Chapter 199: Ulrich Against Valdris [2]

Clang!

The collision of their swords rang across the camp.

Ulrich and Valdris resumed their fight beside the stream, their boots cutting through the wet grass as they circled one another. Crimson light flashed whenever Ulrich’s blade met Valdris’s black sword. The red spell coating Ulrich’s weapon shattered at every contact, scattering sparks across the ground, yet the exchange no longer looked like the one-sided battle it had been at the beginning.

Earlier, Ulrich had been forced to defend.

Valdris had driven him backward with the force of his swings. Every attempt Ulrich made to reinforce his blade had ended the same way: black steel struck crimson mana, the spell broke, and the impact numbed his hands.

Now the ground between them had become equal.

Valdris’s expression no longer held amusement.

His smile had disappeared completely.

He swung from the right.

Ulrich’s sword rose to meet it.

The black blade struck the crimson reinforcement spell.

Red sparks scattered across the darkness.

The spell shattered.

Yet Valdris’s sword did not pass through it as easily as before.

He felt the difference immediately.

The resistance lasted only an instant. It was not enough to stop his sword. It was not enough to keep Ulrich’s spell intact. The black blade still severed the formation, breaking through the layers of mana and destroying the runes connected across Ulrich’s steel.

But the spell forced Valdris to put more strength into the strike.

That tiny delay mattered.

Ulrich’s crimson light vanished from the blade, leaving bare steel behind. Before Valdris could turn the momentum of his broken swing into another attack, Ulrich had already moved his sword away, created a sliver of distance, and drawn fresh mana through his hand.

Crimson runes formed again.

The same structure returned.

The runes did not simply circle the sword in a thin layer. They were bound together in clusters. Each connection had been strengthened with additional mana, turning the reinforcement spell into a denser formation. The lines between the runes had become thick enough to endure the anti-magic effect for a brief moment before finally tearing apart.

Valdris attacked again.

Clang!

The crimson spell broke.

Ulrich rebuilt it.

Clang!

The spell broke again.

Ulrich rebuilt it again.

Each time, the structure appeared with the same accuracy.

Each time, Valdris’s sword had to cut through the reinforced connections before it could fully destroy the spell.

Valdris’s eyes narrowed.

Ulrich was not the first person to understand how an anti-magic blade worked.

Valmorian knights trained with such weapons from the beginning of their military education. Their instructors repeated the same warnings year after year: an anti-magic weapon was powerful, but it was not invincible. It could disrupt spells. It could tear through weak formations. It could give a trained swordsman the advantage against a mage who relied too heavily on mana.

It could not erase magic from the world.

A large enough spell would overwhelm the blade’s ability to dismantle it. A complex enough formation could resist long enough to inflict damage. A mage with enough mana, enough preparation, and enough understanding of spell construction could create a force the sword could not fully disperse.

That was why the Valmorian knights never believed themselves untouchable.

They learned to close the distance quickly.

They learned to pressure mages before stronger spells could be completed.

They learned to force their enemy into close combat, where the advantage of the anti-magic blade became decisive. A mage could stand far away and cast elaborate formations, but that took time. A mage forced into a sword fight had little opportunity to build high-rank spells.

Valdris had expected exactly that from Ulrich.

He had known that Ulrich’s mana core was damaged. The Count possessed skill, knowledge, and unusually refined control, but he lacked the overwhelming reserves a powerful mage would need to cast great spells repeatedly. Valdris had assumed that breaking Ulrich’s initial reinforcement would force him into a pure martial exchange.

That part had happened.

Ulrich had entered close combat.

He had accepted the fight Valdris wanted.

And still, Valdris was beginning to lose the advantage.

His black sword struck crimson light again.

This time Ulrich did not retreat after the spell shattered.

Instead, he turned his wrists beneath the impact and sent Valdris’s blade away from his body. The motion was slight. A less experienced observer might not have noticed it. Ulrich changed the angle of his guard by only a few degrees, yet it made Valdris’s strike travel farther than intended.

Valdris’ blade cut through empty air.

Ulrich stepped into the opening.

His sword came upward toward Valdris’s ribs.

Valdris jerked backward. The edge grazed his coat and cut a shallow line through the black fabric near his side. He answered immediately, swinging downward toward Ulrich’s shoulder with enough force to cleave through a lesser sword.

Ulrich’s crimson reinforcement had already returned.

The black blade met it.

The spell shattered.

The resistance held Valdris’s sword for the smallest fraction of a second.

Ulrich used that fraction.

He moved aside, stepped around Valdris’s right shoulder, and brought the pommel of his sword toward the commander’s temple.

Valdris bent away.

The pommel missed him by little more than an inch.

He spun, attempting to catch Ulrich’s ankle with a low cut.

Ulrich jumped backward. His boots cleared the blade, and he landed near the edge of the stream. Water splashed around his heels. The stones beneath the shallow current shifted under his weight, but he did not lose balance.

Valdris followed.

He swung again.

Ulrich caught the attack at an angle.

Crimson light scattered between them.

The spell had broken, as it always did.

Yet every time it broke, it consumed part of the force Valdris needed for his next movement. His anti-magic blade tore through the reinforcement, but it did not do so freely. The runes resisted, the mana threads resisted, and the clash pushed his sword back enough to delay the follow-up strike.

Ulrich had found a way to purchase time.

A heartbeat.

Less than a heartbeat, actually but enough.

He cast the spell immediately after it shattered. There was no visible pause. The crimson light vanished from the blade, and almost in the same instant, new runes formed over the steel. The transition was so fast that, to anyone watching from a distance, Ulrich’s sword appeared to pulse with red light each time Valdris struck it.

Valdris could see every step of the process.

That made it worse.

