Chapter 704: Blink And You’ll Miss It [Bonus - ]

Chapter 704: Blink And You’ll Miss It [Bonus Chapter]

"The First Style is a horizontal plane," she explained, her voice dropping into a clear authoritative tone. "It sweeps wide, catches atmospheric pressure, and shears guards sideways but the Third Style does the exact opposite. It takes that same heavy-water pressure... and packs it into a single vertical line."

She raised her ironwood blade straight up overhead.

The stance was identical to the high-shoulder bait pose of the Second Style with her ribs completely exposed and her chest lifted high.

"This is the Plunging Tide," Morwenna said. "When someone refuses the bait of the Second Style, or when an enemy turtle hides behind an impenetrable shield... you don’t dance around them... You drop the entire ocean onto their skull."

HUUUUUM!

She began to swing the blade downward.

It wasn’t a blindingly fast strike as Silas could track the descent clearly with his naked eyes.

...But as the ironwood edge fell, the rainwater coating the blade didn’t spray off, it began to compress instead.

BANG!

Layer upon layer of dense heavy water packed along the descending line as the atmospheric pressure climbed with terrifying exponential speed.

And at the exact second of impact...

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The blade struck Silas’s high guard and it didn’t feel like a wooden stick hitting wood.

It felt as though an entire iron anchor had been dropped from the top of a mast directly onto his wrists.

A narrow concentrated column of crushing heavy water erupted from the point of contact, driving downward with bone-shattering force.

CRACK!

Silas’s boots skidded backward three full yards across the basalt floor with his arms vibrating so violently his knuckles went completely numb and his breath knocked out of his lungs in a sharp gasp.

"Haah... Haah..."

He shook his stinging wrists, staring at her in awe.

"See?" Morwenna grinned, casually resting the blade back on her shoulder. "No spinning water-saws, no reading currents, no fancy footwork... It’s just the First Style turned downward, The only trick here is timing... compress the water as the blade falls, and let the pressure peak at the exact microsecond the edge touches the target. You peak too early, and the pressure vents into useless spray but if you peak too late, it’ll just be a heavy chop."

She stepped to the side, gesturing toward an empty training post carved from solid ironwood.

"The beauty of it," Morwenna added, "is that it chains seamlessly... You use the First Style to shatter an opponent’s balance sideways, and while their guard is wide open, you follow through immediately with the Plunging Tide to cleave them in two. Once you master the Seventh Style down the road, you can link all three into an execution cycle. For now... you manage the First and Third."

She pointed her blade at him. "Your turn, Captain... Show me your Plunging Tide."

Silas took a deep steadying breath.

He closed his eyes for a brief heartbeat, visualizing the mechanics in his mind.

He recalled the sensation of her descending blow, the gradual compression of moisture, the steady build of atmospheric pressure, and the sudden explosive peak at the moment of impact.

’I’m ready...!’

He opened his eyes, raising the ironwood blade straight overhead.

HUUUUM!

Silas brought the blade down and water condensed along the falling edge, packing tighter and tighter...

BOOM!

Morwenna raised her own blade to block.

The narrow column of heavy water detonated against her guard with the concussive pressure kicking up a wide sheet of spray, forcing her boots back by half a step.

Morwenna lowered her weapon, letting out an approving boisterous whistle.

"First try! Perfect execution, Captain! The column was a bit thin compared to mine, but that’s only because you haven’t spent decades at the bottom of a trench... With practice, you’ll be cracking fortress gates with that chop."

Silas wiped his brow with a confident hungry smirk returning to his face.

"Three down," Silas said, stepping forward with bright ambitious eyes. "Now... what about the Fourth Style?"

Morwenna’s smile vanished.

Her posture stiffened with her dark brows knitting together in an intensely solemn frown as she studied his determined face.

"Are you sure, Silas?" Morwenna asked, her voice dropping into a rare dead-serious tone that carried zero trace of her usual playful banter. "Before I start teaching you... the Fourth Style is a nightmare. It’s not like the others... It doesn’t forgive mistakes, and it doesn’t play nice with regular flesh."

"I’m sure," Silas answered without a microsecond of hesitation.

His Gold Core flared with unyielding resolve. "I need to know what I’m working toward, Morwenna... Teach me."

Morwenna stared at him for a long quiet moment then, a soft resigned sigh slipped past her lips.

