The giant sword blade that halted a mere millimeter in front of Henry Percy's face slowly faded from my vision. The smell of burnt ozone and the metallic tang of blood in the Forbidden Forest trench vanished without a trace.
Bone-piercing freezing air suddenly slapped my face hard. The scent of wet firewood and a vast expanse of dirty snow filled my olfactory senses. Time seemed to leap ten years into a dark future.
I was in a military exile camp in the Western Valley Mountains. A blizzard howled fiercely outside our thin tent, as if singing a song of death. Ragnar and I sat facing each other on wooden crates beginning to rot from age and freezing temperatures.
Our faces were covered in rust dust, the residue of endless battles. My beard grew thick and unkempt. My eyes were the dull eyes of a middle-aged soldier who had seen far too many senseless deaths on a battlefield abandoned by the world.
The sound of iron boots stepping suddenly shattered the layer of snow outside the tent.
Someone strode through the blizzard, approaching our rickety shelter. The person wore silver armor severely scratched in many places from long battles. A fully closed iron mask hid his entire face, leaving no gaps other than eye holes.
Instead of giving a military salute to a superior, the iron-masked figure immediately pointed the tip of his spear at my chest.
"Are you the one named Kael Draven?" the figure asked, breaking through the sound of the storm. His voice was muffled by the thick iron mask. His tone was incredibly cold, rigid, and filled with lingering arrogance. "The man they call the Commander of this outcast squad?"
I sipped cold coffee from my tin cup casually. The coffee tasted bitter and was mixed with mud, but I did not care. I lazily pointed my rusted sword at him.
"That is what they call me in this icy hell," I answered very flatly, completely devoid of interest. "Lower your spear right now before my foolish partner cuts off your right hand and uses it as firewood."
The masked figure did not move a single inch. He kept his spear pointed with perfect posture.
"I am taking over command starting today," he stated arrogantly, like a king demanding a throne. "I am a graduate of the Aethelgard Elite Class. I am also an Official Imperial Knight and a pure-blooded noble. You are merely a Bottom-Tier Elite Soldier picking up the scraps of war. Your position is legally one rank below mine under Imperial military law."
Ragnar, who had been silently sharpening his axe all this time, immediately stood towering high. The giant man kicked the wooden barrel in front of him until it shattered into pieces.
"A cowardly outcast knight from the traitorous Nightbane faction dares to bark about military law in front of me?!" roared Ragnar, baring his savage fangs. His anger exploded instantly. "Do you think your noble title is worth trading for a piece of rotten bread in this hell, you Bastard?!"
I held back Ragnar's chest with one hand to prevent him from cleaving the knight in two. I stood up slowly, then tossed the rest of my coffee onto the snow. I assumed a combat stance with my old, bloodstained sword.
"In this freezing valley, rank is useless to stop the bleeding when your stomach is torn open," I said, staring straight through the eye slits of that iron mask. "Do you want this command, Sir Knight? Take it from my corpse."
The figure codenamed Hollow lunged forward without hesitation. I was pushed back by his academy techniques, which turned out to be highly superior and well-trained. His spear flashed rapidly like lightning cleaving the snow. However, I retaliated with the brutality of a veteran.
On the verge of defeat, I used a feint maneuver I had created myself on the battlefield.
I dropped my shoulder and let Hollow's spear narrowly miss my ear. Then I swatted the weapon away until it was thrown far into a snowdrift. The tip of my old sword stopped just centimeters from his iron-masked neck.
Through the narrow slits in that iron mask, I saw a pair of blue eyes. Incredibly clear eyes. Those eyes widened, full of absolute shock, completely unprepared for the reality that street tactics could defeat knightly arts.
Those shocked blue eyes from the past slowly melted, perfectly piercing through space and time. The snow illusion vanished, replaced by the drizzle of the Forbidden Forest.
Those eyes from the past merged with Henry Percy's present blue eyes. The aristocratic youth whose true face had just been exposed because his helmet was split by my precise slash at the bottom of the muddy trench.
Henry was still in shock hearing me call him Hollow with a tone full of nostalgia. He frowned with the anger of a noble who felt heavily mocked by his enemy.
"Who is Hollow?!" snapped Henry with rough, ragged breathing. The veins in his neck bulged, restraining explosive anger. "What kind of nonsense are you mumbling in the middle of a fight, Draven?! Has your brain gone mad from the Miasma poisoning of this forest?!"
Taking advantage of the split-second of my carelessness while reminiscing, Henry forcefully pulled his spear back. The young knight did not give up. He detonated his very last reserve of lightning magic for a counterattack.
He tried to turn the tables tonight. Henry launched a desperation-fueled lightning thrust aimed straight at my heart.
That blue lightning flash should have been extremely deadly for any academy cadet. Its speed cleaved the air with a loud explosive sound.
However, with a casual movement that almost looked as if I were yawning in boredom, I tilted my Blood-Iron sword. I parried and deflected that lightning thrust so perfectly it sparked fire into the air.
Henry growled in frustration, finding his ultimate surprise attack a total failure. He twisted his body and launched a relentless, merciless barrage of slashes at me.
Left. Right. A deadly low sweep. A fake thrust toward the neck. Henry deployed every ultimate technique he had learned and honed for years in the Aethelgard Upper Class. He moved like a raging thunderstorm in a confined space.
But to me, that continuous assault felt incredibly slow and predictable. It felt like watching a blind child swing a wooden twig at me.
In my dark first life, I had engaged in practice duels thousands of times with Hollow at the exile camp. That iron-masked knight was ten years stronger, faster, and far deadlier than the hot-blooded teenager in front of me. Every inch of his movement was permanently recorded in my memory.
