I died, got reincarnated, and discovered I'd somehow ended up in someone else's harem anime. Fortunately, I brought my builds with me.
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Pathless Exile [POE/DXD]
- Thread starter Alchto
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Pathless Exile [POE/DXD]
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Alchto
I want money so I can get some pussy ~ peep
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"Death" was not nearly as dramatic as I had always imagined it would be. There was no final moment of clarity, no brilliant light at the end of a tunnel, and certainly no mysterious ROB waiting on the other side to congratulate me on completing whatever cosmic test I had apparently been taking part in or that he was bored and wanted me to entertain them. One moment I was sitting in front of my computer, in an ordinary night, the kind that blurred together after enough hours spent playing the same game, and the next blink there was nothing. No pain, no sensation, no awareness of my surroundings. Just a abrupt absence of everything.
The sensation was so abrupt that I didn't even have time to react properly, one moment I was sitting in my chair in front of my computer, my body remained in roughly the same position it had been in at the computer, hunched forward with one hand still raised as though I were about to reach for the mouse, there was a brief panicked thought that my chair broke and that I was going to fall, and then I did.
My hands instinctively reached forward for the desk that should have been there, even as my legs remained bent beneath me, I barely had time to register the surprise before I landed hard on my backside.
"Fuck."
I stayed there for a moment, more hurt than than confused, waiting for the embarrassment of having somehow managed to fall out of my own chair to pass. My first thought was that one of the wheels must have broken, although I couldn't remember hearing anything snap. I reached behind myself, expecting to feel the carpet beneath my hand, but my fingers sank into something soft and uneven instead.
I opened my eyes and spent several seconds staring at the forest that appeared in front of me, I looked upwards to the sky which was framed by the branches of trees I didn't recognize, then downwards to myself. My first assumption was that I had fallen asleep somewhere outside, although I couldn't remember leaving my house, the second assumption was that I was dreaming, which seemed considerably more plausible once I noticed that the clothes I was wearing were not the clothes I remembered putting on, I was wearing some kind of strange vest and old fashioned leather trousers and boots, and then I realize I'm now wearing gloves that went up almost to my elbow. All in all, I now looked like a hobo that stole random clothes from a movie set based on a medieval setting.
I pushed myself upright and looked down at myself, bewildered at what I was looking at, the barbarian looking armor had gaps I could look into so I got scared shitless since I now had strange looking scars that almost seemed raw, een though I wasn't feeling any pain, I took one of the gloves off and look at my hands and arms and saw the same scars, although there was something different about them that I couldn't quite place. My body felt fine, too, no headache, no lingering sensation from whatever had happened before I lost consciousness. If anything, I felt better than I had in years.
Then I took notice of the weapon lying in the grass beside me, for several seconds I simply stared at it, refusing to acknowledge it.
It was a Gemini Crossbow.
Not something that merely resembled one, either. I knew that particular weapon intimately. I knew its weight, its shape, the way it sat in my hands, and even the faint marks along its surface. I had spent enough hours looking at it, modifying it, cleaning it, and using it that there was no possibility of confusing it with anything else.
Putting the glove back on, I reached down and picked it up.
The moment my fingers closed around the weapon, the rest of my equipment seemed to fall into place in my mind as naturally as remembering my own name. Armor. Ammunition. Flasks. Skills. Passive abilities. The entire collection of things that should have existed only inside a game was suddenly as familiar to me as my own body.
I stood there in silence, staring at the crossbow.
"No."
It was the only word I could manage.
I had played enough Path of Exile 2 to recognize what was happening, and that was precisely why I found it so difficult to accept. There was no rational explanation for any of this. My character's equipment shouldn't exist outside a computer screen, and yet I could feel the weight of every piece of it. I could sense abilities I had spent countless hours using, as though they had been carved directly into my instincts.
I tested the first one almost reluctantly.
Cold gathered around my hands and into the bolts.
I froze.
It wasn't an illusion. The temperature genuinely dropped around my fingers, and a thin layer of frost spread into the weapon before slowly fading away. I stared at my hand for a long time, trying to find some reasonable explanation for what I had just seen, but my mind kept returning to the same impossible conclusion, my permafrost witch hunter build had come with me.
That realization should probably have terrified me more than it did. Instead, after the initial shock wore off, a strange sense of familiarity settled over me. Whatever had happened, I wasn't helpless. I had a weapon, I had abilities, and apparently I had somehow retained everything that had made my character effective in combat. It was only when I started walking that I realized how little I actually knew.
I didn't recognize this forest, which it turned out to be some kind of forested park. when I reached the town connected to it several minutes later, I recognized absolutely nothing about the surrounding area. It felt like Japanese architecture based on what I knew about that country, what with the narrow streets and their the kanji, not that I could understand it. I somehow woke up in Japan, I tried to use a public phone but I couldn't speak Japanese so I couldn't ask for directions, still, the people seemed normal enough, not like those from wraeclast, even if they looked at me weird for wearing strange clothes.