"Alright," she murmured, nodding slowly. "I trust you, Captain."

She backed away, crossing the arena until she stood twenty paces from him, near the far perimeter of the barrier.

"This time... I’m not going to explain the mechanics to you," Morwenna said, her voice echoing strangely through the damp air. "The Fourth Style can’t be taught through words or diagrams. Words will only lie to your mind so from today onward... I’ll perform it once per day, whenever you ask for it... until your eyes can actually see it."

Silas arched an eyebrow with his mind racing.

’Until I can see it...? See what?’

Without hesitation, Silas channeled a thick dense stream of pure golden mana straight into his optic meridians, activating his ocular vibration technique to its maximum limit.

His vision sharpened to an impossible level, and he could see the individual dust motes in the air, the microscopic fractures in the basalt floor, and the moisture particles evaporating from the walls.

"I’m ready!" Silas called out, locking his hyper-tuned gaze onto her silhouette.

Across the ring, Morwenna slowly lowered her body into an acute low combat stance.

Her right hand held the blunted ironwood blade reverse-gripped against her forearm with her left hand pressed flat against the wet basalt floor.

SSSSSSSSSSSS!

A cold bone-chilling mist began to bleed out from the pores of her skin.

The temperature plummeted instantly as the rain pooled on the floor froze into thin sheets of jagged black ice.

The air became so heavy and so suffocating that Silas’s lungs felt as though they were being filled with liquid lead.

’What is this...?’

Everything went quiet, there was no dripping, no hum from the barrier, even his own heartbeat sounded far away, like it belonged to someone down a long corridor.

His skin crawled... His Gold Core, which had stared down Tier 3 bosses without a flicker, curled in on itself like a frightened dog.

Black ice crawled out from under her palm in thin veins and raced across the floor toward him then it stopped a hand’s width from his boots, as if it had thought better of it!

Silas’s eyes widened with his instincts screaming an red-alert warning through every nerve ending in his body.

’Move! Move! MOVE!’

But move where? There was nothing to dodge... There was no direction that felt safe!

’I’m rea—’

SNAP!

The world... completely ceased to exist.

There was no sound... There was no flash of light... There was no ripple of pressure, no current line of mana, no blur of movement either.

The entire visual spectrum of Silas’s reality simply turned pitch-black, as if the universe had blinked for a single undetectable nanosecond.

Where was the floor? Where was the ceiling? Where was she?!

KAAAAAAAA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A concussive impact detonated against the center of Silas’s chest with the force of a falling meteor.

CRUNCH!

The sound reached him a full second after the pain, as if the world had needed time to catch up.

"GAH—!"

Silas was violently launched through the air at terrifying speed.

He slammed straight through the high-tier barrier, smashing into the reinforced basalt perimeter wall with such terrifying violence that the stone pulverized into a massive spiderwebbed crater.

The barrier hadn’t torn where he hit it... It was gone along a wide arc, as tall as a door and wider than the woman beyond it.

Cough!

A mouthful of bright metallic crimson blood sprayed from Silas’s lips, splattering across the dark stone.

He hung there for a heartbeat, embedded four inches deep into the wall, before sliding limp and broken onto the floor, collapsing face-first into the cold rainwater.

Above him, a torrential downpour of heavy freezing rain cascaded from the ceiling wards, battering his trembling frame.

Morwenna stood in the center of the cratered floor with her ironwood blade resting loosely at her side.

Her heavy chest rose and fell in ragged deep gasps with her bountiful breasts jiggling with a soft hypnotic bounce beneath her soaked black sharkskin tunic as she looked down at him.

"Did you see it, Captain?" she asked softly, a faint breathless rasp in her voice.

Silas lay in the pool of water, his vision swimming with spinning black stars and his ribs feeling as though they had been fed through a mechanical ore-crusher.

’What... in the name... of the seven hells... was that?!’

His mind was screaming in sheer shock...

He hadn’t seen a single thing! Not a footstep! Not mana! Not a muscle twitch!

One second he was standing with his Gold Core fully flared, watching her across what felt like twenty paces of open floor... and the next second he was spitting blood out of a wall crater.

Twenty paces? Thirty? Ten? He had no idea how far that reach went, or whether she’d even been standing where he thought when it started.

And the damage made no sense.

