Like Elios, each one here must’ve recognized the opposing side. A glance passed between three Wardens.
The largest stepped forward first. His shoulderplate now bore one more deep, caved-in dent from Neru’s kick. His voice rolled out low and thick.
“Not bad. Give me your names. I’ll need them when I pray for your souls.”
Elios almost laughed.
Did they truly think him that foolish?
But when he glanced at Neru, something tightened in his chest. She looked tense—visibly so. Not fear of battle.
Something else.
Her jaw clenched. She shifted her tone, faking an accent.
“Where is R—?”
“Noct!” Elios cut her off sharply.
He knew exactly what she was about to ask.
Not now.
They still didn’t know what had happened to Rajido. Confirming that connection between them would be handing these men a weakness large enough to drive a blade through. An exposed flank for both them and Rajido
Neru flinched—just slightly—then steadied herself. She said nothing more.
The swordsman licked his lip and rubbed the welt along his cheek where the rope had struck. A low growl slipped from his throat.
“Noct? So that’s your name,” he said, voice sick and vile. “Good. I’ll carve it into your skull so I don’t mix it up with the others in my collection.”
Gone was the cool restraint he had shown when facing Rajido. Of the three, he was the only one still armed—and the one Elios judged most dangerous.
“Please, young lord. That hobby of yours will get you into trouble one day.” The last Warden sighed and shook his head.
He stood differently. Calm. Respectful.
Then he turned and lifted one hand, beckoning Elios forward.
“If you’re a warrior,” he said evenly, “remove that mask. Give your name. Fight me properly. Scurrying like a rat does not suit a man.”
Later then. Elios exhaled slowly.
Three Wardens. Three styles and temperaments.
Hard fight.
Neru tightened her grip on the rope’s end. With her other hand, she wound it quickly from palm to just below the elbow, layering it a few times over into a crude gauntlet. The coarse fibers pressed hard against the open cut on her forearm, binding it tight enough to slow the bleeding.
Her voice dropped, barely a breath, just enough for Elios to hear.
“The big one’s armor is thick and heavy. Normal strikes won’t work. You’ll need the dagger for a clean finish.”
Elios simply nodded. She continued.
“The swordsman fought like a duelist,” she pointed out. “Low, linear stance. Quick steps, quick stabs. In-then-out. He tried it the first time we met. He did it just now.”
“Southern noble’s fencing style,” Elios agreed. “Hard to counter that while being outnumbered.”
“And the fist-fighter there?” Neru asked softly.
Elios shook his head.
“He fought well. That’s all I know.”
The talking did not last long.
“Oi. Ignoring us has its consequences.”
The largest of the Wardens charged forward first. He moved like a battering ram given human form.
To Neru’s left strode the second—leaner, visor narrow as a slit wound. His sword never stopped moving. Small circles. Testing arcs.
The third did not advance at all.
He remained half a stride behind the others, steel gauntlets flexing once, head tilted slightly—as if watching. Unpredictable.
The brute lunged.
Not recklessly. He aimed to pin—driving Elios backwards toward the corner, denying him room to maneuver. The duelist shifted wide at the same instant, angling to isolate Neru from support.
Divide and conquer. Good tactic.
Elios stepped into the brute’s charge instead of retreating. He seized the moment before full momentum built, twisting his body to deflect the shoulder crash past him rather than absorb it. Stone cracked where the Warden’s weight struck instead.
“Left,” Elios shouted.
Neru had already moved.
She drew the duelist in with a retreat that seemed half a breath too slow. He unleashed his offense, thinking she slipped. His blade moved, cutting for her uninjured arm.
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But her weight contribution was not what it looked like. She dove lower than everyone expected.
The sword shaved air.
Her hand shot out, aiming not at his face this time—but at his sword wrist. The grip found it. Caught it. Locked it.
Only for an instant.
Elios pivoted and drove the knife into the brute’s neck. As if having eyes behind his head, the giant ducked cleanly, leaving the dagger stuck deep into the stone pillar.
“Hah, my neck again?” he laughed and turned his head, returning Elios a backhand strike that tasted like a hammer. “Easy guess.”
Elios swallowed the pain and seized the man’s arm, wrenching it tight beneath his own armpit to lock the joint in place. In the same breath, he brought his forearm down just above the elbow, aiming to shatter it.
No sharp crack answered him—only a dull thud against hardened steel. The brute had bent his arm in time, shielding the joint.
You think you're smart, huh?
From this position, Elios still held the advantage. If one angle failed, another would do.
He shifted his weight forward, changed the line of force, and rammed his elbow into the man’s damaged shoulder—precisely where Neru’s earlier strike had weakened the metal. The dent sank deeper with a low metallic groan.
The brute grunted and tried to get up, but Elios’s foot had already landed on the back of his knee, nailing it onto the ground.
The third Warden finally acted.
A stone the size of a fist whipped toward Elios’s head. He had no choice but to tilt away and release the larger Warden he’d been controlling.
In that heartbeat of space, the fist-fighter surged forward.
