Vessa's hand dropped to the short blade at her hip. She didn't draw it yet, but her whole posture changed, shoulders squaring, weight shifting forward onto the balls of her feet, her body becoming something aimed at what was coming toward them.
The lazy competence she wore before like old armor fell away. What replaced it was something older, sharper. Something that had been doing this long before Lys ever picked up a sword.
Lys's fingers tightened on CorpseSlayer's hilt. The metallic smell grew stronger, thick enough now that he could taste it at the back of his throat. His hunting instincts were screaming at him, every nerve, every scrap of borrowed knowledge from the skill, that he should run now while he has the chance.
Whatever was coming, it was big. And it was heading straight for them.
Vessa moved before Lys could get out half an inch of steel from the sheath at his waist.
She stepped forward fast and silent, a short blade already in her hand, not drawn so much as there, like the steel had been waiting for her grip.
"Stay back," she said to Lys in a low and flat voice. "Don't draw that thing yet." She said it as if it were a warning.
Lys froze, sword half-drawn, heart hammering against his ribs. He wanted to argue, the sword was his, the safety of himself was his to handle, but the look on her face stopped him cold.
This wasn't the sharp-tongued vice guild master whom he saw drilling rookies until they wanted to cry yesterday. This was someone who seemed like someone who had stood in worse places than this, and knew exactly how bad it could get when someone who didn't know what they were doing got in the way.
Before he could figure out what to do, the undergrowth exploded ten feet ahead.
A big undead creature came through it like a battering ram, branches snapping, leaves shredding as the wet crack of wood gave way under something that didn't care about pain.
The undead that was charging toward them must've been a large man once, seeing how large he was. Broad shoulders. Heavy frame. It almost didn't seem like a human's body to Lys, seeing how large it was.
Skin stretched wrong over bone with the color of old mushrooms, thin enough in places to show the darkness underneath. Its eyes were sunken to black pits, empty of anything that had ever been human. Its mouth hung open, lips pulled back from teeth that had been filled with some kind of worms.
Its movement was jerky, wrong, the long limbs swinging in arcs that shouldn't work, but still fast. Too fast for something that looked like it should barely stand by itself. Yet it was not only standing, but even coming at them, like they were his food or something.
It didn't snarl. Didn't groan. Didn't do any of the things Lys expected from the isekai stories he used to read. It just came, straight at them with that brainless, relentless certainty of something that tracked by heat and movement instead of sight. Its head swiveled toward him for half a second, those black pits fixing on his face, and Lys felt something cold slide down his spine, instantly regretting looking at its face.
It knew he was there. It knew they both were. And that's why it was charging at them like a madman.
Seeing it wasn't stopping, Vessa met it head-on.
She didn't wait for it to close the distance. She didn't even bother to back away a little to find better ground. She just stepped into its path, closing the gap with three long strides that ate up the space between them like it was nothing. Her long, powerful legs, the kind of legs that had carried her through battles Lys couldn't imagine, ate up the distance in a way that made his breath catch.
She looked very beautiful to Lys when she moved like that.
Not pretty. Not the soft kind of beauty that belonged in candlelight or silk. This was the beauty of a blade being drawn, and a storm breaking something that had been forged for one purpose and was finally allowed to do what it was made for.
Sensing her coming toward it, the undead swung. Its arm, thick as a small tree, fingers curled into claws, cut through the air where her head had been.
But when it swung, she wasn't there. She'd dropped low, her hair whipping behind her, the muscles in her thighs tensing as she pivoted. Her trousers pulled tight across her legs when she bent down to dodge the hit.
She made the first cut on the undead's arm.
Her blade took the undead's right arm at the elbow. Clean and surgical. The limb dropped like dead weight, hitting the ground with a wet thud. Black fluid came out, not blood, something thicker, wrong-colored, spattered across the leaves.
Although it had one arm less now, the undead didn't slow down. Didn't even seem to react at all. It just kept coming, its stump swinging wide like it hadn't noticed anything had changed.
Vessa flowed around it.
She was literally flowing, that was the only word Lys could find in his head, seeing how she moved around it.
It seemed like she was not fighting. Not even struggling a little. She was moving like water finding its level, her body finding the gaps in the creature's assault before the gaps even existed. Her leather vest had pulled tight across her chest, small traces of sweat already glistening along her collarbone, tracing down into the deep cut of the neckline. The fabric clung to the curve of her breasts when she breathed, and she was breathing hard now, but it didn't slow her.
She pivoted on her back foot, her thigh tensing, the line of her leg from hip to knee to ankle made a single, beautiful arc, and her blade flashed again. It sliced across the back of the undead's knee.
The creature buckled with its balance gone. The joint gave way with a wet crack, and the leg folded under it at an angle that should have sent it to the ground. But somehow it caught itself on its remaining arm, claws digging into the soil, and Lys saw the muscles in its back bunch as it lunged at Vessa.
But Vessa was already moving. She stepped into the lunge, her long legs carrying her body, past its grasping hand, her hip brushing against its shoulder as she slid past it.
She and the undead were very close. Almost too close for the undead to grab her if it had even a basic sense of battle. He could see the sweat on her skin, the way her chest rose and fell, the flash of her eyes when she looked at him for half a second, before she was behind it.
The creature tried to turn. But it was too slow.
Her blade came up, both hands on the hilt now, the muscles in her arms and shoulders flexing under her skin. She made a powerful and controlled swing with her small blade.
She swung the blade with the kind of strength that came from years of doing this, from pushing her body past what most people thought was possible. Her dark hair spilled across her shoulders, sticking to the sweat on her neck as she drove the blade into the base of its skull and twisted it with a Crunch sound.
The undead went rigid almost instantly. Its remaining arm froze mid-swing. For a moment, it stood there, impaled, its black-pit eyes staring at nothing. Then the tension went out of it all at once, like a string was cut, and it dropped to the ground with a soft Thud.
Not with a roar. Not with a dramatic collapse. It just stopped, the way a machine stops when you pull the right wire. It hit the ground hard, limbs twitching once or twice, then completely still.