His ribs were crushed, fine but his hoodie wasn’t torn.

The ironwood blade he’d dropped lay in the middle of the ring, sliced into a neat stack of thin disks.

The ice between them was whole except for one dead-straight strip, running from her boots to his crater and the wall hadn’t cracked where he’d hit it.

It had cracked four feet to the left, as if something had struck that spot a moment before he arrived.

With a pained shuddering groan, Silas channeled his internal restorative mana.

[Spell Activated: Radiant Cellular Reconstruction.]

A warm radiant golden glow washed over his broken ribs, knitting the fractured bone together, soothing the torn muscle fibers, and flushing the blood from his bruised lungs in a matter of seconds.

Silas pushed himself up onto his elbows, leaning his back against the shattered stone of the crater wall, looking up at her with wide bewildered eyes.

"What the FUCK was that, Morwenna?!" Silas gasped, wiping the blood from his chin with the back of his trembling hand. "I had my Gold Core pumped straight into my retinas... I was reading molecular vibrations but I didn’t see a swing! I didn’t see you move! It felt like the entire sky just caved in on my chest!"

Morwenna’s lips curled into a mischievous breathless little smirk.

"Hehe~" she chuckled, resting her hands on her hips, her heavy chest bouncing once more. "I told you, Captain. I won’t explain it. If I put it into words, your logical little brain will try to rationalize it, and you’ll ruin the instinct. You can ask me to perform it once per day... until you figure it out yourself."

Silas sat against the broken wall, staring at her with his entire body still trembling from the aftershocks of that concussive strike.

Yet, beneath the lingering pain and the terrifying shock... a wild intoxicating fire ignited in the depths of his soul.

’I must have it,’ Silas thought, his heart pounding with manic predatory hunger.

’I have to master this technique! Imagine fielding an attack like that in a real battle! Crossing blades with an arrogant Lord, and before they can even perceive the start of your swing... ONE-SHOTTING THEM INTO BEDROCK WITHOUT THEM EVER SEEING THE STRIKE?!’

It was the ultimate god-tier prize... It was an unstoppable unblockable execution move, and Silas was going to pry the secret from her if it took him a thousand days of getting thrown into walls.

Silas let out a long ragged chuckle, shaking his head.

"You’re a cruel teacher, Morwenna," he groaned playfully, extending his right hand toward her. "Help me up... My legs feel like wet noodles."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Morwenna smiled, stepping over the debris and reaching down with her calloused strong hand to grasp his wrist.

She pulled...

YANK!

Silas didn’t stand up.

Instead, throwing his whole weight backward in a sharp sudden heave, Silas violently yanked her arm toward his chest.

"Whoa—!"

Morwenna lost her footing on the wet basalt, tumbling forward with a breathless squeak.

Before she could hit the ground, Silas’s strong arms snaked around her waist, catching her mid-fall and pulling her down squarely into his lap.

The wet supple weight of her curvaceous hips settled firmly against his thighs with her soaked black sharkskin tunic pressing flush against the thick wool of his hoodie.

Silas wrapped his left arm tightly around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest, while his right hand reached up, gently gripping the soft heavy curve of her left breast through the damp fabric, giving it a slow and remarkably firm squeeze that made the plush mound bounce beneath his palm.

BOING!

"Mmh~!"

A soft helpless whimper slipped past Morwenna’s parted lips with her spine arching as a jolt of pure searing electricity shot straight down to her toes.

’Wh-why out of the blue...?’

Silas leaned in close, his lips brushing against the sensitive shell of her burning ear.

"You know, Morwenna..." Silas rumbled softly in a hot tone that vibrated straight through her ribs. "you’ve been being awfully naughty tonight. Walking around in soaking-wet sharkskin that leaves practically nothing to the imagination... throwing me into walls... bouncing those magnificent breasts right in front of my face with every swing..."

He gave her breast another lingering possessive squeeze with his left arm tightening around her waist, pulling her hips so tightly against his that she could feel the hard undeniable heat stirring beneath his linen trousers.

"Nnnnghah~"

[Author’s Note]

Thank you for the castle and other gifts as well as the Golden tickets! Heh, despite me being sick and in the clinic right now, I’ve done a Mass Release and maybe there’ll be another one tomorrow, who knows?

Heh, give me more of your tickets and castles~