Chapter 57: A Spy Captured

"Another one...!?"

John couldn’t escape in time. The shadows beneath his foot solidified into stone, tripping him mid-stride. Yuria seized the opening immediately, her blade already arcing toward him.

But John wasn’t finished. Even as he stumbled, he twisted and reached out with his one remaining arm, catching Yuria’s sword by the flat of the blade.

With a surge of wind-enhanced strength, he slammed her into the ground, using the momentum to launch himself upward. Yuria hit the dirt hard, a sharp grunt escaping her lips.

"Fuck..."

Green light pulsed through the veins in John’s legs. Wind gathered around him, coiling like a spring. He was preparing to flee.

BOOM!

I wasn’t about to let him.

I launched myself from the ruined barn, two orbs of light positioned beneath my feet. I’d been imbuing them with enough mana to make them semi-solid, a technique I’d practiced for weeks before finally managing to use it in actual combat.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was fast.

Far faster than running.

"Reyn!?"

Trish’s voice cut through the wind as I sailed past her, a spinning chain of light orbiting my body at high speed. I was closing the distance.

John was slower now. The potion’s glow had dimmed, its potency fading with every drop of blood he lost. His movements were still quick, but they lacked the terrifying precision from earlier.

And Trish wasn’t done with him yet.

The darkness beneath his feet turned to mush, the solid ground suddenly feeling like swamp water. His stride broke, momentum faltering as he struggled to find purchase.

It was all I needed.

I flicked the chain mid-spin, the abrupt stop lashing it forward like a whip. It struck John square in the back with a sickening crack, carving a deep scar through his tattered shirt. He went tumbling, rolling across the dirt and grass, blood trailing behind him.

"You’re not going anywhere."

With Trish and Yuria here, killing him was no longer necessary. Capture was possible. Better, even. A dead spy told no tales. A living one could be questioned.

I spun the chains again, this time sending them fully toward him. They caught John mid-roll, snapping taut around his arms and legs. The light burned against his skin as the chains tightened, binding him completely.

He looked like a worm. A very angry, very defeated worm.

"Useless...!"

John winced out the words, and I caught a flash of white between his gums. A quick thread of light yanked it free before he could bite down.

A cyanide pill.

Of course it was.

Plop.

The pill dropped harmlessly onto the dirt. John’s expression shifted from defiant to genuinely irritated, his body squirming against the chains with enough force to make my head ache.

Containing him was like wrestling a caged animal. Even wounded, even bound, he refused to stop fighting.

"Be a good boy and stay still."

I clenched my hands together, tightening the chains until they pressed hard enough to restrict his blood flow. Not enough to kill. Just enough to make him stop.

"Agh—!"

His agony was cut off by a strip of darkness that sealed over his mouth. Trish appeared beside me a second later, panting harder than I’d ever seen her.

Either through physical or mental exhaustion, I was still about to find out.

"Y-You captured him?"

Yuria caught up second, her sword already sheathed. She was cradling her arm against her chest, the angle wrong. Probably broken from the impact when John slammed her down.

She was strong. That much was obvious.

But John, doped with the magical version of steroids, had been something else entirely.

"You’re hurt."

I dropped from the light orbs and reached for her arm. She tried to pull back, but my grip held firm.

"Don’t be stubborn."

"Don’t heal me. I can handle this on my own."

I didn’t listen.

Consent mattered. But not when I had healing magic and the person in front of me had a broken arm. She could be angry about it later. Right now, she needed to be whole.

I’m sure she’d rather swallow her pride than lose her sword arm.

Besides, it was an easy way to earn goodwill without being forceful. I wasn’t about to waste that opportunity.

"I said stop—"

She stopped when my magic flooded through her. Her breath caught, likely surprised by the sheer potency of it.

I could feel the difference almost immediately; her breathing shifted from strained to steady, the tension in her shoulders easing despite herself. Her skin looked healthier, too.

I was probably healing old training scars without meaning to.

"Stop!"

She yanked her arm away, and I let her. I was finished anyway. She could keep using that arm as usual now.

She stared at her palm, turning it over. The calluses were gone. Years of swordsmanship, erased in seconds. When her eyes snapped back to me, the glare was worse than anything she’d ever aimed at the old Reyn.

She looked like she wanted to cut me down where I stood.

"Lady Yuria."

Trish stepped in before the tension could snap. When I glanced back, John was already fully encased in a cocoon of shadows layered over my chains.

She wasn’t leaving anything to chance...

"He’s secured. We should decide what to do with him before someone notices the farmland looks like a battlefield."

Yuria’s glare lingered on me for a moment longer, her fingers flexing at her side like she was imagining them wrapped around her sword. Then she exhaled through her nose and turned away.

"Fine. But I’m not done with you."

I didn’t expect her to be. But at least now she’d be angry with two working arms.

A working arm was far better than keeping her calluses.

"Wouldn’t expect you to be."

I dusted off what little remained of my clothes and surveyed the damage. The barn was rubble. Several fences had been obliterated. The field looked like a tornado had mated with a blender.

Someone was going to have to pay for this.

Probably Father.

Probably?

Definitely.

Trish crouched beside John’s cocoon, her fingers brushing the shadowy surface. He’d stopped struggling. Either the blood loss had finally caught up with him, or he’d accepted that escape wasn’t happening.

But more importantly, Trish’s body was still.

It wasn’t the trembling hands I’d expected from someone who had just realized her savior had been kidnapped.

"Trish."

She turned when she heard me call her name, and what I saw—

Was... good news, for lack of a better term.

"...Yes, Reyn?"

Blank eyes. A neutral expression. And sheer pressure radiating from her in waves, cold enough that the mana around her felt like it had frozen solid.

"No, it’s nothing."