Emotionally tired of walking all day and not a single step close to try and get contact with his family, I came back to the park I appeared in as if it would have the answers to my problems and since I had nowhere to go and didn't know what to do, I came back to the only place I actually knew. I was contemplating what to do while sitting in a park bench I found, when I felt something in my head, like a sensation on the back of my head prickling my senses making me aware of something of the occult was happening deeper into that park. I felt the urgency so I ran towards that danger I was feeling, with almost 50% increased movement speed, in a few seconds I reached that place, I felt a presence nearby hiding but I had more pressing matters.
I was looking at someone lying on the ground on a pool of their own blood, there was enough of it that the sight immediately suggested something catastrophic had happened to him but he was still alive and was muttering something about wanting to see crimsom hair, something about him was familiar not personally familiar, he never seen this person but it triggered memory kind of thing.
I started to panic a little when a unsettling calm came over me and made me rationalize the situation, I crouched beside him and checked for a pulse, it was weak but still present, he had a hole pierced into his stomach by some kind of piercing object, an magic icicle? or a lance? or those thorns those witches use, thing is, he was probably seconds away from dying, it clearly wasn't a normal injury, the amount of blood suggested that whoever had done this had not intended to leave him alive so I had to be careful, then while keeping track of my surrounding while i tried to find his phone to call an ambulance, I felt a dark presence nearby.
Raynare had initially come to the park for a completely different reason, the human boy lying below had been dealt with, and she had been waiting for the final moments of his life to pass before leaving. She had expected no complications, then she had felt someone approaching, at first she dismissed as a normal human being nearby, then she sensed it coming close abnormally fast, she did a better scan and the presence immediately made her cautious, because of its unfamiliarity, something she couldn't quite place so she hid herself and waited
The feeling had been subtle at first, but something about the approaching presence had immediately made her cautious. It wasn't the ordinary sensation of another human entering her surroundings. There was something unfamiliar about it, something she couldn't quite place.
Now she understood why her instincts had warned her, the man standing over Issei did not look like anyone she had expected to encounter tonight. His clothing alone was strange enough to draw attention, the strange armor, the ancient looking but modern at the same time crossbow, the unusual equipment and the overall appearance of this man made absolutely no sense in the middle of a quiet Japanese park, perhaps some foreigner participating in some kind of event. But the appearance wasn't what concerned her most, it was the way he moved. He had came without making nearly as much noise as a human should have, even while sprinting with superhuman speed. His attention had constantly shifted toward the surrounding trees, as though he instinctively understood that he might be watched. Even now, while examining the wounded boy, his attention moved constantly across his surroundings, his eyes checking the trees and the spaces between them as though he were accustomed to looking for threats.
Human? Probably. But there was something wrong with him.
Then that stranger suddenly stopped, Raynare's eyes narrowed.
He had felt her.
She hadn't moved. She hadn't spoken. She hadn't made any deliberate attempt to reveal herself, yet the man's entire posture changed almost instantly, he withdrew his hand from the boy and looked toward the trees.
Raynare watched as he moved, he had no hesitation, he crossed the concrete clearing quickly and disappeared behind a stone water fountain, that was not a normal human reaction, she couldn't even see him properly from where she stood, but she could tell from the position of his body that he had taken cover and was aiming at her, a moment later, the sound of a weapon being reloaded reached her ears.
Interesting.
She couldn't see the weapon clearly, but she could see enough of it to understand that it wasn't a prop. The stranger was actually prepared to shoot her, so her curiosity deepened.
Slowly, she stepped out from between the trees, the weapon was trained on her immediately.
She stopped.
So he really was watching her. Raynare raised both hands slightly, keeping her expression calm.
"I wasn't trying to sneak up on you."
The stranger said nothing, his weapon remained pointed directly at her.
She couldn't help but smile.
He was cautious. Very cautious. More importantly, he had reacted to her presence before she had given him any reason to believe someone was there, that meant his senses were considerably sharper than those of an ordinary human.
Raynare glanced toward the wounded boy lying several meters away.
"You shouldn't be worried about me. I was only coming to check on him."
She had no intention of admitting that she was the one who had left the boy lying in a pool of his own blood.
The stranger finally spoke.
"Do you know him?"
His voice was calm.
Raynare had expected uncertainty, but there was surprisingly little fear in it.
"Yes."
She allowed her gaze to settle briefly on Issei before looking back toward the fountain.
"His name is Issei."
The weapon remained fixed on her.
"And you?"
Raynare smiled.
"My name is Yuuma Amano."
She took one slow step forward.
The weapon tracked her movement immediately.
She stopped again.
A faint irritation crossed her face.
At first, she found it amusing, then she began to find it irritating.
"You can lower that, you know."
Her voice remained pleasant, although there was a little less warmth in it than before.
"You really intend to keep that pointed at me? I told you I was looking for him."
"I think I'll keep it for now."
