Chương 41: Sharpen Your Resolve

The azure blade had a handle wrapped in tight, braided cord that dug into the calluses of my palm. It was thin, built like a rapier with a flat spine, and orange lines ran down the fuller where the metal met the guard. I had picked it out from Lady Livia abruptly. I took one short step forward. I crossed the blade over my chest, meeting an unseen pressure wave that rattled through my forearm. The strike had no visible arc, but my feet moved before my mind processed the direction.

Pattern recognition from two thousand earlier attempts against this same floor guardian guided my stance. At level twenty-nine, a direct impact from the dark knight's weapon would break my ribs instantly. My stats were skewed toward intelligence, leaving my body brittle in a straight engagement. I checked my positioning relative to the wide stone seam on the floor. Petra was standing three paces behind that line.

If I shifted too far left, my trailing heel would cross into Petra's zone, altering the system's targeting logic and pulling Petra into the active threat table. I adjusted my trajectory sideways, keeping my center of gravity low. Mimir spoke from the leather belt hanging at my left hip, his voice dry and buzzing like dry leaves.

"Hey there buddy, careful. I sense something deathly." I did not answer. System windows expanded in my peripheral vision, casting a faint yellow light over the flagstones. [RESOURCES] [HEALTH: 260 / 310] [MANA: 220 / 300] [STAMINA: 78 / 100] I had lost five health points from the initial shockwave and a chunk of stamina from the backward leap. I could manage the drain, but I needed to change my footwork.

I dipped my front shoulder, making the azure blade deflect another downward thrust overhead, then dismissed the mana flow sustaining the edge. Faint sparks died along the orange lines. The dark knight was hunched forward, its steel pauldrons locked in a heavy guard. I closed the distance while the entity was resetting its weight. I had the mana to channel Spellfist through my knuckles and shatter the knight's breastplate in a single touch. I did not use it. It was not a matter of system restriction or cooldowns.

Humans often called such choices pride, but to me it was simple respect for the combat form I had spent centuries perfecting. I made the azure blade materialize again, its light reflecting off the dark metal plates. I stayed in a low posture, weaving behind the knight's right flank. I drove the point into the padded joint gap between the leg and the lower spine, drawing the thin edge upward toward the shoulder armor. Thick dark fluid erupted from the seam, splashing across the dry stone floor in heavy drops.

"Atta boy!" Mimir yelled from the belt. I dropped into a quick crouch, bracing for the immediate counter-sweep. The knight did not move. It remained frozen in its tilted stance, armor plates grinding faintly as fluid continued to pool around its boots. I frowned. The hit should have severed the internal structure. I had studied the wind samurai forms during previous cycles, learning how quick pressure bursts targeted deep tendons to collapse an opponent's balance.

I wondered if the damage scaling on the weapon was relying on affinity and intelligence rather than raw physical strength. I glanced at my core attribute display floating in the corner of my eye. [ATTRIBUTES] [STRENGTH: 34] [AGILITY: 31] [VITALITY: 55] [INTELLIGENCE: 134] This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it [WISDOM: 39] [PERCEPTION: 16] [AFFINITY: 121] My perception attribute was sitting at sixteen.

It was a stat I rarely upgraded, as the raw numbers provided little benefit compared to intelligence during grimoire study. Because my perception was low, I had misread the entity's subtle weight redistribution. The knight was not disabled; it was charging a secondary attack pattern. I shifted my weight onto my back heel a fraction of a second too late. The dark blade swept around in a full horizontal arc, leaving a wide trail of black shadow in its path. I pushed off my left leg to duck under the swing.

"Shit," I hissed. The tip of the dark sword caught my left shoulder, slicing through the cloth wrap and biting deep into the flesh above my collarbone. Hot purple blood sprayed outward, hitting the front of my tunic. I had miscalculated the reach. Normally, the knight's right-hand sweep followed a forward step with its left foot, allowing me to slip past the left shoulder without taking damage. On this run, the knight had anchored its back foot instead.

