Infinite Mana - Chapter 173: Real Might (Thank you for your support, Nevan!) (Patreon)

The man moved, and Sieghart immediately understood that twenty meters had been giving him a completely false sense of security from the beginning.

One moment, the Aura user stood near the robbed wagon. In the next, the tip of his sword was already directly in front of Sieghart’s left eye, driven forward with enough speed that his vision failed to follow the distance between.

There had been no gradual acceleration that Sieghart could comfortably process. The man had simply driven his reinforced body forward through one explosive step, placing his legs, hips, torso, shoulder, and entire weight behind the point of the sword.

Sieghart activated Impulse entirely through instinct. Wind detonated beneath his feet and threw him backward while the sword continued through the space his skull had occupied only a fraction of a second earlier. Even while retreating, Sieghart raised his free hand and released a broad blast of Wind Magic. He sacrificed cutting power entirely, shaping the spell into a violent wall of air intended only to force the swordsman backward.

The blast struck the Aura user directly and sent dust exploding around his boots. His coat snapped violently behind him, but the man merely slid several meters before planting one foot and stopping himself.

Sieghart landed farther down the road and immediately raised his Mana Sword again. His heart was already beating harder, and the rush of adrenaline had erased every remaining trace of sleepiness from his body.

“That speed is insane.”

The Aura user smiled, returning his sword beside his right hip. His left hand extended forward again, recreating the strange stance as calmly as though the first attack had merely been a measurement.

Sieghart narrowed his eyes while replaying what had happened. The most disturbing part was not some mysterious sword technique or unusual Aura ability, but how brutally simple the attack had been.

The man had crossed twenty meters and stabbed forward. That was all. Yet if Sieghart had reacted even slightly slower, the weapon would have entered through his eye before Protection could prove whether it was capable of stopping the concentrated force behind the attack.

Sieghart had known since childhood that Aura users occupied the highest levels of human combat society. His own family had practically built its identity around that fact, treating weak magical talent as something embarrassing beside physical Aura potential. Knowing that intellectually was different from discovering that a trained Aura user could convert twenty meters of supposedly safe distance into less than a second of reaction time.

The man moved again.

This time, Sieghart did not watch the sword. He watched the rear foot.

The instant the swordsman’s heel compressed the dirt beneath him, Sieghart activated Impulse sideways. The Aura user crossed the road immediately afterward, his thrust cutting through empty air where Sieghart’s face had been.

That should have ended the exchange. It did not.

The man’s front foot planted, his hips rotated, and his sword changed direction almost immediately. The second thrust chased Sieghart before he had even completed his magically assisted movement.

Sieghart raised his Mana Sword and blocked. The impact exploded through his arm. His magical weapon survived the collision, but Sieghart himself was thrown sideways several meters before Wind Magic helped him correct his balance and land without rolling across the road.

Pain traveled from his wrist into his shoulder despite Protection absorbing part of the impact. Sieghart flexed his fingers and immediately understood why the sword’s narrow point was considerably more dangerous than its edge. The Aura user was concentrating almost everything into that point. His legs created acceleration, his waist transferred it, and his reinforced body remained aligned so completely that the sword became the final extension of his entire mass.

Getting cut would hurt. Getting stabbed like that might simply punch through whatever stood between the sword and the organs behind it.

“You’re quick for a mage.”

Sieghart rotated his aching wrist once.

“You’re annoyingly quick for someone carrying that much metal.”

The man laughed before moving again, and Sieghart noticed something else immediately. The Aura user had stopped treating the distance between them as meaningful because he already knew he could erase it whenever he wanted. Sieghart responded with two Glacial Fists rather than retreating immediately. One appeared near the man’s temple while another formed behind his forward knee, forcing him to deal with attacks originating from outside Sieghart’s physical position.

The Aura user tilted beneath the first fist and drove his heel backward through the second without losing momentum. Ice shattered around his leg while the swordsman continued toward Sieghart as though neither attack deserved respect.

Sieghart shifted backward, expecting another thrust. The sword moved differently. The man twisted his wrist during the approach and changed from the normal one-handed grip into a reverse grip, bringing the blade beneath his forearm before pulling it across Sieghart’s throat. The transition happened so smoothly that Sieghart recognized the danger only after the blade had already changed its angle. There was almost no visible windup and barely enough movement to warn him.

He threw his upper body backward. Steel crossed his throat. Protection flashed beneath his jaw as the edge scraped through the defensive layer, coming close enough that Sieghart felt the cold pressure of metal against his skin before the blade passed.

He immediately released another blast of Wind Magic from point-blank range. The swordsman finally gave ground, sliding backward while Sieghart used the opportunity to increase the distance between them. Sieghart touched his neck with two fingers.

No blood.

“That was unpleasant.”

“You saw that one late.”

The Aura user rotated the sword back into its ordinary grip without looking at his hand, suggesting the transition had been practiced enough times to become completely automatic. Sieghart’s heartbeat accelerated even further as he examined the man again. The problem was becoming clearer, and simple speed explained only part of what made the Aura user dangerous.

The swordsman knew exactly how to turn that speed into pressure. The initial thrust forced movement, the follow-up punished the direction of escape, and the reverse-grip slash targeted somebody expecting the weapon to continue along its original path.

There was no wasted movement. No dramatic flourish. Everything existed because it helped kill somebody faster.

