The assassins’ rain of hidden weapons hadn’t so much as grazed .
Well—aside from a few strands of hair and a sleeve edge nicked in passing. That was the extent of the damage.
By this point, they too seed unsettled and halted their barrage.
Keeping my eyes closed, I turned my head slowly, asking, “Ah, that’s it? All done? Out of toys already?”
No answer.
“My turn, then? It’s my turn, right? Yes? My turn?”
I spread my aura wide, seeking them in the darkness, and my lips curled into a sharp grin.
“Then I’ll be coming.”
Tshht—
I sprang into the air, racing along the treetops as I closed in on them.
Which one to go for first? …The long-haired senior, of course.
After all, I’d promised to execute the Senior.
I spotted him crouched in a thick cluster of branches where the shadows pooled.
“Senior Brother, here I co!”
“…!”
Launching off the branch, I slashed for his midsection.
Jas reflexively brought up his daggers to parry.
Clang!
He was dual-wielding—one dagger in each hand. So this was what they ant by “welcoming arms.”
“Senior Brother!”
Jack, underwear still wrapped around his head, charged in with a reverse grip on his twin daggers.
Both assassins wielded their blades reversed.
It wasn’t a style you often saw, so even with my eyes closed, I paid close attention.
Not that opening them would’ve helped—darkness was all around.
So I focused on defense, observing their dagger work in detail.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
We darted from one tree to another, tal constantly clashing.
I wasn’t an assassin, yet I bounded across branches like a squirrel. That seed to unnerve them.
“He’s… fighting with his eyes closed?”
“How…?!”
Their shocked cries grew harsher as they realized just how unnerving it was.
Amid the flurry, Jas gasped between breaths.
“Did you learn the Way of Walking from Sushruta?”
So that’s what they called it. Sounded similar to my lightness skill.
I smirked.
“No. I learned from my revered master.”
Jack, panting heavily, spat,
“Master? What master?”
“Why are you so curious about other people’s teachers? Worry about your own. Pathetic fools.”
I pressed when they tried to retreat, and blocked and deflected when they attacked—keeping things defensive while I studied their form.
And then… the mystery of the reverse grip swordplay began to unravel.
To really understand, you had to compare it against the standard grip.
With a proper grip, you need to pull your shoulder back to create space before cutting. That makes it slower.
There’s a faster option—drawing the elbow in and snapping with the wrist—but that weakens the blow and strains the wrist badly.
But in reverse grip, simply lifting the elbow and swinging grants speed and force. Add a twist of the waist, and you can pour in your body weight with surprising efficiency.
Take the upward slash, for example.
With a normal grip, it’s clumsy at close range—slow, awkward on the wrist, and lacking power.
But in reverse, you can lock the elbow and drive it upward like an uppercut, landing a swift, powerful cut even in close quarters.
It beca clear to : reverse grip swordplay wasn’t ant for long swords. It was designed solely for daggers.
Not for fighting—
For killing.
It allowed strikes along odd trajectories that were normally slow or impossible, making defense harder and opening flesh faster.
Since most swordsn held their blades normally, few were prepared to deal with it. That surprise alone could be lethal in the hands of a skilled assassin.
To sum it up, it was swordplay tailored for assassination.
But it required great skill and training—fine control of the fingers, strong grip strength—otherwise it was more liability than advantage.
Its strengths were clear: unpredictability.
Its weakness: complexity and limitation.
It was easy to see how a novice, trying it without preparation, would snap their wrist before ever landing a strike.
And yet—if used alongside normal grip, switching unpredictably, it could create devastating openings in battle.
It was a style that fit perfectly—improvised, instinctive, chaotic.
I decided to test it imdiately.
I slashed high.
Jas dodged without difficulty.
But in the sa motion, I loosened my grip, flipped my hold into reverse, and chopped down.
“…!”
Clang!
Jas barely crossed his daggers in ti, straining under the unexpected blow.
“Kh!”
Jack’s eyes widened.
“…Reverse grip swordplay?”
As I’d noted, my weapon wasn’t a dagger, so using reverse grip exclusively wasn’t practical.
But switching grips mid-fight—ah, that worked beautifully.
Even I never knew when I’d switch.
It was spontaneous, emotional—just like .
“You bastard!”
Jack lunged fiercely to cover his senior.
I blocked, sidestepped, deflected—then, suddenly, swept sideways for his ribs.
Clang!
He parried, and I instantly released my hilt. The rebound snapped my blade outward, and I caught it again in reverse grip, thrusting straight at the other man.
