Chương 32: The Weight of the Past and Hidden Blades

The sun of Ithrya was beginning to decline on the horizon, bathing the forest canopy in orange hues and casting long shadows. Away from the inn, in an isolated clearing, Kuro maintained his firm posture with his sword in hand. A few meters from him, Liora remained static, her dark garments almost blending into the advancing gloom. Kuro broke the silence, looking seriously at her.

"Let's train, Liora. We need to get stronger."

"To truly fight in the shadows, you must not rely solely on your eyes," Liora explained, her cold voice cutting through the silence.

"You need to feel your opponent's murderous intent even before the strike is delivered."

"Showing murderous intent is easy. The hard part is concealing your own until the very last millisecond. Show me how it's done." Liora did not answer with words. In a nearly invisible movement, she advanced. An overwhelming pressure took over the air. I focused my mind immediately. In that exact same instant, my perception shifted drastically: the surrounding environment lost focus, and I began to see the waves of mana emanating from Liora's body. They were distorted lines of pure energy.

They betrayed the exact direction of each attack even before she moved. The physical confrontation began frantically. The sound of clashing metal echoed through the woods. Liora attacked with her blade imbued in a dense murderous aura and magic, forcing me to retreat. She is too fast, and the angle of the attacks leaves me no openings to counter-attack directly, Kuro calculated. I need a visual distraction to break her rhythm. Every movement of mine against her has to be millimetrically calculated.

I will risk an infiltration tactic. I executed the strategy in the blink of an eye. Instead of defending the next strike, I threw my own sword forward, hirling it straight toward Liora's face. The blade spun in the air, creating a perfect cover that completely blocked the warrior's line of sight for a fraction of a second. She will try to dodge or deflect the blade by instinct. That is my cue. Taking advantage of her blind spot, I advanced at an absurd speed beneath the obstructed line of sight.

In a continuous and precise movement, I stretched out my hand, caught the hilt of my sword back in mid-air, and concentrated my entire flow of energy into my free arm. I don't want to hurt her with the edge of the blade, so I will use pure impact force. Activate: Strengthen Blade and Imbue with Magic. Mentally, I sought the flow of my internal energy, channeling the concentrated impulse of my magic straight into my fist. I delivered a brutal punch directly into Liora's stomach. The impact was violent.

Liora's body was hurled backward by the impulse of my magic, dragging her feet on the damp earth before coming to a stop several meters away. In the heat of that movement, something snapped in my mind. Triggers from my muscle memory awakened ancient combat techniques, bringing an strangely familiar sensation.

"My bad, I didn't mean to overdo the impulse. Are you okay?" Liora's expression shifted instantly. A wave of pure rage took over her features. Without saying a single word, she lunged at me with an absurd speed, driven by wounded pride. Liora unleashed an overwhelming sequence of consecutive punches, breaking through my defense. Before I could recover, Liora's blade advanced cold and pierced straight through my lung. The pain was sharp.

As the air vanished and blood welled up my throat, my mind was thrown backward, triggering a vivid glimpse of my previous life. This sensation... I have died like this before. In my mind, a vivid flashback surfaced of a mysterious woman raising a sword and killing me in the exact same manner. That memory hurt more than the metal in my chest. I fell to my knees, wheezing. In a few minutes, the wound in my lung began to close thanks to the properties of my modified body, though exhaustion still weighed heavily.

Liora sheathed her weapon, observing my recovery with an attentive gaze.

"A fair test. But I will still surpass you." Taking advantage of the minutes of rest and the end of the afternoon, I began to collect tactical materials I found around the clearing: pieces of durable wood, specific stones, and basic healing plants growing among the roots. I carefully stored everything inside the rustic backpack Liora had brought for the training. Night fell rapidly, and with it, the weather turned sharply and violently. Heavy clouds covered the sky, and a strong tempest poured down upon the forest.

Left with no choice, we ran toward the isolated cave to take shelter and keep our night vigil. Inside the cave, the sound of the tempest outside was deafening. Under the dim light of an oil lamp, Liora began to remove her rain-soaked clothes, revealing her body before me with total naturalness before reaching for the dry blanket. Wait... Wait a minute. Is she seriously doing this right in front of me? Hey, I cannot lose my focus... Surely this is nothing out of the ordinary.

Her clothes are completely wet; this is just the normal thing to do to avoid hypothermia. It's just basic logic. Pushing aside the initial shock and maintaining my cold expression, I observed Liora immediately cover herself with the blanket from the backpack in a practical manner. She sat down beside me on the packed earth. I kept my eyes fixed on the dim fire of the lamp, my mind distant, drowned in dark thoughts.

"You know, Liora... Even though I want to cry for everything that has happened, I simply cannot. It's as if I feel absolutely nothing inside, and it consumes me more and more with each passing loss. Who am even I? What is left of me? Do I still have anything to say, even if I can no longer shed a single tear?" This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. The silence in the cave became absolute, as if time itself had stopped completely around us.

For a brief instant, I remembered what it was like to have real feelings, wondering if one day I would be capable of being happy.

"I have memories of a past life. I was a king... An evil king who killed many people. But these memories are completely fragmented; I simply cannot remember anyone's face from that past life. All of this is connected to the nightmares that haunt me. That is why I know how to fight well with a sword and can manipulate this internal and external magic so easily." Liora pulled the blanket a bit tighter around her shoulders, staring at the lamp with seriousness.

"My past is also bathed in blood," Liora confided, her voice low.

"The assassin clan to which I belonged was completely slaughtered years ago. I was the only one who managed to escape alive. The order for the massacre came directly from the ancient king... the late father of Queen Liria." I analyzed her expression coldly. Liora's face showed no hesitation, only a grim acceptance of her own destiny.

"Do you want to take revenge on them, Liora?"

