The Bloodthirsty Asura (3)
“His aura looks like it’s gone rotten.”
Launching aura from a weapon consumed a staggering amount. In the West, doing so was considered half-mad. When your reserves were already meager, wasting them on a gamble meant you’d have nothing left when it truly mattered.
William leaned aside, letting the flying blade aura pass, then fixed his gaze on the direction it had come from.
“Blood… more blood…”
A hoarse, eerie voice slithered through the wind and into his ears.
He’s lost it.
The bushes rustled. A ragged man stepped into view.
Clothes soaked through with blood. Eyes where every capillary had burst. And an ominous aura clinging to him like a second skin.
Demonic possession? Or is it a devilish art?
Hard to say which, but one thing was certain: the man was staring at him with eyes brimming with concentrated killing intent. William met that gaze and spoke.
“Hye-ryeong. Tell Elder Baek a demonic head has appeared here.”
“Yes! Uncle, do your best!”
If the man could hurl blade aura, he was no opponent she could face. She shot off without another word, light footwork carrying her away in a flurry of motion.
Maybe it was the noise she made, but the lunatic’s eyes flicked toward her.
“Woman…”
“Instead of staring at her, how about minding your own neck?”
William stepped forward slowly, cutting off the man’s line of sight, and reset his stance.
“Westerner’s blood…”
The man adjusted his grip on the massive blade and layered fresh red blade aura over it. The weapon pulsed with greedy light as it leveled at William.
Judging by how oversized that blade is, he must rely on brute-force blade techniques.
As if reflecting its wielder’s savage nature, the thick blade scattered crimson energy and pointed straight at William’s heart. The intent to kill was unmistakable.
William studied the man with calm, sunken eyes.
Nothing but scratches. If he really wiped out the patrol squad, he must have burned through a lot.
Just like stamina, aura was a finite resource. Even in the Central Plains, where people generally held more aura than Westerners, flinging blade aura like that would have taken a brutal toll.
Unless he was a master or a young genius who treated spiritual herbs like rice, it would have been perfectly normal for him to be too exhausted to swing a sword properly by now. The louder and messier the fight, the fiercer the drain on both stamina and aura.
Yet William refused to believe the man was tired.
Skilled warriors ration their strength. A lunatic possessed by demonic frenzy pours everything into every single strike.
William knew lunatics well. The madness of the battlefield could turn even ordinary men into monsters. He had watched comrades lose themselves to that frenzy, carving through enemies until their own heads flew off. He had also ended the lives of countless foes who had fallen to the same berserk rage.
There had even been a time when he himself had been stained by that madness, butchering enemies without thought. At least in this land, no one understood lunatics better than he did.
The smartest move would be to avoid engaging him altogether…
If William simply ran, the man would eventually exhaust himself and drop dead. The lunatic’s wounds were too severe to ignore; once his energy ran dry, collapse was inevitable.
But if the target switched to Hye-ryeong, things would get troublesome. William had never learned light footwork. He couldn’t chase down a fleeing opponent.
A knight does not show his back to the enemy.
To turn away from a foe was to abandon what a knight was sworn to protect. So he held his sword steady, not a flicker of hesitation, and waited for the lunatic’s attack.
Unless he could take the head in a single stroke, rash moves against a madman were forbidden.
“Give me your blood…”
With a voice like metal scraping bone, the lunatic closed in. William watched the path of the blade and angled his longsword to meet it.
The full-power swing slid harmlessly along the smooth face of the blade. No matter how hard he struck, unless the difference in raw power was overwhelming, the laws of physics favored the rational fighter.
The instant the blade slammed into the ground, William drove his pommel into the lunatic’s forehead. A clean counter. Any ordinary martial artist would have been finished right there.
But William never expected the demonic head to fall so easily. If he went down that pathetically, he wouldn’t deserve the name lunatic. As predicted, the man rolled aside and evaded the follow-up.
Naryeotagon. The Lazy Donkey Roll.
Any self-respecting martial artist would be scorned just for attempting it. Yet the lunatic used the move without the slightest shame, purely on instinct.
This is exactly why lunatics are such a pain.
They didn’t care about face or reputation. They moved only as their instincts demanded. When the gap in skill wasn’t too wide, few opponents were harder to handle.
Seizing the initiative was difficult because their reckless movements could drag you into their rhythm, and they sensed life-threatening attacks with eerie precision, dodging even if it meant rolling in the dirt. They minimized damage from blows they could afford to take, then went straight for the kill.
Pure survival instinct. Only death could stop a demon-possessed lunatic.
That was why William made no attempt to press the attack. If he simply endured, the man would burn himself out and collapse on his own.
He adjusted his grip on the longsword and assumed a high guard, ready for the nameless demonic head’s next move.
A heavy downward chop. A technique a properly trained warrior would rarely use. But the lunatic seemed to have forgotten every lesson he’d ever learned and simply brought the blade down with raw power.
