Chương 69: An Old Acquaintance

The scene before him showed the Opponent staring at Lloyd with his arms hanging limp, sweat pouring down his face in streams, leaving damp trails across skin pale with terror, his lips trembling as though he were struggling to say something and couldn't — his whole body remained rigid, frozen, as if bound by invisible chains.

The battle still raged around them — somewhere to the left someone let out a desperate scream, to the right steel clashed against steel — but here, in this tiny island of space between Lloyd and the Opponent, time seemed to have stopped for a moment. — What the—? The Opponent seemed to barely manage to force those words out, as though he'd lost control even over his own body, as though every muscle refused to obey him, paralyzed by something he couldn't understand or explain.

His eyes darted from his own chest to Lloyd's face and back again, filled with a mute, animal terror, thick beads of sweat forming at his temples and running down his contorted face. A nervous smile crept across Lloyd's face, trembling at the edges, as though he himself hadn't fully processed what had just happened, the echo of that eerie, ringing silence of the spirit world still resonating somewhere inside him. — Heh, can't believe I actually managed to use my skill.

Before, when I used it, my hand would just light up — who knew I needed direct contact with a living creature for it to work. The Opponent looked at Lloyd as though he were insane, his face growing damper with sweat by the second, his eyes wide with terror mixed with total incomprehension, as if what stood before him wasn't a person at all, but some unthinkable, otherworldly creature torn straight out of a nightmare.

Lloyd, noticing this, flinched slightly, as though only now realizing how inappropriate it was to muse aloud at a moment like this, and for an instant felt a strange, uncomfortable pang of shame, instantly washed away by a wave of cold, practical necessity. — Oh, sorry. I'll fix that right now.

Lloyd released his grip, and in that same second the Opponent clenched his fist to strike — his body, freed from that unknown hold, lunged forward with desperate, instinctive fury, as though making one last effort of will to regain control of the situation, as though some part of him understood, on some subconscious level, that this was his final chance. But it was too late.

Lloyd's axe buried itself straight into his opponent's skull with a dull, heavy sound that rolled across the clearing in an unpleasant, viscous echo, and blood erupted in a fountain, splattering the grass and Lloyd's own sleeve with dark, hot droplets, the lifeless body collapsing to the ground and soaking the grass in dark red fluid that spread in uneven rivulets between the blades, sinking into the soft, damp earth, mingling with the smell of freshly crushed grass and fallen leaves.

Lloyd looked down at his right hand — the skin was ordinary, no trace of the green glow, as though nothing supernatural had happened at all, only a faint tingling still lingered somewhere beneath the skin, a reminder of what had just occurred, running in small electric pulses from his fingertips all the way to his wrist. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"So the effect isn't permanent. At least it disappeared the moment I pulled my hand away." He let out a slow breath, trying to steady the trembling that still ran through his fingers, feeling his knees buckle slightly from the strain he'd just endured, his vision darkening for a moment, as though using the skill had cost him far more than it had seemed at first.

"No point guessing. I need experience, and right now I simply don't have the time for that." Suddenly the pool of blood spreading across the grass reached Lloyd's shoe, the warm liquid touching the toe of his boot, and he instinctively stepped back, feeling an unpleasant, clammy chill run down his spine at the sight of the dark stain slowly swallowing the green grass around it.

"He didn't actually die for real, right?" Lloyd clenched his fist, feeling a strange emptiness somewhere inside him, as though part of his own strength had stayed behind, back in that other body, dissolving without a trace the very moment he'd touched that foreign soul, as though he'd personally brushed against something forbidden, something no mortal was ever meant to see.

"What a strange feeling, after using that skill. My strength has clearly dropped, like I lost some part of my own energy." The corners of his mouth twitched into a faint approximation of a smile, though exhaustion was already pressing down on his shoulders like a heavy, viscous weight, and his ears rang faintly, as if the echo of that deafening silence still refused to leave his mind.

"Compared to the cost of using a relic, this is basically nothing." Lloyd scratched his head, trying to gather his thoughts amid all this chaos — the battle still raged around him, the clash of steel mixing with screams and the groans of the wounded, the air thick and suffocating with the smell of blood and churned earth, clogging his lungs with every breath.

But then he suddenly heard the rapid pounding of running feet, heavy and relentless, closing in at a terrifying speed, the ground trembling faintly beneath the impact. One of the Players was charging straight toward him, completely wreathed in flame, his eyes burning with a desperate, reckless resolve bordering on total madness.

"You've got to be kidding me." The Fire Man came racing at Lloyd with wild speed, the flames trailing behind him leaving a blurred orange streak in the air, the heat distorting the air around him so much it seemed to shimmer, like a mirage rising off scorched asphalt, the ground smoking beneath his feet with every stride, leaving a trail of smoldering footprints, thin wisps of smoke curling up from the crushed grass.

The heat radiating off him could be felt even several meters away, making Lloyd's skin break out in sweat well before the collision, his eyes starting to sting from the superheated air. And as he closed the final distance, his fist ignited with even fiercer flame, the scorching heat outpacing the strike itself, as though the very air before the blow had already begun to melt, rippling and warping right at the surface of his skin.

Lloyd, in turn, swung his axe, feeling adrenaline drown out all his exhaustion, driving his blood through his veins in a scalding wave, his free hand once again wrapping itself in neon-green lines, flaring up with that same anxious hum, growing brighter with every fraction of a second, casting flickering emerald light across his tense, focused face. And now they were only a meter apart, and both struck at the very same instant...