Chapter 264: The Duel

Iron silently finished eating the fruits and sweets he had bought, keeping his eyes fixed on Noah. The latter continued to grind through tough training sets without stopping, pushing his body to its absolute limits in speed and strength.

​Waiting until Noah finished another exhausting set and caught his breath for a second, Iron calmly said:

​"Noah, let's go have a spar... At full strength. You can use your sword, and I'll use my magic."

​Noah gave him a look, and then, without another word, dropped back into a push-up position for his next set:

​"I'm doing it right now."

​Iron silently nodded and returned to his food, unhurriedly finishing the rest of the dessert.

​About twenty minutes later, they were already deep in the forest. Tall trees rustled around them, and the ground was covered with fallen leaves.

​Iron slowly warmed up his body: stretching, spreading his arms to the sides, rotating his joints, and lightly bouncing in place, warming up his muscles. Noah, meanwhile, waited for him silently, pacing with a measured step between the wide trunks with his sword in hand.

​Finishing his warm-up, Iron made a final light jump, rolled his neck, and looked at Noah walking among the trees. They started moving parallel to each other, not taking their eyes off one another and waiting for the right moment.

​Iron took another step and stepped behind the wide trunk of a massive oak.

​In that very fraction of a second, Noah instantly disappeared from sight.

​Stepping out from behind the tree, Iron immediately stopped and began to quickly look around. Complete silence reigned around him; Noah's silhouette was nowhere to be seen.

​Suddenly, literally a couple of meters away, a barely audible rustle of dry leaves was heard. Iron sharply turned his head toward the sound, but there was only an empty strip of forest.

​And in the next instant, Noah appeared right behind Iron's back.

​Raising his sword above his head, Noah was already preparing a devastating slashing blow, aiming straight for the back of Iron's head.

​At the very last moment, the engineer noticed the sword and the whistle of the cleaved air. He ducked sharply, tilting his head down, and simultaneously threw his left arm back, delivering a crushing counter-punch.

​However, Iron's left fist sliced only through emptiness. Noah vanished in that same fraction of a second, never completing his swing.

​Iron instantly straightened up, catching only quick shadows and dark silhouettes flickering between the tree trunks at breakneck speed.

​He followed another flicker of a dark shadow behind the trunks with his eyes. Realizing that Noah was going all out at the limit of his abilities, he unhesitatingly engaged his scan and activated "Heavens".

​Suddenly, right from the shadow between the trees, Noah's sword flew at Iron at frantic speed.

​Iron smirked. The speeding blade abruptly froze in the air a centimeter from his face. Iron casually grabbed the handle with his fingers and tossed out:

​"Are you a complete idiot?"

​In that same second, a bright red sign flashed right on his retinas, and Lumon's voice echoed in his mind:

​"Warning. Critical threat level. Drop the weapon immediately."

​Through the scan, Iron clearly saw invisible cuts starting to burst out in all directions from the blade and the handle.

​Iron hurled the sword with all his might toward a massive oak standing nearby. The blade plunged into the trunk, and in that same fraction of a second, the cuts tore through it, splintering the massive tree into dozens of tiny chips.

​With a lightning-fast dash, Noah appeared at the chopped trunk and immediately snatched his sword back.

​Iron tensed. He took a deep breath and smoothly spread his arms out. Within a radius of several dozen meters, the friction force between the ground, the fallen leaves, and their soles completely disappeared. Iron froze, expecting that Noah would slip right now, lose his footing, and crash to the ground.

​However, nothing happened.

​Iron looked around. Instantly adapting to the environmental changes, Noah stopped taking his usual pushing steps and moved with short, rigid jumps strictly vertically, directing the force vector perpendicular to the surface and maintaining balance by shifting his blood mass.

​In the next moment, Noah appeared right in front of Iron, having already raised his blade. Funneling all his blood into his right arm, Noah unleashed dozens of lightning-fast swings at him.

