With the Serpent’s Cloak still active, Blake rushed off after the silhouette, zipping into the fog after her. She was fast, but he wasn’t just going to let her get away.

  He wasn’t going to let someone keep doing this until finally, they succeeded. For a few seconds, he thought he’d lost the silhouette, but a moment later, after he sprang off, the fog peeled away and she was still in front of him.

  “Who are you!” he shouted. “Who sent you?”

  She didn’t reply. Of course not. He’d dealt with a few assassins before, and they all stayed deathly silent like this. Why would they give up their employer?

  Then the silhouette disappeared. A tiny gust of wind blew past, moving toward him, and Blake’s eyes widened.

  Mingel?

  She’d trained him on how to handle that Augmentation technique, though. He whirled around, anticipating exactly where she’d emerge, then swung his staff. It cracked into muscle, striking a shoulder with immense force and using an aftershock of the Black Palm to fling her down into the mud.

  She yelped in shock, but it wasn’t Mingel’s voice. It was an older.

  Holding his staff out, Blake rushed over. A woman in black robes lay on her back. She had silver-white hair, but appeared to be in her late thirties, early forties. Her face was similar to Mingel’s—enough that there was a family resemblance, no matter how faint. Mingel was softer, had a kinder face. No ridges from constantly scowling.

  “You!” Blake hissed. “You’re her mother, aren’t you?”

  “Who?” the woman snapped. “I won’t live in the shadow of that failure. No, I am Lady Windblade! The Lady Windblade.”

  “Never heard of you. But you’ve gotta be her mother, because how else would you have the same techniques as her?”

  The woman didn’t wear a rank seal, but she did exert a faint spiritual pressure on Blake’s soul, and when he scanned her, he estimated the weight to be somewhere in the low Core Formation range.

  “Who sent you?” Blake pressed his staff up into her chin. He tried to push a wave of killing intent out at her, but she deflected it.

  “I don’t answer to the likes of you,” the woman replied. Blake looked around, searching for weapons, but her hands were empty. “If I tell you, I’m dead.”

  “You’ll die either way,” Blake replied. “I mean, unless you agree to stop hunting me. But we both know that’s not going to happen.”

  “Correct.”

  She wasn’t fighting back as hard as he thought she would be. Something else was up, and from the way she was acting, she still thought she could defeat him? Was there another monster chasing them?

  “Mr. Blake?” Jared shouted, glancing over his shoulder. “Is something wrong?” Blake could barely see Jared through the mist and fog, and the boy could probably see even less of him.

  “Get away!” Blake shouted. “Get back and keep an eye on Winterbeard!”

  “But you—”

  “Just go!”

  A faint wisp of warning flared up in Blake’s soul, and behind him, a sword whistled through the air. But it wasn’t aiming at him. Its tip pointed directly at Jared, and it raced toward the boy.

  The weapon itself was a simple sword. It had a one-handed grip, a blocky guard, and a heavy pommel to give it balance, but it didn’t look like anyone had held it by the handle in its whole existence. Currents of wind buoyed it as it raced toward Jared’s head.

  Windblade. Of course.

  Blake used the Serpent’s Cloak to leap after the sword, springing off after it. The air split around the sword, cracking, but Blake was just fast enough to swat it down into the ground and save Jared.

  “Go!” Blake insisted. “Get out of here! I’ll explain what happened later! But I can handle this!” Lady Windblade was a Core Formation cultivator. Blake could deal with her. She wasn’t much stronger than Heron, and he’d gotten more powerful since their duel anyway.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Nodding, Jared darted back. The flying sword wriggled out of the ground and lifted up again, but another sliced at Blake from the side. He whirled his staff to deflect it. Another slashed from behind, trying to cut his spine, but he knocked it so it only left a light scratch.

  Lady Windblade had disappeared. She had either floated back into the wind and run away, or had disappeared into the fog nearby, but was waiting nearby with hopes of taking Blake down from a distance.

  Since her swords were still harrying him, he assumed it was the latter. He extended his senses, forcing himself to just use his spiritual senses, until he picked up on Windblade. The fog helped. It made sure he looked in a broader area.

  She was still ahead of him, but only a few paces back through the fog.

  But if he couldn’t see her, then she couldn’t see him. How good were her senses?

  Blake struck one of her blades into the ground, and the tip lodged in the dirt. It bought him time to reach for the elixir hanging around his neck and pump a wisp of Honour into it. It cancelled out that mana.

