As a chill ran down his spine, Evans unconsciously stepped back. He didn’t even know why.

The woman before him barely seemed present. It felt as if the moment he looked away, she would vanish completely from existence. It was a kind of strength unlike anything he had ever encountered.

Tightening his grip on his sword, Evans muttered the thought that flashed across his mind.

“Are you an... Assassin Master?”

It was supposed to be a realm so rare it was thought to be a legend. The pinnacle of assassins, a state that no ordinary warrior should ever reach. It was a transcendence that had long since left the path of martial arts behind.

That was what it meant to be an Assassin Master. Karen had reached that very height, not only through genius but through sheer luck—mastering Pitch-Black Dance, a technique that shattered the limits of her art.

“Who knows?” she said lightly, teasing him.

Karen leveled the two Jugend Steel blades in her hands with careless ease. There was no killing intent nor a trace of a target. Even her stance gave away nothing.

However, that void—that emptiness—was what made assassins terrifying. Evans drew every ounce of focus he had, determined to react no matter where or when she struck.

The two of them stood motionless for several dozen seconds, without muttering a single word. Evans was drenched in cold sweat. Karen, on the other hand, wore a faint smile that was mysterious and unreadable.

Around them, the clash of battle raged between the other Masters and the Imperial Knights, yet these two did not move. Each knew instinctively that whoever acted first would lose.

Seconds stretched into minutes. Then, three minutes passed.

“Keh.”

Cedric, who had been watching from behind, finally broke into laughter. Empty potion bottles clinked at his feet.

“Pahahahaha! Idiot! You actually fell for it!”

Only then did Evans realize it. The reason he had felt nothing from Karen’s stance was that there truly had been nothing.

Of course. She had no reason to risk her life fighting him head-on. Cedric’s wounds were deep but not fatal. Ten minutes of rest would see him back in the fight. All she had to do was stall for time.

In this situation, Evans, who had revealed his Aura Blade, was at an immense disadvantage. There was no doubt that he would suffer the consequences.

Evans turned toward her in disbelief and thought, A bluff? In this situation? That bold?

“Oh dear,” Karen said with a grin, sticking her tongue out. “Guess you’ve figured me out.”

Her playful smile fanned the fury rising in his chest.

“Enough of your cheap tricks! I’ll cut you down myself!”

Grinding his teeth, Evans charged straight in. No matter what trick she pulled, he’d crush through it.

A knight was an unfavorable matchup for an assassin. Full plate armor easily blocked throwing knives, and on an open battlefield, stealth and ambush meant little.

However, Karen’s Pitch-Black Dance was no move of an ordinary assassin. Hands shot up from Evans’s shadow, seizing his ankles and stabbing upward with awls of darkness.

The greaves kept him from being injured, but the suddenness of the attack still broke his rhythm. Just as he tried to recover, Karen unleashed her attack.

“Dark Thunder, First Form.”

She accelerated soundlessly, thrusting her dagger straight ahead. It wasn’t powerful enough to pierce Nekator’s Crescent Collapse, but no ordinary armor was going to stop it.

Sensing the threat of the pierce, Evans twisted his body. However, the blade stretched, elongating over two meters as it drove through his side. The crescent-shaped dagger extended its reach, altering its point of impact as it grew.

It was an assassination strike using Jugend Steel number 139, “Crescent.” The wound itself wasn’t deep, but the poison coating the blade was lethal.

“How cunning...!”

“Please,” Karen said, smiling coldly. “Surely you’re not saying that to an assassin?”

A Master’s Aura could resist and purge even synthetic toxins, but the process consumed strength and time. Karen had no intention of letting him recover in peace.

“Pitch-Black Dance, Shadow Manipulation, Third Form: Sixfold Phantoms.”

Six shadow clones surged forward, attacking from every direction. When a clone was destroyed, the backlash didn’t return to her. That freedom allowed them to act without hesitation, executing moves the real body never could.

One lunged for his throat. Another crawled low, targeting his shins. Two leaped to grab his arms, holding them fast.

Karen wasn’t finished.

“Shadow Manipulation, Fourth Form: Impaler.”

The last two clones transformed from human shape into giant black spikes, driving straight into Evans’ abdomen while his arms were still restrained. The impact struck harder than a battering ram, slamming against the full plate with brutal force.

