Chapter 82: The Unyielding Battlefield
The air in the mountain pass seemed to disintegrate beneath Count Greyson Thorn’s descent. He brought no martial grace, no recognizable stance, and no strategic restraint. Driven by the volatile power of the crimson pill, he surged forward with the momentum of a collapsing mountain, the shockwave of his landing ripping cobblestones from the ground and hurling jagged fragments in every direction.
"Move!" Peter shouted, his raspy voice cutting through the explosion of dust.
Ethan, Peter, and Luna opened in immediate, synchronized coordination.
Peter took the direct center. Pushing through the agonizing pain of his crushed breastplate, the veteran mercenary leader ignited every ember of his remaining crimson aura. The dense, deep-red energy erupted around his broadsword like a furnace, roaring outward as he swung in a heavy, arc-carving cleave designed to force Thorn onto the back foot.
To his left, Lady Luna moved with fluid, lethal elegance. Her frost aura flared violently along her skin and swept across the ground in branching, translucent ribbons of cold energy. Rather than using physical steel, she channeled her frost aura into a concentrated, lance-like beam of razor-sharp energy, aiming straight for the tender tendons behind Thorn’s right knee.
From the right, Ethan darted across the shattered stone. His own aura flared, wrapping around the Eternal Sovereign Blade like a dark shroud. His trajectory was low and precise, aiming the tip of his dark blade toward the exposed juncture between Thorn’s neck and collarbone.
The three attacks converged from three different angles, perfectly timed to leave Thorn nowhere safe to retreat. Against an ordinary Knight Lord, the combination would have been almost impossible to survive.
Yet the moment their strikes converged, Thorn abandoned all predictable combat logic. He didn’t parry. He didn’t evade. He didn’t even attempt to protect his vitals.
Ignoring Ethan’s incoming thrust entirely, Thorn twisted mid-stride with unnatural, bone-creaking flexibility. His massive left palm, wrapped in a dense, suffocating crimson shroud of forced energy, slammed directly into the flat of Peter’s broadsword.
BANG!
The concussive collision sounded like a siege hammer striking an anvil. Peter’s crimson aura shattered on impact, the raw kinetic force driving the flat of his own heavy weapon back against his chest. The veteran gasped as a fresh spray of blood burst from his lips, his boots carving deep furrows into the earth as he was knocked four paces backward.
Before Luna’s frost lance could sever his knee, Thorn spun on his heel with frightening speed. Using the rotational momentum of his heavy frame, he threw a vicious backhand elbow straight into Luna’s path.
"Tsk!" Luna winced, her sharp eyes registering the trajectory a fraction of a second before impact.
She collapsed her stance, dropping her shoulder and sliding beneath the wild strike. The sheer wind pressure trailing Thorn’s arm tore the clip from her hair, letting her dark locks fly loose into the freezing air. The residual force smashed into the ground where she had stood a fraction of a second prior, blowing a two-foot crater into the cobblestones.
Thorn’s head snapped toward Luna. For a moment, his bloodshot eyes widened in disbelief before his expression twisted into fury. He had expected the first exchange to end with their bodies broken beneath his overwhelming strength. Instead, they were still standing.
"You insects..." he snarled, his voice vibrating with barely contained rage.
The crimson aura around his body surged violently, as though responding to his anger. The veins bulging across his neck darkened further, and the muscles in his arms convulsed under the strain of the pill.
"Why won’t you die?!"
There was no pattern to read. No martial rhythm to anticipate. Thorn’s movements were pure, uncalculated violence—accelerating with every passing second as the forced energy burned through his lifespan and tore his muscles apart from the inside.
A stray wave of pressure from Thorn’s wild backswing blasted into a cluster of broken stone near the gatehouse wall. A wounded Bluemoon guard, lying trapped beneath a fallen timber from the earlier siege, cried out as a massive, jagged boulder was launched straight toward his head by the kinetic shockwave.
Ethan’s sharp eyes flicked sideways mid-combat. Without a moment’s hesitation, he abandoned his offensive vector, lunging sideways across the cobblestones to interpose himself between the helpless soldier and the flying rock.
Ethan raised his gauntleted left arm, channeling his aura into a dense defensive barrier to take the full brunt of the boulder. The stone shattered into a shower of gravel and dust, but the massive kinetic impact transferred straight into Ethan’s chest.
A sickening crunch echoed beneath his tunic as his broken ribs shifted agonizingly. The air was violently purged from his lungs, forcing Ethan down to one knee as a warm wave of blood spilled over his split lip and trickled onto the stones.
Thorn’s gaze snapped toward him.
Instead of taking advantage of Ethan’s weakened position, the boy had chosen to protect someone who was already out of the fight.
Thorn’s expression twisted.
"Still protecting others?"
His laughter came out low and distorted, more growl than sound.
"Then they die first."
Thorn abruptly turned toward the retreating soldiers, his massive frame lowering as he prepared to launch himself after them.
Peter’s expression hardened.
"Not happening."
He stepped directly into Thorn’s path.
