Eric, unlike Ethan, had spent far more of his life in personal training with a blade.

That much was obvious the moment their first exchange ended.

Summoners weren’t the only occupation in this world. Sword knights walked a parallel path, one built on physical conditioning and the refinement of combat instincts rather than the art of binding.

Eric had done both. The Lesser Drake was his summon, but the sword was his foundation, and the combination was not something Ethan had fully accounted for when he activated White Transit and closed the distance.

—woo

Eric slashed outward in a wide horizontal arc and his muscles flooded with energy, the kind of force that didn’t come from spells alone.

The impact caught Ethan across the guard he had managed to raise and sent him skidding backward, boots dragging lines in the pit floor, barely keeping his feet under him.

The recoil ran all the way up his arms.

Ethan swallowed the blood that had pooled in his mouth and kept his eyes forward.

’That strength....’

He had expected Eric to be strong. Son of the clan leader, top talent from the ritual, walking with the particular confidence of someone who had never needed to second-guess their own ceiling. He had expected strong.

He had not expected this.

His eyes moved quickly across Eric’s body while the distance was still between them.

The cuts were there.

Small ones. Thin lines running across his forearms, his shoulder, the side of his neck. Each one still weeping, the bleeding slow and persistent, the kind that didn’t respond to pressure or will. The moon blade’s passive effect was doing its work quietly in the background, exactly the way it was supposed to.

’It’s working.’

After their initial clash it had become clear very quickly that fighting Eric directly was not an option worth pursuing. His sword technique was trained. His physical output was unreasonable. Taking him head-on meant absorbing exactly the kind of exchange that had just sent Ethan across the floor.

So Ethan had stopped trying to match him.

He had switched to the moon blade instead, letting the treasured echo do the work that brute force couldn’t. Every graze. Every deflected cut that still grazed skin. Every moment Eric’s guard slipped by a fraction. Each contact was light, but the cumulative effect didn’t care about that.

The blood wasn’t stopping.

Eric’s face had gone pale around the edges in a way that hadn’t been there when he first dropped into the pit. His movements were still sharp, still dangerous, but the color was leaving him by degrees and the intervals between his attacks had grown slightly longer.

Slightly.

Gritting his teeth, Eric suddenly pushed forward, closing the gap with a burst that covered the distance before Ethan could fully read it. His sword came up and arced downward in a flash of white light, the spell still running through it, radiating outward from the blade in visible pulses.

’Good.’

Ethan moved the moment he read the angle.

He stepped sideways and Vlad replaced him in the same instant, the exchange clean, Ethan pulling the crossbow from his coat and swinging it toward the giant salamander in the same motion, sending several bolts in rapid succession into its flank.

A distraction, nothing more.

Vlad extended one hand and caught Eric’s arcing sword with his fist.

The impact rang through the pit.

The momentum stopped.

Before Eric could redirect, Vlad’s boot drove into his chest with the full weight of an S-ranked summon behind it.

Even with his training. Even with his conditioning. Even with the sword knight foundation built across years of personal instruction, Eric could not compare to what Vlad was. The gap wasn’t technique. It was category.

Puuu

He coughed out a mouthful of blood, the sound of it wet and harsh in the enclosed space of the pit. His feet left the ground for a moment before the impact drove him backward.

His mind was still working even through that.

He pushed the drake’s direction through the link before he had fully landed, the command moving through the bond the instant he needed it to. The salamander broke off from Ethan’s bolts and drove itself hard into Vlad, its full body weight catching the summon and throwing him sideways into the pit wall and out through the undergrowth beyond.

The sound of it carried.

Then silence.

’The damage has already been done.’

Ethan turned the crossbow back toward Eric without rushing.

Two direct hits from a summoned beast. The first had been the kick, and the second the drake’s initial push earlier in the exchange. Taking either of those was a serious matter for most people. Taking both, in succession, in a fight that had already been bleeding him out steadily, was a different conversation entirely.

Eric’s chest had caved slightly on the left side.

He was still standing.

"Death is only a release."

Ethan said it without particular feeling behind it and raised the crossbow, releasing a heavy succession of bolts in Eric’s direction.

—shuu

—shuu

—shuu

—shuu

They came out in rapid succession, the momentum behind each one enough to churn the air, dust rising from the floor of the pit as the impacts accumulated around Eric’s position. A cloud of it rose between them and sat there, thick enough to obscure the far end of the hollow.

Ethan held the crossbow level and waited.

The dust settled.

Eric stood in the center of it, covered in a resplendent glow of light that was still holding, his outline visible through the haze, arms at his sides, sword still gripped. Bloodied. Caved in on one side. Pale in a way that was progressing rather than static.

Still standing.

"You’re really hard to kill."

Ethan said it plainly, because it was true and he saw no reason to dress it differently. He looked at Eric across the settling dust. Caved chest. Blood running freely from a dozen small cuts that hadn’t clotted. The light coating him was doing something, holding what was left of his output together, but it was costing him.

Everything was costing him now.

"Hmp!!"

Eric didn’t answer with words.

He pushed forward again instead, sword rising, the light around him surging with the movement as he drove toward Ethan across the floor of the pit.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

At the same time, elsewhere in the forest.

A group of four rode through the trees, moving toward the sounds carrying through the undergrowth from the distance. The clashing. The impact of something heavy against the pit walls. The occasional sharp report of bolts leaving a crossbow in rapid succession.

Looking closer at the group, the ratio was wrong in a way that registered before anything else did.

Human to beast.

The number didn’t add up the way it did for a normal summoner group.

This was naturally because these were tier 8 summoners.