Thunk!
“Urgh!”
I’d aid for his chest, but only pierced his shoulder—Jas twisted at the last instant.
“Senior Brother!” Jack shouted.
Jas steadied himself with a grim voice.
“I’m fine. It’s not deep.”
I mimicked his tone with a smirk.
“I’m fine. It’s not deep.”
“Damn, that was deep.”
Their furious voices snapped back at .
“Shut up!”
“Big mouth.”
With Jas wounded, Jack stepped forward to face head-on.
Jas hung back, supporting him by flicking out the hidden weapons he’d kept tucked in his sleeves.
Their teamwork couldn’t compare to the Reaper brothers.
Truthfully, it seed they didn’t get along very well.
Is an assassin truly an assassin if he can’t lt into the shadows?
Hardly.
They’d already lost their greatest advantage—the darkness—and so the outco had been decided from the start.
This was a fight I could not lose.
The only reason I’d traded blades this long was to steal their reverse-grip swordsmanship.
Not killing only makes stronger.
Crossing the line of death—that’s what it ans.
Since my battle with the flute mage, I had grown.
I had taken another step forward.
Even against Jack, Jas, and ten more assassins besides, I wouldn’t have been at a disadvantage.
And now that I’d learned reverse grip? I had no further use for them.
“My loudmouthed brothers. Let’s finish this.”
I drew starlight across my blade.
No longer did it gleam only at the tip—
The entire sword shimred with radiant, flowing light.
I had deepened my martial realm.
I cracked an eye open and saw my weapon, luminous like the sword I had once forged of starlight in my dream, the one I wielded against the Reaper Brothers.
“What the—!”
“What is that…?”
I grinned.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
They gaped, half their mouths hanging open.
“Impossible…”
I chuckled softly and swung.
“Ha! Catch!”
“Dodge it!”
Clang! Clang! Claaang!
The sound of our blades clashing was nothing like before.
“Kh…!”
Their daggers, wrapped in black Aura, began to crack under the pressure.
I swung from lower left to upper right.
Crash!
Jack barely caught it.
The mont I saw his arm raised high, I released my blade.
Snatching it again in midair with a reverse grip, I cleaved down from the opposite angle.
Jack desperately dropped his arm to block, but his posture was already broken.
Clang!
“What—!”
His eyes widened.
His dagger shattered in an instant, and a bloody line carved itself across his chest.
Shhhhk!
“Gaaah!”
But the wound was shallower than I’d intended.
He’d twisted back at the last second, evading the worst of it.
“Ohh. Not bad.”
Assassin reflexes—his body was sharp and quick.
“Jack!”
Jas lunged in desperation.
I easily knocked aside his blade and swept my starlit sword to the left.
And then—
“End of the line.”
I loosed a slash of sword energy brimming with starlight.
Flash!
BOOOOOOOOM!!
The explosion shook the forest and echoed all the way across the still lake.
“Hm.”
I pulled back the starlight and examined my blade.
Spotless.
The snowy surface reflected the moonlight like a mirror.
No need to wipe the blood away—
The starlight itself had seared it to nothing.
That faint hissing I’d heard earlier… it must’ve been that.
“Not bad at all.”
Practical, too.
No need to bother cleaning the sword after a fight—
Just feed it starlight, and it would purify itself.
Click.
I slid the sword into its sheath and looked ahead.
“Hmph.”
Even knowing I’d caused it, the scene before looked grim.
As if a typhoon had swept through.
Under the cold moonlight stretched a forest in ruins.
Shattered rocks, torn earth, trees toppled in every direction.
My sword qi had flown far and detonated.
An area nearly ten ters wide had been utterly blown apart.
All that remained were the traces of a storm.
But… no corpses.
“Their bodies are gone, huh? Well, assassins are quick when it cos to running.”
[Pathetic fool. You let your power consu you and lost your prey. Do you think that makes sense?]
“Stop nagging. I let them go on purpose.”
The Heavenly Demon snorted.
[As if.]
“I an it. Let’s see now…”
I scanned the ground.
Though they’d fled, the blood trail was heavy.
They couldn’t have gone far.
“Heh.”
A crooked smile spread across my lips.
“Ti for a ga of hide-and-seek.”
Of course, hide-and-seek isn’t fun when you already know where they are.
So I didn’t spread my aura. I simply followed the drops of blood, step by step.
“Hide well, now. Or I’ll see your hair.”
My cheerful sing-song echoed eerily through the forest.
(End of Chapter)
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