Chapter 41: Who’s next?

"Good. Very good," Craig murmured, a cold, satisfied smile gracing his face as his golden eyes meticulously dissected Ser Liyen’s combat posture.

The young knight’s form was taut as a bowstring, his center of gravity perfectly balanced, and his emerald mana humming with intense concentration.

He was a man who had drawn a sharp line in his own mind—a line where fear ended and absolute focus took over.

Craig reached down and unsheathed his weapon. Instead of a heavy military broadsword, he drew a slender, double-edged arming sword.

The polished steel caught the overhead torchlight, gleaming like a thin sliver of moonlight.

The instant his gloved fingers tightened around the leather-bound hilt, something deep within Craig’s soul snapped into place.

His eyes flickered, the dark golden irises glowing with a brief, terrifying radiance.

He felt it instantly—the passive activation of his Special Grade Talent: Monarch of Swords.

In that fleeting second, the boundary between man and metal dissolved entirely.

The slender blade did not feel like an object held in his grip; it felt like a natural, living extension of his own nervous system, an extra limb forged of refined steel.

Every microscopic groove along the crossguard, every vibration in the air currents surrounding the blade, registered in Craig’s mind with absolute, flawless clarity.

With a low exhale, Craig unsealed his mana core.

Having survived forty agonizing years in the dark future of his past life, Craig was intimately familiar with dozens of high-level mana suppression and concealment techniques.

He consciously constructed a suppressed barrier around his core, deliberately throttling his aura down so that it mimicked the signature of a standard Sword Apprentice.

Yet, the moment his crimson mana erupted from his body, a visible shockwave rippled across the chalk-dusted floor of the arena. ℴ

SWOOSH!

A dense, blood-red aura surged outward, coating Craig’s blade and swirling around his leather boots like a violent vortex.

Gasps echoed across the grand training hall.

The thirty garrison knights flinched, stepping back in utter disbelief. Even Ser Hughway, standing beside the elevated dais, widened his eyes in genuine astonishment.

The sheer volume and density of Craig’s mana was absurd.

For someone officially classified at the Sword Apprentice class, the sheer volume of crimson energy pouring out of his frame was easily thrice the amount an ordinary Apprentice could ever hope to manifest!

It was a completely natural reaction for the onlookers to be stunned, for Craig was anything but ordinary.

Even with his core suppressed to the Sword Apprentice class, the passive amplification from his Dragon’s Heart was constantly producing twice the raw mana density that even an Initial-stage Sword Runner could generate.

Ser Liyen staggered back half a pace, his eyes wide as the suffocating pressure of the crimson aura washed over him.

But the instant his gaze met Craig’s cold, expectant golden eyes, the young knight steeled his heart.

Remembering the brutal warning he had received moments ago, Liyen bit his lip, channeled every ounce of his emerald mana into his broadsword, and lunged forward.

BOOM!

Liyen was fast.

Once a Sword Apprentice reaches the Peak-stage, with their body going through reformation.

Their speed triples.

He covered the ten-pace distance in a fraction of a second, his boots kicking up clouds of white chalk as he executed a swift, horizontal slash aimed directly at Craig’s collarbone.

Craig didn’t even bother to parry. With a subtle tilt of his torso, he let the whistling steel pass mere millimeters from his throat.

The wind from the blow ruffled his crimson hair, but before Liyen could reset his stance, Craig vanished.

ZIP!

Craig’s form blurred into nothingness, leaving behind a faint crimson afterimage. The very next millisecond, he reappeared directly behind Ser Liyen.

"What?!" several knights gasped in unison, gripping the railings of the spectator ring.

The movement was unnaturally fast—a speed far beyond the wildest imagination of what a Sword Apprentice should be capable of achieving.

In the martial hierarchy, the title of ’Runner’ in the Sword Runner class signified the complete, harmonized unification of a Superhuman’s physical body with their enhanced mana core.

That unification multiplied a warrior’s agility and physical strength ten-fold.

Sword Runners were terrifyingly swift, capable of zipping across battlefields and cutting down hundreds of mundane soldiers before a single drop of sweat could hit the ground.

Yet here was Craig—a fifteen-year-old Sword Apprentice—displaying movement speed that blatantly rivaled a seasoned Sword Runner!

This terrifying agility was the direct result of his newly awakened A-grade Talent: Speed Demon, paired with the raw, biological perfection of his Divine Draconic Physique.

His muscle fibers and energetic pathways responded to his commands at near-light speeds.

Sensatory alarm bells rang violently in Ser Liyen’s mind.

Relying purely on raw martial instinct, the young knight spun around, swinging his elbow backward in a desperate counter-strike to force his opponent back.

But Craig saw right through the movement before Liyen’s arm even fully extended.

Pivoting smoothly on his heel, Craig spawned at Liyen’s exposed flank.

Instead of cutting the young man down with the sharp edge, Craig reversed his grip and slammed the solid pommel of his arming sword violently into the side of Liyen’s neck.

THWACK!

Liyen groaned loudly, staggering sideways across the floor as pain exploded through his jaw and collarbone.

He barely managed to plant his boots to keep from falling flat on his face.

