The dust from the collapsed west wing hung thick in the air, a grey shroud over everything. Buried under chunks of stone and shattered wood, Marquis Vistro gasped for air, his lungs burning with each breath. His fancy robes were torn to shreds, and his body was a mess of cuts and bruises. With a trembling hand, he reached into the hidden inner pocket of his tunic and pulled out a small, crystal vial containing a high-grade healing elixir.
He gulped it down. It felt cool, like spring water on a raging fire, but it didn’t do much. Edward’s mana blast had struck him point-blank, bypassing his defenses and tearing through him with brutal force, leaving severe internal injuries in its wake. Luckily, he had a passive mana shroud active, a second skin of energy that absorbed the worst of the impact. Even so, it had been barely enough.
As the Marquis’s vision slowly cleared, a ripple distorted the air in front of him. In the next instant, Edward was there, as if he had always been there. He stood directly before him, eyes catching the dim light of the ruined room, cold and unblinking.
But the Marquis was not a man who had reached the peak of his power through luck. Even in the short seconds he had spent under the rubble, his mind had already planned his counterattack.
Standing on either side of the wreckage were two massive, eight-foot-tall sculptures of knights clad in full plate armor. They were meant to be purely decorative, nothing more than stone ornaments, but under a high-tier, epic-ranked puppet spell, the sculptures could be turned into a deadly attack force.
The Marquis moved his fingers, forming a runic seal. Instantly, the statues’ eyes glowed with an eerie blue light. The stone and steel creaked as they came to life. One statue, holding a massive axe, swung down hard, trying to split the ground. The other, with a broadsword as big as a person, swung sideways, aiming to take someone’s head off.
They attacked from both sides, moving faster than they should have been able to. Normally, even a powerful mage would have been surprised by the sudden change.
But Edward countered, Just as he had in his previous regressions, Edward had accounted for the Sentinel Protocol. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even widen his stance. With a fluid, almost bored motion, he raised his blade. He tilted the steel at a precise angle, that caught the intersection of the axe’s head and the broadsword’s edge simultaneously.
CRACK.
The shockwave of the parry shook the entire place. The ground under Edward cracked, and his boots sank into the stone, but he didn’t move. The two sculpture giants were halted mid-swing, their massive frames vibrating from the feedback of his unyielding strength.
The Marquis’s jaw dropped. How? The anticipation was too perfect. It was as if the boy had seen the attack play out a thousand times before it even began.
Then, with a sudden burst of mana, Edward shoved the two sculptures back. The force was so immense that the obsidian knights were sent flying out through the hole in the wall, crashing onto the lawns of the courtyard. Edward followed them in a blur of purple light.
The fight moved into the open air. The two sculptures, driven by the Marquis’s desperate will, attacked with relentless, mechanical precision. They moved in a blur of steel and stone, their weapons carving deep trenches in the earth. To the watching knights and terrified maids, it looked like a storm of metal.
Yet, Edward was calm.
He dominated the encounter with a grace that bordered on the supernatural. He didn’t just dodge, he navigated the space between their strikes. He leaned back as the axe whistled past his chest by a hair’s breadth; he spun beneath the broadsword, his own blade leaving a trail of blue lightning that scorched the puppet’s armor.
The puppets didn’t land a single hit. Every movement Edward made was a pre-emptive response to a strike that hadn’t yet landed. He was moving in a different dimension of combat.
Growing weary of the play, Edward’s eyes flared. He sheathed his sword for a split second, his palms opening toward the two giants.
"Fire Blazing Storm!"
A vortex of fire erupted from the earth beneath the sculptures. The heat was so intense it turned the grass to glass instantly. The puppet knights began to glow orange, then red, until they finally disintegrated into piles of molten slag and ash.
Edward didn’t wait. He disappeared in a crack of vacuum and reappeared inside the ruined wing, standing over the Marquis. The old man was still struggling to stand, his eyes wide with the realization that his secret weapons had been dismantled in seconds.
Edward raised his blade, the m steel humming as it prepared for the final execution. The lightning around his body reached a crescendo.
CLANG.
A sound like a massive bell being struck echoed through the manor. Edward’s blade didn’t hit the Marquis. Instead, it was parried by a massive shield.
The recoil was so powerful that it sent Edward sliding back five feet across the rubble—the first time he had been moved since the battle began.
Standing between the Marquis and Edward stood a man who looked like a hero from the past. He was seven foot tall, in full armor that glowed with mana. A white cape flowed from his shoulders, and he held a big sword that was smoking from the impact.
The knight didn’t look back, but his voice was deep and strong.
"My Lord, I came as fast as I could," the knight said, watching Edward.
The Marquis let out a long, ragged breath of relief, a bloody grin appearing on his face. "Captain... you’re finally here."
Edward stood still, narrowing his eyes as he recognized the knight. It was Captain Valerius, Commander of the Vistro Silver Knights, a man known for his skill. He was the Marquis’s best knight, a fighter who had fought alongside the Flame Phoenix Lord himself.
"EDWARD!! YOU DARE RAISE YOUR BLADE AGAINST THE LORD?!"