The thralls seemed to stir from their momentary stupor, emboldened now that the towering beast lay in rapidly disintegrating ruin.
Their lifeless eyes regained focus, hands gripping weapons tighter as they sensed an opportunity.
Raven watched them with narrowed eyes, her grip on her swords assured and practiced.
She could feel Helena’s weariness radiating off her like waves of heat.
The Feral Sage had clearly expended enormous effort to bring down that abomination through sheer skill and raw power alone.
A slight turn of Raven’s head was enough to convey her intent.
“Please rest for a moment,” she said lowly. “Let me finish these ones.” She glanced at Terence, “you too.”
Helena gave the barest hint of a nod, chest still heaving from exertion as she leaned heavily on the black rod, its tip gouging into the torn earth.
While Terence lowered her sword and looked at Raven plainly.
With a subtle shift of her stance, Raven allowed her focus to narrow to a razor’s edge, all distractions falling away until there was only the impending dance.
The twin swords in her hands stretched out like extensions of her body, perfectly balanced instruments of elegant lethality.
The first thrall charged with a feral snarl, blade raised high in a clumsy overhead chop.
Raven didn’t so much as blink. In one seamless motion, she flowed into the attack like water crashing over rock.
Her swords wove an intricate mesh of steel, deflecting the wild strike with almost contemptuous ease.
As the thrall’s guard opened from the momentum of its failed attack, Raven struck.
Moving with the blurring speed and grace that made her one of the most accomplished duelists of her age, she whirled through the thrall’s defenses.
Her blades flashed in precise arcs, shearing through flesh and severing tendon in a whirlwind of strikes that lasted less than a heartbeat.
The thrall crumpled to the ground, shorn of its limbs before it could even perceive the attacks that had disabled it.
Three more rushed her from the side, animalistic roars torn from ruined throats. Raven glided into their midst, swords trailing behind in a reflective silver blur that stained the darkness.
When the afterimage faded, two thralls collapsed with shredded tendons and severed nerves rendering their bodies useless.
The third managed half a rattling gasp before crumpling, Raven’s blade having opened its throat in one impossibly precise strike.
She didn’t pause, couldn’t afford to as more rushed inwards, a tide of aimless violence drawn by the scent of their own rancid vitality spilling across the forest floor.
Raven moved in a mesmerizing dance, each step blending seamlessly into the next as her swords wove an impenetrable aegis of whirling steel.
Her feet traced the forms of the Kageyama Dual-Blades technique – the sublime art of duality in lethal harmony.
Here, a sequence of flowing defenses met a flurry of strikes in a deafening clang of blades, not blocking or parrying but guiding the assault away while feeding momentum into a counter-attack. freewebnvel.coɱ
And there, when the onslaught seemed fit to crush her under its sheer weight, she transitioned into spinning bladework that inflicted grievous wounds through the narrowest of openings, severing limbs and disabling attacks before they could land.
All the while she moved in perfect balance and control, never allowing herself to be overwhelmed despite being surrounded by endless foes.
At one point, a thrall leapt at her from behind, fangs gnashing and raking claws extended.
Before it had even left the ground, Raven had whirled, blades tracing ephemeral arcs of silver light.
The thrall landed in two neatly bisected pieces, flesh sizzling from the cauterized wounds.
On and on the battle raged with Raven its unrelenting eye.
Each foe that fell was promptly replaced by another, but through it all she fought with the cold poise of a sculptor carving masterpieces from yielding flesh.
When the tide began to swell too thick to repel with bladework alone, Raven kicked it into overdrive.
Planting her feet in the low Duality Stance, she inhaled deeply, focusing her will to a razor’s edge.
On the exhale, she erupted into action, body blurring into a whirling cyclone of flashing steel.
“The Falling Sakura Technique” unleashed, each microscopic pause between strikes a freeze frame capturing Raven in a new, increasingly lethal stance.
Here her swords swept low in searing cross-slashes that crippled, hobbling attackers with severed hamstrings and ankles.
There she pirouetted with both blades extended in spiraling wheels of annihilation that dismembered and decapitated in equal measure.
A heartbeat later her form sheathed itself in illusion, Raven’s body vanishing in a blur of afterimages that wove between stunned attackers.
“The Mirrored Lotus Illusion” inflicted death from every angle, razor-edged petals of distortion rending flesh from bone in rapid sequence.
By the time the last thrall fell, the dark woods had been transformed into a sprawling abattoir of severed limbs and rapidly cooling corpses.
Raven stood in the epicenter, chest steadily heaving with each breath as she lowered her swords.
Her clothes were speckled with rancid vitae, the front fall of her jet-black hair disheveled.
Yet her eyes remained clear and focused, missing nothing as they scanned the treeline for any further threats.
Only when she was satisfied that the last of the thralls had been neutralized did she relax her battle stance, rolling her shoulders in a subtle stretch as the tight coils of lethal potential unspooled once more.
Turning to regard Helena with a raised eyebrow, Raven couldn’t resist a tiny smirk. “Not bad for a light warm-up, eh?”
Helena looked away and muttered, “Damn, I hate scions of those noble clans.”
Just like Helena, what Raven had showcased was pure strength with no use of talent abilities.
However, the difference between her and Helena was that Raven was well-trained by her clan.
The deadly moves that Raven had used were undoubtedly Battle Arts, rooted and created from the deep history of the Kageyama clan. She had likely started practicing battle stances and footwork before learning how to walk.
Helena, on the other hand, was just a commoner like many others.
A girl with a relentless spirit and a bit of luck.
She was quite envious of Raven, which was why she couldn’t understand why someone as fortunate as her lived recklessly and did not value her life.
Sigh
An audible heavy sigh resounded amidst them.
Immediately, they all turned toward Northern’s direction.
The star of the night, the one everyone had been waiting for, finally turned.
However, the moment he did, all three of their faces contorted with horror and became very pale.
Northern frowned slightly.
“What’s wrong?”
Terence shakily pointed at Northern.
“Y-Your eyes…”
Northern raised a confused brow, only for notifications to pop up before his eyes.
[All Eyes is resonating with Chaos]
[The structure and composition of your eyes is changing]
[Chaos is reweaving its strings]
Northern frowned at the notifications and looked at them.
“What’s wrong with my eyes?”
Raven’s voice rang out evenly.
“You have two merged eyeballs on each eye… terrifyingly beautiful, but you look like a monster, Northern.”
Northern blinked for a couple of seconds, utterly confused, but he sighed the next moment and moved his head slightly.
“Like we have time for all that. Ready yourselves, our true enemy is coming.”