Reine peered through the thick canopy, his breath hitching. Below, the two soldiers—Okla and Bokla—moved with a predatory grace that made his skin crawl.
"There are two of them. They seem to be strong... possibly Assassin-types," Reine thought, his eyes tracking their every shift in weight. He didn't move a muscle. He was a statue of grit.
Slowly, Reine raised his hand. He extended three fingers, catching Argol's eye. The Kla brothers were pacing below, their heads whipping around as they searched for where the fox had vanished.
Reine lowered one finger. Two. Argol's knuckles turned white as he gripped his own gear, his face set in a terrified but determined mask. He understood the signal.
Reine lowered another finger. One. The wind in the Ravine whistled, masking the sound of their hearts.
Reine lowered the last finger. Zero.
Reine threw himself from the branch, plummeting through the leaves directly above Okla. Mid-air, his hand flew to his waist, unsheathing Aurelian in one fluid, violent motion aimed straight for the tracker's head. Beside him, Argol shadowed the move, dropping toward Bokla.
But the Kla brothers didn't scream. They grinned.
In a blur of gold-veined alloy, the two brothers stepped back in perfect synchronization. As Reine and Argol were still in the air, the brothers lashed out, flinging a volley of daggers that hissed like vipers.
Reine's honed instincts—forged in the fires of past failures—kicked in. His body twisted mid-flight, the daggers grazing his leather armor as he landed in a low crouch.
"ARGOL!" Reine roared, his head snapping around. But to his surprise, Argol had pulled off a desperate, clumsy roll, the blades thudding harmlessly into the dirt behind him.
The two pairs stood ten feet apart, locked in a tense, silent standoff. The forest seemed to hold its breath.
Okla was the first to break the silence. He ran a thumb over his scarred lip, his grin widening. "You two seem strong," he chuckled, the sound like dry leaves. "But not strong enough."
The brothers charged.
Reine weaved through their strikes with a cold, mechanical precision. Compared to the Dark Knight he had faced, these two felt like a warm-up. "Compared to that knight, these two are nothing," Reine thought, and a quick glance at Argol showed his partner felt the same confidence.
Reine saw his opening. He lunged for Okla's neck, intending to end it—but then, the world turned gray.
A sudden, violent drain hit him. It felt like his veins were being filled with lead. Aurelian was glowing a dull, hungry red, and it was drinking his mana faster than he could produce it. His arm felt like it weighed a ton; his knees buckled. The "Worthy" test had begun at the worst possible moment.
Reine stumbled back, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"YOU WERE JUST LUCKY, YOU LITTLE RAT!" Okla screamed, seeing the weakness. He didn't know about the sword; he just saw a boy failing.
Okla's mana erupted, splitting his form into a dozen flickering illusions. A circle of monsters with sticking tongues and freaky, wide-eyed faces surrounded Reine. The wind began to twist violently, a localized gale whipped up by the spell.
Luck? Reine thought, his eyes half-lidded as the mana-drain threatened to knock him unconscious. You call this luck? Do you know how many times I've died to get this far? The pain... the suffering...
Reine closed his eyes. He didn't need vision. He had the weight of a thousand deaths to guide him. He listened to the air. He felt the displacement of the wind.
His eyes snapped open, locking onto the real Okla.
"HO—"
Reine didn't use the sword. He let it hang at his side, a useless parasite. Instead, he stepped into the storm and threw a devastating right hook. Before Okla could even register the pain, Reine followed through with a mana-starved, bone-shattering left hook.
The impact was absolute. Okla was launched off his feet, his body skipping off the ground like a stone before vanishing into the dark treeline with a sickening thud.
The illusions shattered. Silence returned to the woods—but only for a second.