Chương 68: Hand of the Forgotten King

The Players slowly advanced toward Lloyd and Lorian, clearly with nothing good in mind — their faces twisted with a mix of malice and fear, and their ranks, uneven as they were, kept tightening relentlessly into a ring around the clearing, cutting off any path of retreat.

The shadows of the trees behind them seemed especially thick, as if the forest itself were pushing this crowd forward, toward the inevitable clash, and the air between the rows of Players trembled with poorly hidden tension, thick and almost tangible.

Sweat trickled slowly down Lloyd's face, leaving damp trails along his temples, his breathing turning heavy and ragged, his fingers numb from how tightly he gripped the axe handle, while Lorian calmly walked toward the Players, as though strolling through a peaceful garden rather than approaching an armed mob — his steps just as light and silent as before, not a trace of tension in his posture, not a single flicker of worry on his serene face.

"Looks like we're in trouble." Suddenly Lorian vanished from Lloyd's sight, darting forward at wild speed straight into the crowd of Players — so fast that the air behind him let out a brief whistle, and the grass where he'd just been standing was still swaying from the force of his launch, as if an invisible whirlwind had swept through, kicking up dry leaves and fine dust.

The Players were just as stunned as Lloyd — the Elf seemed to have grown even faster than during his fight with the Examiner, as if he hadn't shown even half of his true abilities before, holding his strength in reserve until this very moment, saving it like a card up his sleeve. Lorian closed in on one of the Players, who drew his sword in response and swung it wide at the Elf, pouring every bit of his fear and resolve into that single strike.

But Lorian dodged it with ease, as though the movement cost him no more effort than the blink of an eye, and in that same instant his opponent's head flew from his shoulders, the body slowly crumpling to the ground, dark blood soaking into the grass in uneven, spreading patches, sinking into the soft forest soil. Dead silence fell over the clearing.

No one could find even a single word to describe what they'd just witnessed — people stood frozen in place, eyes wide, breath caught somewhere in their chests, and a few Players unconsciously lowered their weapons, momentarily forgetting their own attack, paralyzed by the sheer sight of it. It had taken the Elf only a second to deal with one of the Players. Then a scream tore through the silence from the crowd, raw and full of dread. — That bastard's reached level two!

Right after those words, a female Player loosed a volley of arrows at the Elf, her hands trembling but her aim desperately precise. Lorian deflected them effortlessly with his blade — steel flashing through the air several times in quick succession, the arrow shafts splintering with a dry crack and scattering apart, spinning through the air like dry autumn leaves caught in a sudden gust of wind.

Lorian let out a slow breath, and suddenly a green aura enveloped him, thin tendrils wrapping around his entire body like living, pulsing ivy, giving off a faint, shimmering glow that filled the air with a barely audible hum, like the distant whisper of the forest — and in that same instant he plunged into the very heart of the crowd of Players. No one could land a hit on him — not a single sword strike, not a single arrow.

Lorian moved between his opponents as though he weren't fighting a brutal battle at all, but performing a dance perfected over centuries, and every motion left behind a faint green trail that dissolved into the air like glowing smoke.

His swordsmanship existed far beyond anything ordinary amateurs, who'd only recently picked up a weapon, could hope to understand — every movement fluid, economical, as though calculated ten steps ahead, and the bodies of his attackers went flying one after another, like puppets with their strings cut. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Lloyd, for his part, could only watch the spectacle with his mouth hanging open, momentarily forgetting even his own danger, stunned by the sheer ease with which the Elf dismantled an entire armed crowd, as though he weren't facing hardened fighters at all, but clumsy children wielding sticks for the first time. — Guess my help would just be in the way at this point. Suddenly he heard the snap of a branch behind him, sharp and close, jolting him out of his daze and instantly tensing every muscle in his body.

Over there, Players were fighting each other in the general chaos, the clash of steel mixing with shouts and ragged breathing — someone groaned on the ground, clutching a wound, someone else fought desperately against two opponents at once — and one of them was charging straight at Lloyd with an axe raised high, his face twisted with desperate, frantic determination, his eyes burning with something between panic and rage, as if he himself didn't fully understand what he was doing.

Lloyd swallowed hard and gripped his axe even tighter, feeling the wooden handle dig into his palm, his heart pounding somewhere in his throat, each beat echoing dully through his entire body.

"Couldn't get much worse than this. Well, guess this is my chance to make it work — now or never."

The Player had already raised his massive axe for the strike, time seeming to slow down, stretching into an endless fraction of a second, every detail of the moment suddenly frighteningly vivid — the gleam of the blade, the beads of sweat on the stranger's forehead, the trembling of his tensed muscles — but Lloyd thrust his hand straight toward the man's torso, and in that instant his own arm erupted with a network of neon-green lines, like glowing circuit-board pathways, branching rapidly all the way to his fingertips, emitting a faint, barely audible hum, like the buzzing of a distant swarm, growing brighter with every passing fraction of a second.

A faint green glimmer flickered in his opponent's eyes, reflected in pupils blown wide with shock, something like confusion flashing briefly across his face, and in that moment Lloyd's hand reached the man's body, beating the raised axe by a split second. The green glow of his hand flared so bright that the surrounding material world seemed to lose all its color at once, plunging into complete, eerie silence.

The sounds of battle vanished — no clash of steel, no screaming, no snapping branches, only a deafening, viscous emptiness pressing against his eardrums almost physically, as though the entire world had collapsed into a single point. His opponent's physical flesh and armor stopped being any kind of barrier.

Lloyd felt his fingers, wrapped in green digital light, slip easily through the man's chest, as if moving through thick water, sinking deeper without meeting the slightest resistance, the opponent's skin parting before him as though the flesh itself had become an illusion. But he wasn't searching for organs or blood.

His hand was reaching through the very substance of matter itself, sinking into the spiritual realm — dark and monochrome, stripped of reality's familiar colors, a place with no up or down, only boundless, viscous darkness. In that darkness within the stranger's body, he finally saw it — the soul.

It looked like a fragile, pulsing cluster of pure energy, glowing with a faint inner light, like a tiny star trapped in impenetrable black, trembling at every touch of the surrounding void, defenseless and impossibly delicate to behold. Guided by some sixth sense, Lloyd moved his hand forward, and his fingers, lit with green light, gently touched that foreign essence.

For a moment everything froze — no sound, no movement, only absolute, ringing emptiness, stretching what felt like an eternity, as though time itself flowed differently here. And then Lloyd closed his hand around it, gripping it tight. In that same instant, everything vanished. Lloyd found himself back in his own world, the sound of a fallen axe thudding dully against the ground reaching his ears, and he slowly began to open his eyes.