Chapter 224. A Formal Match Against Her Sister, Judged by the Man Who Taught Her Fear
The battle with the golems became a brutal symphony of grinding stone and shattering granite. William acted as the conductor, but he deliberately stepped back, leaving Lia to face the brunt of the ancient constructs’ crushing power.
He watched with hawklike intensity as she navigated the chaos. When a golem’s fist missed her by mere inches, sending a shower of razor-sharp stone fragments across her skin, she didn’t flinch; she used the distraction to drive her blade deeper into its core.
By the time the second golem finally succumbed to a devastating combined strike from William and Lia, its torso exploding into a cascade of rubble and enchanted dust, the chamber was silent save for the ringing in their ears.
Lia stood amidst the debris, chest heaving, sweat streaking through the dust on her forehead. But she wasn’t hunched. Her spine was straight, her shoulders squared.
The girl who had been a broken marionette a week ago was gone; in her place stood something forged in fire.
William wiped a smear of stone dust from his brow, preparing to offer a moment of respite. "That’s enough for--"
"Again."
The word cut through the air like a blade. William paused, surprised.
Lia was already resetting her stance, her knuckles white around the hilt, her eyes burning with an intensity that bordered on feverish.
"I want to try the redirect against something faster," she demanded, her voice raw but unyielding. "Something less predictable than stone..."
’The golems were heavy, Instructor Wade... I could read their intent in the way the ground shook. "Lia wiped her sweat. "I need something that doesn’t announce itself."
William studied her. He saw the tremor in her thighs from exhaustion and the way her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat, but he also saw the hunger in her eyes, the desperate need to prove she could own her own strength.
To deny her now would be to starve the very flame he was trying to kindle.
"There’s a den of shadow imps deeper in," William said slowly, his voice dropping to a gravelly register. "They don’t move like men or beasts."
"They move like smoke... Quick, erratic, and even vicious." William starts to do some little stretches. "If you can’t read them, they’ll carve you open before you can even finish a swing."
"That will test whether you’re truly learning the technique or just memorizing motions."
"Let’s go."
"That’s the spirit," William smiled.
...
They descended further into the lightless veins of the dungeon, where the air grew cold and smelled of sulfur and decay. When the imps found them, the nightmare began.
They were small, spindly horrors of living darkness, with elongated limbs and teeth like serrated glass. They didn’t charge; they flickered.
One moment they were ten feet away; the next they were skittering across the ceiling, raining down venomous claws.
Lia struggled immediately. The greatsword, her greatest asset against the golems, suddenly felt like an anchor.
An imp darted beneath her guard, its claws raking across her forearm in a bloody spray. She swung wide to punish it, but the creature vanished into the shadows before the blade could connect, leaving her off balance.
’Fuck, they’re too fast,’ she thought desperately, her mind racing as another imp lunged at her throat. ’I can’t track them...!’
’Every time I swing, I’m hitting air, and they’re using that moment to bite...!’
She felt a sharp pain in her thigh as an imp’s blade-like fingernail tore through her leggings, drawing blood. The pain ignited something primal in her.
She stopped trying to chase them. Instead, she planted her feet, forcing herself to stop the frantic, panicked movements.
She began to use the greatsword as a tool of area denial, swinging in massive, controlled arcs that forced the imps to either retreat or be shredded.
"You’re overcorrecting on the wide swings, Lia!" William roared over the screeching of the imps.
He was a whirlwind of steel beside her, decapitating one imp mid-leap, but his focus remained on her form. "You’re swinging to hit them, but you’re stopping the blade too early because you’re afraid of missing!"
"You’re fighting your own momentum!"
Lia stumbled as she tried to abort a swing that had gone too far, nearly tripping over her own feet as an imp hissed in her ear.
"It feels like I’m losing control!" she screamed back, the frustration boiling over. "If I don’t stop the swing, I’m exposed!"
"That’s the trap!" William countered, his voice cutting through the chaos like a whip. "You think control means stopping... But true control means trusting the arc!"
"Trust the follow-through! If you fight to stop the blade, you’re giving them the opening they need!"
"Let the sword finish its path; even if you miss, the momentum itself becomes your shield for the next move!"
