Darkness. The moonlight was blocked by thick clouds, and the forest fell into a brief gloom.
Balke stared at the slender black figure on the branch, his mind racing in a calm pre-battle calculation.
The last encounter had left him with a deep psychological shadow.
That seemingly soft and weak silver-haired maid acted as though she had personally written the storm style sword technique textbook.
She knew every move he made—the starting stance, the point of power, even the tiny pauses when he changed moves—like the back of her hand.
His proud Whirlwind Slash was easily dodged as if she were taking a walk.
The aky-ahattering azure storm was interrupted by her using a broken dagger to jam the most critical point of magic power convergence, directly breaking his spellcasting and sending him face-first into the dirt like a sandbag.
Balke stayed inwardly alert.
He knew very well that his wide, open, visually spectacular storm style fighting, when facing an assassin this abnormally agile and extremely familiar with his routines, wouldn’t just miss—it would become a fatal flaw.
In other words, tonight’s fight couldn’t be a bombardment. It had to be a close-quarters battle that severely tested basic skills, reaction speed, and battle instinct.
Whoosh—
Balke took a deep breath and actively dispersed the violent wind-attribute magic power from his greatsword.
The originally roaring cyclone immediately subsided, and the forest returned to dead silence.
He gripped the sword handle with both hands, holding the heavy broad blade greatsword diagonally in front of him, assuming an unadorned starting stance.
It was the purest sword instinct honed over twenty years on the edge of life and death countless times.
From the branch, Ailiya’s clear, cold voice came from under her hood.
“…So you’re not going to use your original fighting style?”
A flash of surprise crossed her eyes.
So this rough guy wasn’t stupid. After suffering a loss once, he immediately adjusted his tactics, choosing the most solid basic sword skills to fight a war of attrition with her.
“Against a slippery assassin like you, those slow moves would only make me lose faster.”
Balke grinned, showing his white teeth, his eyes filled with a long-lost fervent battle spirit.
“Come on, little girl! Let me see how solid your real fighting foundation is, aside from those tricky tricks!”
The moment his words fell—
whoosh!
Ailiya didn’t waste words. She swooped down from the branch.
This time, she didn’t deliberately close in to find openings like before.
Against a warrior who had abandoned skills and was fully focused on defense, the risk of close-quarters engagement shot up.
So Ailiya chose hit-and-run.
In midair, she suddenly twisted her waist, her body turning at an odd angle to avoid Balke’s frontal sword blade range.
[Precise Throw]
whoosh! whoosh! whoosh!
Three gleaming dining knives shot toward Balke’s throat, heart, and right knee joint in a tricky triangle formation.
“Petty tricks!”
Balke shouted.
He didn’t fluster into swinging his sword to block. Instead, he calmly flicked his wrist.
The heavy broad blade felt light as a feather in his hands as it traced an extremely stable semicircular arc in front of him.
clang! clang! clang!
Three metallic collision sounds rang out almost simultaneously.
The three dining knives were deflected with extreme precision by the wide sword spine, deeply embedding in a nearby tree trunk.
The moment Balke blocked the knives, Ailiya had already landed lightly less than three meters to his right.
Her toes barely brushed the decaying leaves. Without any pause, she turned into a black afterimage that hugged the ground and instantly closed in on his flank.
The dagger held in reverse grip silently slashed toward his ribs like a viper’s tongue.
“So fast!”
Balke’s pupils contracted.
Even mentally prepared, the explosive speed Ailiya displayed still made his heart pound.
At the critical moment, Balke showed his seasoned battle instinct.
He didn’t forcibly withdraw his sword to defend—that would be far too late.
Instead, he gave up defense, sank his waist, planted his feet, and swung his left fist like a gust of wind, ferociously smashing it toward Ailiya’s head.
It was a complete life-for-life trade.
A cold light flashed in Ailiya’s eyes.
She certainly wouldn’t injure herself just to take one of his ribs.
The instant before the dagger struck Balke, she forcibly stopped her forward momentum.
Her waist bent backward impossibly, like a drawn bow, easily dodging the fist the size of a sandbag.
The fist wind roared past her hood, stirring up a strong gust.
Using the recoil from leaning back, Ailiya pushed off the ground with her feet and flew backward like an arrow from a bow, instantly creating distance and disappearing into the edge of the tree shadows.
The two returned to a state of confrontation.
The entire series of extremely dangerous exchanges happened in the blink of an eye.
“Huff… huff…”
Balke’s chest heaved violently.
Even though they had only exchanged one round, he felt more exhausted than fighting a second-tier magic beast hand-to-hand.
His nerves were stretched to the limit, terrified that a single slip would let that elusive dagger slit his throat.
“Lord Balk.”
Ailiya stood in the shadows, playing with her dagger, her tone flat with a hint of objective evaluation.
“You really are very skilled at fighting those large, straightforward magic beasts.”
“But when fighting people—especially assassins known for agility and one-hit kills—this life-risking style of trading wounds can easily get you into serious trouble if you ever run into a truly unscrupulous desperado.”
Balke propped his greatsword on the ground, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and let out a hearty but helpless laugh.
“Hahaha! Little girl, easy for you to say!”
Balke pointed at Ailiya as if looking at an unreasonable monster.
“Do you think everyone is as freakish as you?!”
“I’ve been out in the wild for so many years—how many assassins happen to know all the ins and outs of both our storm and swift wind schools, move like a ghost, and are damn well skilled in high-level shadow magic? And of all luck, I run into one?!”
The more he talked, the more aggrieved he felt.
He, the prestigious First Swordsman of Wind Moon City, was forced into purely passive defense.
“I’m telling you, if any ordinary assassin dared to get this close to me, they’d have been split in two—dagger and all—long ago!”
“Is that so?”
Ailiya noncommittally retorted, twirling the dagger in her hand with extreme skill.
“Since Lord Balk’s basic skills are so solid, it seems if I don’t show some real skills tonight, it’ll be hard to get you, the Captain of the Guard, to let me pass.”
“Then, to save time—in the next few dozen seconds—”
“I’ll end this meaningless entanglement with a slightly more serious attitude.”
As her voice fell, Ailiya’s figure blurred completely. At the same time, several phantoms split from her, flickering and leaping through different shadows.
The smile on Balke’s face vanished entirely.
“What… what kind of magic is this?!”
For the first time, cold sweat broke out in the palm gripping his heavy sword.
In this darkness, he felt like a blind target, while the other was a ghost that could stab a fatal blow from any dead angle at any moment.
“Little girl, who did you learn these deadly tricks from…?”
Balke ground his teeth, raised his perception to its limit, and stood with his back against a large tree, on full alert.