Their battle raged on. This time, Lucy didn't let the chaos around him break his focus.
The war screamed in every direction—explosions of mana lighting the sky, roars from dying beasts shaking the earth, the metallic clang of steel echoing across the battlefield—but none of it penetrated his concentration.
His world had narrowed to a single point: the brown-haired elf in front of him.
Lucy pressed forward, relentless and precise, his jaw set with grim determination.
Each step cracked the blood-stained obsidian beneath his feet.
Tiny crimson droplets splashed upward as he weaved through corpses and rubble, fists coiled with shimmering mana, eyes locked on his enemy.
However, it still wasn't enough.
The elf's movements were maddening—fluid, disciplined, untouchable.
He twisted around Lucy's blows like a dancer, every dodge a calculated brush with death that left Lucy striking only air.
The elf's expression remained serene, almost bored, which only stoked the fire building in Lucy's chest.
'What is with this guy!' Lucy thought, ducking beneath another flash of steel that whistled past his temple.
He retaliated with a brutal uppercut, fast enough to split the air with a thunderclap. His gauntlet shimmered with heat, the strike leaving a trail of golden sparks.
But the elf's free hand snapped up and caught it. Clean. Effortless.
The impact sent vibrations up Lucy's arm, and for an instant, their eyes met—the elf's cool and calculating, Lucy's burning with frustration.
Lucy spun, cloak trailing like fire behind him, and launched a sweeping kick toward the elf's ribs.
The elf twisted just in time and leapt backward, creating space between them once more. He landed with impossible grace, not a hair out of place.
Lucy's teeth clenched, sending sharp pain through his jaw.
He wouldn't waste the opportunity.
A swirl of fire bloomed in his palm—first a spark, then a dancing flame that reflected in his eyes—then, with a thrust of his arm, a blazing cylinder roared across the distance.
The fire struck toward the elf just as his boots landed on the battlefield's scorched terrain.
After weeks of training with Darfin, his control had improved immensely. His fire was hotter, tighter, more refined. Darfin had even praised him once, rare words that had caught Lucy off guard.
But it still didn't match the real thing.
The elf didn't hesitate. A smirk curled at his lips as he kicked off the back of a passing ogre, using the massive creature like a springboard.
His body rocketed forward, sword outstretched and gleaming with an eerie light.
The ogre turned, confusion crossing its brutish features, and caught the full brunt of the fire cylinder in its chest.
It howled, a sound that pierced through the battlefield's chaos, skin blistering and peeling away in blackened flakes.
A surge of water from the rear lines crashed into it, hissing against the flames. Steam burst skyward in great billowing clouds.
Lucy's gaze snapped back to the elf, who was now a blur, flying straight toward him through the fading fire.
He moved fast, but not fast enough.
Lucy sidestepped calmly, letting the elf shoot past his stomach like a thrown spear.
But then, midair, the elf twisted. Like wind changing direction, his body spun with inhuman precision, and his blade came screaming down in a vertical arc.
Lucy barely managed to duck, muscles responding a heartbeat before his mind fully processed the danger.
The sword passed just overhead, slicing clean through a chunk of his hair.
He exhaled sharply, heart pounding against his ribs like a war drum.
And then—pain.
A searing, unexpected sting flared in his lower leg.
His calf.
'What—?!'
He stumbled, blinking down in shock, his balance momentarily compromised.
Blood trickled from a thin gash on his leg, painting the obsidian beneath him with fresh crimson.
Lucy's breath caught in his throat.
His muscles twitched involuntarily. The pain wasn't unbearable, more surprising than debilitating, but it was deeply confusing. He had dodged the blade. He was sure of it.
And yet...
Blood dripped steadily, soaking into the black rock like ink in water.
Then, just as confusion threatened to settle in, a flicker of a manual sparked in Lucy's mind—brief, like a flash of lightning behind closed eyes.
It was his habitual learning ability triggering again.
Whenever someone attacked him with a skill or technique, he could catch glimpses—fragments of a mystical manual that appeared in his mind. It wasn't a perfect process. It never gave him complete mastery unless he took real damage.
Only this time... it wasn't.
The elf's ability was too complex, too refined.
What appeared in his mind was barely a page, less than that—a splinter.
Still, it told him something critical.
The way the air distorted around the blade. The impossible angle of the cut. The wound that came even after a successful dodge.
This wasn't normal.
The elf's strikes weren't just fast; they bypassed things. They defied the very laws of space itself.
Even cutting through space is possible here, the thought drifted into Lucy's head.
He exhaled, centering himself.
If he wanted to beat this elf, this man who wanted him dead so desperately, he'd need to understand the technique.
And one cut wasn't going to be enough.
'Man, this is going to suck.'