’Trust the follow-through,’ she repeated internally, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. ’Don’t fight the weapon...’
’...Become the weapon!’
Lia closed her eyes for a heartbeat, drowning out the screeching of the imps and the burning sting of the cuts across her arms. ’Trust the arc...’
’Don’t fight the steel... Let it finish!’
The next imp lunged from the ceiling, a blur of shadow and serrated claws aimed directly at her temple. Instead of pulling back in panic, Lia planted her left foot, twisted her core with violent intent, and unleashed a massive horizontal slash.
She didn’t try to brake the blade when she saw the imp’s claws graze her shoulder; she let the greatsword roar through its full trajectory.
The result was carnage. The blade sliced through the first imp mid-leap, bisecting its torso in a spray of black ichor.
The momentum carried the steel effortlessly into the second imp that had been skittering behind her, the tip of the blade punching through its skull with a wet, satisfying thwack. The creature’s head exploded in a shower of dark fluid as the sword exited the other side.
Lia stood frozen in the aftermath, chest heaving, the tip of her sword dripping with foul-smelling shadow essence. Her lungs burned, and her muscles screamed in protest, but her mind was unnervingly clear.
She stared down at her hands trembling slightly, stained with gore, and a slow, genuine smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. It wasn’t the practiced smile of a dutiful student; it was the hungry smile of a predator who had finally tasted blood.
"That... worked," she whispered, her voice thick with awe at her own capability.
William stepped over the dissolving corpse of an imp, wiping his blade with a grunt. A feral grin split his face.
"Hyuuppp~! That worked indeed, my fellow student."
...
The journey back toward the city was bathed in the honeyed light of a dying sun. The forest seemed softer now, less threatening, as the adrenaline faded into a pleasant, bone-deep exhaustion.
They walked in a comfortable silence, the kind that only exists between two people who have shared the intimacy of violence. William found himself watching Lia from the corner of his eye.
The way she moved was different; the rigid, defensive tension that had defined her posture was gone, replaced by a fluid looseness that spoke of newfound confidence.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, a flicker of real optimism stirred in his chest. The weapon he was forging was finally beginning to take shape.
But the silence between them wasn’t just peaceful; it was heavy. Lia’s shoulders had gone rigid again, but this time it wasn’t from physical fatigue.
"There’s something I need to tell you," she said.
Her voice was quiet, stripped of the battle-hardened steel she’d shown in the dungeon. It sounded fragile.
"I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t want it to affect today’s training... I didn’t want to lose focus."
William felt an instinctive tightening in his chest. He knew that tone. "Okay... What is it?"
Lia kept her eyes fixed on the path ahead, her gaze distant as if she were looking at something far beyond the treeline. "My father is arriving the day after tomorrow."
William slowed his pace but didn’t stop. "Your father...? I thought... he was stationed at the northern border."
"He’s coming home," she said, swallowing hard. "And he’s arranged a formal match."
"I will be competing against Seraphina, and my performance will be evaluated directly in front of him to determine whether I’ve made sufficient progress to remain at this academy."
William stopped dead in his tracks. The sudden stillness of the forest felt oppressive.
"W-wait... He wants you to fight your sister...?" William showed a surprised expression. "Seraphina is a Grand Swordmaster, Lia..."
"She’s three ranks above you in technique alone...! And he’s forcing this... in two days?"
"Yes." Her jaw tightened so hard he could hear her teeth grind. "He doesn’t believe in gradual progress."
"He believes in breaking what doesn’t bend."
"And if you lose...?" William asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "If you can’t match her?"
The composed mask Lia wore, the one she had spent years perfecting, cracked. For a split second, William didn’t see a warrior; he saw a terrified girl standing on the edge of an abyss.
Her eyes were glassy with a fear she couldn’t suppress.
"Then he’ll conclude the academy’s training methods have failed," she said, each word clipped and bitter. "He’ll decide you’ve wasted his resources."
"I’ll be removed from the academy immediately and sent home for what he’ll call... ’more appropriate instruction.’"
She finally looked at him, and the desperation in her eyes was more cutting than any blade. "Which means he’ll take my sword away... permanently."