As Henry met the devastating strike, he was violently shoved backward, but through gritted teeth, he kept his balance. He immediately snapped back into control, launching a feint overhead strike before seamlessly twisting his wrists to turn it into a horizontal cleave.
But the Hobgoblin Champion easily read the shift in momentum, brought its broadsword down in a crushing parry, and instantly countered with a horizontal sweep from the opposite side.
As their blades clashed in a blur of steel, the cavern's chaotic noise began to dull.
Everything began fading from Henry's mind. The crushing pressure, the burning in his lungs, the overwhelming physical gap all melted away into a profound, absolute silence. There were no thoughts. No doubts. All he could see was the massive monster in front of him, the exact angle of its blade, and the positioning of its feet.
Henry plunged back into the flow state.
He began fighting at a level of speed and brutal efficiency he had never achieved in his entire life. His reaction time practically doubled. Instead of trying to block the Champion's earth-shattering power head-on, Henry met the strikes with just enough angled force to redirect them, letting the monster's momentum glide harmlessly past his guard.
His footwork was flawless, keeping him just out of range of the heavy shockwaves and perfectly conserving his stamina while the monster burned its energy swinging.
As the relentless exchange dragged on, the towering Champion finally began to slow down. Henry's pace dipped as well, but only slightly; he was still firmly locked in the zone.
Slice.
Henry's blade flickered past the monster's guard, leaving a shallow, bleeding cut across its deltoid. Then another across its forearm. While Henry remained completely untouched, the Champion was slowly bleeding out.
The monster noticed the shift. It quickly backed up, recalibrating. Recognizing that raw power wasn't breaching Henry's defense, the Champion altered its grip, sacrificing some of its strength to increase the speed of its strikes.
The Champion lunged, bringing its blade down in a fast arc.
Henry raised his sword to catch the strike, perfectly positioned to counter. But the exact second the blades met, something inside Henry's overclocked mind snapped.
His vision doubled. A sharp, high-pitched ringing pierced his ears, and the cavern completely blacked out.
The mental fatigue of sustaining the intense flow state had finally crashed his system. Seizing the momentary lapse, the Champion aggressively slapped Henry's sword downward, opening his guard entirely, and launched a lethal backhand horizontal slash.
At the absolute last possible millisecond, Henry's vision snapped back.
Panic flooded his veins. He violently threw his body backward and to the left, desperately trying to escape the whistling iron. He was a fraction of a second too late. The very tip of the Champion's broadsword caught him, tearing a half-inch-deep gash straight across the middle of his right arm.
Shhhk.
The burning pain of the laceration ripped Henry entirely out of his mental fog.
He staggered back, his brain throbbing with a sudden, blinding headache. His internal alarms were screaming. The flow state was gone, his muscles were trembling, and pure survival instinct overrode everything else.
'I need to make it to the door, or I'm going to die here,' Henry thought, his eyes darting frantically across the arena.
He glanced toward the safe zone, only to realize with sinking horror that the duel had dragged him all the way to the complete opposite end of the massive cavern.
He turned to run, but the Champion was already there. The monster anticipated his escape route, stepping directly into his path and cutting off any chance of flight.
The fight resumed, but the scales had completely tipped.
Without the flow state's focus to guide his parries, the fight quickly turned one-sided. Every time Henry tried to block, the Champion's terrifying strength rattled his bones, nearly knocking the sword from his grip. Blood poured from the gash on his arm. Shallow cuts began accumulating across his thighs, ribs, and shoulders as he failed to dodge the monster's speed strikes.
Panic set in. With every drop of blood lost, Henry's energy hemorrhaged.
Finally, the Champion stepped into Henry's guard and delivered a devastating, full-body kick.
Henry was launched backward, crashing onto the stone floor. His arming sword clattered against the rock. His body refused to move. He could only watch as the towering Hobgoblin Champion slowly walked toward him, raising its massive broadsword for the final, decapitating execution.
"I can't die," Henry screamed, his voice cracking with pure desperation. "I can't!"
Right as the monster loomed over him, bringing the heavy iron down, Henry gripped the hilt of his sword with both hands. From flat on his back, he desperately swung the blade upward with absolutely every single ounce of force he still possessed.
He closed his eyes.
He saw his family. He saw Mia's face, bright and smiling.
'I didn't come all the way back in time to die like this,' Henry thought, a sudden, burning defiance erupting from the depths of his soul.
The upward strike drained the last drop of his physical and mental energy. His arms went entirely numb.
Expecting the crushing weight of the monster's blade to end his life, Henry slowly opened his eyes.
The cavern was dead silent.
Standing directly over him, the massive Hobgoblin Champion was completely frozen. Slowly, a perfect line appeared down the exact center of the monster's face, chest, and waist. The two halves of the towering colossus slid apart, dissolving into a massive shower of blue light before they even hit the floor.
But Henry wasn't looking at the dissolving monster.
He was staring at the air behind where the Champion had just stood. In the empty space, perfectly tracing the exact trajectory of Henry's desperate upward swing, was a physical line of pure, pulsating energy.
It was a brilliant, fire-red, two-inch-thick, and it hummed slightly as it slammed into the cavern wall.
"What the fu—" Henry managed to croak.
Before he could finish the sentence, a translucent blue panel materialized directly above his face, illuminating the dark edges of his fading vision. He squinted, his brain shutting down, managing to read only a single, fragmented word before the world went entirely black.
Congrat...