The duel went off to a quick start as both human phase lords zipped across the cold airless environment of Jotunheim like racing shuttles.
At first, it appeared that the Dark Apostle held a decisive speed advantage. His more modern and optimized equipment granted him a distinct advantage in linear acceleration.
The bat wing-shaped flight system was able to produce greater thrust and push the challenger forward with slightly greater power than the competition.
Yet the Fiery Axe did not stay behind for long.
She started gaining progress by lowering her mess with the help of a special phasewater organ.
This was an unusual choice of organ.
Most phase lords developed an obsession for becoming the biggest, heaviest and strongest of their kind. They constantly sought to increase their phasewater concentration in order to grow bigger and achieve physical superiority over their peers.
Mass was everything to a phase lord.
Mass was responsible for increasing their dimensions.
Mass protected them from damage and injuries.
Mass conveyed greater physical might and endurance.
This was why the Marigal organ was such a popular choice among martial phase lords.
Although its inclusion increased the mass and density of a phase lord by a hefty margin, it was often worth it because the changes conformed to their obsession.
The Fiery Axe turned out to be a deviant who chose a less conventional development route.
Instead of trying to turn into meaty tanks that could withstand a lot of hits and dish out heavy attacks in return, she adopted a fighting paradigm that had a lot in common with light mechs.
She sacrificed brute force in exchange for mobility. Though her reduced mass and her weaker true body brought several disadvantages, she could still make it work so long as she made excellent use of her advantages.
Right now, she clearly gained the upper hand in the race due to her superior acceleration!
The acceleration of an object could be calculated in several ways, but one of them was by dividing the net force acting on the body with its mass.
In a situation where the thrust power of her flight system and her own inherent flight capabilities as a phase lord remained constant, lowering her mass by 10 to 20 percent actually yielded a slightly greater proportionate increase in acceleration rate!
For example, reducing the mass by 10 percent yielded an increase in acceleration rate by 11.11111 percent!
A reduction in mass by 20 percent resulted in a more exaggerated increase in acceleration rate by 25 percent!
If the Fiery Axe became powerful enough to reduce her mass by 50 percent in the future, she would effectively be able to improve her acceleration rate by 100 percent!
That meant that she was able to speed up twice as fast as before, which was a shocking advantage, especially when fighting against enemies that adopted a similar approach to combat!
This was when Ves realized that the Dark Apostle was in serious trouble at the moment.
Even if the differences were not too big due to the Fiery Axe's immature phasewater organ and lack of proficiency in its use, it was still enough for her to gain the initiative in this duel.
Of course, her hits would not strike as hard due to her reduced mass, but that did not matter too much when the Dark Apostle's raiment was fairly light on armor. The Dark Wing Raiment was much thinner and less robust than the Flame Lord Raiment.
The Fiery Axe also utilized a combination of high technology and hyper technology to activate a superheated blade that was practically on fire, enabling it to inflict burning wounds that generated greater pain and could not be regenerated as easily as wounds caused by cold alloy blades.
As the female phase lord came close enough to be able to chop down her axe onto the Dark Apostle's rear, the latter clearly could not sustain this race any longer.
The challenger turned and met the incoming Fiery Axe with the shaft of the Dark Tooth!
Fire and darkness collided at a single location, causing an eruption of energy that soon saw the two phase lords bounce away from each other!
The shaft of the Dark Tooth gained a shallow cut mark. It still lit up in heat before it cooled a few seconds later.
Upon the moment of impact, a small wave of fire energy had splashed across the Dark Apostle's lightly armored body.
Fortunately, the damage inflicted by this secondary effect was minimal. The dark miasma that cloyed sickly around the Dark Wing Raiment had successfully managed to neutralize the fire attack.
The two duelists only remained separated for a short amount of time before they converged again!
"Haha, again!"
The Fiery Axe became increasingly more affected by her lust for battle. She threw aside much of her complicated thoughts and fully dedicated herself towards high-speed martial struggle!
Her lighter mass gave her enough of an edge in acceleration to feel she could dictate the confrontations.
Right now, she wanted to stick to her adversary and never let go! Frenzy or not, she still remembered what her opponent could do if given a chance to throw his spear, so the Fiery Axe decided to defeat the progenitor before he could reproduce this technique!
This put the Dark Apostle at an immediate disadvantage. Knowing that there was not much point in running, he decided to be more proactive and launch as many counterattacks towards the Fiery Axe as possible.
This was not supposed to be difficult as he had designed the Dark Tooth for this kind of confrontation. Its shaft was thick and dense enough to resist plenty of axe blows and its length was shorter in order to improve its performance in intense close quarters combat.
For a short amount of time, their weapons repeatedly struck against each other.
The Dark Apostle found himself on the defensive more often than not. The Fiery Axe may not be the largest and most heaviest axe-type weapon that a phase lord could wield, but it still possessed enough mass and a chopping edge to be able to inflict a crippling injury with a single good strike.
What was more important was that the Fiery Axe was also capable of inflicting greater-than-average damage to spatial barriers!
The Dark Apostle's spatial barrier often bore the brunt of his failures to intercept and block the female phase lord's aggressive attacks.
In the few times that the Dark Apostle launched a counterattack, his Dark Tooth inflicted substantially less damage to his adversary's spatial barrier.
The good news was that the Fiery Axe apparently neglected to implant any phasewater organs that could strengthen her spatial barrier.
The bad news was that each time the Dark Apostle landed a sharp hit with his spear, the Fiery Axe was able to land her own counterblow in return!
This was an exchange that was not in the Dark Apostle's favor. He tried his best to compensate by leveraging the Minor Demons locked in his Dark Tooth, but all it did was to make the weapon spread more dark clouds that did not seem to affect the Fiery Axe all that much.
The fire energy released from her raiment and iconic weapon burned away much of the ambient darkness E energy.
Her raiment also protected her from the subtle influence of the Corruption Orb.