, thus the speed of response by the Palace's security was slower. Furthermore, no one had devised a proper deployment and counter-terrorism strategy for this segment of the Palace just yet both due to the recent nature of the Inner Court's creation, as well as the general hubris of the Head of Security. For that, the man would definitely lose his head - Yor chuckled derisively as that thought popped into his mind.
Yor's primary goal was to create enough chaos to divert the focus towards himself so that the Young Mistress could escape. If along the way he could cripple a few of the Sol Clan's assets it would be a welcome addition. Unfortunately, the protective ritual formations of the other courtyards in the Inner Court were activated and inhibited him from entering (he would have preferred to purge a few other Prince, Princesses and Consorts). He could force his way through, but that would take too much time and energy.
Apart from Head Eunuch Row, a few other contenders opposed his course forward. All of them met the same fate as the former, with their hearts enriching Yor's vitality and their cultivation enriching his own. It is an unstable growth process since stacking conflicting cultivation inside one's core inevitably leads to a gruesome demise. But it didn't matter to Yor - it wasn't like he was looking for longevity here.
Once he'd reached the entrance to the Inner Court, Yor was finally faced with the first true opposition. Before him stood a vast contingent of the Solar Empire's Royal Army, with the Emperor himself poised in the lead. The man was garbed in his yellow-orange robe with burning-red borders. His long, flowing, fiery-red locks were fastened into a prim top-knot with a golden crown that held the Sol Clan's emblem on it holding his hair in place. His face was stoic, though a mote of antagonism was leaking through the wrinkling cracks that formed on his pristine, tanned skin. His ruby eyes glinted with animosity and rage, and his mana complimented this emotion by gushing forward with unbridled fury. Then, as the Emperor's senses latched properly upon Yor's form a flash of recognition sparked in his face, which then warped further with irritation.
"So one of the Yoruz Clan's dastardly contraptions still lives? Here I thought that the knowledge and skill to create them went extinct with that wretched woman," the Emperor commented with an audible edge in his tone. He then growled, "You have cost me a very loyal and powerful servant. For your crime of treason, your punishment is death. And for killing a Princess of the Solar Empire, your death will be slow and painful."
"I challenge you to try," Yor shot back a provocative smirk. "Your majesty," he added with a sarcastic and mocking drawl.
The pressure emanating from the Emperor magnified as a fresh wave of turbulent mana projected outwards. The force behind the ejected mana pushed the contingent of men backwards with a sudden jerk, though it did little to shake Yor as he held his ground unwaveringly. In return, he countered the pressure by releasing his own mana.
The two combatants engaged in a battle of wills as the two enforced their influence over the overlapping mana domains. The unseen duel was tense, and the Emperor was surprised to see Yor standing firm against his power.
"It seems that woman left a contingency prior to passing. She asked you to protect the girl, didn't she?" The Emperor commented. Yor did not entertain him with a verbal response.
The ambience surrounding the two started to ripple, not due to any arcane magical phenomena, but rather due to the uninhibited rise in temperature as the Emperor actively moulded the mana under his control. The ground started to warm and undulate as the temperatures reached their melting point. On the other end, Yor started to wrestle over his control of the domain by burning the mana with toxic-green flames.
As the back-and-forth reached a tense equilibrium, the Emperor made the first move. With an imperceptible blur, he flashed in front of Yor. His right foot illuminated with a dangerous red hue of highly pressurised vapour flames and hurtled with imperceptible speed towards Yor's head for a roundhouse. Yor raised his left guard to block the kick and pushed back with two of his right arms wreathed in the green flames for a mean hook. The Emperor dodge the attack by moving his body slightly out of the fists' trajectory, though in this process he found himself facing a hidden uppercut from Yor's free second left hand that moved towards his ribs. With no way to dodge, the Emperor bodied the attack while strengthening the targeted body segment with his mana. The flaming fist connected, pushing the Emperor backwards. This exchange occurred within a fraction of a second.
The Emperor gazed towards the hit location and noticed a fist size hole tearing through his robe. One must know that the Emperor's garb is highly enchanted and commonly known to be impenetrable. On top of that, the punch had left a visible char on the Emperor's skin itself, having burst through all the protective measures the Emperor hastily erected to negate the attack.
"You're strong, I'll give you that. Why chose the path of suicide? You and the girl could have escaped?" The Emperor questioned.
