Chapter 84: The Woman Who Ruined My Break

Chapter 84. The Woman Who Ruined My Break

The noblewoman ran toward me, or at least attempted to. With one injured arm and a Crimson Siegehorn thundering behind her, what she actually managed was an increasingly desperate stumble in my direction.

I pushed myself to my feet.

My hood remained low enough to hide most of my face, while the dried monster blood covering my clothes did an excellent job of making me look like anything except a respectable Royal Magus. More importantly, the woman hadn’t seen me use any magic yet.

Maybe I could keep it that way.

Creating an entirely different combat identity could be useful.

Especially now that the king had given me permission to operate as the Grim Reaper again.

The woman reached me.

I stepped past her.

[Abyssal Reinforcement]

Forbidden Energy spread through my muscles, bones, tendons, and skin. Strength flooded my limbs as the Crimson Siegehorn lowered its massive skull.

The ground shook beneath its charge.

I didn’t cast from a distance.

I ran toward it.

If I wanted to look like a close-combat class, then I needed to fight like one.

The Siegehorn’s right hoof struck the ground.

Mana surged.

My Abyssal Eye caught the movement immediately.

The ground erupted.

I changed direction before the skill fully activated, planting my left foot against a protruding rock and pushing sideways. Reinforced muscles launched me out of the blast radius just as flames burst from the earth where I’d been.

Heat washed across my back.

I landed in a low crouch.

Two Eclipse wisps appeared inside my sleeves where the woman couldn’t clearly see them.

They condensed into daggers.

The Siegehorn turned.

For something built like an armored carriage with anger issues, it was surprisingly fast.

It charged again.

I sprinted toward it.

The distance disappeared rapidly.

One horn swept upward, aiming to catch my torso and throw me into the air.

I twisted.

My body passed along the outside of the horn with barely a hand’s width between us. One dagger scraped across the monster’s bone plating as I moved, throwing pale sparks into the air.

Too hard.

My Abyssal Eye immediately highlighted several softer points.

Armpit beneath the front leg.

Back of the knee.

Lower abdomen.

Throat.

Eyes.

I pivoted behind the monster.

The Siegehorn kicked.

I leaned sideways.

Its hoof passed my ribs.

My dagger plunged into the joint behind its rear leg.

The blade entered only a few centimeters.

Enough.

I extended it.

The Eclipse dagger lengthened inside the flesh.

The Siegehorn screamed.

Silver-black light pierced through muscle without requiring me to make another wound. I dragged the blade sideways as the monster twisted, severing tendons beneath its armor before dissolving the weapon.

Blood poured down its leg.

The Siegehorn stumbled.

I was already moving.

This was exactly how Evan had learned to fight.

Don’t compete with a monster’s strength or stand there trading blows like two idiots negotiating through blunt-force trauma.

Move.

Find the weakness.

Attack.

Leave before retaliation.

The Siegehorn turned its head toward me and roared.

Fire gathered around its horns.

I recognized the skill. Flame Charge.

"Nope."

I ran sideways.

The monster launched itself forward surrounded by flames, accelerating far faster than its size should have allowed.

I kept moving toward a tree.

Three steps.

Two.

One.

At the last possible moment, I planted my foot against the trunk and kicked upward.

The Siegehorn passed beneath me.

Its shoulder clipped the tree.

The trunk exploded apart.

I twisted in midair and landed on the monster’s armored back.

One Eclipse dagger appeared in each hand.

I drove both downward.

The first struck armor.

The second found a seam.

Blood sprayed across my fingers.

I grinned beneath my hood. ℴ

Then extended the blade.

The dagger became a sword inside its body.

The Siegehorn bucked violently.

I released the weapon before it could throw me badly, planted both hands against its back, and vaulted sideways.

My boots hit the ground.

I rolled.

Stood.

The monster spun toward me.

Blood leaked from its side and rear leg, but its eyes remained furious.

Definitely from Hollowgrave.

Its skills were too developed for an ordinary A-rank monster living outside the dungeon, although its intelligence wasn’t anywhere near the corrupted Dreadhorn’s level. It possessed skills, knew how to use them, and could adjust basic tactics, but instinct still controlled most of its decisions.

The crystal’s influence must have spread farther than I’d realized.

The Siegehorn stomped.

Earth Mana erupted around its body.

Stone crawled across its already thick hide.

I sighed internally.

Armor on top of armor.

Someone was insecure.

The monster charged again.

I moved directly toward it.

One dagger formed.

Then another.