System alerts flashed bright crimson across my sightline, accompanied by a sharp ringing tone. [RESSOURCES] [HEALTH: 26 / 310] [MANA: 220 / 300] [STAMINA: 50 / 100]"Hey buddy!" Petra shouted from behind the boundary line. Mimir's voice rose sharply from the belt.

"Hey pal, get it together! Why are you like this?!" Panic surged through my limbs, cold and sudden. I turned my back to the knight, breaking my own fundamental rule of spatial awareness, and stumbled forward two steps. I heard the heavy rush of air behind my neck. I spun around, summoning the azure blade directly into my right hand to parry. The blade materialised just as the dark sword descended.

The azure blade shattered instantly into splinters upon contact, breaking the force of the strike just enough for me to throw my upper body sideways and scramble across the floor flagstones. I came to a rest on my knees, my left hand clutching my bleeding shoulder. I had broken a rule by summoning the blade. I had not used the blade to cast a spell, but relying on an auxiliary item to block a physical strike was a lapse in control.

'Carlos,' I thought, forcing my mind to focus on the shape of the letters.

'Carlos.' I repeated my name internally, over and over, using the simple label to stop my thoughts from fragmenting. It was a familiar sensation, a mental degradation that occurred whenever my health pool dropped into single percentages after heavy physical trauma. I took a slow breath, breathing in the smell of iron, burnt dust, and cold damp stone. I forced my body back into a low stance.

The transparent interface framing my vision continued to flash red, amplifying the pressure in my temples, but I held my ground. Dying here meant resetting the floor, losing my current progress, and standing before the memory of the Sword Saint with nothing to show for the attempt. I summoned the azure blade again, transferring it to my right hand. I was proficient with either hand, but my right was my natural side. I pressed my injured left arm against my torso to stabilize my chest.

I stared at the knight's posture, watching the narrow slit in the helm. Underneath that heavy steel armor, there was no skin, no muscle, and no breathing lungs. It was an animated shell moving on programmed routines, holding no life inside its frame. A small glass bottle skittered across the floor, stopping near my foot.

"Hey Carlos!" Petra called out, her voice tense. Petra remained standing on the far side of the flagstone boundary. She knew the rules of the chamber. If her boots crossed that line, the system would register her presence, adjust the boss attributes to account for two combatants, and target her immediately. The boundary would only dissolve if I died. I looked down at the bottle. It was a standard health potion, its red fluid sloshing against the glass.

The dark knight shifted its weight, raising its blade overhead for a heavy downward thrust. A spatial pressure wave rippled outward from the steel tip, grazing me across the center of my chest. Blood trickled down my tunic, soaking into the fabric. I picked up the vial and slipped it into my belt pocket. I did not drink it. If I used the potion now, my health would rise above the critical threshold, but it would not save me from the knight's heavy combination attack.

The next sequence was an unavoidable wide-area sweep that no standard dexterity build could absorb without specialized mitigation. To survive it, I needed to maintain my current health state to trigger the low-vitality damage calculations required for my counter-technique. I needed to finish this engagement immediately. The fight had dragged on past my calculated time limit. I thought briefly of my Master of Many Paths title.

With a single mental command, I could activate the title's resonance, tap into my stored memory from earlier regression cycles, and pull the complete martial tree of a high-level Warrior. It would give me immediate access to heavy armor parries, physical damage absorption, and instant stance resets. I dismissed the thought. I had used transferred skills during the confrontation with the World-Eater on Floor 5, taking a mechanical shortcut to survive an impossible encounter.

Relying on cross-class memory here, in a duel governed by the pure fundamentals of swordcraft, felt wrong. The thousands of runs I had spent learning the sword against this guardian demanded that I complete the floor using the path I had chosen for this cycle. I breathed out slowly. I focused on the dark knight's front foot, watching the subtle shift of metal plates near the ankle joint. I stepped forward, bringing the azure blade up to meet the incoming strike.