Raynare's smile twitched, Raynare stared at him.
She took a slow breath and forced her expression to soften again.
"You're being unnecessarily suspicious."
"Maybe."
There was something peculiar about his caution. He wasn't staring at her like a frightened civilian who had encountered a stranger in an isolated park and only had a weird weapon to protect himself. He wasn't constantly looking for an opportunity to escape, either. He simply refused to give her an opening. Even when she stood completely still, his attention never wandered for long. Whenever she shifted her weight or moved one of her hands, his eyes followed the movement almost immediately.It reminded Raynare of an animal that had learned, through experience, that relaxing around the wrong thing could get it killed.
Raynare took another step toward him.
Again, the weapon followed her, she stopped several paces away, watching him from across the clearing with an increasingly impatient expression. The stranger still hadn't lowered it, but something about his expression had changed. His eyes were no longer moving over her clothes or her face as though trying to identify her. Instead, he seemed to be looking at her without really knowing what he was looking for.
He felt it again.
The moment she came closer, that strange sensation returned, it had been faint when he first noticed her, almost indistinguishable from the ordinary unease of having an unfamiliar person approach him in an isolated place. Now that she was closer, however, it was becoming harder to dismiss, something about her presence felt wrong.
He couldn't have explained what he meant by that, even to himself. She looked human. She spoke like a human. She moved like a human. There was nothing visibly unusual about her at all, yet the closer she came, the more his body seemed to resist the idea of treating her like one. His instincts kept searching for something that his eyes couldn't find.
His grip tightened on his crossbow and his expression hardenex slightly.
Raynare noticed the change and tilted her head.
"What's wrong?"
The stranger didn't answer immediately.
For a moment, he wondered why he was doing this, there was no rational reason for it, he didn't know this woman. He had no evidence that she intended to attack him. She hadn't even made a threatening gesture since approaching the clearing.And yet the instinct remained. Stay alert. Don't let her get close. Don't turn your back on her.
It wasn't fear.
The real problem was that there was someone else in the clearing who was running out of time, his eyes flicked toward the boy lying several meters away. Issei was still bleeding heavily, and whatever had caused the injuries had left him in no condition to simply be abandoned while the two of them stood there staring at each other.
He looked back at the woman, she was simply watching him, apparently content to wait and see what he would do, his instincts wanted him to keep the weapon trained on her. Every part of him that had reacted to her presence was telling him that allowing himself to become distracted would be a mistake.
But he couldn't stand there forever.
The boy was dying.
Whatever was wrong with the woman, she had not attacked him. She had spoken to him, tried to calm him down, and was currently standing there watching him. His instincts were screaming that he shouldn't trust her, but that wasn't the same thing as knowing she deserved permafrost bolts to strike and freeze her and shatter her in a million pieces with fragmentation bolts.
Whatever questions he had about the woman could wait. The boy couldn't, he lowered the weapon slightly, though he did not put it away, and began moving toward Issei. He crouched beside him for the second time.
He looked over the wounds, trying to understand what had happened. They were far worse than anything he could casually treat, then his hand instinctively moved toward his belt, his fingers closed around glass, he pulled out a flask.
A Life Flask.
Raynare watched without much interest.
A potion? Some kind of medicine? It didn't matter, nothing was going to save him, she made sure of it since she had personally driven the light spear through him..
"Well..."
He pulled the stopper free, the smell was strange, but not unpleasant. He brought it toward Issei's mouth, lifting his head slightly, and carefully tipped a small amount into his mouth.
The change in Issei was subtle at first, then the he took a deeper breath. His chest rose more easily than before, and the tension in his face seemed to lessen by the smallest degree.
"Okay..."
He wasn't sure what else to say, the flask worked just like in the game, he just didn't know how it would work in real life, how much is 1.1k life worth in this world? I didn't know.
Raynare stared at Issei.
No. She stepped forward.
The stranger looked up.
"What did you give him?"
"A Life Flask."
Raynare stared at him.
"It's medicine."
"That isn't medicine."
The stranger frowned.
He looked at the flask again.
"I suppose it isn't, technically."
She took a step toward him.
He immediately looked up.
His weapon was still within reach.
"Stay there."
Raynare ignored the warning, her eyes remaining on Issei.
"He should be dead."
The stranger looked down at the boy.
"He almost was."
"No."
Her voice was quieter now.
"He should be dead."
The stranger looked back at her, something in her expression made his instincts flare again, he didn't know why she was so certain,he didn't know what she had done.
But the way she was looking at Issei made one thing increasingly obvious, she knew exactly why he was injured.
The stranger slowly rose, putting himself between Raynare and Issei
"You did this."
Raynare's expression went cold.
She did not bother lying this time.
"Yes."
"I put a light spear through him."
She looked toward Issei.
"I watched him die."
The stranger's grip tightened around the weapon.
"And now?"
Raynare's eyes moved toward the flask.
"Now I'm wondering what else you have."