"I will not disobey you," Liora answered firmly, sustaining my gaze.

"I am your sword that walks in the shadows. I will do exactly what you tell me to do." I gave a slight corner smile, keeping my eyes fixed on hers.

"Know that I have a plan. I am going to take revenge on the Guild Leader either way for certain reasons. That person killed a woman who was very important to me. I am going to hunt him down and kill him. I just need to finish making my new weapon first. And, even if you want revenge, you cannot kill Liria. And... I love you, Liora." Liora blinked a few times, looking at my expression with a mixture of irony and a nervous twitch.

"You say that, but your face remains exactly the same as always. It looks identical to when Selene kissed you in that room."

"Wait... How do you know about that?"

"It's... well... it's nothing," Liora stammered, quickly turning her face away to try and hide her embarrassment. Her confused reaction was enough to confirm my suspicions. She really thought she could hide perfectly from me while she was watching me.

"I already knew you followed me and watched me from the shadows, Liora. No need to pretend." Faced with the revelation and seeing there was no longer any way to hide her actions, Liora took a deep breath. She approached resolutely, setting the blanket aside.

"Let's do it," Liora sentenced, surrendering herself completely to me in the darkness of the cave. The scene cut with the first ray of sunlight crossing the entrance of the cave at dawn. In the morning, I returned with Liora in silence to the inn. As soon as I pushed the wooden door of the room open, I came face-to-face with the girls already awake. The heavy atmosphere in the room betrayed that they had spent a sleepless night. Selene and Mireya came straight toward us, crossing their arms with inquisitive looks.

They began demanding explanations from us immediately.

"Where did you two vanish to all night?!" Selene demanded, her cheeks puffed with anger. Before I could formulate a neutral response, Liora took a step forward, with the greatest calmness in the world and a completely indifferent expression.

"It was a wonderful night," Liora fired off, without blinking. Her declaration fell like a bomb in the room. I tried to intervene on the spot to contain the damage, keeping my tone cold.

"Nothing happened. And besides, it's your own fault for kicking me out of the room yesterday afternoon. We were just guarding the perimeter and the training extended due to the heavy storm. That was all." My mouth tried to maintain the lie out of pure tactical convenience, but the truth in my mind was completely opposite. Looking at Liora now and trying to deny it only made me remember the details of that dawn. Who am I trying to cheat? It really was a wonderful night.

Selene took a step forward, her eyes locked on me, gleaming with a mixture of desperation and pure jealousy.

"Did you... did you two do that?!" she asked tremulously.

"No," I replied dryly, sustaining her gaze.

"Yes," Liora countered in the exact same millisecond, with the most deadpan face in the world. Beside them, Mireya merely let out a bored sigh, shrugging with total half-interest.

"To me, it doesn't matter in the slightest. As long as you don't keep making noise near my laboratory, do whatever you want." Liora's direct response shattered the remainder of Selene's defenses. She took a step back, visibly unwell and frustrated by the confirmation, averting her gaze. While the tense silence took over the room, the youngest Neko of the party observed the scene from a corner, with her cat ears drooping and an expression of complete innocence.

"Did they do what?..." Akari asked, completely failing to understand anything that was happening there. I brushed the discussion aside, and my eyes passed over the young purple-haired Neko. I looked at Akari cleaning the corner of the room in a timid manner. She is beautiful and helpful, but I do not intend to be with her or get romantically involved with her yet. I need to keep her strictly under observation. When I was already preparing to leave the room, Selene crossed her arms and stared at me with mistrust.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"I'm going to hunt Shadows," I replied directly. Selene let out a heavy sigh and rolled her eyes.

"That has already lost its funny side. That only works once, Kuro, that joke of yours."

"Yeah, I agree," I replied calmly.

"But you look irritated just the same. I'm just going to the library." I left the party at the inn and walked alone to the city's grand library. After the first few minutes passed, I was already flipping through ancient scrolls and dusty records about the kingdom's religion, analyzing the texts critically. The way they describe the Goddess Ariana is ridiculous. The books portray her as a woman with blue hair and majestic wings. That does not look like a real deity to me at all.

Because of the wings, normally this type of creature is just the servant or messenger of a greater divinity. The kingdom is hiding something about what truly governs this world. I closed the heavy book hard, keeping the information to myself, and left the stone building. While walking down the main street toward the inn, I spotted Selene walking a bit further ahead. I quickened my pace and called her directly.

"Selene! Come with me to the Guild. We need to settle a matter there." She turned, surprised by the sudden approach, but ended up accompanying me. The two of us moved together through the bustling streets until we crossed the wooden doors of the Adventurers' Guild. The place maintained its usual movement. Running my eyes across the hall, I spotted Aurelia sitting at a distant table, accompanied by her sister and her two friends. This is the perfect way for me to approach Aurelia, I thought to myself.

I walked in their direction, accompanied by Selene, and joined the table. Without beating around the bush, I looked directly at the leader of the party.

"I have a proposal for you and your party. I want you to accompany me on an expedition to the Mineral Cave. I need to collect specific materials inside to begin the manufacturing project of my new weapon. Furthermore, I know there is already an official pending mission in that cave to eliminate a local monster. We can solve both problems at once. This can yield up to thirty gold coins. I'll give twenty to you and keep ten. What do you say?"

Aurelia crossed her arms, analyzing the financial and tactical proposal with a narrowed gaze. Beside her, her sister and the two friends watched in silence, waiting for the decision. Aurelia gave a slight corner smile and tapped her fingers on the wooden table, sealing the deal.

"A mission with a guaranteed reward and a fair split? Sounds like an excellent deal. We accept, Kuro." Aurelia's sister nodded right after, confirming the party's full support. With the pact formalized between both sides, we began to organize the preparations for the expedition.