Chapter 120. Not Fighting Like a Swordsman Anymore
The battlefield was no longer a place of tactical maneuvering; it had devolved into a slaughterhouse of sparks, steel, and desperate blood. The air itself felt thick with the metallic tang of adrenaline and the scorched smell of Aetherion’s energy.
William drove Aetherion forward in a relentless, blurring combination. He moved with the terrifying economy of a predator who had finally stopped pretending to be prey.
Starting in a single-wield configuration, he unleashed a series of razor-sharp arcs that cut through the air with a deadly hiss. The masked man barely managed to deflect the first three strikes, the impact of steel against steel sending vibrations through the ground that felt like miniature earthquakes.
Then came the impossible. In the middle of a devastating downward cleave, William twisted his grip, his muscles coiling and snapping like steel cables.
With a wet, mechanical click of the weapon’s mechanism, he shifted into double-weapon mid-strike. The single blade split into two separate points of attack, converging on the masked man from angles that defied human physics.
The twin blades screamed as they tore through the air, one aiming for the throat while the other swept for the ribs.
The masked man gasped as he was forced into a desperate, stumbling retreat, his boots skidding through the churned mud and blood. He barely caught both blades on his vambraces, the force of the impact creating a shockwave through his arms that made his bones creak ominously.
"Interesting," the masked man panted, his breath coming in ragged bursts behind the porcelain facade of his mask.
He retreated several steps to reset his guard, his stance wider than before. "You’ve been holding back, Instructor Wade... All this time, you were playing at restraint."
"You noticed," William said.
His voice was unnervingly calm, the quiet before a hurricane. His eyes were cold, focused entirely on the killing intent bleeding from his opponent.
William didn’t give him time to breathe. He pressed forward with renewed savagery.
His footwork became a lethal dance of contradictions: he shifted from Ember’s aggressive, forward-pressing pressure, with each strike carrying the weight of a falling mountain directly into Wind’s explosive, unpredictable repositioning.
One moment he was a wall of unstoppable force charging head-on; the next, he was a gust of killing air, pivoting on his heel to close the distance from an unexpected flank.
The masked man spun violently to track him, but William was already inside his guard. Aetherion’s blade caught the man across the shoulder, slicing through leather and flesh alike.
Blood sprayed across the dirt in a crimson arc, hot and steaming in the cool air. The masked man grunted in pain, but he counterattacked with a vicious kick that caught William in the ribs.
Crack.
William felt the ribs splinter, a white hot spike of agony shooting through his side, but he didn’t flinch. He couldn’t afford to.
’Pain is just information,’ he told himself through gritted teeth, his inner voice a cold whisper amidst the chaos. ’Pain means I’m still alive...’
’Pain means I’m still fighting.’
He used the momentum of the kick to roll backward, immediately spinning into a low sweep that forced the masked man to leap upward. As the opponent was airborne, William unleashed a vicious upward slash.
The blade bit deep into the man’s thigh, severing muscle and grinding against bone with a sickening, wet crunch.
"You’ve been fighting carefully until now," the masked man observed, his voice losing its mocking edge as he stumbled, blood streaming down his leg.
He parried a rapid-fire series of strikes that sounded like a hammer striking an anvil. "Measured... Controlled... I assumed that was simply your nature."
"That you were a man of limits."
William’s next strike was a brutal overhead blow that shattered the ground where the man had stood a millisecond before. He stepped into the crater, his face splattered with the opponent’s blood, his eyes burning with a primal, focused fury that transcended mere technique.
"That was me being patient," William growled, his voice dropping into a register of pure menace as he raised both blades for a killing thrust. "This is me being done being patient."
The two combatants collided with a sound like a thunderclap. Metal shrieked as Aetherion met the masked man’s blade in a shower of sparks that momentarily blinded them both.
CLANG SHHHHIIIIING!
William didn’t retreat from the impact; he leaned into it, using the screeching friction to slide his blade down the opponent’s steel, aiming to disarm. But the masked man was fast, twisting his wrist to redirect the pressure, sending William stumbling sideways.
Before William could recover, the masked man unleashed a vicious horizontal slash.
William ducked, feeling the wind of the blade whistle past his ear. He surged forward, his boots tearing up chunks of earth.
Thwack!
His elbow connected with the masked man’s ribs with a solid, bone-jarring impact before he swung Aetherion in a brutal upward arc.
CRUNCH.
The blade caught the masked man beneath the chin, splitting the leather gorget. Blood sprayed in a fine mist, painting William’s face crimson.
The masked man roared, not in pain, but in fury, driving his forehead into William’s nose.
CRACK.
William’s head snapped back, blood erupting from his nostrils as cartilage shattered. His vision swam with stars, but the instinct honed over decades took over.
His brain screamed warnings of pain, but his body responded with cold, mechanical precision.
The masked man lunged, his sword a blur of killing intent. William met him mid stride.
Suddenly, the single blade of Aetherion split, clicking, clacking, and shinking the mechanism engaging with lethal speed.
Now in Double Wield, William became a whirlwind. He parried a thrust with one blade while simultaneously driving the other into the masked man’s kidney.
"What—?!" The masked man gasped, twisting away just as the blade grazed his flesh, leaving a shallow but bleeding furrow.
William didn’t stop. He spun, the dual blades creating a sphere of steel around him.
Clash. Slash. Parry. Thrust.
The choreography was hypnotic and terrifying. He would strike with both blades in a cross cut SHINK and then, before the opponent could counter, he would slam them together, the blades merging back into a single sword with a metallic CLACK, using the combined weight to deliver a crushing blow that sent the masked man sprawling backward.
The masked man scrambled to his feet, breathing heavily, blood dripping from his chin and his torn side.
"No magic... no elemental enhancement... just raw, flawless execution," he panted, his eyes widening behind the porcelain mask. "How...?"
"How can you shift your entire tactical framework mid combo without a single drop of mana?"
William didn’t answer with words. He answered with steel.
He charged again, the transition between forms becoming faster than the eye could follow. He was a shapeshifter of violence.
He would attack with the single blade in a heavy, Ember-style overhead smash. BOOM, and as the masked man raised his guard to absorb the impact, William would twist, the blade splitting into two in a heartbeat.
The dual blades would then dart in like twin vipers, targeting the gaps in the man’s armor.
Sta b. Slash. Parry. Split. Strike.
The masked man was forced into a desperate defensive spiral. Every time he thought he had read William’s rhythm, it changed.
One moment it was the slow, crushing cadence of a juggernaut; the next, it was the erratic, staccato lightning of a dual-wielding assassin.
"You’re not fighting like a swordsman anymore," the masked man grunted, his sword arm shaking from the sheer force of William’s relentless pressure. "You’re fighting like a machine designed to dismantle me piece by piece!"
William’s ribs burned where they had been broken, each breath a wet wheeze in his lungs. Blood soaked through his shirt, warm and sticky.
But his mind was a cold void, focused entirely on the next microsecond of motion.
’Left guard.’
’Shift to dual.’
’Thrust lower.’
’Split.’
’Counter slash.’
He caught the masked man’s blade between his two smaller blades, K-CHINK, and wrenched it sideways, exposing the man’s throat.
"I told you," William growled, blood spattering from his split lip as he prepared the final, devastating sequence.