Sam is standing in a large arena and a shadow demon completely dressed in black.
He even had his face covered. As he is an assassin by nature and it is indeed a good choice.
Sam held the scythe over his shoulder as he took a deep breath and waited for the other party to make the first move.
The scythe is not exactly a conventional weapon as it has many limitations attached to it. It is not as versatile as other staff weapons as the blade is too big to allow the rest of the staff to move as freely.
Due to the weight of the blade, it cannot be wielded as simply as the spear or even a halberd.
It needs a lot more effort than other staff weapons and due to its requirement of large movements, it is easier to dodge than the other weapons.
Particularly when the opponent is a shadow demon who can move along the shadows as he liked.
The opponent didn't show any weapons and everything seemed to be hidden away. Sam was vigilant and when having such an inflexible weapon in his hands, it is better for him to show some restraint and not just barge in on the opponent.
The shadow demon waited patiently for a good while and made his first move.
He threw a knife towards Sam and it is completely covered in shadow energy.
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Sam swung the scythe and hit the knife to the side.
By now the opponent is already halfway through the stage and is still zooming towards Sam who is ready to defend, but to Sam's surprise, the demon turned into a black puff of smoke and disappeared from that spot, and reappeared in the shadow of the knife that was hit by Sam.
From that spot, the shadow demon threw two knives at Sam.
Sam once again swung the scythe and made the knives fly away by instinct and got ready to defend against the demon who is running towards him.
The demon once again used the shadow transverse to appear at the shadows of one of the knives and this time, he threw two knives and two throwing stars. The knives came straight towards him, but the throwing stars or simply shuriken took a large curve in the air as they moved towards him.
While is Sam is busy dealing with the weapons flying towards him, the demon is closing the distance.
This time Sam used the scythe to nail down the knives instead of hitting them away.
They landed right beside him, but as he struck down one of the shurikens which is taking a longer route coming towards him with a condensed energy slash of the scythe, the demon moved to the second shuriken which is still out of range of Sam's attacks.
He caught the shuriken and threw it towards Sam along with two more knives and shuriken.
The attacks kept on repeating and the demon moved more and more, the number of weapons he is throwing is also increasing by a lot.
The position of the demon is also changing with every throw and as the weapons are increasing the options for the demon to move are also increasing and for every transfer, he is making, he is getting closer to Sam.
The audience is gathering around the stage and is cheering the demon with extreme excitement. It seems like this guy is extremely popular within the city and this place might be the one place who straight out sent the strongest person without any problems.
Even though the difficultly increased as time passed, Sam also started getting accustomed to the situation and he became more comfortable in using the scythe as he spun it around to deflect the projectiles coming at him.
Soon the demon is moving within a seven and a half feet radius around Sam and if Sam moved from his spot, the demon is also moving relatively to maintain the seven and a half feet radius as he threw the weapons and also made sure that he is outside the range of the scythe.
Soon the intensity of the battle increased as Sam has to be on constant guard with the weapons and couldn't find a chance to hit the opponent and then landed the first hit on him. The shuriken flew past his cheek leaving a small cut.
The cut is laced with shadow elemental energy trying to corrode the skin. Even if Sam couldn't use the shadow energy to neutralize it, due to the presence of elemental affinity, he can endure it better than the rest.
But he understood that it is about time that he changed the style of fighting. The scythe has extremely long movements that are not fast enough to stop the projectiles when they are thrown from such a short-range.
He took a deep breath and got an idea.
He spun the staff and slammed the tail end of the staff into the floor making the floor tiles crack.
He covered his body with spiritual energy as he dodged most of the weapons but let the rest cut him up as he attacked the demon.
But the demon is moving faster, but every time he dodged, the hit landed on the stage creating craters and making the floor turn into rubble.
Within a few seconds, the floor around Sam within the range of the scythe turned to rubble.