​Iron instantly collapsed space. Finding himself a dozen meters away from his previous spot, he saw the place where he had stood a second ago, along with the surrounding trees, turning into splinters from the slashes.

​Noah immediately appeared right in front of Iron again with his sword already raised to strike.

​Iron momentarily opened his palm, and the Asfolt sword instantly materialized in it.

​Through the scan, Iron saw the geometry of the flying slashes in minute detail. Making three lightning-fast, precise swings with his sword, Iron chopped through and completely neutralized all of Noah's attacks.

​Noah's eyes widened in shocked surprise.

​In the next instant, their swords clashed with a ringing screech. Both made a sharp push and immediately broke the distance, jumping backward.

​Iron calmly lowered his sword and lightly drove it straight into the ground in front of him, leaving his hands free.

​Seeing that he had disarmed himself, Noah darted forward. In a fraction of a second, the tip of his sword was literally a couple of centimeters from Iron's throat.

​And right at that moment, the engineer instantly dropped the temperature of the air and all molecules within a fifty-meter radius to a value close to absolute zero.

​Noah instantly felt the deadly cold, and with all his might made a dash backward. The entire zone within a fifty-meter radius — the ground, trees, and moisture in the air — was covered with a thick crust of ice and deep frost in fractions of a second.

​Noah managed to jump out of this zone at the very last second, narrowly avoiding frostbite.

​Iron immediately teleported behind his back and with a wave of his hand formed dozens of spatial cuts. They didn't fly through the air, but appeared strictly at pre-set points in space.

​To Noah's sight, these cuts manifested as white lines. Clearly seeing exactly where the cuts were appearing, he stepped and jumped exclusively on clean islands of land, not touching a single one of them.

​Iron was genuinely surprised that Noah hadn't fallen for a single one of the cuts.

​Not wasting a second, Iron simply snapped his fingers.

A colossal increase in gravity instantly slammed down on Noah. With a dull crack, he was momentarily pressed face-first into the dirt.

​Iron unhurriedly walked up to him. The Asfolt sword materialized in his hand again. Iron lowered the blade tip down, stopping it right near the head of the pinned Noah, and calmly said:

​"You lost."

​Noah grimaced on the ground, overcoming the hellish weight:

​"Like hell I lost?!"

​Digging his fingers into the soil, he literally tore the damp earth apart. Overcoming the gravity with pure physical strength, Noah slowly began to lift his torso.

​Iron watched this silently, thinking to himself:

​I could intervene, of course...

​With a roar, Noah powerfully pushed off the ground with his hands, sprang to his feet, and rapidly dashed at him.

​Iron collapsed space and materialized several meters to the side, finishing his thought aloud:

​"...but why?"

​He immediately engaged the scan and instantly located Noah. He was already right behind his back. Without turning around, Iron simply thrust his sword behind his back, placing the blade in the path of the strike.

​Noah brought his sword down on Iron's blocked weapon with all his might. The blow turned out to be of such monstrous force that the flat side of the Asfolt blade pressed right into Iron's own body.

​The momentum flung Iron to the left. He flew through the air, tumbled across the ground, and slammed back-first into a tree trunk with a loud crack. From the harsh impact, the sword slipped from his hands.

​Opening his eyes, Iron saw that Noah was already flying at him from above, raising his blade for a finishing blow.

​Iron instantly recalled the sword back into his hand and raised it in front of him.

​Noah's strike landed squarely on the Asfolt blade with a screech. Iron barely withstood this terrifying pressure, but managed to bend his wrist and deflect Noah's tip to the side. Wasting no time, he delivered a counter-slashing sword strike to Noah's left side.

​But right in mid-air, Noah executed a quick lateral flip and delivered a retaliatory swing with his right hand on the fly.

​Iron collapsed space again and disappeared, reappearing further away.

​Noah landed heavily on his feet, turned to him, and yelled in annoyance:

​"I'm sick of you using your teleports! Don't be a coward!"

