Chapter 479. A Wasteland of Broken Steel and Wounded Men

Chapter 479: 479. A Wasteland of Broken Steel and Wounded Men

The lesson had been burned into his soul long ago, in a life that felt more like a fading dream with every passing year, yet it remained the foundation of everything he was. Soldiers were not monsters; they were architecture.

They were built of discipline, duty, and the rigid belief that following an order was the highest form of virtue. To slaughter a private for the sins of a prince was not justice; it was merely manufacturing more grief to pass down the chain of command.

He remembered breaking that rule exactly once. A lifetime ago.

He had acted out of pure, unadulterated rage against a man who had earned every ounce of the brutality William had unleashed. The memory still tasted like copper and ash.

He had spent years afterward wondering if the momentary satisfaction of that violence had been worth the price of what it had cost his own humanity.

He refused to find out a second time. Not here.

Not against men who would wake tomorrow with aching ribs and a story about the day they underestimated an instructor, rather than men who would never wake at all.

So, he chose restraint. It was a different kind of violence, a more precise one.

He broke joints that would knit back together. He drove strikes into muscle clusters and nerve endings rather than vital organs and arteries.

He used the wind as a blunt instrument, hurling men across the marble courtyard like ragdolls, sending them skidding through the rain until they came to rest far beyond the fight’s edge.

Every motion was a calculation; every strike was measured. To the terrified witnesses on the colonnade, it looked like a hurricane of uncontrolled chaos, but to William, it was a symphony of controlled force.

Thwack. Crack. Thud.

The sounds mingled in a nauseating chorus: the metallic shriek of steel, the wet slap of bodies hitting stone, and the distinctive, hollow sound of cartilage being compressed. Dust and rainwater kicked up in thick clouds with every impact, creating a hazy theater of violence.

"Don’t let him slip away! Circle him!" a voice screamed, likely one of the younger recruits, his bravado cracking under the pressure.

Two soldiers, moving with the practiced coordination of seasoned veterans, attempted to flank him along the western edge. They employed a deadly shuffle step, their blades angled to create a lethal X shape that would trap William regardless of which direction he turned.

They weren’t rushing; they were hunting.

William sensed the trap closing. The wind began to hum against his skin, a warning.

At the last possible microsecond, he allowed the air to surge beneath his feet. He performed a short, explosive vertical hop, a movement that would have appeared lazy to the untrained eye, but it cleared both converging blades by less than the width of a hand.

He didn’t land behind them; he landed between them.

In one fluid, terrifyingly fast motion, William drove a palm strike into the first soldier’s sternum. OOF,OOF the impact sent a visible shockwave through the man’s cuirass as his lungs collapsed.

Simultaneously, William’s heel descended like a hammer onto the second soldier’s knee. CRUNCH,CRUNCH a sound that made even Kaela flinch from the sidelines. Both men folded instantly.

One gasped for air that refused to come, while the other hissed through gritted teeth as his leg buckled, the joint screaming in protest, though William had been careful to leave the ligaments intact.

"He’s not human!" someone cried out, the words dissolving into a panicked retreat.

"Stand your ground, you cowards!" Bracken bellowed, though his own sword hand was shaking. "One at a time! Hit him all at once!"

A massive soldier, towering over the others, stepped forward. He wielded a heavy two-handed claymore designed to shatter shields and bones through sheer kinetic energy.

He swung with a guttural roar, the blade whistling as it descended in a killing arc meant to cleave William in two.

William didn’t flinch. Instead, he allowed Aetherion to respond to his will.

Mid swing, the blade shifted, its metal elongating and expanding into its greatsword configuration with a resonant SHING.

The heavy blade met the claymore’s strike with a bone-jarring parry CLANG that sent sparks flying into the rain and a shockwave of impact up both men’s arms.

William used the half-second of stagger that followed. Before the giant could recover his weapon, William reversed his grip on Aetherion and drove the heavy pommel into the man’s solar plexus.

THUMP.

The impact was deep and internal, doubling the soldier over in immediate agony without breaking a single inch of skin.

