The air at the bottom of the ruined trench felt incredibly dense, suffocating the lungs with every breath. The scent of rusted mud mingled sharply with the burning ozone from the enemy's weapon. Tonight belonged purely to the slaughterers.
I stood facing Henry Percy. The distance between us was merely a few meters.
Without wasting a single second, I broke the seal of the Sanguine Core in my chest. Dark red blood vapor exploded outward. That fierce aura enveloped my Blood-Iron sword.
The black blade in my hand now throbbed with a thirst for blood. My weapon clashed directly against Henry's silver spear, which radiated a blinding blue lightning. Sparks of red and blue energy illuminated this battlefield.
Henry initiated the assault with a lightning-fast lunge that was technically flawless. His silver spear thrust straight toward my throat. The reach of a spear should have granted the knight an absolute spatial advantage over a sword user like myself.
However, I shattered the logic of that distance. Instead of parrying his spear shaft, I merely tilted my neck a few millimeters.
The electrified spear tip crackled, tearing my cheek and left shoulder. A horrific ozone burn formed instantly. Searing pain stung my nerves.
But I paid absolutely no mind to that pain. Instead, I utilized the momentum of Henry's lunge, which caused his body to lean forward. I stepped in, breaching the blind spot right within his spear's reach.
The blood vapor roared fiercely. The wounds on my shoulder and cheek closed and healed completely in a matter of seconds, all thanks to the Troll genetic assimilation.
Harnessing the dense muscle mass of my arm, I swung the Blood-Iron single-handedly. I launched a devastating slash from a low angle aimed straight at Henry's chest.
Henry was shocked to see his enemy ignore a fatal wound. He never expected me to close the distance with such brutality. The knight was forced to pull his spear shaft horizontally to block my giant sword's slash.
The collision of steel sounded incredibly loud. Its echo reverberated throughout the trench area. Henry's shin vibrated all the way to the base of his shoulder from bearing the immense weight of my sword.
I used my free left hand to deliver a hard punch to the shaft of Henry's spear. My strike ruined the knight's balanced stance.
Henry staggered backward a few steps. His eyes widened in horror behind his helmet, beholding my wounds which had become completely intact without a trace. The composure of the genius knight was eroded by pure terror.
"What kind of regeneration is this?!" shouted Henry, gritting his teeth to suppress the trembling in his hands. "You are no human, Draven!"
I offered a chillingly cold smile, preparing to return his slash. "You only just realized? In my world, ordinary humans who rely on sanity have long since rotted away."
In another corner of the trench, mud splashed wildly from a brutal physical confrontation. Darius Greyvein was fighting desperately against Ragnar Holt.
Blinded by vengeance, Darius attacked Ragnar blindly. The noble deployed an incredibly beautiful and structured academy swordsmanship technique. He launched a deadly horizontal cross-slash aimed at Ragnar's temple.
However, Ragnar cared absolutely nothing for the aesthetics of combat. The wild youth from the north did not parry with the blade of his sword.
Instead, Ragnar took a step forward. He slammed the thickest part of his giant sword directly into the thin section of Darius's blade. This technique relied entirely on savage, raw power.
The weight of dozens of kilograms of steel clashed violently. Since Darius's sword was locked dead, Ragnar savagely pushed his body forward. He executed a close-quarters blade lock.
Darius's feet, clad in expensive leather boots, slipped on the wet mud. Darius's silk-clad arms trembled violently, straining against the push of that northern monster.
The muscles in Darius's arms began to burn with fatigue. Realizing his enemy's defense was weakening, Ragnar yanked his sword downward roughly.
That sudden jerk completely disarmed Darius's stance. Without mercy, Ragnar smashed the iron pommel of his sword hilt right into Darius's chest plate.
Darius was launched two meters into the air. He fell flat on his back, crashing into the muddy trench wall incredibly hard. The noble gasped heavily, entirely out of breath.
Meanwhile, Ragnar simply stood tall. The giant man laughed savagely without breaking a single sweat.
"How is this possible?!" cursed Darius in panic, stumbling backward with a pale face. "It is impossible for a filthy thug like you to possess this much physical strength!"
Ragnar grinned widely, resting his greatsword casually on his shoulder. "You spent your life eating veal at the banquet tables of Noble Lords."
Ragnar spat on the ground. "While I spent my life beating wild wolves in the snowfields just to get dinner. Our bones were forged in very different hells!"
The battle was not limited to those two points. Four elite Upper Class cadets attempted to flank our formation from the earthen mounds above the trench.
They utilized an arrow formation. They intended to jump down to ambush me and Ragnar from behind. However, they had barely taken two steps before their nightmare began.
Selena Lune stood gracefully behind our formation. She did not fire destructive magic to obliterate the enemies' bodies. Her crystal blue eyes meticulously read the footwork of those cadets.
Right as the foremost cadet shifted his body weight to his right foot to jump, Selena acted. She conjured roots of silver light directly around the right ankle of that cadet.