Surprisingly, Yor offered him a response. "As long as the Sol Clan reigns over the Solar Empire, the Young Mistress would never truly be free from your grasp."
With that curt rebuttal, Yor burst forward and pressed the attack. What followed was a flurry of exchanges in close quarters. The Emperor was a practitioner of lower-limb-focused martial arts, thus most of his attacks and defensive moves relied on the use of his legs. To wit, his fighting style relied heavily on maximising and maintaining his momentum. His movements included frequent rotation and shift of the mass moment of inertia to modulate the speed of rotation. As a leg-focused martial artist, his engagement distance was generally longer as legs have greater reach than arms. However, the efficiency also falls off at close distances since grappling and short attacks are intractable with the leg. Hence, the Emperor combined his fighting style with efficient movement arts and acrobatics to reposition himself.
Yor wasn't technically at a disadvantage due to his inherently shorter engagement distance. By relegating defence to his secondary pair of arms and using his primary for offensive purposes, he could mitigate the opponent's advantages. Furthermore, due to his inhuman form, he benefited from a wider range of motions. For instance, the Emperor repositioned himself behind Yor and attacked with a spinning kick. The attack should have been in Yor's blind spot, as the Emperor disrupted Yor's mana sense in that location by hijacking it with his own. However, Yor countered it by spinning his body segments at impossible angles to face the attack from his front.
As attacks were exchanged, the two combatants actively wrestled for control over their domains. The little surrounding mana they could gain control over was immediately recruited for their purpose, thus there was an infrequent exchange of spells. The Emperor recognised that this fight was one of attrition - he could not afford to deplete his core's mana early on. Yor was on a shorter fuse, the Emperor could tell. Yor's mana felt unstable, vigorous, but unstable. If he could outlast him then-
An opportunity presented itself, and the Emperor capitalised on it. Just as he predicted, Yor's movement stumbled possibly due to a miscalculation of the amount of mana utilised causing an overextended punch. The Emperor shuffled forward and brought his heel down on Yor's head with a guillotine, Yor managed to block it but the momentum from the attack was too much. Yor was forced to use all of his arms, which allowed the Emperor to proceed with a chained barrage of spinning kicks. With each attack delivered that made contact, Yor's control of the surrounding mana faltered, turning over to the Emperor. The surrounding temperature started to rise again, and the Emperor's legs burned brighter and brighter, with the energy of the sun. The Emperor started to chain in spells with his attacks.
|Solar Spear|, a ball of concentrated combusted gas pressurised into a thin arrow-like form that followed a push kick. |Solar Wave|, a spherical release of pure heat that pulsed periodically as the Emperor attacked with spinning kicks. |Immolation| the passive burning modifier that augmented each of the Emperor's attacks.
The Emperor brought his heel down on Yor's right knee, shattering it and staggering his balance. He then twisted and raised his leg above Yor, bringing it down toe first as a pointed hammer towards Yor's head. Like a comet, a trail of superheated gas followed the immolated foot's trajectory, only to face a final and desperate opposition from Yor's four arms blocking its motion. The Emperor started to push all of his power towards the attack forcing it downwards in an attempt to crush through Yor's defence and obliterate him completely.
"You cannot defeat me!" The Emperor declared mockingly as an audible crack emanated following the destruction of one of Yor's wooden hands. The immolated foot was now right in front of Yor's eyes, who was now on his last knee, boiling the skin of his face at a visible rate.
Contrary to his expectations, Yor revealed a proud smirk and said, "My goal was never to defeat you!"
Within a fraction of a fraction of a second, Yor's broken leg split in two and latched onto the Emperor's pivoting/support leg. Then, Yor released his hectic control over his own degrading core, overloading it with a final attack.
|Toxic Finale|
Yor's core burned with a dangerous green hue, matching that of his flames. It spun rapidly, shrunk and then exploded, releasing a concentrated cone of liquid green flames. Due to the way his abdomen was positioned, and the way the Emperor was standing mid-attack, the cone's field of attack was centred on the Emperor's perineum.
A bloodcurdling yowl followed by a loud crack of the shattering of a skull echoed through the Palace as the pressure and melting heat ceased in an instant.
"Turnabout is fair play," were Yor's last words as he observed the Emperor collapse onto the ground, rolling wretchedly while grabbing his abominably melted groin.