Before the man had even finished his collapse, the greatsword shivered and shrank back into its single-handed form. William was already spinning away, light and quick once more, his eyes already scanning for the next threat, his mind already three steps ahead of the storm.

For the first time since the chaos erupted, the flawless rhythm of the storm faltered. A single soldier, lean, wiry, and possessed of a desperate, feral speed, found the infinitesimal crack in William’s defenses.

As William pivoted to evade a spear thrust, his foot slipped fractionally on a patch of slick marble. It was a mistake measured in millimeters, but in this dance, millimeters were everything.

The soldier’s blade hissed through the air, the razor-sharp tip catching the outer edge of William’s sleeve and biting into the flesh of his forearm.

Ssssss.

William felt the thin, searing line of heat as blood welled up, a crimson bead tracing a path down his skin. He didn’t flinch.

He didn’t even grunt. His pupils merely constricted as his mind cataloged the error with cold, lethal efficiency.

’Too slow,’ he chided himself. ’Even the storm can be cut if the blade finds the eye of the wind.’

Without breaking his stride, William adjusted his stance by a fraction. Before the soldier could pull back for a killing thrust, William’s free hand shot out like a striking viper.

His fingers clamped around the man’s wrist with the force of an iron vise, CRUNCHINGCRUNCH the small bones of the metacarpals, ring.rinding together under the pressure. With a vicious twist, he sent the soldier’s sword spinning across the wet courtyard with a lonely, metallic shring shring shring.

Before the disarmed man could scream, William delivered a brutal sweep of his leg that caught the soldier behind the ankles, sending him crashing flat onto his back with a wet thud.

It was the only blood William had shed on his own side all afternoon. A shallow scratch that would sting in the bath later and mean nothing by morning.

But the lesson was etched into his consciousness: luck was a variable he could no longer ignore.

"He’s bleeding!" someone shrieked from the formation, a spark of hope igniting in the terrified eyes of the Delmore troops. "He’s bleeding! Push him now!"

That spark of hope was short-lived. Three more soldiers, emboldened by the sight of blood, launched a coordinated rush from the western flank.

They moved in a tight wedge, hoping that sheer numerical pressure pressed into a single narrow line would finally overwhelm the supernatural force at the center of the circle. They came at him with a unified roar, blades raised like a forest of steel.

William did not retreat. He met the rush by stepping directly into the heart of it.

The wind roared around him as he dropped low, letting the first blade whistle harmlessly over his head.

Using the momentum of his duck, he drove his shoulder into the second man’s midsection with the force of a battering ram. OOF,OOF the impact was so violent it lifted the soldier off his feet for a heartbeat before sending him crashing into the stone.

Without pausing, William spun on his heel, his forearm becoming a whip of controlled kinetic energy. His arm connected with the third man’s jaw with a sickening CLACK, the force snapping the soldier’s head sideways and folding him instantly into unconsciousness.

All three men went down within the span of two full breaths. The silence that followed their collapse was heavier than the noise of the fight.

The soldiers still waiting their turn along the edge of the circle took an unconscious step backward, their boots scraping nervously against the stone. The gap between them and the center of the fight widened by another pace, a physical manifestation of their crumbling resolve.

"Stand your ground, you cowards!" Bracken’s voice tore through the courtyard again, raw and cracking. "Orders are orders! Fight for your lives!"

But the orders were failing. The attacks came in waves, now some in twos, some in threes, some desperate lone gambles, but each wave was more hesitant and more fractured than the last.

The soldiers moved like men walking toward their own funerals, their eyes darting between William’s deadly grace and the bodies of their brothers littering the ground.

One by one, then in broken pairs, the Delmore elite fell. The courtyard became a mosaic of defeated men: some groaning in agony as they clutched broken ribs, others lying silent and still, their armor dented and their pride shattered.

In less time than it would have taken a seasoned duelist to finish a single proper engagement, well over half of the original circle lay scattered across the wet stone, leaving William standing alone in the center of a wasteland of broken steel and wounded men.