If William blocked it head-on, the sword and his body would both be split in two. But he was not foolish enough to meet a strike like that directly.
Once again the blade slid along his sword.
The opening appeared exactly as expected. Feeling the weight along his arm, William rotated the blade he had deliberately kept at an angle. The attack, having lost the hilt it was supposed to crash into, slammed into the ground and ruined the lunatic’s balance.
William thrust the tip of his sword into the man’s forearm and immediately retreated.
It wasn’t fatal, but it was a wound that would hamper movement.
Not sure if I severed the tendon properly.
Even a lunatic was still human. Cut the muscle and tendons, and eventually he wouldn’t be able to move.
William intended to carve away at the man slowly, the way one peels an apple. Tire him out faster so he would die on his own.
“Blood… not enough…”
“What are you, a vampire?”
William watched with open disgust as the man rose, blood dripping from his right arm. Without any change in expression, the lunatic wiped the blood from his arm with his hand, then licked it from his fingers.
A common symptom among the mad. An obsession with blood.
“Blood…!”
The man charged again. William met him in the Ox Guard stance.
Five steps.
Red blade aura erupted from the lunatic’s weapon once more. A full foot of it rose above the blade, writhing with murderous intent as though it would destroy anything it touched.
William answered by coating his own blade in a thin layer of aura. Compared to the opponent’s, it was so faint it was hard to tell whether it was even there.
It looked pitifully weak against that powerful blade aura, but William knew better than anyone that simply pouring more aura in did not make it stronger. In the end, technique decided victory, not raw power. Strength without technique meant nothing.
Here it comes.
He slid his right foot slightly forward.
Three steps.
Like an executioner delivering a beheading, the lunatic’s blade left red afterimages as it streaked toward William’s neck. A slash worthy of the phrase “flesh-rending, bone-severing.”
Yet the idea of giving flesh to take bone was ultimately a mutual-destruction tactic. Fail to take the bone, and you were left with nothing but a bad trade where only your own flesh was cut.
William’s sword, tip lowered, received the thick blade. The clashing red energy rampaged as if trying to devour the blue, shoving against William’s aura.
But the aura covering his longsword simply refused to entertain it. It held firm like a locked gate, silently enduring the assault. Then William’s sword tilted diagonally once more.
True power only mattered if your opponent met it. William had never intended to engage in a contest of strength.
The moment the blade slid again, he gripped the longsword with one hand, drew a dagger from his belt with the other, and hurled it.
The lunatic twisted to avoid the unexpected throw, but he couldn’t stop it from burying itself in his stomach.
A trick I used on poorly armored opponents. Never thought I’d need it here again.
The lunatic staggered back and ripped the dagger free. Blood began pouring from the wound.
“Blood…”
Yet he wore a mad grin as though he hadn’t even noticed the injury. He began drawing every last ounce of energy from his dantian.
“Kill…”
The ground turned red. The lunatic’s body followed, drenched in an even deeper crimson glow. William clicked his tongue.
“What a bothersome final struggle.”
The man was going to die. William was certain of it. But this final attack would contain everything he had left.
The lunatic charged once more. It looked less like a human attack and more like a wild beast’s final lunge. William calmly leveled his sword at the man radiating energy from every pore.
“Let’s see what you can do.”
Life and death would be decided in a single exchange. Both of them? Or only one?
William poured more aura into his longsword, thicker this time. He had calculated that the minimal amount would no longer suffice.
The two warriors charged at each other.
A savage slash filled with nothing but murderous intent flew at William’s neck, carrying the fierce will to shatter any sword that tried to stop it.
William wrapped aura around his hand and grabbed the middle of his own blade. Unified with the aura, he met the blood-red blade head-on. Longsword and dao clashed, beginning another contest of strength.
This time the strike carried the man’s full power. The far more violent blow tore into the blue aura as though it would accept no defense whatsoever.
Then William spun, sword and body turning as one. The blade that had lost its target sliced through empty air, and the lunatic’s eyes snapped to William’s sword.
The blade raced toward his throat. The lunatic’s aura-covered hand seized the longsword. Blood sprayed.
No matter how much aura protected it, a hand could not fully stop a steel blade. Yet the lunatic ignored the wound, gripping the tip of the sword and opening his mouth.
“Sorry, but I don’t have any interest in being bitten by men.”
William released the sword, dropped his stance, and drove an aura-coated fist straight into the lunatic’s solar plexus before the man could react.
“Keuk…!”
“No matter how wildly you rampage, a blow to a vital point will still stop you cold.”
The weapon slipped from the lunatic’s grasp. William stepped back and watched as the man vomited blood.
“I’d like to make you pay for damaging my sword, but… that doesn’t seem likely now.”
“Uncle!”
“Hero Wi!”
“Ah, you’ve arrived?”
William turned away from the lunatic, who had collapsed in a growing pool of blood. There was no point paying attention to a dead man.
He looked at Hye-ryeong, who was staring up at him with worried eyes.
“It was taking too long, so I just finished him off.”