Chapter 26: The Serpent's Shadow
Rolf's victorious howl was not just a declaration of victory but was a testament of the changing era. But he was running on adrenaline and his fuel stocks were now empty. He had pushed his B-grade core too far in order to achieve this victory. The blood-red aura covering his body receded and then displayed was a horror of the injuries he had suffered.
He swayed on his feet, the fur on his chest and arms matted with blood. A dozen deep, precise cuts from Kaelen's twin blades wept crimson onto the already muddy ground. His breathing was ragged and he was coughing up violently.
"Rolf, stand down," I commanded with my reassuring voice, which helped him calm down a little. I moved ahead and placed my hand on his shoulders. With the help of my newly upgraded D-rank core, I tried to make his mana stable. "You earned your rest. Nyssa, get him stabilized."
The High Hobgoblin rushed forward, her emerald eyes glowing as she rapidly traced an Arcane Stasis array over his chest, magically cauterizing and sealing the worst of the lacerations. Rolf gave me a grateful, exhausted nod and limped back to our side of the clearing, collapsing heavily to one knee.
On the other side of the Arena, Caelen Aurelius was burning with fury. He had just watched his prized duelist get beaten by "mindless beast" in front of the whole Academy. If this was not a humiliation ritual, then what was?!
"Unacceptable," Caelen hissed, his knuckles white around his bow. He turned to the female Elf at his side. "Lyra. Drown him. Drown them all."
A slender Elf with silver hair braided with river stones stepped forward, a cruel, calculating smile on her face. "It would be my pleasure, Lord Aurelius."
As she entered the combat zone, the very ground began to tremble. The firm, packed earth of the clearing that Rolf had fought on liquefied with a sickening glug-glug-glug. The mud churned, bubbling violently as jets of steam erupted from its surface. The entire arena became a roiling, treacherous sinkhole of boiling quicksand.
"Your brute force tactics end here, goblin," Lyra declared, her voice echoing with the power of her element. She stood perfectly balanced on a small, solid patch of ground she had preserved for herself, her hands weaving patterns that controlled the churning mire. "You will sink, you will boil, and your last breath will be a mouthful of this swamp."
I looked at the deathtrap she had created. A direct charge was suicide. Rolf, even at full strength, would have been swallowed whole. Nyssa's spells would be disrupted by the chaotic ambient mana currents. It was a perfect counter to a physical vanguard.
"I'll go," a quiet voice said beside me.
Kaelith stepped forward, pulling her hood up to cast her face in shadow. She didn't look at me, but her intent was clear. This was her domain.
"Kaelith," I started, my voice low. "She's a C-Grade Elementalist. She can control the entire battlefield."
"Good," the Shadow-Knight replied, a dark, predatory light in her silver eyes. "It means she won't be looking for the knife in her back." She glanced at me, and for a split second, a flicker of something possessive and fierce crossed her face before being masked by her usual stoicism. "Let me show you what the shadows can do."
I nodded slowly. "Make it hurt."
Kaelith didn't answer. She simply melted into the fog at the edge of the clearing, her form dissolving into the gloom as if she had never been there at all.
Lyra laughed, a high, arrogant sound. "Hiding? How pathetic. The shadows cannot save you from the earth itself!" She slammed her foot down, and a massive geyser of boiling mud erupted from the spot where Kaelith had vanished.
Nothing. There was only the splash of mud and the hiss of steam.
"Where did she—?" Lyra began, spinning around, her arrogance finally giving way to a flicker of unease.
The fight had begun. But it wasn't a clash of steel and mana. It was a symphony of terror.
From the dense, hanging fog of a weeping willow, a whisper came. "Your left flank is exposed."
Lyra whirled around, firing a jet of scalding water into the shadows. The stream tore through the mist, hitting nothing but tree bark.
"Your spellcasting is predictable," another voice murmured, this time from directly behind her. "A two-second chant before every major manipulation. An eternity."
Lyra snarled, her composure cracking. She spun, her hands glowing as she prepared a wide-area freeze spell to trap the entire zone. But before she could finish the chant, a black dagger shot out of the gloom—not at her, but at the small, solid island of ground she stood on. The blade sank deep into the earth, and a spiderweb of cracks instantly spread across her only safe haven.
Panicked, Lyra abandoned her spell, pouring all her mana into reinforcing her footing. "Stop running and fight me, coward!"
"I am," Kaelith's voice replied, now directly beside her ear.
Lyra screamed and lashed out with a whip of boiling mud, but the Shadow-Knight was already gone. The whip of superheated sludge slammed into the tree behind her, instantly boiling the bark and leaving a black, steaming scar.
The psychological assault was relentless. Kaelith was everywhere and nowhere. A flicker of movement in the corner of Lyra's eye. The faint sound of a blade being drawn from its sheath. A cold breath on the back of her neck. The Elementalist, so confident in her control of the physical world, was being systematically dismantled in the psychological one.
"Your fear smells like river moss," Kaelith's voice whispered, seeming to come from inside Lyra's own head. "You are afraid of the dark. You always have been."
"SHUT UP!" Lyra shrieked, her control fracturing. In her rage and terror, she made a fatal mistake. She abandoned her defensive posture to launch a desperate, full-power assault—a massive tidal wave of mud and steam aimed at the largest cluster of shadows.
It was the opening Kaelith had been waiting for.
For the final attack, Lyra pored everything she had in this attack. She poured last bit of her mana in this attack. But Kaelith was no pushover and she was not an idiot either. She was not going to wait for the opponent to finish her spell. She was not in the shadow. She was no the embodiment of the shadow. She was the shadow itself. She flowed across the boiling mud like a patch of night, her form coalescing directly behind the Elementalist.
There was no grand final blow. No dramatic clash. Just a single, brutal, efficient movement.
One black dagger slammed into Lyra's shoulder, severing the tendons of her casting arm. The other pressed coldly against the side of her neck.
Lyra froze, the massive tidal wave of mud collapsing back into the swamp with a disappointed splash. The pain in her shoulder was excruciating, but the cold steel at her throat was infinitely more terrifying.
"You rely on the light to see your enemies," Kaelith breathed, her voice a deathly whisper in Lyra's ear. "I was born in the dark."
With a sharp, precise strike of her heavy pommel, Kaelith knocked the Elementalist unconscious. Lyra's body went limp, and Kaelith let her fall into the churning mud with a soft, final thump.
The Shadow-Knight stood over her fallen foe for a moment. Her dark form looked like a stark silhouette against the steaming swamp. Then, she looked towards her foe and said, "Not worth my time." She looked towards us, a small smile tugged on her lips. Her confident gaze which showed her presence even more brilliantly.
"Two down, piece of cake!," she said, her voice a low, satisfied rumble.
Across the arena, Caelen Aurelius lookes at the broken bodies of his squad mates. He was extremely furious. It felt sickening. It hurt his pride. Was he angry because his friends got hurt? Hell no!! He treated them like his possessions. If someone broke your toys, wouldn't you be sad? He now had to take this seriously. He was not going to take this jokingly now.