The Regressed Heir of Ravencrest

CLANG!

The blinding shower of yellow sparks from their opening clash still hung in the damp night air when Ethan felt the brutal force of Peter’s strike travel straight through his arms. Pain flared sharply in his chest from his underlying injuries, but he remained calm.

Peter didn’t give him a second to breathe.

Without using aura, the mercenary leader drove forward with raw, instinctive attacks—the lethal efficiency of a veteran forged through countless battlefields. Ethan relied on footwork, timing, and razor-sharp precision, evading the heavy blows by hair-breadths.

Peter’s broadsword swept low, aimed at Ethan’s knee. Ethan pivoted neatly out of the arc, driving his elbow toward Peter’s exposed ribs. Peter caught the strike on his forearm guard, the impact ringing dull through the iron plating, and answered with a vicious headbutt that Ethan barely slipped beneath.

Peter’s simple footwork suddenly became frighteningly fast, each step devouring the distance between them and driving deeper into Ethan’s guard. His heavy broadsword whistled through the fog in a brutal, low-angled sweep aimed at Ethan’s shins.

Ethan dropped his center of gravity, catching the massive broadsword near the hilt.

CLANG!

The raw force behind Peter’s strike drove Ethan’s boots two inches deep into the stone floor, spraying gray dust into the air.

He’s faster than me... Ethan’s eyes narrowed.

Ethan parried outward, using the broadsword’s own weight against Peter before thrusting his black blade toward the mercenary’s exposed collarbone. Peter’s reaction was instantaneous—he ducked beneath the dark steel, drove his iron-clad shoulder straight into Ethan’s chest, and followed with a devastating left hook aimed at Ethan’s jaw.

Ethan blocked the punch with his gauntleted hand, but the sheer momentum rattled his teeth and sent a wave of shock shooting down his spine. He spun on his heel, sweeping his leg to catch Peter’s ankle, but the old mercenary jumped the sweep and brought the heavy pommel of his broadsword smashing down onto Ethan’s shoulder guard, buckling the steel with a sickening crunch.

Ethan gritted his teeth as blood welled in his throat from his internal injuries. He bit his lip through the burning pain and swallowed it back down.

Time blurred beneath the relentless rhythm of their battle. The passage echoed with the agonizing clash of two warriors tearing at each other with pure muscle, reflex, and lethal instinct.

Pressing his assault, Peter dodged a thrust aimed at his side, suddenly accelerating by channeling a sliver of aura into his legs. His movement was fast enough to slip past Ethan’s attack, but the sudden acceleration exposed his footing for just a beat too long.

Ethan noticed the opening immediately and capitalized on it.

SLASH!

Ethan’s blade flicked out, slicing deep into Peter’s thigh. Crimson blood poured down the mercenary’s greave onto the wet cobblestones.

Peter checked his stride, a low growl escaping through his teeth as he glared down at his bleeding leg, while Ethan took a quick, shallow breath to steady his aching chest.

Then Peter’s aura ignited.

A suffocating, dense crimson aura erupted from his body, radiating outward in physical shockwaves that blew away the surrounding smoke and cracked the stone arches above them.

The air grew impossibly heavy. Peter stepped forward, his speed suddenly doubling as his crimson-infused broadsword sliced through the fog, shattering floor tiles in its wake.

Ethan tried to match it, channeling his aura into the Eternal Sovereign Blade to form a defensive parry. But his own aura was a flickering match compared to the bonfire of Peter’s crimson tide.

CLANG!

The collision was violent. Ethan’s dark aura flickered wildly beneath the oppressive weight of Peter’s crimson tide. The raw pressure forced Ethan back three steps, his boots tearing long furrows into the stone floor.

Peter surged forward, closing the distance before Ethan could reset his footing. His broadsword thrust forward like a striking viper. Ethan twisted his torso violently to avoid a chest wound, but Peter’s blade bit deep into his right shoulder, slicing through fabric and steel plate and drawing a spray of crimson blood.

"Ungh!" Ethan hissed, staggering back, his right arm trembling as crimson soaked down his dark armor.

"You’re skilled, kid!" Peter barked, stepping in to press his advantage, his broadsword sweeping in a ruthless execution arc. "Your instincts are terrifying! But your aura is far too weak! No matter how sharp your techniques are, you can’t bridge the gap between us with tricks alone!"

Ethan was forced entirely onto the defensive, bleeding from a second shallow cut across his thigh as he desperately parried the cascading crimson strikes.

Yet, as Peter drove Ethan backward step by step, the veteran mercenary leader’s eyes flickered with a growing, nagging inconsistency.

Wait...Peter thought, his mind racing amidst the high-speed clash.

This doesn’t make sense.

His broadsword struck Ethan’s blade again, sending another wave of bone-shattering force into the youth’s body.

His aura... why is it this weak?

Peter couldn’t understand how someone whose physical strength and combat ability were clearly this formidable could possess such a comparatively weak aura.

It was a complete mismatch—an unnatural contradiction that defied everything Peter understood about strength and aura. It nagged at him even as their blades continued to clash, sparks scattering across the churned stone with every exchange.