The stranger did not answer.
Raynare smiled faintly.
It was not a friendly smile anymore.
"You've become much more interesting than I expected."
She took another step.
The stranger raised his weapon.
"Don't."
Raynare's eyes hardened and she moved.
One moment she was several meters away, and the next she was already beside him.
The stranger barely saw her, his body reacted before his thoughts could.
He twisted his body aside as her hand suddenly had a spear made of light, feeling the force of the attack pass close enough for its heat to sting, she let go of the spear and flew backwards, that was the moment he saw she now had black wings on her back, distracted, the spear that was still floating destabilized and exploded.
He stumbled backward.
Then, Raynare came in low, her wings folded tightly behind her as she drove forward with a spear of light in her hand. The weapon was aimed directly at his chest.
His body twisted sideways, letting the spear pass across his armor, and his free hand caught Raynare's wrist. She tried to wrench herself loose, but he had already brought his weapon around.
The weapon came up, the barrel was almost touching her and saw the cold gathering around the weapon.
Thpse bolts struck her before she could move, at that distance there was nowhere for her to dodge, and the impact sent a violent burst of frost covering her upper body in a sheet of white ice. Ice raced over her arm and shoulder, crystallizing across the black feathers of her wing as the cold forced a sharp gasp from her throat. For an instant, her entire body seized, one wing hanging half-open behind her while frost continued spreading across the feathers and locking them together.
Raynare stared at him in disbelief, she had expected a weapon, she had not expected that.
She was thrown backward.
Her wings opened instinctively, but the movement was sluggish. One of them barely responded, weighed down by ice, and she crashed onto the ground several meters away.
Raynare slowly pushed herself up, her breathing heavier now, the ice cold making her breath come out in bursts of steam.
Ice covered most of the right side of her body, spreading from her shoulder across her ribs and down her arm with frost even creeping up her jaw and cheeks. Several black feathers had been completely encased, and tiny crystals continued forming across her clothing.
She looked at the frozen wing.
Then at him.
"You..."
Her voice came out quieter than before, she tried to flex her fingers, and nothing happened, the cold temporarily numbed her arm.
Raynare kept her distance, her eyes fixed on the weapon in his hands. She had already learned that getting close without understanding it was dangerous. The first projectile had nearly frozen her in place, and she had no intention of discovering what would happen if she took another one at the same distance, what bothered her was that she still didn't understand the weapon itself, It wasn't shaped like any ordinary crossbow she had seen before, it felt almost like one of those human shotguns, the projectile had come out with enough force to make her need to treat it like a magical weapon rather than a mundane one.
The man did not give her time to recover or analyze though, advancing immediately.
Raynare saw him coming through the frost covering her vision and tried to bring her arm up, but it barely responded. The strange weapon was already coming around again.
She forced her body to move, a spear of light formed in her left hand and threw it at him.
He shifted aside and the spear passed beside him. Another spear followed. Then another.
He kept advancing whenever he could, but Raynare refused to let him get close enough to use that strange weapon against her again. Whenever he tried to close the distance, she gained altitude or shifted sideways, throwing another glowing spear to force him back. All the while, she watched the crossbow, whatever he had fired at her had apparently been a single projectile, like an ordinary crossbow in a sense.
That made sense, the weapon looked strange, but beneath the unfamiliar shape it still seemed to obey a simple principle, one projectile and one shot, perhaps the stranger wasn't quite as dangerous as she had thought.
She descended again, with a smile on her lips and a spear of light in her left hand as she came down, and she thrust it towards his head from above. He evaded the very telegraphed attack, the spear embedding deep into the ground and instead of retreating, he stepped forward, Raynare immediately let go of her spear and tried fly backwards.
He caught her wrist.
Her smile disappeared.
He pulled.
Raynare stumbled forward, suddenly finding herself much closer to him than she had intended. She tried to tear her arm free, but his grip tightened. Her other hand tried to come up, light already gathering in her frosted palm.
He moved faster.
For one brief moment they were locked together.
Raynare struggled against him, wings beating behind her as she tried to throw him off balance. He held on.
Then she felt the barrel of the crossbow press against her.
Her eyes widened.
She looked down at the same weapon, the same one that had frozen her.
Her gaze flicked back to his face.
"You already fired that."
The man looked at her.
There was no anger in his expression.
Almost no emotion at all.
Then, with the faintest hint of amusement, he said,
"Gemini Crossbows shoot twice before reloading, you know?"
Raynare's eyes widened.
BANG
And that's a wrap, what do you guys think? I think its a shame that people with wings in DXD don't use it for actally flying they just stand on the air with static wings behind them, I tried to make the fight have a mobility issue with him freezing one of her wings but the just don't work that way, first fight I've written, is it too much narration? What about the Leon-esque line at the end?
The sensation was so abrupt that I didn't even have time to react properly, one moment I was sitting in my chair in front of my computer, my body remained in roughly the same position it had been in at the computer, hunched forward with one hand still raised as though I were about to reach for the mouse, there was a brief panicked thought that my chair broke and that I was going to fall, and then I did.