With an explosive crash, Evans’ body was hurled backward, gouging two long skid marks into the marble floor. A crack split across the surface of his full plate armor, proving that he hadn’t been able to withstand the full force of Impaler.

Unlike the Imperial Guardians, his armor showed no sign of self-repair. That much was a modest result for the effort spent, but the single strike, using four shadow clones as bait, still proved to be a solid hit.

“Was this your plan from the start? Expected I’d lose my temper and rush in?” Evans asked.

“Please. I just went with the flow,” Karen replied with a shrug.

Tactics had never been her specialty. In the realm of the Swordmasters, where hundreds of exchanges could happen in seconds, she wouldn’t last a heartbeat if she tried to play their game.

So, this outcome could mean only one thing.

“Seems we’ve got pretty good compatibility. Though, well, that’s only good news for me. For you, it’s the opposite.”

Their Aura Blades were perfect opposites. Evans’ Balisarda was formidable, but it was purely designed for dueling. Beyond the reach of his blade, its ability to pierce defenses meant nothing.

Karen’s Pitch-Black Dance, on the other hand, could manifest shadow clones dozens, even hundreds of meters away.

Their durability was negligible, but their attacks were nearly as strong as the original, and even if they were destroyed, the real body remained unharmed. Their speed, freed from physical constraints, defied common sense.

Karen moved again.

“Pitch-Black Dance, Projection, Fifth Form.”

As Evans faltered, several thick, serpentine shadows surged upward from behind him. The same secret technique she had once used to capture a Hive Walker had turned upon a single man.

“Collateral Damage.”

The shadows converged from all four directions, aiming not to restrain but pulverize their target. However, Evans wasn’t about to just take it.

“Balisarda, Armor Form.”

He lifted his sword as though in salute before a duel, and the air around him rippled violently. The shadows struck before the motion could finish, crashing down with the weightless but overwhelming force that could crush even mithril into dust.

Anyone caught in the center would be compacted like a ball of steel. Yet—

“I’ll admit it. You might truly be my natural enemy.”

From within the storm of shadows, Evans strode out unscathed, his eyes fixed on her, sword leveled.

He had overlaid his body with phase through, a conceptual defense that made all attacks pass through him. Even with the palace’s power supporting him, he could maintain it for only a few seconds. To breach that defense, she would need the power to cut through space itself.

Evans, revealing another hidden card, lowered his stance like a beast about to pounce.

“Balisarda, Impact Form.”

With a violent kick off his rear foot, he charged. All his overflowing Aura became propellant; within two strides, he broke the sound barrier. His blade thrust forward, and the sword light warped, its range extending several times over.

Balisarda wasn’t just a phasing weapon. It bent space itself, diverting external force, distorting volume and surface at will.

“Pitch-Black Dance.”

Karen slipped just out of its path, weaving a quick sequence of hand signs. After clashing with Leon’s Prominence countless times, she was long used to dealing with attacks that stretched their reach.

Six more clones bloomed into existence. Evans, however, had more in him.

“Balisarda: Expansion Form.”

Evans’s sword suddenly widened, stretching into an immense arc that cleaved through all six clones like a bolt of lightning. Karen’s Sixfold Phantom shattered in an instant, leaving her spacing broken by a single step. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

He advanced faster than she could retreat. Normally, his techniques required pauses between uses, but with the palace’s power fueling him, he could chain them endlessly. Even if Balisarda lacked brute force compared to other Aura Blades, it was more than enough to dominate one-on-one combat.

“Balisarda, Prison Form.”

With only ten meters left between them, Evans swung his sword. It looked like an ordinary diagonal slash, but the strike carved out a circular space about five meters wide around Karen, sealing her in. The warped air formed a temporary barrier, cutting off all routes of escape.

The distortion would fade in mere seconds, but that was all he needed. Evans was already inside her reach, which was the Swordmaster’s range and the killing distance.

“This is the end,” he declared.

The moment Balisarda’s Prison dissipated, Evans delivered the final blow. At this distance, there was no evading it. Blocking would only let the blade phase through, splitting her from crown to groin.

And indeed, with the eerie sound of flesh being bisected, the sword sliced clean through her daggers, through her skull, tearing downward past her heart and bursting out below her ribs. Even for an Aura Master, it was a wound that meant instant death.