He knew how difficult it was.

Strengthening a spell formation was simple in theory. One only needed to reinforce the connection between the runes. Make the mana lines thicker. Add more support. Bind the individual elements together so that a disruption spell or anti-magic blade would need to destroy more than a single weak thread.

Any student of magic could understand the principle.

Executing it during battle was another matter.

Most mages needed time to form even a basic reinforcement spell properly. They had to focus on the runes, control the flow of mana, decide where to anchor the formation, and make sure every line connected in the right order. A small mistake could weaken the spell. A rushed connection could cause the mana to collapse before it ever reached the blade.

Ulrich was doing it while fighting.

He was doing it while moving across wet and slippery ground.

He was doing it while avoiding attacks from him.

He was doing it after every collision.

No mistake.

No flawed rune.

No mana wasted.

Valdris’s sword broke the spell, and Ulrich formed it again before Valdris could exploit the gap.

The interval was too short.

Valdris had tried to strike through it. He had noticed the moment when Ulrich’s sword lost its crimson hue. At first, he believed that instant would give him the opening he needed. If he attacked fast enough, he could cut Ulrich before the Count reassembled the spell.

But every time Valdris tried, the resistance from the previous collision delayed him.

His blade did not rebound freely after breaking the reinforcement. The strengthened mana structure pushed back against his sword. It was weak compared to a high-rank spell, but it was dense. It forced his arm to work through resistance before the formation burst.

By the time Valdris regained full control of his sword, Ulrich’s next spell was already in place.

And whenever Valdris tried to increase the speed of his attacks, Ulrich changed the angle of their blades.

Ulrich never met a heavy swing directly if he could avoid it.

He slid along the force.

He turned his shoulders, shifted his hips, moved his feet, and made Valdris’s sword travel just a little farther than the commander wanted. Each redirection was small. Each one made Valdris take an extra fraction of time to recover his stance.

Valdris swung toward Ulrich’s neck.

Ulrich lowered himself beneath the cut and used his sword to lift the black blade slightly higher. The movement made Valdris’s attack pass over Ulrich’s head, but it also carried the his arm farther behind him.

Ulrich stepped forward.

He drove his shoulder into Valdris’s chest.

Valdris moved back, but Ulrich’s sword was already coming toward his knee.

Valdris knocked it aside.

Crimson light broke.

Ulrich turned with the impact and cut from the other direction.

Valdris blocked.

The anti-magic blade tore through the spell.

Ulrich stepped around the collision, twisted his body, and struck with his elbow toward Valdris’s jaw.

Valdris leaned away.

Ulrich’s elbow grazed his cheek, reopening the shallow cut already there.

Blood ran down Valdris’s face.

He withdrew three steps.

His breathing had changed.

Only slightly.

But Ulrich saw it.

Valdris had expected to dominate the close fight with strength, training, and the advantage of his weapon. He had expected Ulrich’s mana to become useless the moment they entered sword range.

Instead, Ulrich had made his weakness into a tool.

He was not trying to use magic as a killing strike.

He was not wasting mana on grand spells that Valdris could cut apart.

He was using the lowest form of reinforcement again and again, reshaping it into a barrier that lasted only long enough to alter the rhythm of their fight.

Ulrich had made every clash cost Valdris more than it cost him.

Valdris looked at the red runes forming around Ulrich’s blade once more, almost captivated by the accuracy and perfect alignment

Crimson light gathered over the steel in a pattern he could now recognize. The spell was low-ranking. By itself, it should have been nothing more than an ordinary reinforcement, the kind of magic a knight might use to make a sword endure longer or strike with greater force.

Yet Ulrich had changed it.

Every line had a purpose.

Every rune supported another. Every connection was strengthened where Valdris’s black blade was most likely to strike. The formation broke whenever the anti-magic sword touched it, but it did not break immediately. It resisted for the smallest instant, just long enough for Ulrich to redirect Valdris’s strength, recover his stance, and weave the spell again.

Everything had been calculated.

Not merely the spell.

Ulrich had calculated the angle of every guard. The direction of every step. The way Valdris’s sword rebounded after shattering crimson mana. The time required to bring the black blade back into position. The distance between the stream and the campfire. The ground. The force Valdris used in his dominant hand. The small delay that appeared whenever his sword had to tear through reinforced mana lines.

Each detail served Ulrich.

Each detail prevented Valdris from overwhelming him.

At first, Valdris had believed it was a fortunate response. A clever adaptation made by a skilled swordsman under pressure. Then he had thought Ulrich had simply found a rhythm that worked against the anti-magic blade.

But this was too exact.

The gap between Ulrich’s shattered spell and the next reinforcement did not last a full second.

It did not even last half a second.

The crimson light vanished from Ulrich’s blade.

Valdris shifted his weight, ready to strike through the opening.

Fresh runes appeared.

The gap was gone.

Again.

And again.

Was it coincidence?

Valdris rejected the thought immediately.

He had spent too many years on battlefields to blame a dangerous opponent’s skill on coincidence. Weak men blamed fortune when they lost. Strong men recognized ability when it stood before them, even when that ability threatened to humiliate them.

Was it luck?

No.

Valdris was not so pathetic that he could dismiss this as luck.

He raised his gaze from Ulrich’s sword.

Ulrich stood ankle-deep in the stream, water moving around his boots. The current carried fragments of crimson light away from him each time a spell shattered. His clothes were marked with mud and water. A line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, and the hand gripping his sword showed the strain of their repeated collisions.

Yet his deep red eyes remained fixed on Valdris, briefly flickering to his hands and sword, back and forth.

The crimson sparks drifting around him made those eyes appear brighter.

Frightening.

That was the only word Valdris could find to describe what Ulrich was just doing right now.