Chapter 106: Mud and Steel
A few of the creatures fell to the ground from Seraphina's earlier deflection while the rest only staggered back, their bodies twisting unnaturally as they fixed their stance and prepared themselves to strike once more.
Before they could make their next move, Seraphina was already upon the fallen ones, her figure darting forward with ruthless speed. Those creatures had barely begun to rise, their limbs trembling as they pushed against the earth, when their heads were suddenly lifted into the air, severed cleanly as her sword flashed through one neck after another. The sight was merciless, and yet she did not hesitate, for her sword did not stop with their deaths but carried its momentum toward another that struggled to stand.
However, even as her blade descended once more, the other monsters rushed at her from every direction, their hands clutching kunai and knives that gleamed under the dim light as they sought to tear her flesh apart. Seraphina's sword still found its mark, cleaving through the throat of her chosen prey, and in that same moment, her lips curved faintly into a smirk.
They believed they were striking at her blindly, and though she could not sense their presence in the usual way, she had already learned where they would appear, how their movements bent and swayed, and where their attacks would fall. She had deliberately chosen this creature as bait, her sharp eyes reading the rhythm of their earlier assault, and now she understood the pattern of their encirclement.
As their weapons were about to cut into her, she pressed her boot against the corpse of the creature she had just slain and used its body as a stepping stone, leaping upward with sudden force. Her body twisted in the air, and her sword swung wide, its gleaming edge aimed at the monsters that reached for empty space where she once stood.
Their eyes turned upward too late, and what they saw in that instant was death descending on them. Her sword danced as gracefully as her body, sweeping in a wide arc that severed several heads at once. She used one of the collapsing bodies as leverage, landing with practiced control, her feet pressing into the ground as though she had never left it.
The monsters gathered themselves again, their distorted faces locking on her with hatred, yet Seraphina did not allow them a chance to strike. She dashed forward before they could even step, and the sound of steel rending flesh sang into the night air. Her blade tore through them relentlessly, her form cutting through their ranks until once again heads rolled and bodies fell, littering the ground like broken dolls.
She came to a halt upon one of the corpses, her chest rising and falling as she exhaled a heavy sigh, her sword lowered yet still steady in her hand.
From across the field came the sound of hands clapping together, slow and deliberate, followed by a voice that dripped with mockery. Caelum stood there with a crooked smile that curled into something unsettling. "What a magnificent performance. The way you moved, the way your blade sang through them… it was nothing short of a dance. You should have chosen the stage instead of the battlefield, Lady. A dancer might suit you far better than a knight."
Her eyes cut toward him, cold and unamused, her body leaning faintly against her sword as though drawing strength from its presence. Her breath was steady yet heavy, and her words left her lips sharp and dismissive. "Do you have more of your guests waiting, or is this pitiful display all you had prepared?"
Caelum's grin widened as he reached behind himself and drew forth his double-edged sword, raising it slowly until its tip pointed directly at her. "No, no. Sadly, you have torn through every last one of her collection, and she will be so terribly displeased with me now. But perhaps if I can add you to the collection, if I can turn you into one of them, then maybe her anger will soften and she will smile at me again."
Seraphina lingered in silence for a brief moment, her gaze narrowing as she weighed his words, and then she asked with calm disdain, "This woman you speak of, who is she? If she is so eager to see me fall, why do you not invite her to step out and face me herself?"
Caelum's laughter echoed, low and twisted, as he took several measured steps forward. "Do not trouble yourself. We do not need her to join us here tonight. And as for who she is, you will discover soon enough, once your body lies broken at my feet."
Her stance shifted, her sword rising as her posture straightened, her eyes locking on him without a flicker of hesitation. "Then let us see which one of us will be broken."
With a long breath that carried a strange weight of resignation, Caelum sighed, and then he too raised his weapon.
In the next moment, their blades clashed, the impact ringing out like thunder, steel against steel resounding through the forest. Caelum's face twisted, his teeth clenched as though he were straining against a pressure too great for him to withstand, and Seraphina's strength pressed against him mercilessly.
He staggered, his foot slipping back against the ground as he fought to regain balance, only to be driven further by her unyielding force.
As he pushed forward, gasping for ground, Seraphina lunged once more. Her wrist twisted and her sword reversed in her grip, the blade curving backward as she drove it toward him with sharp precision.
Yet Caelum's own blade rose in desperate defiance, blocking the strike as his teeth ground tightly together, his body trembling with effort as he fought to shove her away.
Then she heard it, the faint echo of steel clashing against steel in the distance, louder than her own battle, its rhythm deep and thunderous. Her mind turned briefly toward Arwyn, for she knew at once that it must be her. She recalled the plan she had laid in silence, the care with which she had placed Arwyn near Eska, and Lyra hidden as a civilian, waiting and watching. They had to remain unseen, to let the enemy believe Eska had been abandoned, that the Knights had forgotten her, when in truth she had never left their protection.
If an attack came again, they were to act, and now, hearing the distant fight, Seraphina could only trust that her plan had succeeded. All that remained for her was to finish Caelum. Even if she appeared to hold the upper hand, she understood she could not unleash herself completely until she was certain the others were safe.
