Chapter 127: A Poisoned Gift
Because the moment he opened his mouth—or the instant all warmth vanished from his eyes—that beauty turned strangely cold. It stopped being attractive and became simply imposing, almost unsettling, like a perfectly polished blade: magnificent to behold... yet unmistakably forged to wound.
“Promise me,” she insisted. “This is dangerous.”
He studied her for a long moment before taking hold of her chin with his slender fingers.
A cruel hand.
One responsible for countless deaths.
“I promise.”
Deep inside herself, Blanche activated her spell.
Then she spoke.
“I cleared the tenth level last night. I gained a passive skill that lets me recover one-tenth of my temporal experience.”
She rattled it off so quickly that she had to stop and catch her breath.
“So I automatically crossed the hundred-thousand thresholds. Strength, speed... everything.”
Erik stared at her for a long moment before nodding.
“Well... that's not such a bad thing. We can finally get serious.”
He stood up.
So did she, instantly on guard.
Blanche blinked.
As if his training hadn't already been hell?
“I've got a feeling I'm going to regret this,” she muttered. “And you—why are you such an asshole today? I mean... even more than usual.”
Tilting his head, he walked back toward his position and resumed his fighting stance.
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, we're not friends. I'm not close enough to tell you my life story.”
“Oh? But I am? It goes both ways.”
“In your dreams.”
“Is this about your brother?”
He stopped dead.
Without the slightest warning.
Then he moved.
His retreat became a charge so sudden that Blanche didn't even have time to blink.
In a fraction of a second, he erased the distance between them.
His face came to a halt less than an inch from hers.
Looking away was impossible.
His pale eyes, almost inhumanly intense, seemed to dissect her with the cold precision of a surgeon. They revealed neither anger nor amusement, nor any true emotion at all.
Only that unsettling, calculating intelligence that always seemed to be several moves ahead.
It felt as though he was observing not only his opponent's reactions but also their future consequences, like a chess player already studying the endgame.
Not a single muscle in his face moved.
His breathing remained perfectly steady.
His expression perfectly controlled.
That was exactly what made him so frightening.
Most people shouted before they became dangerous.
Erik...
Became silent.
And there was something deeply unhealthy about that silence.
He deliberately invaded her personal space without ever touching her, knowing perfectly well that the closeness alone was enough to make anyone uncomfortable.
It wasn't a loss of control.
Nor a burst of anger.
It was a demonstration.
A way of reminding her that he could cross every boundary imaginable... while making it seem as though she had been the one to let them disappear.
Blanche instinctively felt every muscle in her body tense.
Her brain screamed at her to step back.
Her pride refused to let her.
So they remained there.
Almost forehead to forehead.
Barely an inch apart.
As though the slightest blink might trigger something.
And for one brief second, Blanche understood why everyone feared him.
Wounds always healed eventually.
Psychological warfare...
Left scars far harder to erase.
“My brother?” he repeated, utterly serious. “What do you know about him?”
Blanche swallowed.
Why had she opened her mouth?
With all those points invested in Intelligence and Wisdom...
“Uh... that he's your twin. And that he's insanely strong. Mind backing up a little?”
He ignored the request.
“Who told you about him?”
She shrugged.
He attacked.
His movements changed.
Almost imperceptibly.
To an untrained eye, Erik had merely sped up.
Blanche, however, understood immediately.
He had just shifted into an entirely different gear.
His guard tightened.
His footwork became shorter, sharper, more explosive.
Every movement ceased to be a simple advance and became a trap.
He was no longer trying merely to touch her.
He worked angles, broke distance, feinted with his shoulder before switching guards, then almost vanished from her field of vision with a flawlessly executed pivot.
Faster.
More precise.
Above all...
Infinitely more technical.
His sword now carved unpredictable paths through the air, alternating thrusts and cuts without leaving the slightest opening. Every attack seemed to foreshadow the next... only to transform at the very last instant into something completely different.
A high feint became a slash at her flank.
A horizontal strike flowed into a rising backhand cut.
Whenever she thought she had finally found his rhythm, Erik shattered it without warning and launched into an entirely new combination.
Blanche parried effortlessly.
Steel sang at every impact.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Hundreds of hours spent training against him had made reading his more familiar attacks almost instinctive.
Her body reacted before she even had time to think.
An outside parry.
A twist of the wrist.
A retreating step.
A rotation of the hips.
Everything flowed together with the ease born of endless repetition.
Erik didn't seem surprised.
If anything...
The more she held her ground, the more attentive his expression became.
As though this was exactly the moment he had been waiting for.
The minutes slipped by.
Five.
Perhaps a little less.
Perhaps more.
Blanche had completely lost track of time, her entire focus fixed on deciphering her instructor's intentions.
Then, without warning...
He abandoned everything she knew.
His stance shifted once more.
Lower.
Looser.
His blade nearly disappeared from her sight before reappearing at an impossible angle.
He launched into a sequence of movements she had never seen before:
A crossing step that completely shattered their line.
A full-body spin generating tremendous power.
Then a subtle feint with his eyes that instinctively drew her attention toward protecting her face...
Exactly where he wanted her to look.
The real danger...
Was coming from somewhere else.