As the demon reached his new position and threw a bunch of weapons at Sam, Sam didn't defend himself with the scythe, instead, he channeled the energy into the blade of the scythe and used it to sweep the rubble off the floor.
The glowing blade swept the floor and the rubble flew upwards with extreme force hitting the projectile weapons coming at him.
And the demon who was already in the middle of his shadow transfer didn't manage to lock the location of the shadows as they shifted because of the rubble and suffered a minor backlash and came back to the original position.
He was stunned for a second and Sam is ready with his scythe swinging at his torso.
When he felt the blade near him, he is sure that he would be completely cleaved into two if he got hit. He endured the pain of backlash and used all his strength to move back.
The scythe made a keening sound as it cut through the wind and slashed at his chest.
The cut was smooth and deep.
The opponent started panting as he tried to control the bleeding.
Sam stood there on the spot while holding the scythe behind his back as he let the dust to settle a bit.
The demon once again tried to use the same technique as before to see how accustomed Sam is to it and this time, Sam held the scythe by the extreme tail end of the staff and channeled his energy as he spun on the spot.
The glowing crescent slash, not just swept the rubble, it is propagated further as it sliced the tiled layer off of the floor next to it.
The demon had to once again dodge that crescent slash and before he could get the balance, Sam is already near him with the scythe this time aimed at his throat.
This time, he cannot dodge like the previous time as he is in mid-air, so he used his hand to block it with his arm guard.
But the scythe cut through the arm like it was butter and the blood spilled all over the place including Sam.
The demon managed to find his foot and retreated a bit as he looked at the fist that was separated from his arm at the wrist.
The cut was so smooth that it took a second for him to realize the pain.
The elder who arranged the fight wanted to stop it, but the opponent gestured him not to move as he channeled all the shadow energy to the chest and a large dark energy orb surrounded him.
Sam made his move as he decided to cut the orb in half and stop the process in middle, but unfortunately, as the scythe landed on the orb, it was deflected.
He activated energy vision, but he couldn't see anything past the orb.
He channeled his energy to the one point on the edge of the scythe and started attacking a single point on the orb.
The orb slowly started showing some cracks, but all of a sudden multiple shadows shot out of the orb and surrounded Sam.
They all looked identical to the opponent and the place where the arm was cut off was covered with a dark black cloth.
The blood is not dripping at any of them.
Sam's initial reaction was as usual use the energy vision, but there was no use this time. All the clones looked real in terms of energy.
All the images of the opponent started throwing the shuriken and knives and Sam once again focused on dodging and blocking, the only good thing is the opponent kept a lot more distance than normal.
Sam felt a bit frustrated. He decided to attack one image after another to finish them off, but as soon as he moved to one, the rest of the images that were on the opposite side and closing in to attack him in the back.
He couldn't understand how the opponent has this much energy left in him, but he has to find a way, and while thinking he kept on deflecting all the attacks made on him.
He couldn't see the blood drip to identify the real body, but as he thought of the blood his eyes brightened.
Sam focused all his energy on his nose as he closed his eyes, he placed all his concentration on the nose as he completely ignored the rest of the senses and even let the projectiles attack him a bit.
After three seconds, he lunged forward towards one of the images.
The three images opposite to the one he targeted moved towards him and started attacking from the rear.
But this time, Sam didn't stop to defend and just moved forward as he deflected the attacks from the front.
Right before he was about to cut the image off, he kicked the ground turned around and slashed the middle image that was coming at him.
The shadow demon was stunned and widened his eyes in disbelief.
s
Sam's rear is stabbed with a bunch of projectile weapons, but all of them didn't go past the feather coat by much, in fact, they are barely stuck in the fabric gaps. The scythe stopped right before it sliced the throat.
The edge of the blade slightly cut the skin on the throat without going too deep.
The shadow demon gave out a heavy sigh as the rest of the images disappeared and a faint voice was heard on the stage.
"I lost."
The crowd became silent as their hero lost in the match which they are so sure that he would win.