  In theory, he would drop from her senses entirely, if she was anything like the other mana-cultivators.

  The other two swords didn’t attack. They hovered in the air, poised to strike something, but as far as Windblade knew, Blake had disappeared. He used the ‘light body’ half of the Serpent’s Cloak to hover above the dirt slightly, then he sprang to the side without even making a ripple in the mud.

  The swords didn’t follow him.

  That was good news and bad news. From what Mingel had said, Lady Windblade was a powerful and above average cultivator. Even some of the best couldn’t detect Blake if he disabled his elixir. But it also meant that Mingel wasn’t getting a full range of skills when it came to her senses.

  That was a problem for the future. For now, he had to make sure Windblade couldn’t bother him again.

  He used his own senses in combination to pinpoint where Windblade was. She stood in the mist, keeping low, while manipulating her three swords to attack targets. For a moment, Blake wished he’d gotten a chance to train against Elder Ulfreld, because he would’ve at least had some experience against a flying sword wielder, but he could make up for that now.

  Once he located Windblade, he switched to the ‘lightning fists’ half of the Serpent’s Cloak and blasted off toward Windblade. The air cracked and a cloak of black lightning erupted around him.

  She turned to face him and called all her swords back, then raised them and crossed them, creating a shield in front of her that barely blocked Blake’s strike.

  He twirled his staff backward, swinging through the bottom of the shield and scattering the swords in all directions. They rushed back toward him, but he deflected them one at a time. He was a little slow to block the last, and it slashed his shoulder, but he immediately triggered River’s echo skill and healed himself.

  “If you…” Blake smashed a sword down. “...were Mingel…” He knocked another blade to the side. “...you probably would’ve hit me…” He ducked and poked a sword in the fuller with the tip of his staff, sending it skidding over his head. “...by now.”

  “Don’t speak to me of that abomination!” Lady Windblade snapped. “She does not belong to me anymore and has no more use except to disgrace the family!”

  Blake ducked under a sword as it cleaved sideways. He aimed a blow at the woman’s head, hoping for a finishing strike. But Windblade used her Augmentation technique and faded into the wind again, practically teleporting.

  She’d trained Mingel, though, and Mingel in turn had trained Blake. He knew exactly where she was going to end up. Spinning around, he twirled his staff to build speed and generate a Black Palm, then slammed it into the air where he knew her head would be.

  With a crack, it caught Lady Windblade on the side of the skull. She ragdolled across the land, bouncing through the mud, before landing face down in a puddle. Blake raced over.

  “She was only a child when the Integration happened!” Blake shouted. “You ruined her life over nothing!” The same went for all of the Blended. Anger bubbled up, but he restricted himself. Lady Windblade desperately called her swords back to herself and launched them at Blake, but he protected himself.

  “She should have been a boy! Then none of this would ever have happened!” She rolled over onto her back, then tried to sit up.

  “Enough!” Blake tried to strike her in the forehead, but she shifted, and instead, he ended up jabbing the staff into her mouth. He scowled for a few seconds, debating, but if he did nothing, she was going to keep trying to kill him. He didn’t know how much time he had before she could use her Augmentation technique again, and he had to be quick.

  Shouting, he wrenched his staff forward, snapping her jaw and cracking her head back. Her neck snapped, and she fell still.

  Panting, Blake searched Lady Windblade’s body. But there was nothing to identify her. No storage ring, no rank seal, nothing of value except her swords, and even then, they were plain. Again, nothing to identify her with.

  Blake shook his head and tucked his staff back into the straps of his backpack, then picked up her swords. He could probably find a pawn shop or something to sell them for, because he was going to need all the hacksilver he could get.

  He raced back to Winterbeard, moving as quickly as he could, and when he arrived, he found the man leaning over the spider, panting. Black blood smeared the man’s face and arms, but his turquoise eyes blazed with glee. The body of the Veiled Spider lay on its back in the mud, legs splayed upward. It wasn’t invisible anymore, and it looked like a surprisingly normal spider—aside from its size, and aside from the black scales running down its legs or coiling its abdomen.

  “Ah, there you are!” Winterbeard laughed.

  “I was checking the mists to see if I could draw anything closer to you,” Blake replied. “There wasn’t anything nearby. Apologies.”

  Winterbeard raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t press the point. “Either way,” he said, “I am satisfied. I haven’t felt more alive than I did today. Perhaps I will return later. Let us gather the loot, and we shall return victorious!”