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Chapter 458 - Fighting Against Shadows
🕑 Added 2023-11-12 21:42:45 +0000 UTCThe Shadow didn’t move immediately, staring at Red from across the workshop. Red was also observing his opponent, or more specifically, their fluctuation.
‘It’s not the same person.’
Although their fluctuation was faint, he could tell that this assassin wasn’t as strong as the dagger-throwing Shadow who attacked him before. But that revelation also confused him.
‘They brought someone weaker to kill me?’
This made no sense to him. As Red tried to figure out the trick behind this matter, the Shadow finally moved.
It raised its two shadowy arms and made a grasping motion. The shadows around Red seemed to come alive and form spikes that pierced towards him without making a sound. He jumped back and avoided the blow, but before he could even react, more shadow spikes shot in his direction in a cascade.
Red was forced to move back again, but soon enough spikes also formed behind him to trap his path. Without hesitation, he pushed off his feet and jumped high into the air as his feet were covered with azure energy.
Gale Drift!
With his technique, Red rode the wind currents of the room and outran the pursuing shadows. Instead of retreating to safety, however, he charged toward his enemy. Wind energy surrounded his sword as he soared like a hawk to strike at the Shadow.
One second he was retreating, and the next, he was on the attack. This was the power of the wind to control the flow of battle.
His opponent flinched, but didn’t move. They raised their open hands in front of themselves, and a wall of shadows rose in front of him like a shield. Red didn’t stop his attack and swung his sword around against the barrier, a shrill sound captured by the arcing tip of his blade.
His sword bit into the shadows, but was stopped midway through. The wind energy in the weapon, though, exploded a moment later.
A shockwave exploded from the point of impact, blowing the shadow shield apart and creating a wind storm within the workshop. Both combatants were thrown backwards by the force, and the entire room was thrown into disarray as blacksmithing items flew around them. To Red, though, this was an opportunity!
The chaotic winds appeared in his vision, drawing dozens of paths that led to a multitude of corners of the room. But in the middle of it all, Red found the one he wanted. Before he even fell down from the explosion, he was already travelling back through a current towards his opponent, who still hadn’t recovered their composure.
Midway through his path, though, he sensed something strange.
‘Another fluctuation!’
Red twisted his body midair as he saw something leap at him from below. Something slashed his left side, drawing a fine line of blood, but still missing its target and allowing him to retreat. Without hesitation, Red moved to the other side of the room.
His hand immediately moved to his new cut. Instinctually, he expanded his awareness and checked the wounded area for poison. To his relief, all he found was lingering shadow Spiritual Energy, which had failed to pierce him too deeply. Then his gaze moved back towards his enemy.
There, on the other side of the room, now stood two Shadows.
The first one was just now standing up from Red’s earlier attack, while the second one was a few meters in front of them, its features likewise hidden by an impenetrable dark mist. In their hands, they held two curved daggers, and one of them dripped with blood.
Red could tell with one glance these weapons were artifacts. But this wasn’t what worried him.
‘I didn’t feel its fluctuation.’
This wasn’t a matter of just having a hard time detecting the fluctuation. Red didn’t detect it at all! For the first time, someone fooled his crimson sense, and this was something not even that Greater Ring Realm sect cultivator managed to do.
‘What went wrong?’
Thankfully, Red wasn’t left wondering for long. The dagger wielding Shadow started to seemingly melt away into darkness, before merging with the shadows around the room. When that happened, their fluctuation disappeared!
Red frowned. Neither his crimson sense nor his vision could pick up any traces of his opponent, and the only thing he could do was jump away towards the light of a lamp. His thoughts were that the fewer shadows around him, the fewer angles he could be attacked from.
As this plan came to his mind, the first Shadow stood up and made more symbols with their hands. Red expected more spikes to fly his way, but instead, they shot towards the lamps, shattering them one by one while he could only watch it helplessly.
The entire room was plunged into darkness, the only faint light coming from the corridor outside.
Then, the next moment, the second Shadow attacked again. This time, the attack came from above, as the Shadow plunged towards him, dagger first.
It was too sudden of an attack for Red to react, so he raised his claymore and activated one of its abilities.
Wind Locking!
Although this was an ability meant to trap enemies, it could also be used as a shield in a pinch. The air in front of the diving Shadow solidified, and their movements were suddenly slowed down as if they were moving through a quagmire. This gave Red ample time to react as his claymore glowed with azure energy and slashed upwards.
But before it could connect, another shadow barrier rose from the ground to block the attack, allowing the dagger-wielding Shadow to disappear once again into the darkness. Red frowned and looked at his other opponent, who was already in the process of casting another spell.
Red thought about charging forward and focusing on one opponent, but suddenly, his movements slowed down. He looked down, only to notice darkness tendrils wrapping around his ankles, holding onto him and making it hard to move swiftly. With alarm, he swung at the tentacles, which were cut in half but reformed almost a second later.
Physical attacks were ineffective against this strange matter.
Before Red could come with another plan, he felt the dagger-wielding shadow appear again, this time from his back. He turned around and used Wind Locking to protect him, but this time, his opponent was prepared.
As the Shadow’s first dagger was blocked by the wind barrier, it thrust its other dagger forward, which was now surrounded by dark energy. The blade cut through the shield, and a shadow spike shot out from its tip at Red. He leaned sideways, but the spike still pierced into his shoulder and sent him stumbling backwards.
This time, Red knew he didn’t have time to assess his wounds.
‘I need light!’