Her blade struck again, forcing Caelum backward, yet even as she moved to slice across his throat, he collapsed low, her strike grazing past him by only a breath. He had no time to recover before her wrist twisted again and her blade snapped down toward his skull, but once more he deflected at the last possible instant. This time, he poured unexpected strength into his defense, enough that Seraphina herself slid a step backward under the force.
He rose at once, lunging forward with renewed aggression, and their swords collided once again, ringing in a furious cadence as leaves scattered into the air around them.
Seraphina's body flowed with practiced control, her movements precise, flawless, balanced, and calm, her swordplay the mark of discipline and mastery.
In contrast, Caelum's strikes were riddled with imperfections, his movements reckless, desperate, unrefined, devoid of any true technique. It was as though he had never studied the blade at all, as though he were only thrashing wildly to survive. And yet, despite this, he endured, his frantic defense somehow finding her strikes at the last possible instant, his blade always catching hers before the steel could bite into his flesh.
The thought rose in her mind, quiet and sharp. "How could this be possible?"
An opponent so untrained, so utterly unbalanced, should have fallen long ago, yet here he was still standing before her. She saw the fear hiding in the depths of his wild eyes, the madness that twisted his face, and the strain of a man on the verge of collapse. And yet, she also saw that he was not collapsing. Somehow, despite everything, he met her again and again.
There was something wrong with him.
Her thoughts lingered on the question. "But what?"
She drove forward once more, her blade lashing out in merciless succession, each strike sharper and heavier than the last. Caelum flailed desperately, blocking by sheer instinct, his arms trembling under the force. The battle had shifted fully, Seraphina advancing with unyielding rhythm while Caelum retreated, his entire being bent on holding her back even as her strikes bore down endlessly on him.
At some point, as they moved across the ground like two blurred silhouettes that collided and parted again and again, Caelum suddenly leapt backward, his boots scraping against the dirt as he tried to steady himself, his chest rising and falling with each sharp breath while his entire face was drenched in sweat that dripped down and stung his eyes, so much that he was forced to wipe them away with the back of his trembling hand.
A few shallow cuts marred his body, each one leaking thin trails of blood that slid slowly before dripping to the ground, yet despite those wounds he still managed to stand, though only barely.
Seraphina, on the other hand, inhaled softly as though nothing about this exchange had troubled her in the slightest, and while her chest lifted gently with each breath there was not even the faintest sign of fatigue in her bearing, only the readiness to continue.
It seemed that even though she had struck at him countless times without delivering a single decisive wound, the force behind those blows had eaten away at his strength until exhaustion clung to him like a heavy shroud. The worst part of it all was that Seraphina herself was no less strained, her limbs burdened by the repetition of swift and merciless attacks, yet unlike Caelum she was accustomed to enduring that kind of pain and exhaustion through years of relentless training every morning, and so what had nearly broken him was nothing more than another routine test of her body.
Caelum gritted his teeth hard enough that his jaw ached, and as he raised his tired gaze to her he spoke in a low heavy tone that carried both frustration and disbelief. "Do you never tire at all? By the gods, the number of strikes you rained down on me… if some high-ranking beast had been standing where I am now, it would have been torn into pieces long before the fight could even drag on this long."
His eyes dropped toward the weapon in his hands, a blade that not long ago gleamed as though freshly forged, but now its sharpness was dulled, its edge bent in places like a wounded soldier struggling to stand. He muttered almost in mourning, "And look at this sword… what have you done to my beauty?"
Then his eyes suddenly widened and he lifted his head again, speaking in half a plea, half a groan. "Oy, oy, at least let me breathe a little before you come at me again…"
Yet the words had barely left his mouth before Seraphina's figure blurred forward once more, her intention clearer than ever, because this was exactly what she wanted from the beginning. She had sought to exhaust him, to push his body to its limit until his guard fell open, and now that time had arrived at last.
Caelum staggered backward a step as though the ground beneath him had become unsteady, and even as his arms quivered from strain he forced his fingers tighter around the hilt of his battered sword until his knuckles turned bone white. A curse slipped from his lips, barely audible, as his eyes strained to follow her form darting toward him.
Then, in that instant when he thought he had locked her position, his eyes widened in disbelief because her figure melted into a silhouette and then into a blur, and when he blinked it was as though she had simply vanished from existence, leaving not even a shadow behind to mark her place.
He began to turn, instinct screaming at him, but before his body could react a cold edge brushed faintly against his neck, gleaming under the pale light of the moon.
Seraphina stood behind him, her body leaning slightly forward in perfect control, her grip steady as she held her blade in a reversed position, its edge resting delicately upon his throat. As he moved the slightest bit, her quiet chuckle reached his ear. "Do not move. If you do, you will face consequences you cannot take back."
The silence that followed pressed down heavily, broken only by the faint sound of the wind passing through the trees. Caelum gave no immediate reply, and for a fleeting moment it seemed he had surrendered. But when Seraphina allowed her eyes to shift toward him in the smallest glance, what she saw made her breath catch ever so slightly, because staring back at her was the gleaming tip of his double-edged sword, raised and aimed straight toward her eye, so close that a single breath would have been enough to drive it through and blind her forever.
