Chương 22: The Blade Dancer

My counterpart hesitates. Just a fraction. I'm not sure why. Getting the opportunity to dance with someone as beautiful and graceful as me is a privilege. One worth dying for, even. Since he seems a little overwhelmed by the honor, I suppose I'll be gracious and take the lead. I am, after all, magnanimous. I move in swiftly, fully intending to keep our second dance a short one.

After all, there's an entire forest clamoring for my attention, and it would be terribly unprofessional of me—as a dancer—to fixate on a single partner for too long. He responds in kind. Tendrils lash out toward me in a flurry of motion utterly devoid of grace. Annoying. But—acceptable. I am, after all, a genius. I can lead even the most hopelessly clumsy of followers. A simple spin carries me through the gap between two tendrils, my blade flicking out to guide a third safely away from my body.

I step lightly to the side, letting another strike cut harmlessly through empty air. His lower two tendrils spear into the ground as he lifts his mace. The same setup again. Boring. As if something like that would ever hit me now that I'm setting the beat. Sure enough, the moment I enter range, the weapon slams down toward me in a brutal arc. I orbit around it, smooth and effortless, ending up at his back as dirt and grass erupt where I used to be.

He turns— —and his tendrils burst from the ground in response, angling to turn me into a very stylish Lyn-kebab. Unacceptable. I hop cleanly over the wooden spears and let the motion carry me into a loose, almost-barrel-roll of an attack, my blade sweeping toward his head— —only for something new to happen. A wall of solid wood erupts from the earth, intercepting my strike in a violent spray of splinters. Huh. I suppose it makes sense that a miniboss would have more than two tricks tied to his Aspect.

Still, I'll never understand the idea of keeping cards hidden in a fight like this. … I also politely ignore the fact that I haven't used Starlight or Starfire even once. That's different. I'm special. Obviously. Four tendrils coil around the newly raised wall and surge toward me all at once. My posture shifts instantly, my defensive state settling in immediately. I sidestep one. Receive another. Then retreat just far enough to let the last two miss. Hm.

I really should stop calling these "offensive" and "defensive." My expression goes distant, thoughtful. This is, after all, a crucial moment—one that may very well define the rest of my life. Choosing the perfect names. Far more important than the Warden, who is actively attempting to violently end my existence. Naturally, I think. I ponder. Thousands of potential names cascade through my mind—an endless river of elegance, menace, and just the right amount of dramatic flair.

Then my feral smile snaps back into place. Got it. Unstoppable momentum, paired with ever-burning Starfire. Blazing Star Dance. Unshakable stillness, guided by illusory Starlight. Guiding Star Dance. Another notification blooms quietly at the edge of my vision. Ignored. Again. I'll check it later. Preferably when there isn't a wooden tentacle aiming to punch a golf-ball-sized hole through my throat. My sword meets it midair and turns it aside.

Behind it, the wooden wall separating me from my partner finally collapses—apparently it has a duration limit. Unfortunate. The Warden looks far more worried than before. As he should. After all, I have no further use for him. I've achieved my goal. There's no reason to hold back anymore. I drop into a low crouch, posture coiled—and Blazing Star rises to the surface. Then I Dash. The distance vanishes in a heartbeat.

His mace sweeps in a brutal horizontal arc, aiming to reduce me to decorative paste across the forest floor. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. At the same time, all six tendrils strike. It doesn't matter. I reach him anyway, my blade cutting for his torso. He ignores it—choosing a damage trade. One I would absolutely lose, considering that mace alone probably outweighs me. A shame, then. Because it passes cleanly through the illusion he thought was me.

So do the tendrils. Reality snaps back into place. I'm airborne. My blade is already descending, starfire blazing along its edge, aimed straight for his neck. His eyes widen. I give him my most beautiful smile. He wasn't the greatest of partners—but his existence let me rediscover myself. My identity. My passion. So I'll give him the respect he's earned. The runes along my blade flare. Starfire intensifies. Sapphire light sings along the edge.

"Horizon Slash." The wooden wall surges up once more, desperately trying to intercept my finale. I carve through it. And through his neck. I land lightly, moss compressing beneath my boots as the Warden's headless body collapses behind me, already beginning to crumble back into the forest. Yes. That will do. That will do nicely. Notifications begin to flow.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Nascent Sword Style (Uncommon)] has been upgraded into [Blade Dancer (Rare)] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Blade Dancer (Rare)] has split into [Blazing Star Dance (Rare)] and [Guiding Star Dance (Rare)] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have slain Deepwood Warden (Level 15 | Tier 1). A slight experience bonus has been awarded for slaying a monster 2 levels above you. You have gained 19 Tutorial Points.

Your race has leveled up to level 14. Your class has leveled up to level 14. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Mini-Boss: Deepwood Warden has been defeated. Awarding 75 Tutorial Points Bonus Achievements Activated: Slayed Mini-Boss under recommended level → +25 Tutorial Points Slayed Mini-Boss alone → +40 Tutorial Points ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"Whew~" I let out a weary breath, as if what I just accomplished had been remotely difficult. It wasn't. Holding back, however, is exhausting.

Naturally, I turn toward the sky and offer a graceful—only slightly smug—curtsy.

"How was that?" The sky explodes. Congratulations. Praise. Approval. At least six separate stars compliment my impeccable naming sense. I nod solemnly. As they should. As a prodigy, my ability to craft names that sound both elegant and murderous is clearly worthy of admiration. I bask in my family's praise for a while, doing my very best to ignore the sinking feeling curling in my stomach. Because I already know. The concerning second system message. My supernatural sixth sense for bullshit.