Without hesitating, Lucy shot forward once more.
Elemental spells crackled through the air around him, but he ducked and swerved through them with precise grace.
His boots slammed against the obsidian floor, each step throwing up tiny red droplets from the stained stone beneath.
This time, he didn't strike.
He watched.
He dodged.
As he closed the distance, the elf moved to meet him—predictably fast, impossibly fluid. His blade lashed out in a wide, horizontal arc aimed directly at the unarmored gap in Lucy's abdomen.
Lucy planted his feet firmly.
Shifted back just enough.
The blade whistled past, close enough that he could feel its chill against his skin.
But the pain came anyway.
A sharp, searing sting bloomed exactly where the strike had aimed—his abdomen.
Blood welled up beneath his armor, trickling down his skin in warm rivulets.
'Tch, again.'
It wasn't deep. It wouldn't stop him from moving, but it burned—a constant reminder that dodging didn't matter. That this opponent could cheat the rules of space and distance.
Still...
With the pain came something else.
Another page in the mental manual turned.
More information. More insight. Still fragmented and incomplete, but the picture was becoming clearer.
Cut by cut.
Eventually, as Lucy continued to dodge, the number of cuts littering his body crept into the fifties.
There wasn't a single part of him that hadn't been slashed, gashed, or bruised. Blood soaked through his armor. His skin stung with every breath. The elf's last slash had nearly taken out his eye, leaving a fresh scar trailing down the left side of his face.
Still, Lucy pressed forward, each step more determined than the last.
The manual had opened again and again, every cut carving a little more knowledge into his mind. He was close—so close he could almost feel the ability sitting just out of reach.
He ducked under another slash, studying every subtle shift and twitch, and then pain bloomed again. A sting shot up his leg, deepening an earlier wound.
His knee buckled beneath him. He dropped, gritting his teeth as he landed hard, blood pooling quickly on the black obsidian.
Then—it happened.
The manual opened fully.
Pages turned in his mind like a divine wind was flipping through them, line after line of intricate technique flowing into him at light speed.
'Ah, so that's how you do it.'
As the last piece clicked into place, the brown-haired elf began to approach.
Giants fell in the distance like mountains crumbling, gods shouted orders across the battlefield, and magic tore through the sky—but the elf walked like he was already victorious.
Smugness painted every inch of his face.
But before he could speak, the black-haired human kneeling before him raised his head slightly.
"What's your name?"
He blinked, confusion momentarily displacing his arrogance.
Lucy didn't wait for him to sort through his thoughts.
"I want to know the name of my first kill."
The elf burst into laughter—deep, mocking laughter that rose over the cacophony of the battlefield.
"My, my, human, you really can't see how dire your situation is. Still, I will grant your request." His voice turned sharp with pride. "My name is Ayas Naemys. Remember it as you fall into hell, scum."
He pressed the cold, slick metal of his blade against Lucy's bloody, pale neck. Lucy could feel his pulse beating against the edge.
"Die," Ayas whispered, the word intimate as a lover's.
But his blade sliced through empty air.
Lucy had ducked.
At the last second, the battered human moved—not slowly, not clumsily, but with perfect timing, as if he had been waiting for precisely this moment.
Then, without hesitation, he jumped high into the air, leaving a small spray of blood droplets in his wake.
No pain came. No second slash followed.
He had dodged it. Entirely.
'It wasn't that confusing all along. Ayas's ability lets him strike, and if he misses, he can fire off a second slash aimed at where he thinks he missed!'
Now that he had it, the ability made perfect sense.
But it also made Lucy frown.
Even with such a powerful technique, Ayas had used it poorly.
The strikes were never deep. Never precise. Never committed fully to the kill.
Pathetic, even.
He lunged forward, ignoring the screaming protests of his wounded body.
Ayas's eyes widened, the first genuine emotion Lucy had seen in them—fear.
Lucy raised his hand, and from his palm, a roaring column of fire surged outward toward the elf's face.
Ayas snarled and stepped to the side, just barely avoiding it, his perfect hair finally disheveled by the blast.
"Is that all you have, human?!" he roared triumphantly, relief evident in his voice.
Lucy's eyes narrowed, a dangerous calm settling over him.
'To the left. I missed, two feet to the left.'
Ayas froze, confusion crossing his features.
Then came the screaming.
The elf dropped to the ground, convulsing in agony. Fire engulfed his side—fire that had curved in space, redirected by Lucy's mastery of his own ability.
"I'm being burned alive... Help me!" he cried out, rolling across the blood-slick stone, clawing at his armor, voice high and panicked, all trace of superiority gone.
The man who once walked like a god now writhed like a worm, his screams adding one more note to the battlefield's terrible chorus.