"Get him out of here!" Peter roared toward the nearby lieutenants, his bloodshot eyes sweeping across the pass.
He saw how the collateral shockwaves of Thorn’s wild, unbridled surges were putting both Bluemoon soldiers and his disarmed mercenaries in mortal danger. If they stayed near the threshold, the pressure alone would crush them.
"All units!" Peter’s voice boomed across the pass, carrying every ounce of his veteran authority. "Clear the threshold! Fall back behind the main gates! Now!"
Peter’s gaze briefly swept toward Ethan before returning to the battlefield. Whatever happened next, he wasn’t going to let Thorn’s indiscriminate violence drag the boy—or any of his own men—into the killing zone.
Commander Valen and Teresa immediately responded, dragging the wounded backward into the fortress interior, while Corbin and the surviving mercenaries scrambled up the stone inclines to escape the kill zone. Within moments, the courtyard was cleared of all bystanders.
With the last of the soldiers disappearing behind the fortress gates, Thorn’s eyes swept across the now-empty threshold. His breathing was heavy, his body trembling beneath the strain of the pill, yet the pain only seemed to feed his fury.
"Good."
A savage grin stretched across his bloodied face.
"Now I kill you properly."
Peter fought like a dying beast, drawing deep from decades of combat instinct. He stepped into the pocket, exchanging blow for blow with the monster. His broadsword, heavy with furnace-hot crimson aura, carved deep, burning furrows into Thorn’s chest and arms. But the forced energy boiling inside the Count acted like a terrifying anvil; his flesh had turned tough as iron, and even deep lacerations barely slowed his violent momentum.
Thorn slammed a heavy hammer-fist down onto Peter’s guard. Peter’s knees buckled beneath the impact, but instead of retreating, he twisted with the force and let Thorn’s momentum carry the giant half a step past him. His broadsword immediately followed, carving upward beneath Thorn’s arm and opening a deep gash along his ribs.
Blood spewed from Peter’s mouth, splattering across Thorn’s face, but the old mercenary refused to break stance. He snapped his forehead forward in a brutal headbutt against Thorn’s nose, staggering the giant back a fraction of an inch.
"Get off him!" Luna shouted, her voice cold as winter.
Luna moved like a phantom of ice across the battlefield. Her aura flared to its absolute maximum, wrapping around her in a shimmering, white-blue halo. She burned through her remaining aura reserves without holding back, using her high-speed footwork to keep Thorn’s terrifying speed in check.
Her spear rotation changed mid-flow, altering its trajectory and finally landing a direct strike against Thorn’s shoulder.
Taking advantage of the opening, Ethan darted to the front. Dodging a counter-strike by a thin paper’s difference, he drove his black blade into the seam near Thorn’s chest. Simultaneously, Peter moved at blinding speed, executing a sweeping slash aimed at the exact muscle fibers Ethan had just pierced. Before the blade could cut completely through, Thorn deflected the heavy steel with his bare hand and instinctively drove a devastating punch into Peter’s stomach, sending him staggering back as his chest throbbed violently.
As Thorn turned to recover, Ethan stepped back into the fray. Extending his left leg to anchor his weight, he ducked beneath a sweeping blow aimed at his head and carved a clean, horizontal arc across the monster’s waist.
Every time Thorn lunged to break Peter’s guard, Luna’s frost aura would shoot across the ground in jagged paths, freezing the cobblestones solid and slicking the terrain beneath Thorn’s boots. When Thorn pivoted to crush her, she launched dense blades of localized frost aura directly at his eyes and vitals, forcing him to block with his bare forearms.
The bitter cold bit deep into Thorn’s flesh, leaving black-blue patches of frostbite across his arms, but his frenzied state allowed him to ignore the pain entirely.
At the center of this hurricane was Ethan.
Ethan fought with cold, terrifying pragmatism. Knowing his body was battered and his ribs were fractured, he didn’t try to match Thorn in a contest of brute strength. Instead, he became the pivot around which Peter and Luna fought.
Whenever Thorn focused his terrifying speed to crush Luna’s light frame, Ethan threw his aura-wrapped blade into the line of fire, parrying impossible angles and taking the brutal shockwaves onto his own body. When Thorn tried to tear Peter’s throat out with his bare fingers, Ethan darted into Thorn’s blind spot, carving deep, precise thrusts into the Count’s ribs and thighs to draw his attention away.
BANG!
Thorn’s heavy backhand caught Ethan across the ribs mid-thrust, blasting him sideways across the cobblestones. Something inside him tore loose on impact—his lungs seizing, his gut twisting as though a fist had reached in and wrung it. Blood surged up his throat in a hot flood, and for one dizzying instant his mind threatened to spin away entirely.
Nooo.
He clamped down on it through sheer will, forcing the blood back down his throat instead of letting it spill. Ethan rolled through the dirt, his vision swimming in haze, blood leaking continuously from his mouth. Every breath felt like hot needles piercing his chest.
Yet before Thorn could pursue him, Ethan slammed his dark blade into the ground, using the leverage to pull himself back to his feet. His blue eyes remained sharp, dead cold, and utterly calculating.