Alex waited for the werewolf's attack, muscles coiled and ready to counter at any moment. Unexpectedly though, no frontal assault came. At the very last instant, the werewolf leaped upward instead, completely avoiding Alex's prepared strike.
Alex's focus didn't waver in the slightest. His eyes tracked the movement carefully as he waited for the follow-up. But nothing came immediately. Instead, while still suspended in the air, the werewolf suddenly shifted direction mid-flight.
It almost looked as if he had stepped on thin air itself — but Alex had seen it clearly. At the very last moment, a compressed gust of wind had formed beneath the werewolf's feet, solid enough to bear his weight for a fraction of a second. He stepped on it and propelled himself sideways.
Then it happened again.
And again.
Each step was accompanied by a sharp burst of wind, altering his trajectory in unpredictable angles. What initially seemed like a single evasive maneuver quickly turned into a pattern. Before long, even someone without Alex's sharp eyesight would have been able to notice it.
The werewolf looked like a ghost, shifting and rebounding through the very air itself as if the sky were nothing more than solid ground beneath his feet.
'Am I dreaming… or is he copying me?' Alex wondered.
Though far clumsier than Alex's own smoke-stepping technique, the werewolf was indeed doing something similar. He constantly changed direction mid-air, twisting, pivoting, and accelerating to distort Alex's perception and prevent him from locking onto a stable position.
Not only that, but by continuously using his wind ability to reinforce each step, he was amplifying his speed with every burst. The longer he stayed airborne, the faster he became, until his movements began to blur.
Worse still for Alex, the violent turbulence caused by those repeated wind bursts scattered the smoke wisps drifting through the battlefield — the very smoke he relied on to teleport. The currents tore through them, dispersing them in all directions and thinning them out.
Technically, Alex could still teleport. This was a city after all; smoke was never truly scarce. But the nearest dense patch was several dozen meters away, and teleporting that far would mean temporarily relinquishing control of the battlefield.
He didn't want that.
He wanted to finish this here and now.
Besides, if he disappeared too far away, they might attempt to flee. Though, judging by what he had overheard earlier, he was fairly certain retreat was not part of their plan.
The more the werewolf stepped on air, the sharper and faster his movements became. Eventually, Alex found himself straining slightly to keep up with the increasingly erratic trajectory.
In truth, even the werewolf was struggling. Maintaining that level of aerial control required immense focus, especially in his injured state. His vision swam faintly, and the pain in his severed arm pulsed relentlessly.
Yet he did not slow down.
'Now is as good a time as any,' he thought, baring his fangs as he prepared to strike. This time, he wasn't probing. He was going for the kill.
At that exact same moment, the hooded man burst forward from the front, launching himself toward Alex with sudden determination.
The werewolf descended from behind.
The hooded man advanced from the front.
For a brief instant, Alex was caught between them.
The werewolf, slightly faster due to his accumulated momentum, reached Alex first.
His scythe still firmly gripped in both hands, Alex pivoted sharply on his heel and swung upward toward the descending werewolf, the blade carving a deadly arc through the air, aiming to intercept him before the pincer could fully close.
He might have been moving so fast that Alex struggled to follow him with his eyes alone, but Alex wasn't relying solely on his vision in this fight.
The werewolf descended like a falling predator, the claws of his remaining hand extended and rigid, slicing through the air with a sharp whistle as they came crashing down toward Alex's back.
Alex calmly began to raise his scythe to block.
But that was when something he hadn't accounted for happened.
When he tried to move his arms to intercept the strike, it was his legs that responded instead.
His feet stepped forward.
Directly into the attack.
Alex's eyes widened as his own body betrayed him, carrying him a step closer to the descending claws rather than away from them.
In that split instant, a chain of realizations flashed through his mind .
'This hooded man it's...'
Yet he had neither the time nor the mental space to fully process what this meant.
The claws were already upon him.
At the very last second, Alex violently pulled on the smoke both within his body and around him, forcing it to override his misfiring nerves. The smoke tightened like invisible strings around his limbs, yanking his torso sideways against his own faulty command signals.
His body twisted unnaturally, joints straining as he forcibly redirected himself out of the claws' main trajectory.
He avoided the blow, but not cleanly.
The werewolf's claws were simply too fast. Even as Alex shifted away, the tips raked across his shoulder, tearing through flesh and muscle in a savage arc and ripping away a sizeable portion of his upper arm.
Alex gritted his teeth against the sharp burst of pain and retaliated instantly, swinging the shaft of his scythe backward like a bludgeon, smashing it into the werewolf's side and sending him hurtling away.
But he had barely regained his balance when the second threat materialized.
The hooded man was already behind him.
His greatsword came down in a brutal vertical arc, cutting through the air like a descending guillotine, its edge aimed squarely at the back of Alex's neck.
Everything had happened in less than a second. From the moment the werewolf pounced to now, not even a full heartbeat had passed.
And yet—
Despite the chaos, despite the misfiring signals in his brain and the fresh wound burning across his shoulder, Alex moved.
Not by stepping.
Not by turning.
Instead, he bent backward at an impossible angle, his spine arching beyond what should have been physically achievable. At the same time, he forced smoke to erupt from his back and heels, blasting him downward in a violent, unnatural drop. The greatsword passed mere millimeters from his throat, slicing through strands of hair as he collapsed almost flat against the ground.
The blade struck stone where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier.
As he twisted along the ground to regain position, Alex caught sight of the widening eyes of the man above him.
Eyes he recognized all too well.
"Shit!" the werewolf cursed under his breath. Arcanor wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. That was why he had gambled everything on that last exchange despite the searing pain tearing through his body. In a way, that had been their only real chance — and he knew it.
Well… he still had one contingency left if everything went to hell, but he would rather not use it unless he truly had no other option.
So he could only watch through clenched teeth as Arcanor leaped away from his companion.
Meanwhile, Alex exhaled slowly as he retreated, tension easing from his shoulders for the briefest moment. That last sequence had come dangerously close. Had he been even a fraction of a second slower, his head would likely have rolled across the pavement by now.
Fortunately, things had worked out in the end.
For a heartbeat, both sides paused — one filled with bitter regret, the other with quiet relief.
and then something shifted.
Alex's senses suddenly flared with violent urgency.
But it was too late.
He hadn't even managed to turn toward the source of the danger when something slammed into him with overwhelming force.
Crack!
The sound of bones shattering rang out sharply — then a thunderous explosion followed, ripping through the surroundings in a violent shockwave that cracked stone, split the ground, and sent debris erupting outward as if the city itself had been struck by a falling meteor.
As for Alex?
The werewolf and his two companions couldn't see what had happened to him, but judging by the sheer force of the blast that detonated behind them, he had most likely been hurled straight into the city walls.
Both the werewolf and the hooded man's eyes widened to an almost absurd degree as their gazes snapped back and forth between the fresh crater carved into the wall — still crumbling, chunks of stone raining down — and the empty spot where Alex had been standing only a second ago.
But then, as the dust gradually began to settle, a massive silhouette emerged from the epicenter of the destruction.
The one who had just rammed Arcanor with such catastrophic force finally stepped into view.
When they recognized him, their eyes somehow widened even further.
"M-Maurdin?" they both stammered in disbelief. "We thought you were dead!"
"Hah! As if I'd die that easily!" the newcomer laughed loudly only for his expression to suddenly twist as he doubled over slightly, a pained grunt escaping him.
As for Maurdin's identity, he was none other than the rhino man.