บท 477: Cleansing the Island

Nerissa immediately draws Iaito and drops into a stance, Reima had never described a beast like whatever this was before and she had no idea what it was capable of... She continued to stare at the red eye as it was the only thing that indicated where the beast was, unfortunately this was the worst thing she could have done.

A terrible pain in her head forces her to close her eyes, she quickly reopens them as she was trained to do by Reima however the area around her was not the same, instead of the thick fog of the island it had morphed into darkness. Preventing her from seeing anything more than a couple inches in-front of her. The only thing still visible was the glowing red eye that seemed to be approaching. Her senses all felt dulled, her ability to hear and smell felt almost useless as the eye picked up speed and rushed at her with the speed of a fast car.

She leaps out of the way despite the only indication of danger being the red eye, however even with her incredible vampiric speed she could feel the dust of the ground the beast had just destroyed on her heels.

Reima watches as Nerissa barely avoids the Fiends charge, he was ready to intervene at any moment but felt that fighting one of the most dangerous monsters out there would prove to be invaluable experience for her.

The beast itself was around 15ft tall and made of pure muscle, it's fur and large mane were red as if to mimic the blood of those it'd encountered. On his head were a huge set of vicious looking antlers, these suggest that it's quite the ancient beast as the larger the antlers the older the Fiend.

Nerissa eventually calmed herself down enough to evaluate the situation, she knew that the thing causing her current loss of senses was probably that red eye that remained affixed on her. Conjuring a Mist Dagger she throws it as the monster charges her again, her knife is knocked away by what seems like a huge arm however... She leaps away again but isn't quite fast enough as a hand slaps her away like a missile, she collides with a tree that cracks and splinters from he impact. While she is a vampire the attack she'd just received proved to be too much, she struggles to get up and falls to the floor as soon as she gets to her feet. The eye approaches once again but it's influence on her ends as Reima decides to end it.

Seeing that Nerissa was down and unable to fight he leaps forward and kicks the fiend in it's stomach as it's charging, launching it a couple meters away, it rolls due to the force applied to it which causes it's robust set of antlers to break as it's head collides with the floor.

Reima looks down at his apprentice and reaches out an arm with which he pulls her up, "You've a lot to learn Snuffles... But I have to say, I'm impressed at your first fight with a Fiend." he says, making her defeated expression look a little lighter.

He helps her walk as they pick up Iaito from the floor and approach the Fiend that's bleeding from it's mouth due to it's internal injuries... Reima's kick isn't something to be scoffed at afterall.

Reima "You wanna do the honours?" he asks as they look at the struggling beast.

Nerissa shakes her head, "When I'm stronger." she states without hesitation.

Reima shrugs, unsheathes his Silver Sword and cleanly decapitates the beast. He couldn't destroy valuable alchemical components with a showy Pyromancy after all.

Flashback End.

After their run in the Fiend Reima had Nerissa join him as he went around and killed any monsters still inhabiting the Island. It wasn't difficult as the Fiend was the most threatening creature living here, the other Sirens, Foglets, Drowners and occasional Wraith weren't too much trouble. Though it as fun watching Nerissa try and navigate around fighting them as killing some monsters was more like a puzzle than it is an actual fight.

Another thing that Reima was making sure to do was to train Nerissa in some techniques he'd devised after coming to a realisation... Most of his martial techniques were based on the assumption that he'd be fighting people at his level or stronger than him, this obviously was not the case anymore for him or even Nerissa who was vastly superior to regular humans and even some Witchers in strength and speed.

He had noticed this when thinking back to his fight with the vampires, their techniques didn't resemble anything that a human would have devised, instead of focusing on the power you can direct in a strike they did something completely different. Their fighting style was based on speed and unpredictable attacks, while some martial arts did have similarities it just wasn't to the extent that the vampires had.

For example, with a round house kick you'd need to position your leg and hips correctly before making the strike, otherwise you'd have no momentum in which to deal damage with... The vampire version of this attack would have your leg facing fowards in a weird way, this is due to how quickly and how powerful a simple strike like that could be. Though, if vampires were fighting with each other they would need to integrate more traditional strikes. And so Reima had started creating techniques that suited higher strength and speeds that he and Nerissa possessed... And as usual, his apprentice took to it like a fish in water.

This didn't mean he slacked on the martial arts that he'd been using as his base fighting style however, he wanted to be ready if a being with similar strength and speed to himself came around.