Chương 18: When Pulp Fiction Becomes a Killing Blow

The three poison-tipped bolts tore through the fog and buried themselves in the ash-grey afterimage of Lucian, then plunged deep into the muddy ground. But no blood sprayed out. The ten-year-old's body had already vanished from the spot in a thin streak of silver light. Vael'shur. (Fold.) Whoosh. Four meters up, on the rooftop, the Iron Blood sniper hadn't even had time to lower his crossbow when a cold gust of wind hit the back of his neck. No rush of displaced air. No pressure wave.

Not a single ripple of leaked mana.

'Sound Cadence' and 'Silent Step' working in perfect tandem had turned Lucian's instant teleport into something effectively undetectable at that distance. Thock! The hilt of Lucian's silver dagger slammed into the sniper's cervical vertebrae with force calibrated to the millimeter. The assassin didn't even manage a groan. His eyes rolled back and he crumpled onto the roof tiles, limp.

Lucian caught the falling crossbow with one quick hand, set it gently down on the tiles, then kicked off the wall's edge and dropped down into the alley below like a night bird of prey. Down below, two mercenaries wielding daggers spun around, startled. Seeing the ash-grey cloaked figure land right in front of them, they roared and swung their poisoned blades in a crossing X, aiming to cut their prey to ribbons.

In that split-second, Lucian's mind — supported by 'Layered Focus' — suddenly pulled up an oddly specific memory: Chapter Fourteen of Elegy of the Nameless Knight, Volume One, where he'd once invented some overwrought close-combat technique purely to pad out his High Elvish vocabulary count. Without time to think it through, his body ran the exact sequence his six-year-old self had once scrawled onto a page: Lucian dropped low, nearly skimming the mud, his body curling through the gap between the two blades.

His left hand swung the dagger's hilt into the pressure point of the left man's wrist, knocking his weapon loose, while his right leg swept a low arc that shattered the other man's balance, then, using the momentum of the spin, drove a mana-charged palm strike straight into the remaining man's jaw. Crack! Whump! Two impacts landed almost simultaneously. Both hulking assassins flew sideways, slammed into the stone wall, and lay still in the mud.

Lucian stood back up, looked down at his own hands, and swore silently to himself. No way... I wrote that move as a throwaway to pad out five hundred extra words, and it's actually this brutal and effective in real life?! The Empire's traditional swordsmanship schools always taught knights to hold their center, face their opponent head-on, and trade blows along an honorable straight line.

Nobody could have anticipated a child fighting with slippery, gutter-brawl angles — wrist strikes, leg sweeps — woven seamlessly with spatial footwork, flowing like water and drifting clouds. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. From the shadows, Sylvia stood pressed against the stone wall, her sapphire eyes wide, her chest heaving, breathless. She had watched countless masters fight before, but never anyone like this. No drawn-out incantations.

No blinding bursts of mana giving away his position. Every one of Lucian's movements was a surgeon's blade, cutting precisely into his opponent's weakest point, snuffing out all resistance at a mana cost approaching zero.

"Worthless trash!" The furious roar came from the squad leader, Krass. Watching seven of his men drop in under fifteen seconds, the scar-faced enforcer finally lost it. He channeled his full mana reserve into activating his black steel breastplate — a heavy-tier defensive artifact carved with the 'Steel Rebound' array, capable of throwing back any physical melee strike.

Krass swung his massive greatsword, over thirty kilos of steel, tearing through the night straight down at Lucian's head, carrying enough force to split a boulder in half. Lucian didn't retreat an inch. He narrowed his eyes, his lips shaping a single syllable of the Demon Tongue.

"Zul'khar!" (Corrode.) A thread of dark violet light, thin as a needle, shot from his fingertip and buried itself directly at the junction point of the magic circle etched into Krass's breastplate. For exactly half a second, the armor's power flow choked. Blink! Lucian slipped past the falling greatsword's arc and reappeared directly in front of Krass. His right hand gripped the dagger, channeling every last ounce of mana into a single point, and drove it straight into the corroded junction of the magic array.

BOOM! The rebound array inside the breastplate exploded from within. The thick black steel plate shattered into dozens of scattered fragments. The enforcer, built like a small mountain, was flung backward through the air by an invisible force, sailing five meters before slamming his back into the ruined stone wall and sliding down into the mud. Ting! Ting! [Multi-Language Combo executed successfully: 'Blink' -> 'Demon Tongue: Corrode' -> 'Basic Strike'.] [All 12 hostile targets neutralized. Completion time: 28 seconds!] [HIDDEN CONDITION MET: Bottleneck Manipulator.] [New Skill unlocked: 'Syntax Weakness Detection'.] [Effect: Automatically highlights mana flaws and structural weak points on enemy equipment or magic circles as glowing red streaks.] Lucian let out a long breath, steadying his own breathing. The entire fight had ended in twenty-eight seconds. Mana consumed: 8%. Equipment wear: negligible.

He walked slowly across the muddy ground, approaching squad leader Krass, who lay gasping at the foot of the wall. Krass coughed up mouthfuls of fresh blood, eyes bulging as he watched the small figure approach. The faint magic streetlight filtering through the fog cast the ragged shape of Lucian's ash-grey cloak against the crumbling stone wall. The pieces began falling into place inside the assassin's fading mind: A grey-black cloak, no crest... Moving like a ghost, there and gone in an instant...

Ruthless, unconventional strikes, utterly unheard of... And one boy, standing alone, shielding a hunted demihuman. Every line of Elegy of the Nameless Knight he'd ever heard recited in a tavern came rushing back at once, matching the figure in front of him with terrifying precision. Krass's whole body shook violently, some ancient, near-religious terror clamping down around his heart. He raised a trembling, blood-soaked finger toward Lucian, his voice a horrified whisper.

"Black cloak... nameless swordsmanship... you... you're not human... you're... the Nameless Knight, stepped straight out of the book?!" Lucian went rigid in the mud. That agonizing wave of cringe crashed back through his soul, worse than getting hit square in the chest by a magic fireball. He slowly sheathed his dagger, scratched the back of his head, looked down at the trembling assassin, and let out a bitter, exhausted sigh.

"I've said this a hundred times already. I'm just an honest businessman..."