​Iron was standing on the icy soil he himself had recently frozen. In response to Noah's words, he just calmly snapped his fingers. The surrounding temperature instantly returned to normal, and the frosty crust turned into ordinary damp earth in a second.

​In that same fraction of a second, Noah vanished again and appeared right in front of Iron, closing the distance.

​A rapid exchange of blows began. Noah attacked continuously and aggressively. Delivering a powerful vertical swing from top to bottom, he tried to cleave Iron, but he managed to dodge and positioned his blade so that Noah's sword slid along the Asfolt with a screech.

​Iron instantly twisted his torso and tried to sharply slam his right elbow into Noah's head.

​However, Noah intercepted Iron's right elbow with his left hand on the fly and squeezed it in a death grip. In the next second, Noah drove his sword straight into the ground, instantly tripped Iron hard, and forcefully flipped him over his own back.

​Iron smacked into the ground with a deafening crunch, still clutching his sword.

​Noah immediately raised his leg, about to kick the fallen Iron with all his might. But his foot abruptly stopped literally a couple of centimeters from the engineer's body.

​Iron instantly redirected the vector of kinetic energy: all the colossal force of inertia that Noah had put into this kick returned to him as a crushing recoil impulse. Noah grimaced from the sharp internal pain in his leg.

​While Noah froze for a moment, Iron immediately raised his sword, directing the tip at his neck. But Noah instantly yanked his blade out of the ground and managed to block the slashing strike at the very last moment.

​They clashed again in a frenzied exchange of blows. Noah, having redirected all his blood into his right arm, attacked continuously, putting all his strength into every swing.

​Iron parried every sword swing. Taking another heavy blow, Iron flew backward a few meters, dug his feet into the damp earth, and squinted, peering at Noah's blade.

​My blade is magnitudes sharper than his, flashed through Iron's mind. Why can't I just cut right through his sword?

​Focusing his gaze on Noah's blade, Iron gave a mental command:

Deeper... go deeper!

At that moment, the scanner began narrowing its focus, reading the structure of Noah's steel at the atomic level.

In that exact second, Noah sharply dashed forward. Making a feinting high swing from above, right in the middle of the motion he dropped his sword low, aiming the tip directly at Iron's thigh.

​Noah's hand was already just a couple of centimeters from his leg when Iron's scan finally pierced the full depth of the metal and locked onto a pinpoint anomaly.

​A microscopic nick appeared on the surface of Noah's steel blade — a deep microcrack less than a millimeter in size, formed from constant, colossal stress.

​"Found it," Iron said quietly.

​He instantly altered the trajectory of his blade and delivered a highly precise strike exactly on this microcrack.

​A dry, ringing crunch echoed. Noah's blade instantly shattered in half: the top part of the blade fell to the ground with a crashing clang, while only a stump with a handle remained in Noah's hand.

​However, in that same second, Noah jumped powerfully, spun in mid-air, and planted his left foot straight into the back of Iron's head with all his might.

​The engineer simply didn't have time to react.

​The crushing kick knocked him off his feet — Iron slammed face-first into the damp soil, tumbled across the ground for several meters, and stopped with a groan, coughing and spitting blood.

​Breathing heavily, Noah lowered his leg and stood over him, examining the stump of the sword left in his hand.

​Iron, pressed against the ground and breathing heavily, barely lifted his head and wiped the blood from his lips:

​"Alright, that's enough... You win."

​Noah paused for a second, lowered the broken piece, but still kicked Iron in the face:

​"So why the hell did you break my sword anyway?!"

​Iron, wincing, spat the remaining blood onto the ground:

​"I'll buy you a new one in a minute... Your sword was really bad. Considering I managed to break it."

​Noah stepped closer with indignation:

​"You said yourself it was a good sword!"

​"Well... I made a mistake," Iron replied reservedly. "It happens to everyone."