Sieghart suddenly remembered why the stance had looked vaguely familiar. He had seen similar principles in videos, movies, fencing demonstrations, and martial-arts clips during his previous life, usually while procrastinating instead of doing something productive.

He still could not name the exact style, and perhaps there was no exact match. Human bodies still possessed the same joints here, however, which meant similar combat problems could naturally produce similar solutions.

That realization did not make dealing with it easier. The Aura user attacked again. Sieghart stopped trying to follow the sword once it accelerated. Instead, he focused on everything the man needed to do before the weapon could possibly move at that speed.

Feet.

Knees.

Hips.

Shoulders.

Grip.

Breathing.

The blade might become a blur, but the body preparing to launch it still needed to obey physical movement. Aura accelerated those movements enormously, yet it did not completely remove the preparation behind them. The swordsman’s rear heel shifted. Sieghart moved first.

Impulse threw him left, but rather than simply retreating, he fired a Wind Blade into the road where the Aura user intended to place his next foot. The compressed blade tore through packed earth and sent loose dirt upward. The man’s landing slipped only slightly, but that tiny disruption prevented him from putting his full body behind the next thrust.

Sieghart blocked it. The impact still hurt. This time, however, he remained standing. A Glacial Fist materialized beside the Aura user’s ribs and struck before he could completely recover his balance. Dense ice shattered against leather armor while frost spread outward from the impact.

The Aura user slid half a step. Sieghart smiled.

The swordsman looked toward the frozen patch on his armor before returning his attention to Sieghart. The amusement in his expression diminished, replaced by something considerably more focused. Then he attacked harder.

The next sequence came too quickly for Sieghart to separate comfortably into individual exchanges. A thrust toward his face transformed into another toward his chest before a third dropped sharply toward his abdomen. Sieghart avoided the first by twisting aside, knocked the second away with his Mana Sword, and failed to escape the third completely.

Protection flashed across his stomach. The sword did not penetrate, but the concentrated force behind the point hit like a hammer and launched Sieghart backward while emptying the air from his lungs.

He struck the road hard enough to crack the surface beneath his back. The Aura user was already approaching. Sieghart activated Impulse while still lying down, blasting himself across the road just before the sword stabbed downward where his heart had been.

The point entered the ground. Stone fractured around it. Sieghart recovered several meters away and immediately changed tactics. Matching the swordsman’s movement directly was obviously inefficient when he possessed an entire collection of spells designed to attack without requiring his body to keep pace.

Five Mana Swords appeared around Sieghart while several Glacial Fists formed between them. Instead of creating one powerful attack, he spread everything across different heights and directions to restrict the swordsman’s available movement. The Aura user entered the formation anyway.

His sword knocked the first Mana Sword aside before he ducked beneath the second. His free arm smashed through a Glacial Fist while another summoned weapon passed behind his shoulder after he shifted only half a step.

Sieghart sent a Wind Blade toward his legs. The man jumped. Sieghart had expected exactly that. A Glacial Fist appeared above the swordsman and hammered downward, forcing him to raise his left forearm before the construct shattered against the reinforced limb.

Sieghart fired another Wind Blade while the man remained airborne. This one finally connected. The compressed edge sliced across the outer layer of the swordsman’s coat, but the man twisted enough that the attack failed to reach the body underneath.

He landed smoothly. Sieghart used Impulse backward and reestablished distance before the next charge could begin. For several seconds, both fighters remained still. Sieghart breathed harder despite possessing infinite mana. His magical reserves remained completely untouched by exhaustion, but his muscles, joints, lungs, and nervous system were beginning to disagree with the pace of the battle.

Repeated Impulse casts placed strain through his ankles, knees, hips, and spine every time he changed direction violently. Blocking reinforced sword strikes sent pressure through his wrists and shoulders despite Protection.

The Aura user noticed.

“You can keep casting, but your body can’t keep moving forever.”

Sieghart rolled one aching shoulder.

“You figured that out quickly.”

“I’ve killed mages before.”

Sieghart’s expression cooled when he heard that. He had almost become too interested in the fight itself, enough that part of him momentarily forgot what kind of person had provided this opportunity.

Three headless bandits remained scattered behind him. An elderly couple remained beside their robbed wagon. Their wounded horse still bled into the grass because these men had apparently crippled the animal simply to prevent the wagon from escaping.

This was not training.

There would be no handshake afterward. Sieghart tightened Focus until the Aura user occupied nearly everything inside his attention.

“Then I’ll have to learn before my body gives out.”

The swordsman attacked again. Sieghart did not activate Impulse immediately. He watched the preparation.

Rear heel.

Knee.

Hip.

Shoulder.

Sword line.

The blade drove toward his face. Sieghart moved his head before the sword reached full acceleration. The tip passed beside his ear. For the first time since the fight began, Sieghart avoided the man’s full-speed thrust without using movement magic.

The realization sent another surge through his already racing heart. The Aura user noticed too. A Glacial Fist formed beneath the swordsman’s chin. He pulled backward before it connected, but the retreat placed him exactly where Sieghart wanted.

A Wind Blade crossed the new opening. The Aura user twisted. This time, he was not fast enough to avoid everything. A thin red line opened across his cheek. Blood appeared. The swordsman landed several meters away and touched the wound with his left thumb before staring at the red smear across his skin.

Sieghart raised his Mana Sword again.

“Twenty meters is starting to feel small...”