She was on the verge of fainting when, suddenly, she noticed a dark figure moving among the trees. The silhouette was indistinct and seemed to be observing the fight, but a profound fear paralyzed her.
— No... it can't be... — she thought, as despair enveloped her like a suffocating mist.
The figure drew closer, and the terror in her heart intensified. Could it be another victim? Darkness finally took hold of her.
Her vision dissolved into shadows, and the last thing she saw was that figure moving rapidly as her consciousness vanished completely.
The sorcerer watched calmly as the guardian reformed. The creature, made of pure mana, was like a mirror of the environment, absorbing the surrounding energy to grow stronger with every passing second.
He took another step. The impact came without a trajectory.
There was no visible displacement of energy, nor a variation in density preceding the attack. The only perceptible thing was the lag between the moment his body reacted and the instant his mind understood why.
His left arm grew heavy and pain surfaced, dry and icy, accompanied by a sensation of a rupture too clean to be chaotic. When he recoiled, he was already wounded, though he did not yet know where.
The cut only revealed itself when the fabric gave way.
He stared for too long. The guardian remained ahead, recomposing itself with a calmness that didn't match the urgency of the scene. Its form didn't "grow"; it adjusted just like a liquid in a vessel.
Fragments of bluish light slotted into place until they stopped trembling. A burning sensation descended to his elbow, and with it came a physical memory: the feeling of blood warming the skin before growing cold.
— Hm…?
The sound escaped softly, unintentional. He raised his hand to face level, saw the damp glint between his fingers, and for an instant, the clearing lost its depth. As if the world had moved closer.
How long had it been since he last bled?
Before his retina could process the image, the attack was already underway. It was a kinetic discharge so violent that the trail of mana left behind incinerated the dry leaves on the ground even before the impact.
His green eyes were still fixed on the wound, but the body acted on a memory that preceded his own consciousness. In an almost imperceptible movement, he tilted his head just three centimeters.
The displaced air clipped a lock of his white hair, which disintegrated instantly. The guardian's arm passed like a stylus of light, a straight line designed to obliterate any vestige of consciousness.
But the enemy was persistent. Without withdrawing the limb, it rotated the angle, transforming the thrust into a descending lateral slash.
Before the blow could gain strength or the acceleration complete, he advanced half a step. Not out of reach, but into it, with an open palm and fingers far too relaxed to seem like a defense.
Contact happened before the blade finished its fall.
When the palm met the line of mana, the shock collapsed at the exact point of touch. The blade vibrated, lost its alignment, and ceased to be a cut, becoming merely an excess of energy trying to maintain cohesion.
Scattered particles evaporated into the air before touching the soil, as if the forest itself refused to absorb them. He felt the pressure cross his hand and travel up his wounded arm, mingling with the recent pain.
The guardian hesitated. There was a micro-deviation in its adjustments, as if the creature had lost its reference of which version of itself should exist to subdue the threat.
He advanced another step.
The response came as a curved surface, too wide to be avoided by simple lateral movement. The energy spread like a compressed wave, seeking to envelop rather than pierce.
An ancient principle of the martial arts surfaced in his mind: total release before the movement.
His knees gave way. Tension abandoned his entire body at once, from his ankles to his neck.
Alignment was deliberately lost and his weight fell forward as if balance had been forcibly snatched away. For an instant, he was falling.
His torso tilted beyond the point of recovery, arms loose, giving the impression of a fatal error. The wave passed above him in that interval, sweeping the space where his body should have been.
He released a compact flow of mana through his legs, compressing his muscular reaction time. His trailing foot dug into the earth at the last possible second, and the accumulated force exploded forward.
His body moved flush with the ground, almost parallel to the earth, a runner at the starting shot.
Void Dash — the name surfaced too late to matter, serving only to vanish from the line of sight.
The technique completed itself and the fall turned into thrust.
The creature's eyes swept the clearing, adjusting for a target that had already escaped the observable layer. The dust kicked up by the advance marked only a low, nearly invisible trail.
When he rose again, he was already within the creature's immediate radius. The guardian reacted with a lag, and the core remained exposed for a short interval, pulsing irregularly in the center of the mass.
He twisted his torso and drove his shoulder forward in a dry step. His intact hand came forward in a firm palm strike, hitting the exact spot where the light of the core flickered.
The mana surface sank under the concentrated pressure before reacting. The bluish light lost its uniformity, scattering in misaligned pulses that shot through the creature's body.
The guardian slid back, scarring the ground with luminous lines.
His chest rose and fell with force. The mana flow in his legs no longer maintained its uniformity, requiring constant corrections. He knew he couldn't prolong the fight with other wounded nearby.
He advanced again, repeating the technique. His knees gave way and tension abandoned his body in the same low dash that had placed him within range before.
The guardian, however, was waiting. Its reading followed the collapse of the center of mass, and the mana spread across the ground in a dense mantle, anchored to the earth.
As he exploded forward, the energy rose in thin blades that pierced the soles of his boots. Metal and flesh were punctured at precise points, halting his advance mid-thrust.
Pain shot through his nervous system like an electric shock.
His body tilted forward without a base to sustain the acceleration, while the enemy closed the distance. The core began to pulse strongly again, regaining coherence while preparing the death blow.
He didn't force his feet. He diverted the mana flow from his lower limbs and concentrated everything into his intact arm, compressing energy and intent into a single narrow point.
His hand closed in a minimal gesture and the filament shot out in a straight line, thin as a needle. It crossed the space between them until it penetrated directly into the exposed core.
The human essence entered with it, and the core responded with a fatal lag. The blue pulse tried to reorganize, but regularity did not return; the cycles shortened and began to overlap erratically.
The infused mana interfered with the crystallized patterns that sustained the creature. Each attempt at correction introduced more variation, as if the artificial system were always reacting one step behind.
He felt the change in the energy's feedback. The vibration had changed texture.
The reading closed with precision: the guardian operated from a synchronized artificial source. The creature did not produce mana; it merely kept it aligned as long as the supply was stable.
The organic flow spread among the particles like an unforeseen variable. He kept his hand raised, feeling the depletion become clear. The available time was narrowing fast.
Blood ran warm from his nostrils, first as pressure, then freely, dripping onto the ground. Dizziness came with it, a subtle shift of the clearing, as if the horizon had rotated a few degrees.
He braced his weight on his less-injured leg. The price was being paid.
"I have no margin for a second attempt. The core is still accessible, but the body won't sustain another exchange. If it closes, it's over."
The external structure contracted all at once, pulling the core inside. The blue light gained density in internal layers as the creature prepared a cruder reconfiguration.
Heat from the Inner Forge rose through his torso. Bones aligned and muscles contracted in a compact, functional state. The pain was pushed to a secondary plane to avoid interrupting the movement.
The advance happened in a single step.
The transition was too fast to be tracked by the creature's unstable reading. By the time the structure finished closing, the distance had already been reduced to the minimum necessary.
His hand came open and rigid, piercing through the mana layer before the withdrawal could complete. The movement was short and direct, a strike applied where the core still maintained continuity.
Internal cohesion was lost for good. The core fragmented into patterns that no longer sustained form or command. The blue light scattered in short discharges, dissolving into the environment.
Weight returned to his body as his foot found real support.
Dizziness returned with force and blood continued to stain the soil. It took a conscious adjustment to remain standing as the clearing regained its natural sounds.
The combat had ended.