The fight seemed to stretch endlessly, each exchange grinding away at their stamina. Both combatants absorbed damage neither could fully avoid. Ethan’s shoulder throbbed with every movement, blood slowly soaking into his cloak. Peter bore a shallow gash along one forearm where Ethan’s blade had finally found an opening, though the wound troubled him far less than the question still gnawing at the back of his mind.

Between one violent exchange and the next, Peter’s peripheral awareness—honed sharp by decades of survival—caught something that made him falter mid-step.

Not a single death cry.

Not from his own men.

He’d been half-listening to the battle behind him the entire fight, tracking the wider clash as any veteran Knight Lord instinctively did. And what he’d been hearing was wrong. Groans of pain. The clatter of dropped weapons. Bones breaking under controlled, deliberate force.

Only pain. No death.

Peter’s gaze flicked sideways just long enough to see dozens of his shadow mercenaries scattered across the cobblestones: disarmed, bruised, bound in frost, or unconscious.

They were breathing. Every single one of them.

His attention snapped back to Ethan barely in time to deflect a thrust aimed at his throat, the parry rougher than it should have been.

"You..." Peter’s voice came out low, edged with confusion and disbelief. "What are you doing?"

Ethan didn’t answer. He simply pressed forward, his blade sweeping in a tight arc that forced Peter back a step.

The silence only deepened Peter’s unease. He’d fought countless men who killed without hesitation, and just as many who killed reluctantly. But he couldn’t understand the kid in front of him—or what he was planning.

Enough of this.

His grip tightened on his broadsword, his crimson aura condensing into something heavier, sharper—no longer the raw, wild pressure of before, but something refined and lethal.

"I don’t have time to figure out what game you’re playing," Peter said, settling into a stance Ethan hadn’t seen from him yet. "So let’s finish this properly."

Mercenary King’s War Art — First Form: Rending Gale.

Ethan’s blade answered before Peter’s had even finished its arc—the same technique, the same compressed current of aura, executed back at him with unnerving precision.

Peter’s stance broke for half a heartbeat, disbelief costing him his footing just long enough for Ethan’s blade to graze his side, drawing a thin line of blood through his armor.

"You—" Peter staggered back, resetting his stance. His eyes remained locked on Ethan. "Where did you learn this?"

Ethan said nothing. He shifted his weight, his dark blade lowering into another stance.

Mercenary King’s War Art — Second Form: Insanity Strike.

Peter’s jaw clenched.

His body reacted before his mind could. His own broadsword rose into the precise counter required by the technique, the movement so familiar his muscles remembered it before his thoughts could catch up.

Their blades collided, the shockwave sending both of them skidding backward across the cracked stone.

Peter stared at Ethan through the drifting smoke, his breathing growing heavier.

The first form could have been a coincidence.

The second could not.

"How..." His voice had lost its earlier edge of controlled aggression, dropping to something low and unsteady.

Ethan didn’t answer.

Ethan’s stance changed once again.

Peter’s jaw went slack. Something about the opening movement made his heart tighten. He knew that movement—or rather, he knew part of it.

Ethan’s blade continued.

One movement flowed seamlessly into the next, carrying the technique forward with a fluidity Peter had never witnessed.

Mercenary King’s War Art — Third Form: Reaper’s Severance.

A cold prickle ran down Peter’s spine.

"No..."

The blade flashed forward.

Peter twisted away on instinct, but not fast enough—the edge caught his forearm, biting through the vambrace and opening a shallow gash that ran from wrist to elbow.

For the first time since the battle began, his composure completely fractured.

"Impossible..."

Ethan didn’t pursue him. He simply stood there, blade lowered, before slowly shifting into another stance.

Something about the movement immediately caught Peter’s attention. The positioning of the blade, the circulation of aura, the alignment of Ethan’s shoulders and hips—it all carried the faint impression of something Peter had spent years trying to understand.

It wasn’t simply another technique.

There was a principle beneath it.

Something deeper.

Ethan slowly raised the Eternal Sovereign Blade.

The atmosphere around him seemed to change. The drifting smoke grew strangely still, while the distant clash of weapons seemed to recede beneath the quiet pressure gathering around the young warrior.

Ethan’s aura didn’t explode outward. Instead, it condensed along the blade, every movement becoming increasingly precise as the final traces of wasted energy disappeared.

Mercenary King’s War Art — Fourth Form: Collapsing Horizon.

The instant Ethan completed the form, the hair on Peter’s arms rose.

For a single suspended moment, he saw something behind Ethan—a tall, indistinct shadow with a sword resting in its hand.

Peter couldn’t make out its face, nor could he tell whether what he was seeing was real or merely an illusion born from exhaustion and shock. Yet the presence carried something that struck deeper than power alone—a profound principle that seemed to exist beyond the technique itself.

Peter froze.

His broadsword remained lowered in his hands.

The shadow disappeared.

The sounds of the battlefield rushed back all at once—the clash of steel, the cries of soldiers, the pounding of footsteps against stone.

His breathing became uneven.

He stared at Ethan without moving, his fingers slowly tightening around the hilt of his sword.

The King’s successor...

The thought surfaced instinctively.

Ethan simply stood before him, the Eternal Sovereign Blade lowered at his side, quietly aware of the storm he had just stirred within the veteran Knight Lord’s mind.