As he sought to regain his balance, his hand went to his bag and grabbed a round disk. More specifically, the Spiritual Forge controller disk.
The next second, the furnace came to life with a roar. A bright flame ignited in its gullet, lighting up its surroundings with intensity. It wasn’t enough to banish the darkness, but it gave Red an opportunity as his bindings weakened, and the Shadows couldn’t follow up on their attack immediately. With this brief lull, Red moved closer to the light of the furnace and focused on his crimson sense.
‘Retract!’
The normal range for his power was three hundred meters. Red could extend that range if he focused on a certain direction and also sacrificed precision. In the same vein, though, he could retract this range for more precision in his readings. He never needed to do that before because his crimson sense never failed in detecting anyone before, but in this situation, perhaps this precision could prove to be useful.
‘Or maybe this shadow technique is just a perfect counter.’
Whatever the case, this state could help with his reaction timing, even if it couldn’t detect the Shadow. The dagger wielding opponent merged into the darkness again, while their companion cast another wave of shadow spikes towards Red.
These attacks didn’t scare him, though. With his back to the flaming furnace, he raised a wind barrier with his sword, and the projectiles shattered harmlessly when they clashed against the shield. This barrage continued, and Red expected the other Shadow to attack him at any moment.
This didn’t happen. Instead, a few seconds later, the barrage stopped.
The caster Shadow and Red stared at each other. Then, the assassin made another symbol with his hands, and more spikes started to shoot out from the surrounding shadows again. Their target wasn’t Red, though.
It was the furnace.
‘They’re trying to extinguish the light!’
Without it, Red would have no way of reacting. As the first few pikes struck the obsidian stone, the flame within the furnace already flickered. Although this was a sturdy item, it wasn’t meant to sustain this kind of damage, and it wouldn’t take long before it stopped functioning.
Red moved closer to it and formed a Wind Locking barrier around the furnace. However, at the next moment, the dagger-wielding Shadow manifested from the darkness and lunged at him - and this time, he didn’t have the barrier to protect him.
But Red was expecting this.
‘I can sense them!’
After condensing his crimson sense, he could pick up the faintest trace of this Shadow. It wasn’t enough to track them, but he could tell when they were about to reappear, and as such, he could mount a counterattack.
His claymore was already drawing a wide arc towards the Shadow before they could even draw close enough to attack, and it seemed inevitable for a clash to happen.
His opponent wasn’t deterred and raised one of their darkness-covered daggers to block the attack. The claymore, however, was too heavy. It struck against the dagger, shattering it and causing the Shadow’s arm to bend and break from the sheet force of the impact. Yet, even that wasn’t enough to cause them to stop.
The Shadow kept lunging forward with their remaining dagger, and Red was already bringing his claymore around to strike again. Even if he needed to exchange wounds to get rid of this opponent, it was a price he was willing to pay. However, something unexpected happened.
The Shadow dropped their other dagger and abandoned their attack, instead diving low at waist height as if to grab something. Red’s heart stopped when he noticed their target.
The demon-sealing sword!
The Shadow grabbed it and ripped it from his belt, while Red continued to bring his sword down against them. Before his attack could connect, though, the dagger his opponent had dropped suddenly exploded in a shower of steel shrapnel, peppering his body and giving the Shadow the opportunity to dodge his swing.
With that, they tried to dash away, sword in hand, while Red ignored his wounds to give chase.
However, the next second, the retreating Shadow suddenly fell down to one knee and let out a wailing scream. They held onto their head in agony, and the darkness surrounding their body flickered as they dropped the demon-sealing sword to the ground. It was enough to cause Red momentary pause, but he didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity.
He raised his claymore up with two hands, preparing to bring it down. But out of the corner of his eyes, he noticed the other Shadow’s hand movements, which gave him a sudden resolve. He blew out the air from his lungs, and a crimson-colored wind flew out from his mouth before surrounding his raised sword.
It was his Gale Breath.
The blood-colored wind covered his claymore, feeding on the azure-energy to give shape to a true demonic technique and bathing the entire workshop in a bright crimson light. Then, he swung it down at the fallen Shadow.
As he expected, a shadow barrier appeared to block his attack, but this time the result was different. The claymore cut through the shield like paper, before cleaving into the Shadow below. It cut into their shoulder and out through their waist, cleaving them in half in a single motion.
The blood from the Shadow’s bisected body seemed to join the crimson wind surrounding the claymore, and the power of the sword got even stronger than before. Sensing this, Red turned his attention to the other Shadow across the room. Instinct seemed to guide his movements as he recalled the sword arts he had been training in and focused on them.
The crimson wind surrounding his sword condensed, as if becoming solid and sharper, and although there were a dozen meters between him and his opponent, Red swung his sword as if the enemy were right in front of him. Then, in the aftermath of his movement, a crimson-colored energy arc shot towards the shadow.
A sword arc.
His opponent barely had time to react as they tried to create another barrier. Yet, the sword arc was faster. It reached his opponent in a flash, cleaving them in half at the waist and crashing into the wall behind them with an explosion of debris and crimson light.
The second Shadow still kept moving and struggling for a few moments, despite their body being cut in half, but soon enough, they fell still. Red stared at the corpses and lowered his sword as the crimson wind dispersed.
With a deep breath, Red gathered the bloody Gale Breath back into his lungs, where he noticed it seemed to have grown even stronger than before.
‘It seemed to have fed on their blood.’
This, it seemed, was the true power of a demonic technique.
