Chapter 573: Chess II
Before Sam could disappear from the stage, he checked the health and noticed that one of the five bars was empty. The soldiers are not bad. They can even be called geniuses even in the Naga Loka.
Sam didn't feel much surprised and exited the battlespace and reappeared in the chair. He once again moved the pawn forward and this time, the pawn in the diagonal direction of the queen.
He was ready to get taken out by the Queen, but to his surprise, Kartikeya didn't make that move and used another pawn to move forward.
It is not completely unexpected though. After all, the queen is bound to win, so there is little point in making that move. But Sam was ecstatic because his pawn can either challenge the queen or the Knight.
The queen is a Level-5 Nascent, so there is no way he could deal with that, but the Knight is a Level-3. This is not the first time, Sam fought a person who is two levels higher than him. In fact, when he entered the Nascent stage, he was constantly challenging the higher levels and in his Level-6, he can even fight with the Peak Nascent stage cultivators.
So, there is a chance that he could take out the knight, but since these are troops of the Kartikeya himself, he might not be able to kill the knight, but he would definitely make some serious damage.
Sam moved the pawn diagonally towards the Knight.
He once again reappeared on the battlefield with the Black stage.
In front of him was a person holding a broad sword and is sitting on a horse-type beast.
Sam looked at the health bars and noticed that the fifteen is not from the person alone, it is from both mount and the person combined.
The person has ten health bars and the mount has five. The battle is between the combo and Sam.
Sam didn't care much though. He noticed that the knight sculpture did have a horse and just thought it was symbolic because even his knights have the same.
He made his move without any wait as he took out a staff. The only thing limiting is the cultivation, the rest of them are fair game.
He used the light element fusion and started running towards the knight who is on the horse as he threw the light blades.
The knight also rode the horse towards him with his broadsword. The sword was glowing with sharp light as he blocked the light blades, but Sam didn't worry, when he was close enough, the staff and the sword clashed and Sam was slammed into the ground because of the force. One of his health bars dropped immediately, but he didn't feel disappointed, he leveraged this force and swung the staff horizontally.
The edge of the staff glowed with sharp golden light and it slicked the underbelly of the horse.
The internal organs spilled out with a lot of blood and the horse crashed to the ground throwing the knight forward.
The horse has only one health bar left and it is also being slowly chipped away.
The Knight's power is definitely beyond Sam, but that doesn't mean Sam has no fight left against him.
Taking the opportunity of the Knight's imbalance, Sam didn't wait for a single second to throw the staff filled with a light element like a Javelin and ran after it like a golden flash.
The Knight saw the staff coming towards him and steadied himself before blocking it with his sword, a large sword image formed as he slashed towards the staff, he didn't slash it on the tip, rather on the side surface of the staff, deflecting the staff, but the light surrounding the staff is not for show, it left a deep gash on the hand of the Knight.
The arm guard was torn apart and the hand started bleeding.
But his health didn't decrease by much. Only one-fifth of one health bar was reduced. The arm guard took most of the damage and the skin gash was superficial.
The knight who just evaded the attack saw a golden flash right in front of him, as he was ready to wield the sword, Sam kicked the ground and jumped up as he stomped on the face of that guy before leaping forward, the corinthian helmet also covered the nose of this guy, but it didn't stop him from breaking the nose and there is also a gash on the face.
Sam caught the staff that was still flying forward and was almost on the edge of the stage and turned around as he swung the staff once again to attack. The knight didn't have any shield on his hand and could only block the attack with the sword or his hand. But Sam is too fast not giving him a chance to use the sword.
So, he blocked it with the injured hand and the wound opened up even more and the bleeding increased.
Sam didn't stop, he took the chance to hit the Knight as much as he can, his super speed is his only advantage here, but his energy is being drained and when he saw his health bar, he noticed another health bar was gone due to exhaustion.
Only two health bars were left.
After a few moves, Knight gained his balance and stability back and Sam's advantage was gone, the next time he went close to the knight, the broadsword was impaled straight into his chest. Sam felt cold sweat all over as his health decreased rapidly.
Before he could get out of the sword, the knight's aura raged and sharp spiritual energy sword rays spread tearing his body apart.
"ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH."
Sam screamed at the top of his lungs as his body was ripped apart from this single move. His vision turned black and when he came back to himself again, he was drenched in a cold sweat as he sat in the chair. His breathing was erratic. Gasping for air greedily, Sam looked at Kartikeya with a horrified look.
The latter exchanged the glance and looked at him with a faint smile.
"That is the true challenge of the game."
Sam understood what he meant, the true challenge of the game is not just winning, rather the true challenge is winning as he experienced his own death multiple times.
Experiencing one's own death would make one mentally die. He would slowly lose his emotions and he would feel like everything is so trivial in this world.
This is a result of the research Sam saw in his previous life. A rival organization of his tried to create some soldiers through this method. They are all killers. They don't even have thirst for blood. They don't even have any basic emotions like anger, sadness, happiness and so. Even the pain is not something they would care about.
When the virtual reality and neural technology that can connect the human brain to virtual reality came about, they repeatedly experimented and created a batch of killers. They killed them so many times in the virtual reality and also made sure that their original bodies will feel the circumstances of the death, the pain resulting from the death but will still forcefully keep their bodies alive. Such a cruel method to make perfect soldiers. Once they are ready, they would even cut their own balls and give it you if you are their commander and asked for them.
Sam suddenly felt all this information run through his mind, because he felt like it would be dangerous to die so many times in a battle like this.
His mental state became unstable.
Kartikeya made his next move quietly and gestured for Sam to make his move. Due to Sam's mental condition, the next few moves are not so good in particular, but he recovered just after the next three moves and once again started playing.
For some time nobody is trying to take the pieces of each other and a strange deadlock appeared.
If one started the killing the spree would continue, but before that, Sam has to verify another conjecture and sent a pawn to fight with the Knight who was already half-beaten by him.
There are only eight health bars left on this guy's health and Sam's pawn is fully fresh.
When they entered the arena, Sam didn't opt for the same tactic and didn't use the light element.
He actually started using the lightning element and covered the whole stage with a bright sparkling flash, the Knight couldn't help but frown in annoyance and look at Sam coldly.
Sam jumped forward with his staff, but just before the Knight was about to slash, Sam who is as bright as a star a moment, ago suddenly disappeared from the place.
The Knight was stunned for a second and hurried to turn around, but before he could do so, Sam stabbed a dagger from the rear. Due to the Knight's sudden movement, Sam missed the heart by a hair's breadth but was not disappointed.
He took a step back and spat out some blood as he deactivated the shadow mode.
The abrupt change of elemental forms is tiring and harmful to his body, at least until he gets a hang of it and improve his control more.
He left the dagger right there in the back of the Knight.
He took the staff once again and started his battle.
The full-fledged stab reduced the Knight's health by two bars and his health is still reducing due to the knife being there and not allowing the wound to scab or heal.
The knight noticed that his movements are getting slow and his body is feeling numb, but that is not because of the bleeding. He used a lot of brute force and threw Sam off, before checking his own body, only to find a rapidly spreading poison.