My hands instinctively reached forward for the desk that should have been there, even as my legs remained bent beneath me, I barely had time to register the surprise before I landed hard on my backside.
"Fuck."
I stayed there for a moment, more hurt than than confused, waiting for the embarrassment of having somehow managed to fall out of my own chair to pass. My first thought was that one of the wheels must have broken, although I couldn't remember hearing anything snap. I reached behind myself, expecting to feel the carpet beneath my hand, but my fingers sank into something soft and uneven instead.
I opened my eyes and spent several seconds staring at the forest that appeared in front of me, I looked upwards to the sky which was framed by the branches of trees I didn't recognize, then downwards to myself. My first assumption was that I had fallen asleep somewhere outside, although I couldn't remember leaving my house, the second assumption was that I was dreaming, which seemed considerably more plausible once I noticed that the clothes I was wearing were not the clothes I remembered putting on, I was wearing some kind of strange vest and old fashioned leather trousers and boots, and then I realize I'm now wearing gloves that went up almost to my elbow. All in all, I now looked like a hobo that stole random clothes from a movie set based on a medieval setting.
I pushed myself upright and looked down at myself, bewildered at what I was looking at, the barbarian looking armor had gaps I could look into so I got scared shitless since I now had strange looking scars that almost seemed raw, een though I wasn't feeling any pain, I took one of the gloves off and look at my hands and arms and saw the same scars, although there was something different about them that I couldn't quite place. My body felt fine, too, no headache, no lingering sensation from whatever had happened before I lost consciousness. If anything, I felt better than I had in years.
for reference, it is the ezomyte rune scars skin
Then I took notice of the weapon lying in the grass beside me, for several seconds I simply stared at it, refusing to acknowledge it.
It was a Gemini Crossbow.
Not something that merely resembled one, either. I knew that particular weapon intimately. I knew its weight, its shape, the way it sat in my hands, and even the faint marks along its surface. I had spent enough hours looking at it, modifying it, cleaning it, and using it that there was no possibility of confusing it with anything else.
Putting the glove back on, I reached down and picked it up.
The moment my fingers closed around the weapon, the rest of my equipment seemed to fall into place in my mind as naturally as remembering my own name. Armor. Ammunition. Flasks. Skills. Passive abilities. The entire collection of things that should have existed only inside a game was suddenly as familiar to me as my own body.
I stood there in silence, staring at the crossbow.
"No."
It was the only word I could manage.
I had played enough Path of Exile 2 to recognize what was happening, and that was precisely why I found it so difficult to accept. There was no rational explanation for any of this. My character's equipment shouldn't exist outside a computer screen, and yet I could feel the weight of every piece of it. I could sense abilities I had spent countless hours using, as though they had been carved directly into my instincts.
I tested the first one almost reluctantly.
Cold gathered around my hands and into the bolts.
I froze.
It wasn't an illusion. The temperature genuinely dropped around my fingers, and a thin layer of frost spread into the weapon before slowly fading away. I stared at my hand for a long time, trying to find some reasonable explanation for what I had just seen, but my mind kept returning to the same impossible conclusion, my permafrost witch hunter build had come with me.
That realization should probably have terrified me more than it did. Instead, after the initial shock wore off, a strange sense of familiarity settled over me. Whatever had happened, I wasn't helpless. I had a weapon, I had abilities, and apparently I had somehow retained everything that had made my character effective in combat. It was only when I started walking that I realized how little I actually knew.
I didn't recognize this forest, which it turned out to be some kind of forested park. when I reached the town connected to it several minutes later, I recognized absolutely nothing about the surrounding area. It felt like Japanese architecture based on what I knew about that country, what with the narrow streets and their the kanji, not that I could understand it. I somehow woke up in Japan, I tried to use a public phone but I couldn't speak Japanese so I couldn't ask for directions, still, the people seemed normal enough, not like those from wraeclast, even if they looked at me weird for wearing strange clothes.
Emotionally tired of walking all day and not a single step close to try and get contact with his family, I came back to the park I appeared in as if it would have the answers to my problems and since I had nowhere to go and didn't know what to do, I came back to the only place I actually knew. I was contemplating what to do while sitting in a park bench I found, when I felt something in my head, like a sensation on the back of my head prickling my senses making me aware of something of the occult was happening deeper into that park. I felt the urgency so I ran towards that danger I was feeling, with almost 50% increased movement speed, in a few seconds I reached that place, I felt a presence nearby hiding but I had more pressing matters.
I was looking at someone lying on the ground on a pool of their own blood, there was enough of it that the sight immediately suggested something catastrophic had happened to him but he was still alive and was muttering something about wanting to see crimsom hair, something about him was familiar not personally familiar, he never seen this person but it triggered memory kind of thing.