The leg acting as his pivot was locked dead to the ground. The laws of physics instantly hurled the cadet's upper body forward.
The formation of those cadets crumbled into a mess. They collided with one another like falling dominoes.
As the four cadets stumbled and piled up in one spot, their balance was totally destroyed. Virelith, who had calculated the gravitational trajectory of their falling bodies, immediately slammed her staff into the mud.
Three stone spears shot out as fast as lightning from the trench wall. Those stone spears pierced the thighs and shoulders of the four cadets exactly as they fell.
Virelith's magic pinned all four of them to the mud wall like helpless insects on a display board. Screams of agony echoed once more.
"Damn it! Let me go, you filthy witch!" shouted a cadet, writhing in pain from the roots of light and stone. "I couldn't even get within ten meters of them!"
Selena laughed melodiously, perfectly hiding her dark side. "Do not be in a hurry, Gentlemen. If you come any closer, my clothes might get dirty from the splatter of your blood."
Virelith pushed up her glasses with her index finger. Her tone of voice was incredibly flat and clinical. "Gravity trajectory calculation complete. Targets permanently locked in the elimination zone. Enjoy this rain of stones."
Returning to my main duel with their commander. Henry and I exchanged blows at a very high tempo.
Sparks of lightning and blood vapor swallowed each other in the air. I parried Henry's barrage of thrusts while continuously forcing the knight to retreat into the corner of the trench.
My eyes, trained in the hell of future battlefields, began to catch warning signs. Every time Henry prepared to execute a high thrust aimed at my eyes, the knight always performed a strange grip transition.
Henry shifted his left hand five centimeters back along the spear shaft to gain extra leverage. Then, he invariably took two short, irregularly rhythmic breaths. His right shoulder dropped slightly, an unconscious habit to conceal the angle of his attack.
This choreography of movement and these small habits were like a fingerprint. A fingerprint impossible for anyone else to forge.
In the ruined future, this exact movement was the absolute signature of an iron-masked soldier. That soldier bore the codename Hollow.
Hollow was a member of the Deck Hound squad under my command in my first life. Hollow's face was always covered by an iron mask due to horrific burns that hid his true identity.
My heart pounded rapidly upon realizing this fact. I realized I was not fighting an academy enemy. I was dancing with a ghost from my own squad in my first life.
To prove my suspicion, I activated a maneuver of my own creation. A maneuver I had only invented in the future, called the Sanguine Slip.
I intentionally loosened the stance of my left leg. I made my knee appear to buckle as if slipping on the wet mud. My shoulder dropped openly, carelessly exposing my neck area.
The brain of this past version of Henry might not yet recognize me as his general. But his muscle memory and the reflexes of a genius knight reacted exactly like my beloved soldier Hollow.
Seeing that golden opening, Henry twisted his spear grip downward. He unleashed a lightning-fast thrust directly at my dropping blind spot.
This was the psychological death trap I had prepared. Because I knew exactly where that spear tip would shoot, I rotated my hips before the spear blade arrived.
The electrified spear missed, piercing empty air right beside my left ear. Utilizing the momentum from my aggressive hip rotation, I changed my sword grip into a reverse hold.
With a sword whose weight had been lightened by magic, I jerked my right hand upward. I launched a vertical strike of immense power.
The black blade of the Blood-Iron shot upward, penetrating Henry's still-extended defense. The knight could not retract his spear in time due to the balance recovery effect of his missed thrust.
The tip of my sword blade slashed upward with millimeter precision. I had absolutely no intention of cutting his neck.
I curved my slash to pry open the chin gap beneath the iron helmet Henry wore.
The leather strap securing the helmet was severed neatly by the sharpness of my sword. The iron helmet was thrown high into the cold, foggy night air.
My slash fully exposed Henry Percy's true face. The aristocratic young man's face looked deathly pale, covered in cold sweat born of terror.
My giant sword blade stopped instantly in mid-air. The black steel tip hovered motionless without the slightest vibration. My sharp blade was a mere hair's breadth from the skin of Henry Percy's nose.
I stared at the face of the aristocratic youth who served my sworn enemy. The surprise in my red eyes slowly melted, swallowed by time.
My surprise was replaced by a very strange smile. My smile felt incredibly dark, filled with a nostalgic bitterness that painfully squeezed the chest.
"No wonder," I whispered hoarsely, staring directly into his widening blue eyes. My voice was laden with an irony that shook the depths of the soul.
"No wonder you never wanted to share even a shred of your past when we sat drinking beer in the border trenches back then." I took a deep breath, recalling that dark past.
"Long time no see, Hollow."
Henry Percy froze where he stood. His body was as stiff as an ice statue.
The young man swallowed hard, staring at the deadly sword right in front of his nose. He experienced total confusion from my words, which sounded like the mumblings of a madman arriving from another dimension.