I broke every one of Henry's desperate attacks with merely a highly efficient shift of my wrist. I did not counter his attacks to kill. I had absolutely no intention of hurting him anymore.
I only parried. Parried. And kept parrying until Henry ran out of breath and his magic energy began to dim.
Henry Percy's pride was shattered to pieces tonight at the bottom of this filthy trench. There was nothing more insulting and degrading for a genius Upper Class knight than this bitter fact. He realized firsthand that his enemy did not even intend to kill him, despite having dozens of wide-open opportunities.
"Stop toying with me, you bastard!" shrieked Henry hysterically. His spear crackled wildly, but his movements became desperate and drastically depleted of energy.
"If you want to kill me, then slash my neck properly right now!" roared Henry, demanding his knightly honor. "Stop defiling my knight's oath, you Insect! Kill me if you are capable!"
While parrying Henry's spear single-handedly, my rational brain fought a fierce war against the killer instinct boiling in my veins.
I had returned to this past to behead the Nightbane dogs who destroyed my life. Henry Percy was the best executioner that faction possessed. Killing him in this muddy hole was the most logical step to break Orvelis's wings forever.
It was an incredibly easy and rational choice.
But the shadow of the past struck my head extremely hard once again. That shadow restrained my hand from slashing his neck.
I remembered an incredibly cold night in the future. A night where Hollow was heavily intoxicated after drinking cheap beer we stole from the supply warehouse. The usually rigid knight cried soundlessly behind his iron mask in the corner of our defensive trench.
"I am a coward, Commander," sobbed Hollow that night with a hoarse voice filled with profound regret. "I am a massive coward."
Hollow squeezed his iron mask with trembling, scar-covered hands. "When the Nightbane Faction sold this empire to the Demons for absolute power, I merely watched in silence from the sidelines. I let my knight's oath rot for a false loyalty to that bastard family. That is why I discarded my face and wear this mask of a curse."
That poignant memory made my heart ripple. In this very second, I realized a truth far greater than my petty teenage revenge against Orvelis.
My main enemy was not the arrogant Orvelis Nightbane. My absolute enemy was the Great War called the Cataclysm in the future, which would slaughter all of humanity without a trace.
To win that impossible war against the demons, I had to gather the formidable Deck Hound Squad starting right now. I needed the strongest people by my side to change the fate of the world.
And Henry Percy, before he rotted in regret and transformed himself into the pathetic Hollow, was a sword too valuable for me to break now.
You will not die in this mud, Henry, I swore inwardly while staring into his desperate eyes. I will not let you regret your youth and hide behind that ridiculous iron mask again.
If the chains of Nightbane are what make you a coward in the future, then I myself will shatter those damn chains.
Henry took a step back and gathered all the remaining lightning magic in the air around him. The knight condensed all his leftover mana until his silver spear shone blindingly bright, illuminating the darkness of the Forbidden Forest.
He prepared to launch one final, highly suicidal attack to defend his remaining pride.
"Die, Draven!" roared Henry with his last ounce of strength, then charged forward like a spear of light.
I stopped parrying. I let my red eyes glow as bright as fresh blood. I released the limits of the Sanguine Core in my chest for a moment.
Dark red vapor exploded from my body like an eruption of a furious volcano. That dense red energy instantly swallowed Henry's weak blue lightning light.
I swung the giant Blood-Iron sword with the full power of my Troll-dense arm. My swing cleaved the air with a deadly whistling sound.
Instead of slashing Henry's wide-open neck or chest, I altered the direction of my attack with high-level precision. I deliberately smashed the sharpest part of my sword directly into the middle of Henry's heirloom silver spear shaft.
The sound of metal clashing and breaking rang incredibly loud, piercing the night.
The pride of the Upper Class, a spear passed down through generations, snapped instantly into two pieces. The pieces of magical metal shattered and scattered, falling onto the dirty mud puddles. Its blue lightning died immediately.
I had physically and mentally broken the symbol of Henry's loyalty to the Nightbane faction. He had nothing left to defend.
Losing his prized heirloom and seeing the pure red demonic power before him, Henry Percy's mental defense was finally shattered without a trace. His will to fight vanished completely.
The young knight's legs lost all their strength. He fell hard to his knees onto the wet mud, staining his white pants.
Henry bowed his helmet-less head. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and resignedly waited for my black blade to decapitate his head from his neck. He had accepted his defeat absolutely.
The deadly cold of the black sword blade touched the skin of Henry's neck. Yet the pain of tearing flesh never came to greet him.
Instead of cutting my enemy's neck, I spun my greatsword extremely fast and fluidly. I twisted my wrist and smashed the flat side of my sword's pommel squarely into the temple of Henry Percy's head.
That high-powered blunt force impact sent a painful shockwave. The impact reset the consciousness in Henry's brain instantly.
Henry's eyes widened for a moment before his vision began to go dark. His consciousness faded rapidly, and his body began to collapse onto the cold muddy ground.
Right before his ears went deaf from unconsciousness, the knight heard one final sentence from me. I stood towering high above him amidst the deadly drizzle of Miasma.
"Sleep well tonight, Comrade," I whispered very low, yet brimming with the absolute authority of a war commander. "When you wake up, you are no longer Nightbane's guard dog. You are entirely mine."
I sheathed my black sword back onto my back with a sharp scraping sound of metal. I stood tall and calm in the middle of the Death Zone, which had grown silent on my end.
The battle on this side was absolutely finished. I had reclaimed one of my most valuable troops for the wars to come.
However, the savage roar of battle and the loud clashing of steel from the direction of Ragnar and Darius still echoed loudly in the dark distance of the forest. Darius's panicked screams sounded incredibly pathetic. Our business tonight was not yet fully concluded.