I started to panic a little when a unsettling calm came over me and made me rationalize the situation, I crouched beside him and checked for a pulse, it was weak but still present, he had a hole pierced into his stomach by some kind of piercing object, an magic icicle? or a lance? or those thorns those witches use, thing is, he was probably seconds away from dying, it clearly wasn't a normal injury, the amount of blood suggested that whoever had done this had not intended to leave him alive so I had to be careful, then while keeping track of my surrounding while i tried to find his phone to call an ambulance, I felt a dark presence nearby.
Raynare had initially come to the park for a completely different reason, the human boy lying below had been dealt with, and she had been waiting for the final moments of his life to pass before leaving. She had expected no complications, then she had felt someone approaching, at first she dismissed as a normal human being nearby, then she sensed it coming close abnormally fast, she did a better scan and the presence immediately made her cautious, because of its unfamiliarity, something she couldn't quite place so she hid herself and waited
The feeling had been subtle at first, but something about the approaching presence had immediately made her cautious. It wasn't the ordinary sensation of another human entering her surroundings. There was something unfamiliar about it, something she couldn't quite place.
Now she understood why her instincts had warned her, the man standing over Issei did not look like anyone she had expected to encounter tonight. His clothing alone was strange enough to draw attention, the strange armor, the ancient looking but modern at the same time crossbow, the unusual equipment and the overall appearance of this man made absolutely no sense in the middle of a quiet Japanese park, perhaps some foreigner participating in some kind of event. But the appearance wasn't what concerned her most, it was the way he moved. He had came without making nearly as much noise as a human should have, even while sprinting with superhuman speed. His attention had constantly shifted toward the surrounding trees, as though he instinctively understood that he might be watched. Even now, while examining the wounded boy, his attention moved constantly across his surroundings, his eyes checking the trees and the spaces between them as though he were accustomed to looking for threats.
Human? Probably. But there was something wrong with him.
Then that stranger suddenly stopped, Raynare's eyes narrowed.
He had felt her.
She hadn't moved. She hadn't spoken. She hadn't made any deliberate attempt to reveal herself, yet the man's entire posture changed almost instantly, he withdrew his hand from the boy and looked toward the trees.
Raynare watched as he moved, he had no hesitation, he crossed the concrete clearing quickly and disappeared behind a stone water fountain, that was not a normal human reaction, she couldn't even see him properly from where she stood, but she could tell from the position of his body that he had taken cover and was aiming at her, a moment later, the sound of a weapon being reloaded reached her ears.
(crossbows in poe sound like guns)
Interesting.
She couldn't see the weapon clearly, but she could see enough of it to understand that it wasn't a prop. The stranger was actually prepared to shoot her, so her curiosity deepened.
Slowly, she stepped out from between the trees, the weapon was trained on her immediately.
She stopped.
So he really was watching her. Raynare raised both hands slightly, keeping her expression calm.
"I wasn't trying to sneak up on you."
The stranger said nothing, his weapon remained pointed directly at her.
She couldn't help but smile.
He was cautious. Very cautious. More importantly, he had reacted to her presence before she had given him any reason to believe someone was there, that meant his senses were considerably sharper than those of an ordinary human.
Raynare glanced toward the wounded boy lying several meters away.
"You shouldn't be worried about me. I was only coming to check on him."
She had no intention of admitting that she was the one who had left the boy lying in a pool of his own blood.
The stranger finally spoke.
"Do you know him?"
His voice was calm.
Raynare had expected uncertainty, but there was surprisingly little fear in it.
"Yes."
She allowed her gaze to settle briefly on Issei before looking back toward the fountain.
"His name is Issei."
The weapon remained fixed on her.
"And you?"
Raynare smiled.
"My name is Yuuma Amano."
She took one slow step forward.
The weapon tracked her movement immediately.
She stopped again.
A faint irritation crossed her face.
At first, she found it amusing, then she began to find it irritating.
"You can lower that, you know."
Her voice remained pleasant, although there was a little less warmth in it than before.
"You really intend to keep that pointed at me? I told you I was looking for him."
"I think I'll keep it for now."
Raynare's smile twitched, Raynare stared at him.
She took a slow breath and forced her expression to soften again.
"You're being unnecessarily suspicious."
"Maybe."
There was something peculiar about his caution. He wasn't staring at her like a frightened civilian who had encountered a stranger in an isolated park and only had a weird weapon to protect himself. He wasn't constantly looking for an opportunity to escape, either. He simply refused to give her an opening. Even when she stood completely still, his attention never wandered for long. Whenever she shifted her weight or moved one of her hands, his eyes followed the movement almost immediately.It reminded Raynare of an animal that had learned, through experience, that relaxing around the wrong thing could get it killed.
Raynare took another step toward him.
Again, the weapon followed her, she stopped several paces away, watching him from across the clearing with an increasingly impatient expression. The stranger still hadn't lowered it, but something about his expression had changed. His eyes were no longer moving over her clothes or her face as though trying to identify her. Instead, he seemed to be looking at her without really knowing what he was looking for.