"How…?"
The word slipped from her lips without thought, her mind reeling in that heartbeat.
Yet instinct guided her body faster than thought could catch up, and her wrist twisted as her sword carved through the air in a horizontal sweep, the edge sliding across his neck in a perfect clean motion.
His head separated from his shoulders as smoothly as though it had always been meant to, and as the body fell limply to the ground the sword in his hand slipped free, clattering lifelessly against the dirt. Her eyes fixed on the corpse, confusion tightening within her chest.
How had he managed to slip past her senses so completely? It was not that such a thing could not be done, but rather that in the beginning she had not sensed any movement at all and the strangest part was that he had not even turned his body, not even a little, and still his sword had been aimed at her in a way that was unnatural.
She found it deeply unsettling, until she realized that he must have used his element. Still, something about it remained strange in her mind, because she had just…
As she looked down, her fingers trembled slightly which revealed what her indifferent and cold expression didn't, though only for the briefest moment, and then her eyes gleamed with a sharper light as she shifted her attention to her sword.
There was a faint trace of mud and greenish blood clinging to the steel, and in that instant the blade seemed sharper than steel itself as her thoughts cut deeper than the weapon in her hand.
"Why is there no crimson blood on my sword?"
Her gaze slid once more toward the body and the severed head, yet there was nothing, no blood spilled across the ground, no life seeping away, nothing at all. It was as though she had cut through a hollow puppet rather than human flesh.
"A puppet? But he was not a puppet before... I am certain of it. He bled not long ago, I saw it clearly, so then at what moment did he change, and more than that how was he able to change his body while fighting me so directly?" Her mind whispered with unease even as she tried to keep her focus.
Almost instinctively her stance shifted, her feet drawing into a firmer position as her sword lifted forward again, her eyes narrowing as she swept her gaze across the surroundings.
There were only a few trees nearby and a scatter of low grass, the sound of the wind rustling the branches, and the lifeless bodies of the monsters that lay sprawled across the ground. There was nothing else to be seen, no sign of him, only silence.
And yet, she soon noticed it, the slightest shift, not around her but before her, at the place where the false body of Caelum rested. The puppet's form was beginning to change, to lose its shape, its flesh sagging until it became nothing but wet mud that dripped and spilled onto the earth, merging with the grass and soil before settling into a hardened layer of dirt.
"Earth element… so he is an earth user who can create a puppet identical to himself. That explains much." Her thoughts grew more certain, though her eyes remained fixed with sharpened focus.
Now, at last, she understood how he had vanished from her perception without a single trace. She was certain that he had been fighting her with his true body at first, but when his strength began to wane and he felt the weight of exhaustion pressing down on him, he must have realized that he could not withstand her blows much longer.
In that final moment, he must have created a double, a puppet to stand in his place, while he himself sank into the earth beneath her feet.
She reflected on the nature of elements, how in many cases they offered comfort to their wielder, yet at the same time they often turned into a curse. If he could create a puppet from the earth, then it was not impossible that he could dive into the ground or perhaps conceal himself within it as well, if his element granted him that kind of control. That could only mean one thing, that even now he was moving underground. And she had uncovered the truth of his element, which gave her an advantage, yet she also knew that among all the elements she might have wished to face, this was the one that could bring her the greatest trouble.
As her gaze lowered slightly toward the ground, she saw it twist unnaturally and then from beneath the soil rose several spikes, thick and jagged, like muddy spears as wide as a man's arm, all driving upward with terrible speed toward her thighs, knees, and legs.
She willed her body to leap, her legs already prepared to push her upward, but in that instant she felt her feet bound tightly in place, her limbs refusing to obey her command.
Her eyes dropped quickly, and she saw that from the earth two hands clad in muddy gauntlets similar to her own had emerged from the ground below and were clutching her steel boots with unyielding strength, holding her down at the very last moment.
She strained her legs, forcing her body with all the strength she could muster, yet still they would not move, the grip was too strong.
Instead of getting flustered—not that she would—she moved her sword instead of using lightning magic, which certainly wouldn't even pass the muddy gloves, and pierced the sword into the one hand and moved as fast as she could and then another one. But she had only managed to injure one hand.
Soon, the grip loosened from her legs, however, she was a little late to leap because the spikes almost touched her body from almost every angle to tear her apart.
But before they could, a blinding blue light illuminated her figure and sparks of lightning danced around her figure, even sparks of blue flames ignited in the depths of her eyes and her silver turned soft blue and the world around her turned slower.
And in the next moment her sword moved around in the air like a dancing flame, slicing through the spikes before they could even reach her, and she spun around the nearest spikes first, not letting them touch her. But the problem was there were just too many of them and as time passed more were rising from the ground, but she still held for a while.
But even though she was so fast and slicing them apart so easily because they were not made out of steel but rather mud, she still failed to cut a few more and then, soon, those spikes hit her legs as a terrible wave of pain coursed through her body.
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(Chapter Ended)