But Evans’s face twisted in shock. Because from Karen’s bisected body, not a single drop of blood spilled.

Of course, not long after, her “corpse” wavered and melted away like a shadow.

“You really thought that was me?” a voice replied.

It came from behind him. Evans couldn’t turn around.

“Since when...?” he muttered as the realization hit him.

He hadn’t killed her. He had struck down a clone. And now, he had stepped right into her trap.

Before he could even activate Balisarda, his legs were seized.

“Shadow Step.”

It was a technique Karen had honed long before mastering Pitch-Black Dance. By stepping on her enemy’s shadow, she could immobilize them. Against an Aura Master, it only froze the legs for a brief moment, but that was all she needed.

Karen pressed her palm against the backplate of his armor and whispered, “I might not be able to take you down in one hit, but I can make sure you can’t cheat anymore.”

“What...?”

Before Evans could even understand, Karen unleashed her next move.

“Pitch-Black Dance, Phantom, First Form: Formless Existence.”

Shadows poured from her hand, rapidly spreading over his silver-gray armor. It wasn’t a physical strike, so the adamantium’s hardness meant little.

The magic circuits engraved on his armor halted all at once. The divine energy flowing into him from the White Peak Palace faltered and went dead, as if the channel had been cut off. Even the Aura surging through his body dissipated in an instant.

“What is this?!” Evans shouted in shock.

“Just as I thought. You’re not like the Imperial Guardians or the Imperial Guard. You were drawing and storing power through that armor, weren’t you? Cut that off, and all that’s left is your own body.”

Evans shook off the Shadow Step within seconds and swung his sword, but Karen was already several meters away. The distance he’d closed so carefully was gone in an instant.

“I was going to say, ‘My turn now,’ but...”

Karen sheathed both of her Jugend Steel blades, disarming herself before the enemy.

Why? The answer was simple. Ten minutes had already passed.

“You put up a better fight than I expected. Let’s duel sometime,” Cedric said.

“I’d rather not,” Karen replied.

Having recovered, Cedric’s face burned with murderous fury as he raised his sword. Now that he understood Balisarda, there was no chance of being caught off guard again. With Karen’s interference rendering the armor useless, the balance of power tilted sharply in Cedric’s favor.

Humiliated, the Sword Demon’s pride ignited into raw bloodlust.

“I’ll hack you to pieces, you dog of a fallen empire!”

And so began round two.

***

Meanwhile, with Karen gone to save Cedric, the remaining three Masters were forced to bear the full brunt of the fight against the Imperial Knights.

Ninety Imperial Knights against three Masters made it a thirty-to-one ratio.

Unlike the Imperial Guard, even half a dozen of these knights posed a real threat. Facing thirty at once was almost suicidal. So, Leon, Elahan, and Valter stood back-to-back, fighting as one.

“Elahan! Hit them hard!” Leon shouted.

“Got it!”

Following Leon’s command, Elahan slammed the Holy Iron Breaker into the ground. The resulting shockwave hurled the Imperial Knights back, opening a sliver of space, and Valter’s Dragon-Shaped Sword filled that gap with fire.

Even in a full plate imbued with Aura Fire, the knights couldn’t withstand the blaze for more than a few seconds. They feared neither pain nor death, but dying meaninglessly was another matter. They backed off, waiting for the inferno to fade.

Seizing that moment, Leon unleashed his secret technique.

“Grand Chariot, North Star Cross.”

A radiant cross of light erupted, but only managed to tear through seven Imperial Knights. Even considering the absence of Sun Sword, it was an underwhelming result. At this rate, they were bleeding Aura faster than they could replenish it.

Panting, Leon turned. Cedric was already pressing Evans back, and Karen, her task complete, was sprinting toward them.

All right. Time to break this stalemate.

If they kept trading blows, they’d only wear themselves out. Their enemies just needed to stall them, maybe kill one or two Masters, and that would be enough for them to consider this a win. This lopsided battle had to be overturned.

“Everyone, follow my lead.”

Leon’s eyes blazed with dazzling light. Roughly seventy Imperial Knights remained. He needed to take down at least half to open a path forward.

El-Cid’s voice rang in his mind, teasing as ever.

—Think you can pull it off?

Leon grinned before giving his reply.

Of course!