Strike.
Blast.
Edgar's sword tore the air with a harsh, grating sound. The runes along the blade flared—blood-red, pulsing. With a forceful blow he knocked aside the whip of water that lashed from the thicket.
Dash.
And he was already where the enemy had been a second ago.
A slicing instant.
The blade swept in an arc. The runes burned brighter.
The tree ahead shuddered. Bloody traces from the edge surged forward in a heavy wave. The trunk slumped sideways. And after the first went a second, a third. The scar carved onward through the brush. Everything caught in the stroke fell.
Flash.
A rune fixed to one of the cut trunks flared bright. It blinded him for a breath. Light burst out in a ring, steam hissed. A second and—
Explosion.
A backward leap. He did it on instinct, sharp and clean. His feet skidded in the mud, heels gouged dirt—almost got him.
Where he'd stood, a wide, spreading field of ice needles bristled. Thin and wicked-sharp. They had grown in a fraction of a second. Some vertical. Others canted sideways.
"Another trap."
Edgar stopped. Scowled, mean. His eyes narrowed. He breathed steady but deep.
Then silence again.
He lifted his gaze. Keen, aura-heightened to the limit. Every sound was audible. Every flicker in the leaves under his control.
And even so—she wasn't there.
Roxy slipped away and melted into the surroundings. She didn't attack head-on. Didn't try to close. She waited. Tried to wear him out.
Then a new pain licked his wrist. A thin thread of blood slid down, ran along his forearm to his hand, to the hilt. The artifact shivered in his grip. A flicker winked along the blade.
The runes in the steel woke.
The drops trailing from his elbow soaked into the hilt. The blade began to drink them greedily. The runes along the edge trembled as if impatient. With each heartbeat they burned brighter. First dimly, then a saturated red.
His blood was soaking the metal.
The pulse in his veins quickened. Each thud of the heart merged with the sword's rhythm. The blade wanted more. It lived on it. Grew heavier—and stronger for it. Every swing left a crimson trace.
"Roxy! You stupid beast! Come out already!"
His voice, aura-amplified, rolled through the forest in a wave.
But silence. Of course—what did he expect?
And then—again.
A scythe of water.
Thin and curved. It scythed in from the side.
Edgar didn't twitch. He only slid one foot back and turned his torso a fraction. The sword swept up from below.
One. Two. Three—the blades of water shattered into droplets.
She always aimed for the blind side—his left. Always there.
He no longer had a left arm. It was torn off—when the Water Dragon's jaws closed on him. An instant and then everything was gone: flesh, bone, joint, shoulder. There'd been only the crunch. A wrench, and a brutal failure inside his body.
He'd lost the eye almost right after. A fang slit the brow, raked the cheekbone, scraped the socket. Now there was a black blotch there.
But there was no blood. Edgar hadn't allowed it.
His aura was cinched tight, like a tourniquet on the wound. The flow plunged into both mangled places. It was mastery—highest control of his own aura.
Another strike. Another defense.
Roxy wasn't just guessing. She read him like an open book. She knew where the lag was, where the strain, where the flaw. And now she hit them. Without mercy.
Crack.
A sound—quiet, barely there. The snap of a small twig. So soft it could have been chance. But he heard it.
Edgar caught the direction at once. The weight shift, the slip of a sole, the faint bend of a branch. Someone moved. Too fast. Too close.
His body lunged forward before he gave the order. One motion—straight at the sound. The blade already in motion.
"She made a mistake."
He was there. Sword raised. Shoulder in the turn. The blade flared—the runes igniting, searing everything behind them.
A cut of light.
Roxy turned. The runes on her clothes flickered with a barely visible glow.
Strike.
At the spot where she'd been a heartbeat ago.
Empty.
The blow passed clean through. An illusory afterimage. A slight distortion, faint blue flickers of energy.
Slip.
She vanished behind a tree.
A slice.
The sword wheeled after her. A red flare. The tree before him staggered. The trunk split and crashed sideways. Leaves spiraled up in a gust.
"How long are you going to keep running?!"
She stood right in front of him.
The runes on her clothes still clung to life. Weak and shaking.
Sparks crawled along the threads. Ragged, uneven. A last flicker—and then nothing. The light went out, the lines died. The runes couldn't hold. The spell woven into the fabric had burned through.
The cloth remained, but the magic was gone.
Too many activations in a row—shifts, slips, midair turns. Those runes were what let her hide from Edgar. Every step, every dash of hers had been veiled. Muffled, tucked under a film of fine, near-invisible magic.
Her collarbone was broken—he saw that at once.
The shoulder hung lower. Tension loaded the other side of her body. A dark, jagged cut crossed her skin—from shoulder to belly. Deep. But there was no blood.
Everything was sealed under a black, dried, bloody crust.
Edgar didn't know what it was. Didn't know what spell she'd used to keep from dying then.
It didn't matter. What mattered was that now she stood. In front of him.
"Your mana is spent."
He didn't ask—he stated.
The fingers of her right hand trembled. Her gaze stayed level, but her pupils were blown and empty. Lashes clumped with sweat.
Her skin was pale, edged with gray.
Her body swayed a little. You'd miss it—but he caught it.
Sometimes a shiver crawled under her skin. Uncertain, stuttering impulses. That's what a mana stream looks like when it stops obeying. When there's no control.
He looked and saw depletion. Saw a body hanging on by will alone. Saw breath tearing out in jerks. Saw a gaze held steady only because her teeth were already clenched.
Roxy leaned on her staff to keep from falling. But there were no more steps.
The sword was already raised. Weight settled into the front foot. The heel just kissed the ground. His whole body strung tight.
Dash.
Strike.
The blade went true. Met no resistance. The throat parted in a single instant. The head came off clean, almost soundless.
The body slackened.
"At last."
Roxy was dead.