He felt it again.
The moment she came closer, that strange sensation returned, it had been faint when he first noticed her, almost indistinguishable from the ordinary unease of having an unfamiliar person approach him in an isolated place. Now that she was closer, however, it was becoming harder to dismiss, something about her presence felt wrong.
He couldn't have explained what he meant by that, even to himself. She looked human. She spoke like a human. She moved like a human. There was nothing visibly unusual about her at all, yet the closer she came, the more his body seemed to resist the idea of treating her like one. His instincts kept searching for something that his eyes couldn't find.
His grip tightened on his crossbow and his expression hardenex slightly.
Raynare noticed the change and tilted her head.
"What's wrong?"
The stranger didn't answer immediately.
For a moment, he wondered why he was doing this, there was no rational reason for it, he didn't know this woman. He had no evidence that she intended to attack him. She hadn't even made a threatening gesture since approaching the clearing.And yet the instinct remained. Stay alert. Don't let her get close. Don't turn your back on her.
It wasn't fear.
The real problem was that there was someone else in the clearing who was running out of time, his eyes flicked toward the boy lying several meters away. Issei was still bleeding heavily, and whatever had caused the injuries had left him in no condition to simply be abandoned while the two of them stood there staring at each other.
He looked back at the woman, she was simply watching him, apparently content to wait and see what he would do, his instincts wanted him to keep the weapon trained on her. Every part of him that had reacted to her presence was telling him that allowing himself to become distracted would be a mistake.
But he couldn't stand there forever.
The boy was dying.
Whatever was wrong with the woman, she had not attacked him. She had spoken to him, tried to calm him down, and was currently standing there watching him. His instincts were screaming that he shouldn't trust her, but that wasn't the same thing as knowing she deserved permafrost bolts to strike and freeze her and shatter her in a million pieces with fragmentation bolts.
Whatever questions he had about the woman could wait. The boy couldn't, he lowered the weapon slightly, though he did not put it away, and began moving toward Issei. He crouched beside him for the second time.
He looked over the wounds, trying to understand what had happened. They were far worse than anything he could casually treat, then his hand instinctively moved toward his belt, his fingers closed around glass, he pulled out a flask.
A Life Flask.
Raynare watched without much interest.
A potion? Some kind of medicine? It didn't matter, nothing was going to save him, she made sure of it since she had personally driven the light spear through him..
I contemplated saying the full thing here but it would be too cringe I feel like, imagine him thinking "ah yes, a catalysed ultimate life flask of the sylvian with +20% quality"
"Well..."
He pulled the stopper free, the smell was strange, but not unpleasant. He brought it toward Issei's mouth, lifting his head slightly, and carefully tipped a small amount into his mouth.
The change in Issei was subtle at first, then the he took a deeper breath. His chest rose more easily than before, and the tension in his face seemed to lessen by the smallest degree.
"Okay..."
He wasn't sure what else to say, the flask worked just like in the game, he just didn't know how it would work in real life, how much is 1.1k life worth in this world? I didn't know.
Raynare stared at Issei.
No. She stepped forward.
The stranger looked up.
"What did you give him?"
"A Life Flask."
Raynare stared at him.
"It's medicine."
"That isn't medicine."
The stranger frowned.
He looked at the flask again.
"I suppose it isn't, technically."
She took a step toward him.
He immediately looked up.
His weapon was still within reach.
"Stay there."
Raynare ignored the warning, her eyes remaining on Issei.
"He should be dead."
The stranger looked down at the boy.
"He almost was."
"No."
Her voice was quieter now.
"He should be dead."
The stranger looked back at her, something in her expression made his instincts flare again, he didn't know why she was so certain,he didn't know what she had done.
But the way she was looking at Issei made one thing increasingly obvious, she knew exactly why he was injured.
The stranger slowly rose, putting himself between Raynare and Issei
"You did this."
Raynare's expression went cold.
She did not bother lying this time.
"Yes."
"I put a light spear through him."
She looked toward Issei.
"I watched him die."
The stranger's grip tightened around the weapon.
"And now?"
Raynare's eyes moved toward the flask.
"Now I'm wondering what else you have."
The stranger did not answer.
Raynare smiled faintly.
It was not a friendly smile anymore.
"You've become much more interesting than I expected."
She took another step.
The stranger raised his weapon.
"Don't."
Raynare's eyes hardened and she moved.
One moment she was several meters away, and the next she was already beside him.
The stranger barely saw her, his body reacted before his thoughts could.
He twisted his body aside as her hand suddenly had a spear made of light, feeling the force of the attack pass close enough for its heat to sting, she let go of the spear and flew backwards, that was the moment he saw she now had black wings on her back, distracted, the spear that was still floating destabilized and exploded.
He stumbled backward.
Then, Raynare came in low, her wings folded tightly behind her as she drove forward with a spear of light in her hand. The weapon was aimed directly at his chest.