Clutching his bruised neck, he spun around, his breathing ragged, only to see Craig standing a few paces away, a light, mocking smirk resting on his lips.

"Don’t tell me that’s all you’ve got, Ser Liyen," Craig taunted softly, flicking his wrist. "I came down to this arena for a challenge. I would hate to be disappointed."

A surge of embarrassed fury flashed through Liyen’s eyes. "Ghh... Forgive me, Lord Viscount!"

Composing his breathing, Liyen dropped low and unleashed a relentless barrage of preemptive mana strikes.

Curved arcs of sharp, emerald sword-light tore across the stone floor toward Craig.

Craig didn’t move an inch.

With fluid, effortless twirls of his slender blade, he met every single arc of energy, shattering Liyen’s mana strikes into harmless sparks of green light.

Standing at the edge of the ring, Ser Gunther watched the display with a deep, reverent smile spreading across his weathered face.

’Our Lord Viscount is terrifyingly strong...’ Gunther thought to himself, a swell of pride filling his chest.

He felt an intense wave of relief washing over him, deeply glad that he had chosen absolute obedience when Craig had ordered Sebas’s execution earlier.

A fifteen-year-old boy who possessed the raw mana pool of an army, the speed of a Sword Runner while still an Initial-stage Sword Apprentice, and a cold, unyielding battle mind?

Gunther couldn’t hold his curiosity any longer.

Stepping forward toward the edge of the ring, the Ranker Sword Sage called out over the ringing of steel:

"Lord Viscount! Forgive my intrusion... but are you perhaps a Ranker as well?!"

Craig paused mid-step, his slender sword casually parrying another heavy strike from Liyen.

His lips curled into a sharp, knowing grin as he looked back over his shoulder at Gunther.

"What do you think, Ser Gunther?" Craig asked smoothly.

Gunther let out a long, quiet sigh, bowing his head slightly. "I know for a fact that your Lordship is a Ranker. No ordinary Superhuman could display such unnatural martial prowess at your age.

However... I am deeply curious as to which path your Talent belongs to."

Craig’s grin widened, his golden eyes glowing like melted ore. "It belongs to the Blade Path, Ser Gunther. And if you are so curious... I shall demonstrate a small fragment of it right now."

Turning his full attention back to Liyen, Craig’s tone became ice cold. "Ser Liyen. Put everything you have into this next exchange. Fight with your life on the line."

Liyen gasped for breath, but Craig’s command left no room for doubt. "Understood, my Lord!"

BOOM!

Liyen pushed his mana core to its absolute limit.

A blazing mana pressure of emerald light wrapped violently around his entire body, causing his muscle veins to bulge as his physical power surged to its peak.

Tightening both hands around his broadsword hilt, he roared at the top of his lungs and charged straight at Craig like a green comet.

The very air inside the cavernous underground hall trembled under the raw, unbridled pressure of an all-out Superhuman charge.

Yet, as the lethal strike closed in on him, Craig simply closed his eyes.

SWOOSH!

In that split second, Craig’s entire mana signature—his crimson aura, his biological presence, his very soul—vanished completely from the perception of everyone in the room.

He became a ghost standing in the light.

Noticing his lord’s presence abruptly vanish mid-fight, panic instantly erupted among the spectating garrison knights.

"What happened?!"

"Where did the Viscount’s mana go?!"

"Lord Viscount!" Ser Hughway screamed in horror.

Fearing that his master had suffered a sudden mana backlash or an unseen attack, the Guardian Knight instantly reached down, his heavy iron hand gripping the pommel of his sword as he prepared to leap into the ring to intervene!

But before Hughway’s boots could even leave the stone—

BANG!

A deafening, cannon-like explosion shattered the quiet of the underground facility!

The stone floor beneath the duelists ruptured, throwing a massive, blinding cloud of white chalk, stone dust, and shattered marble high into the air.

A fierce shockwave blasted outward, forcing the spectating knights to raise their gauntlets to shield their eyes from the debris.

"Lord Craig!" Ser Hughway shouted, blindly plunging straight into the thick, swirling smoke screen with his weapon drawn, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

The surrounding knights panicked, murmuring frantically as they tried to peer through the haze, desperate to know what catastrophe had just taken place.

A few agonizing seconds passed before the heavy draft inside the cavernous hall finally cleared the thick smoke.

The scene that revealed itself left every single warrior in the room frozen in absolute, stunned silence.

Liyen was lying flat on his back in the center of a newly formed crater in the stone floor.

His armor was torn to shreds, his broadsword shattered into three jagged pieces beside him, and his entire body was covered in dozens of shallow, precise sword lacerations that oozed blood onto his clothes.

He groaned weakly, his eyes rolling back as he completely lost consciousness from sheer physical trauma.

Standing right beside the crater, completely untouched and unblemished, was Craig.

His slender arming sword was already sheathed securely at his waist.

Not a single strand of his crimson hair was out of place, nor was there a single speck of dust on his dark leather training gear.

Craig slowly turned his golden gaze toward the wide-eyed Ser Hughway and the paralyzed knights, his voice echoing clearly through the silent hall.

"Who’s next?"