I kept the magic concealed against my forearms while slipping between the monster’s attacks. A horn passed my shoulder. I ducked beneath the second, stepped inside its reach, and drove one dagger beneath its jaw.

Extend.

The blade pierced deeper.

Blood ran down my wrist.

The Siegehorn jerked backward before the weapon could reach its brain.

Smart enough to recognize danger.

Not smart enough to recognize the next one.

My other dagger entered beneath its front leg.

Extend.

The monster roared.

I dissolved both blades and retreated before it could crush me against its body.

Then, in the middle of all that violence, I remembered something.

The woman.

I hadn’t heard her scream recently.

That was suspicious.

I glanced toward the rock where I’d been eating.

She was lying on the ground.

Completely unconscious.

I nearly missed a step.

Seriously?

I had been deliberately disguising my fighting style for her.

I had limited the visible magic. Fought close enough to an A-rank monster to smell its breath because I wanted to see whether someone could watch me fight and mistake me for another combat class. And my only audience had fainted?

Great! Apparently my performance review had been canceled.

The Siegehorn roared again.

I looked back at it.

My irritation found a convenient target.

No audience meant I could stop caring quite so much.

The monster charged.

I waited.

Closer.

Closer.

My Abyssal Reinforcement surged through my legs.

I moved.

One sharp sidestep took me past its horn. My hand caught the edge of its armor, not to stop it, because that would have been suicidal, but to control my own momentum.

I swung around its shoulder.

An Eclipse dagger appeared in my right hand.

I plunged it into the existing wound beneath its front leg.

The Siegehorn screamed.

I extended the dagger.

Longer.

Deeper.

The silver-black blade pierced through its chest.

My Abyssal Eye showed the heart.

A few centimeters.

I twisted my wrist and changed the angle of the construct inside its body.

Then extended it again.

The blade entered the heart.

The monster froze.

Blood exploded from its mouth.

Its legs buckled beneath it, but I withdrew the weapon and moved before several tons of dying monster could collapse on top of me.

The Crimson Siegehorn crashed onto its side.

-THUD!

Dust rolled across the clearing.

Blood poured from beneath its body, darkening the grass.

I watched it for several seconds.

No movement.

Dead.

I swept my hand over the corpse.

The entire monster disappeared into my Dimensional Ring.

Another profitable contribution to science.

Then the notification appeared.

[Evolution Progress: 80%]

I smiled.

A second notification immediately followed.

[Evolution Specification Fulfilled.]

[Eclipse Light Manipulation is eligible for Arcana Evolution.]

I didn’t hesitate.

[Arcana Evolution]

[Target Selected: Eclipse Light Manipulation.]

The mana around me changed.

Silver-black light gathered across my hands before spreading outward in hundreds of tiny threads.

[Evolution initiated.]

[Eclipse Light Manipulation has evolved.]

[New Skill Acquired: Eclipse Collapse]

[Eclipse Collapse]

[High-Level Area Offensive Skill.]

[Condense Eclipse Light at a designated point, forming an unstable sphere of compressed Light and Darkness Mana. Upon activation, the sphere collapses inward before releasing the accumulated energy in a massive radial explosion. Targets near the center suffer extreme magical impact and mana disruption, while the expanding Eclipse Wave burns, crushes, and tears through everything within its effective radius. The user may control the amount of mana compressed before detonation. Greater mana expenditure increases the sphere’s density, destructive force, and explosion radius.]

[Warning: Maximum-output detonation may cause severe environmental destruction.]

I stared at the final warning.

Then smiled.

Now that was more like it.

Eclipse Light Manipulation had given me precision.

Daggers. Needles. Gears. Whatever shape I needed for whatever unfortunate piece of anatomy happened to be in front of me.

Eclipse Collapse was different.

This one didn’t care about precision.

I could create a miniature black-and-silver sun over the battlefield, compress mana into it until the entire thing became violently unstable, then collapse it.

And after that?

Boom.

Just one enormous magical impact capable of swallowing an entire area.

My grin widened.

Now I had Corruption Bloom for spreading destructive corruption through groups of enemies and Eclipse Collapse when I wanted something considerably more straightforward.

One corrupted everything around it.

The other simply blew the battlefield up.

Beautiful.

I dismissed the system window and finally turned toward the unconscious noblewoman.

She hadn’t moved.

Her expensive blue dress was dirty, one sleeve remained soaked with blood, and her hair had spread across the grass around her. Without the panic twisting her expression, she looked younger than I’d initially thought, though definitely an adult.

I stared at her. Then at the dried fruit I’d abandoned.