His body twisted sideways, letting the spear pass across his armor, and his free hand caught Raynare's wrist. She tried to wrench herself loose, but he had already brought his weapon around.
The weapon came up, the barrel was almost touching her and saw the cold gathering around the weapon.
Thpse bolts struck her before she could move, at that distance there was nowhere for her to dodge, and the impact sent a violent burst of frost covering her upper body in a sheet of white ice. Ice raced over her arm and shoulder, crystallizing across the black feathers of her wing as the cold forced a sharp gasp from her throat. For an instant, her entire body seized, one wing hanging half-open behind her while frost continued spreading across the feathers and locking them together.
Raynare stared at him in disbelief, she had expected a weapon, she had not expected that.
She was thrown backward.
Her wings opened instinctively, but the movement was sluggish. One of them barely responded, weighed down by ice, and she crashed onto the ground several meters away.
Raynare slowly pushed herself up, her breathing heavier now, the ice cold making her breath come out in bursts of steam.
Ice covered most of the right side of her body, spreading from her shoulder across her ribs and down her arm with frost even creeping up her jaw and cheeks. Several black feathers had been completely encased, and tiny crystals continued forming across her clothing.
She looked at the frozen wing.
Then at him.
"You..."
Her voice came out quieter than before, she tried to flex her fingers, and nothing happened, the cold temporarily numbed her arm.
Raynare kept her distance, her eyes fixed on the weapon in his hands. She had already learned that getting close without understanding it was dangerous. The first projectile had nearly frozen her in place, and she had no intention of discovering what would happen if she took another one at the same distance, what bothered her was that she still didn't understand the weapon itself, It wasn't shaped like any ordinary crossbow she had seen before, it felt almost like one of those human shotguns, the projectile had come out with enough force to make her need to treat it like a magical weapon rather than a mundane one.
The man did not give her time to recover or analyze though, advancing immediately.
Raynare saw him coming through the frost covering her vision and tried to bring her arm up, but it barely responded. The strange weapon was already coming around again.
She forced her body to move, a spear of light formed in her left hand and threw it at him.
He shifted aside and the spear passed beside him. Another spear followed. Then another.
He kept advancing whenever he could, but Raynare refused to let him get close enough to use that strange weapon against her again. Whenever he tried to close the distance, she gained altitude or shifted sideways, throwing another glowing spear to force him back. All the while, she watched the crossbow, whatever he had fired at her had apparently been a single projectile, like an ordinary crossbow in a sense.
That made sense, the weapon looked strange, but beneath the unfamiliar shape it still seemed to obey a simple principle, one projectile and one shot, perhaps the stranger wasn't quite as dangerous as she had thought.
She descended again, with a smile on her lips and a spear of light in her left hand as she came down, and she thrust it towards his head from above. He evaded the very telegraphed attack, the spear embedding deep into the ground and instead of retreating, he stepped forward, Raynare immediately let go of her spear and tried fly backwards.
He caught her wrist.
Her smile disappeared.
He pulled.
Raynare stumbled forward, suddenly finding herself much closer to him than she had intended. She tried to tear her arm free, but his grip tightened. Her other hand tried to come up, light already gathering in her frosted palm.
He moved faster.
For one brief moment they were locked together.
Raynare struggled against him, wings beating behind her as she tried to throw him off balance. He held on.
Then she felt the barrel of the crossbow press against her.
Her eyes widened.
She looked down at the same weapon, the same one that had frozen her.
Her gaze flicked back to his face.
"You already fired that."
The man looked at her.
There was no anger in his expression.
Almost no emotion at all.
Then, with the faintest hint of amusement, he said,
"Gemini Crossbows shoot twice before reloading, you know?"
Raynare's eyes widened.
BANG
And that's a wrap, what do you guys think? I think its a shame that people with wings in DXD don't use it for actally flying they just stand on the air with static wings behind them, I tried to make the fight have a mobility issue with him freezing one of her wings but the just don't work that way, first fight I've written, is it too much narration? What about the Leon-esque line at the end?
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Alchto
I want money so I can get some pussy ~ peep
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In the index I said builds~ also its the permafrost bolts from poe2 with the fragmentation bolts to shatter enemies and then use herald of ice all that good stuff but for a story I think its kind of uninteresting to write it exactly as is in the game
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Qem1ng
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The force? Not the obvious magical ICE effects??
Alchto
I want money so I can get some pussy ~ peep
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That's actually true, but what I said wasn't false either, I probably should have made clearer that it wasn't just ice he shot her, its kind of a shotgun that that freezes people if that makes sense but her being a supernatural being makes it kind of hard to juggle the effect it should have, the monsters in the game don't have any knockback either, its a lot of damage and freezes buildup so I kind of have to make things up like the bolts not piercing her and culling her (if she gets to a certain % of health she insta dies) things like that
reynard
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Poe 2 does have knock back features, but our build most of the time kill mobs outright than knocking back.