​Noah exhaled heavily and shook his head:

​"Buy me a new sword. Now."

​Iron struggled to get to his feet, swaying slightly:

​"Yeah, I'm going... But before that, let me sew up your clothes."

​Noah stared at him in bewilderment.

​Iron stepped closer and slowly ran his palm along his jacket — right over the places where the fabric remained slashed and torn since the fight with the mud monster. Under the effect of localized spatial restoration, the threads of the material instantly came back together, forming an intact piece of clothing.

​Finishing with the jacket, Iron snapped his fingers.

​In that exact second, a spatial shift transported them from the deep forest to the outer stone walls of Avers. During the transfer, Iron also completely removed the leftover blood from his own face, as well as from Noah's clothes and hands.

​Afterward, Iron walked at a calm pace toward the gates and tossed over his shoulder:

​"I think you can go back to your room and rest."

​Noah caught up with him, crossing his arms over his chest:

​"No, I'm going with you."

​"Okay," Iron replied briefly.

​They passed through the guard post and went deeper into the artisan quarters. Soon, the familiar rare materials shop appeared before them. Pushing the door open, Iron went inside along with Noah.

​A seller was standing behind the counter. Iron went straight up to him and asked to pick out a durable ore for a heavy, stress-resistant blade.

​The seller went to the back and soon brought out a special piece — a deep azure-blue ore with a deep inner glow.

​Iron ran a quick scan: the lapis lazuli crystal lattice turned out to be incredibly tough and durable.

​Paying the required amount and taking the materials, Iron left the shop together with Noah. They unhurriedly returned to the hotel, went up to the second floor, entered room five, and locked the door tightly behind them.

​Iron got down to business immediately. Engaging the heating, he softened the azure ore right in the air in the center of the room in a matter of seconds, forming a blade out of it.

​Then he made a light flick with his finger towards the wooden paneling of the wall — a neat block of wood popped out of the casing and instantly snapped onto the blade's tang, turning into a comfortable handle. With his next movement, Iron immediately sealed the cut on the wall, completely restoring the wood structure in the room.

​Tempering the metal with spatial compression, Iron caught the finished azure sword and handed it to Noah.

​Noah took the new weapon by the handle, weighed it in his palm, and made a few quick, snapping lunges right in the middle of the room, testing the balance and center of gravity.

​Iron, meanwhile, sank heavily onto the edge of the bed, watching his movements, and asked:

​"So, how is it?"

​Noah made another precise vertical swing, eyeing the blade's response, and answered:

​"Well... I wouldn't say it's exactly perfect, but it'll do."

​Iron flopped onto his back on the bed, stretching out his legs:

​"Awesome, then."

​Noah swung the blade one more time, evaluating its feedback, after which he headed for the exit and opened the wooden door.

​Iron, still lying on the bed and keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling, asked:

​"Where are you going?"

​Noah froze in the doorway and slightly turned his head:

​"To train, where else?"

​Iron smoothly pointed his finger towards the table. The key to room five immediately rose into the air, flew across the room, and dropped right into Noah's open palm.

​"Lock the door behind you," Iron tossed out.

​Noah squeezed the key in his fist, walked out into the corridor, and clicked the lock from the outside.

​Complete silence settled in the room.

​Iron continued to lie motionless on the bed, staring at the ceiling and gradually recovering his strength after the grueling sparring session.

​I can probably beat almost anyone one-on-one... he thought to himself. But that path would be a one-way trip...

​Iron let out a restrained sigh, pushed himself up, and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning his back against the wall.

​I should learn how to use my magic safely, he continued to ponder.

​Changing his posture, Iron sat more comfortably, completely relaxed his stiff shoulders, and closed his eyes:

​Though, I think I'd be better off understanding my skill more. While with magic I at least feel a little bit normal after using it... when I activate my skill, I can't even last a minute.

​Iron finally relaxed completely. One last thought flickered through his mind:

I need to understand myself better.