The cloaked man stood frozen, pearls of sweat rolling down his face. The wind had sohow managed to take down the hood of his cloak, gently brushing against his matte blonde hair.
The windswept hair conjured a hopeless visage with his thin maroon eyeballs. His mouth was slightly open, despair slowly contorting his face.
Northern, however, just stared with cold indifference, the point of his sword slightly touching the wooden ground of the ship's deck.
Silence wafted tensely between the two of them as the man was not sure what to do.
His mind scread in utter disarray,
'No, no, no, no, no, this was not how this was supposed to go. We had planned this for days; this was only supposed to be a preliminary stage of what is to co. How could things go so wrong? I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, he's going to kill .'
An even stronger despair began to rise in his head. One that seed to totally consu the one Northern had inflicted upon him.
His eyes slowly contorted and began to find their flas again; the flas this ti were madder, burning with rage.
"What have you done?!" The man scread, grabbing his cloak and swiping it off his body with a single flip of his hand.
In his right hand, a silvery shower of sparks was already swirling.
Northern observed the man and his hand before taking one hand, using his pinky finger to clean off the dirt on his face with an irritated expression.
Then he straightened his hand as a sleek, midnight black greatsword with a shimring silver edge manifested into it.
The hilt of the sword was dark, with subtle engravings that seed to shift, almost as though they were alive, reacting to the ntal state of its holder.
Before Northern's eyes, there was almost a stark resemblance that it bore to the living wood of the soul vessel. Like a living tal.
Northern narrowed his eyes and lazily extended the Dark Mortal forward.
"Like I said when I first arrived. You have only one sin, which is attacking a ship that I am on. Now, I don't care who you work for or what you and your folks were staging. But curse your fates that you happened to cross paths with ."
He paused a second, his eyes radiating a cold wickedness as he evaluated the man.
"Sotis, coincidences can be quite brutal on plans." He shook his head in pity towards the man and swung his sword to one side before getting into stance, getting ready to give the man his own fair share of... death.
The man gritted his teeth, his face folded by a searing hot rage. He swung his sword to the side horizontally and dashed at Northern.
Northern's eyes widened the mont the man moved. Contrary to what one would have thought...
'Oh? He's fast.'
If it wasn't Northern, any other person would probably have not seen him coming and lost their reaction ti.
But Northern was not like any other person.
Although he didn't see the cloaked man's dash unfold before the actual movent-chaos, after all, did not an every movent. It was just in the thick of it.
Northern, however, could observe with his keen eyes every shift of the man's muscles, the slight twitch in his feet as he pivoted, the faint tightening of his grip around the greatsword -it all played out in slow motion through Northern's Chaos Eyes.
And from such keen and intense observation, Northern, thanks to his past battles, had been able to build a reaction ti that could be considered insane.
He was used to fast opponents, which was why fighting the hijackers just seed so slow, but this man... this man was different.
The speed, the precision, it excited Northern in a way he hadn't felt in a long ti.
It amused Northern for a mont.
And the next mont, the greatsword ca crashing down toward him, a blur of shimring silver in the stormy air.
It wasn't just fast; it carried with it an imnse force, enough to cleave the deck in two if Northern didn't react.
And react he did.
In a smooth, almost lazy movent, Northern sidestepped, the blade missing him by re inches.
The gust of wind that followed it was sharp, and the deck beneath their feet trembled from the power.
"Impressive," Northern murmured, his tone one of genuine intrigue.
Dark Mortal remained at his side, unhurried.
The cloaked man growled in frustration and swung again, this ti a horizontal arc aid at Northern's midsection. Northern didn't retreat.
Instead, he stepped forward, weaving around the blade with the precision of a dancer, letting it pass harmlessly behind him.
As he moved, he raised his hand and drove the poml of the Dark Mortal Blade into the man's side with a sharp, cracking force.
The man let out a grunt of pain but didn't falter.
He twisted, ignoring the blow, and brought his greatsword up in a sweeping upward strike.
Northern leaned back, following with intrigued eyes as the tip of the living tal passed in front of his face.
It was almost playful-the way Northern danced around each attack with minimal effort, his movents relaxed, fluid.
But Northern's mind was far from idle. As the clash continued, he was learning.
The cloaked man's movents were not just raw power; they were calculated.
Each attack carried weight, but it wasn't mindless.
There was a rhythm to his strikes, a pattern that Northern was slowly unraveling.
The man was fast, yes, but predictable-his attacks followed through in traditional arcs.
It was powerful swordsmanship, but Northern realized that power could be the man's
weakness.
A smirk tugged at Northern's lips as he realized sothing from the man's attack pattern.
'It has a form.'
This man, despite his rage and desperation, was bound by the structure of his form. Northern, however, could be anything-he could be nothing.
If the man's attack pattern wasn't based on a form, Northern felt the man would have been more of an opponent to him.
But was it possible to create an attack pattern without form? A combat style that is ever- bending, ever-changing, ever-flexible, ever-evolving?
Although Northern never allowed himself to be tied down by the rigidity of traditional techniques, his movents, guided by instinct and Chaos Footwork, were ever-changing.
But it wasn't enough!
Sohow, his mind for so reason drifted towards the formless attribute.
He rembered his encounter with Hao and how he had used formless to copy the attack
pattern of the devil corpse eater.
But he wasn't interested in copying his opponent's attack patterns.
His opponent's combat style was weak and useless against him for a reason; he wanted
sothing more.
What more could formless do that he was not thinking about?
Reviews
All reviews (0)