Far too fast for a man encased in a full plate.
Elios sidestepped three sharp paces, denying them a clean pincer. But the moment he yielded ground, the fighter changed course—cutting laterally toward Neru and the swordsman instead.
A feint.
Damn.
The brute with the dented breastplate had already regained his footing. Instead of pursuing Elios, he pivoted and charged in the opposite direction.
They were collapsing inward.
Forcing Neru into the center.
They meant to kill her first.
Not good. Too far.
Elios roared.
The stone beneath his feet seemed to soften, then fracture. Power coiled through his legs and detonated outward. He vanished from where he stood—no grace, no subtlety—just raw momentum unleashed.
He struck like a breaking wave.
The brute barely had time to turn before Elios’s shoulder smashed into his side, hurling him off balance.
Elios did not stop.
He absorbed the recoil, twisted through it, and used the brute’s bulk as a pivot—redirecting his trajectory mid-surge, angling straight toward the narrowing gap around Neru.
Even the other three—locked in their shifting triangle—turned as Elios came at them like a sweeping flood.
The third Warden, the composed one, actually smiled.
“Formidable,” he said.
Then he bent both knees and launched forward.
Three strides.
He met Elios head-on with a rising knee aimed straight for the torso, armor and bone turning into a single upward spear.
Too close. Too fast.
Can’t evade in time.
Elios ground his teeth.
Back muscles braced. Shoulder locked. Fist clenched until the knuckles screamed.
Then he unleashed it all with an overhand punch—carrying not only his own mass, but the full fury of momentum behind it.
A wrong punch, he knew, but it was an answer ready.
It cut through the air with the sound of a mace, driving toward the Warden’s face with the promise of bones shattering for both.
And it worked.
For the briefest instant, Elios felt his fist splinter like a dried log when it smashed against the Warden’s cheekbone, just a moment before his rising knee could finish its arc.
The punch did not merely stop him.
The force threw his head downward faster than gravity could claim it, smashing him into the stone and dragging his armored frame across the platform in a brutal skid.
Nearby, Neru had no time to watch.
She yanked the swordsman’s wrist sharply downward, attempting to torque the joint and dislocate the forearm. A clean capture.
But he seemed more than just a spoiled young lord playing soldier.
Instead of resisting, he flowed with her pull—stepping into it. Closing distance. His body aligned perfectly with her momentum.
A second blade flashed from beneath his opposite wrist.
Hidden.
He lunged again, this time at breath’s reach.
Danger!
Neru pivoted inward rather than back. High hand, low hand—she deflected the concealed dagger with her upper forearm while jamming his sword arm off-line with the other. Steel hissed past her ribs instead of into them. A vertical chop from her hand dropped on his shoulder, missing the collarbone just by an inch or less.
The swordsman jumped back to maintain a good distance, his face contorted in pain.
But the opportunity to wrench the thin sword from him was with her no longer.
Across the platform, Elios was watching with awe.
If memory did not betray him, that was part of the Serpent Sequences Neru had once performed against Rajido, forcing the old master to concede.
But this was no demonstration.
In real combat, it was sharper. Deadlier.
He felt it before he thought it. Almost unconsciously, he raised his hand, trying to mirror her posture and—
Pain tore through his ribs, snapping him to reality.
His gamble had paid, but now his body was screaming at the cost.
The fractures from earlier were reigniting through his chest in sharp pulses. His right hand—still clenched from the overhand strike—would not fully open. Worse—his guts flipped like they were trying to crawl out of his mouth. He would’ve vomited if his ribs weren’t screaming louder.
Neru stepped in and slapped his back—hard.
A clot of blood sprayed on the floor, and suddenly it felt as if a bull had stepped off his chest. Elios dragged in a deep, greedy breath.
She glanced at him and shook her head. “Reckless. Your core has been jammed. Don’t use that technique again.”
“Technique?” Elios blinked.
“You didn’t know?” She looked even more surprised than he was.
“Doesn’t matter.” He dropped into a crouch over the half-finished sigil on the stone. His left hand started moving. “Cover me from those two. I need to get us to Level Eight.”
The longer they stayed, the more variables—worse variables.
“It’s three,” Neru said, pointing.
From the ground, the familiar shape hauled itself upright. Half his face was ruined, melted into a purple-red painting. Blood leaked from his nose and the corner of his mouth, seeping through missing teeth. And where his right eye had been, there was nothing but torn flesh and jagged bone fragments.
Miserable, yes, but very much alive.
“You got to be kidding,” Elios hissed. His left hand sped up, drawing faster—almost dancing.
“Stay steady,” Neru said. “Leave them for me.”
Something in her shifted. Her battle aura rose like a tide. Chin lifted, posture sharpening into something almost mythic.
She strode to the cracked stone column the brute had slammed into earlier, yanked the dagger free, and tied its hilt to one end of the rope.
Then she finally addressed them, voice like honed steel.
“Ever heard of Northern flying blade?”
She raised the knife-rope to eye level.
“Watch closely.”