Both strongly suggest that this encounter was not one hundred percent beneficial. Unfortunately, there are only so many ways the stars can praise me. They have standards, after all. Reusing compliments would be beneath them. I sigh. I briefly consider never opening my status window again. Then, my ears flatten with resigned defeat as I summon the menu and glance at my general skills.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ General Skills (7/8): [Inspect (Common)] [Running (Rare)] [Evasive Footwork (Uncommon)] [Lesser Astral Manipulation (Rare)] [Rune Smith (Uncommon)] [Blazing Star Dance (Rare)] [Guiding Star Dance (Rare)] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I sigh. Again. I knew it. My sword style didn't just evolve. It split. Which means it now consumes two skill slots instead of one. My tail flicks with undisguised irritation.

Then, with perfect emotional maturity, I calmly, elegantly vent my frustration on an unfortunate tree that had the audacity to exist within range of my annoyance. It takes approximately five minutes—and the complete transformation of its trunk into an avant-garde piece of modern art—before I calm down. Truly. I am a deeply rational and emotionally stable individual. Anyone else would still be stabbing. I exhale and shove the entire incident into the farthest reaches of my mind. Namely, the garbage chute.

Briefly, I wonder if I can use illusions on my status window to trick it into recombining the skills. The thought transitions naturally into action. It fails. Another entry is added to the growing list of System-crimes I will avenge someday. … However long that takes. … Whatever. I am still slightly irritated, so I decide to indulge in my current favorite method of burning off excess annoyance. Ecosystem destruction.

With that settled, I begin dramatically walking away from the Warden's corpse, politely ignoring the stars' attempt to cheer me up via an elaborate cosmic lightshow. A cosmic lightshow that looks suspiciously like a star-for-star recreation of the Shrek movie. … I stop walking.

"…How are you all even doing that?" Older Sister answers immediately, her tone amused.

"The same way you do, darling. Illusions." Huh. I squint up at the sky.

"Do you only do that for me, or…?" Another voice cuts in—high-pitched, bubbly, and far too cheerful for a colossal ball of burning plasma drifting through the void.

"Nah! Sometimes we pick a random person and mess with them. Earth memes, weird images, or—if we're feeling spicy—cosmic horrors beyond their comprehension!" A silhouette resembling me manifests among the stars and aggressively gives a thumbs-up. … Honestly? Valid. That sounds hilarious. I would absolutely do the same thing if I were a star. Ten out of ten. Dammit. Now I'm not annoyed anymore. You win this round, stars. And so, thus begins another crusade against a helpless ecosystem. Well. Helpless to me.

Other people might find these monsters challenging—terrifying, even—but now that I've stopped holding back, most things are reduced to little more than aggressively mobile bundles of experience points. So much so, in fact, that I can dedicate over half of my processing power to deciphering the cosmic nonsense pouring out of my stellar peanut gallery.

Namely: an in-depth debate about the taste hierarchy of various tree species, a distressingly detailed plan to train pigeons to do taxes, and—my personal favorite—the only slightly unhinged theory that time zones are an elaborate government prank designed exclusively to sell more clocks. An hour and a half passes in a blur of decapitated Canopy Stalkers, violently bisected zombies, and the occasional pig that existed in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Somewhere along the way, I level up again—granting me more stat points and a shiny new skill selection. I make a mental note to check it later. I am currently busy debating whether cake frosting counts as a vegetable if it's dyed green. Naturally, I am firmly on the side of yes, it does. Broccoli is a sin against my taste buds and should be dealt with in an appropriately dramatic fashion. Ideally by tossing it off a cliff.

This is the only acceptable response to encountering the green mini-trees of pain and disappointment— —unless they are cooked with excessive garlic and gently introduced into a pasta dish. Only then are they acceptable. Barely.

"Look, all I'm saying is that green is the color of health. Therefore, if cake frosting is dyed green, it counts." I nod solemnly. Perfect logic. Unfortunately, our extremely productive and intellectually rigorous debate is interrupted by about a dozen humanoid figures awkwardly shambling toward my position atop the surprisingly fluffy corpse of a boar. I tilt my head. Then decide to wait. A glance at the Tutorial clock confirms it. Midnight. Ah. Right. The nightly undead assaults. Those exist.

I scan the approaching crowd. Fifteen undead total. Fourteen of them are the usual Lesser Zombies—ragged, rotting, aggressively uninspired. The last one, however, is a skeleton. I Inspect it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Lesser Skeleton (Level 15 | Tier 1) Species: Undead A basic undead construct animated through crude necromancy. Fragile and lacking intelligence, but capable of persistent attacks when encountered in numbers. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ … I require another apology.

This skeleton does not have a bow. Unacceptable. Everyone knows a bow is a skeleton's primary weapon. This is basic, universal knowledge—on the same level as washing your hands after using the bathroom, or putting your shopping cart in the correct place at the store.

"Why is a skeleton even considered a higher form of undead than a zombie? Zombies have skeletons too." … The high-pitched star—who I hereby officially label little brother —is completely correct. Truly. Nothing ever makes sense. I hop down from my vaguely bus-sized resting place, draw my sword, and make quick work of the offending group of undead disappointments. No starfire. No starlight. Just Blazing Star Dance.

I weave through them, dodging clumsy lunges, severing limbs, removing extremities, and occasionally upgrading a head's separation status. The entire "horde" lasts an astonishing forty-five seconds before it becomes a foul-smelling floor decoration. No level up. Just disappointment. Naturally, I pivot right back to what actually matters.

"So," I say, "back to our discussion." Older Sister responds immediately.

"Just because it's green doesn't automatically make it healthy. It's still cake." I nod once. Convincing her is going to take a while. But it is imperative that I succeed. Cake is life.