Fzzzt-zzt-zzt.
The blade never found flesh.
A small screen of light, built from blue polygons, caught the point of the knife. Sparks sprayed off it in a steady stream, and still the steel would not go through.
Defensive Magic!
It was lucky the assassin had chosen a thrust instead of a slash. Defensive Magic concentrated on a single spot was exactly the right answer to force concentrated on a single point.
The man's footwork was far too fast for the eye to follow, and since he carried no Mana at all, Mana Perception offered no warning either.
As for Killing Magic, its path was too straight. It would miss and leave him wide open, and besides, Lugner knew perfectly well that Killing Magic had never been his strong suit.
Which was why, earlier in the fight, when he had turned the assassin's slash aside with a shield of blood, Lugner had deliberately left a smear of it clinging to the blade.
Through Blood Control Magic, through his own blood answering him, Lugner could read every movement the man made and every arc his weapons traced.
None of which the assassin knew.
A second killing blow had failed, and it shook something loose in him.
"My... turn now. And you're the one... who can't leave."
The office walls, the floor, the ceiling - every surface was streaked with Lugner's blood. The entire room had become his Blood Control Magic.
"Tch."
The assassin turned to withdraw and found the window sealed by a web of blood.
He tried to cut through it with his long knife, but the blood wrapped the steel and glued itself fast.
He let the knife go, produced two daggers from behind his back as if from nowhere, and prepared to close the distance again.
Facing him down, Lugner was at the same time trying to move the blood inside himself, to push the poison out. Unfortunately, there was no way for him to separate the toxin from the blood itself.
His body still swayed like something about to fall. If a poisoned dagger opened him up at close range, he might genuinely lose the strength to command himself, the magic would drop, and that would be the end.
Under the pull of Blood Control Magic, the ceiling and the floor sprouted a fine, hair-thin fur of blood spines, every one of them razor-sharp.
No matter how nimble the assassin was, a barrage that dense in a room that narrow was going to find him.
Half a dozen small holes punched through him at once. He swallowed the pain, twisted his arm around in time, swept the daggers, and snapped the spines off - at the cost of one arm.
"So it really is magic that manipulates blood. Spread across everything like this, at that kind of cost - how much blood do you have left? Or should I ask how much Mana?"
"Save... the speeches."
Seeing that the man could still shield his vitals even now, Lugner shifted into the stance that would call up all the blood scattered around the room again.
"Do you know why I started talking all of a sudden? I only wanted to pull at your attention. To break your train of thought."
Having more or less guessed Lugner's next move, the wounded assassin had already forced his way a little closer. His foot slammed down, and he burst forward faster than before, faster than anything he had shown yet. The floorboards cratered under him, a hole the size of a footprint.
The assassin could still go faster. But Lugner had not come unprepared.
The blood spilling from his wounds and pooling around him rose at his command, erupting into spikes right against the man's body.
The assassin ignored them. Skewered through, he kept coming, and the dagger drew closer and closer.
What Lugner had not expected was that the man, eyes gone red, would simply let go and hurl the dagger.
The distance was too short. Even as the blood spines tore through both of the assassin's legs, the thrown dagger buried itself in Lugner's shoulder before he could raise a guard.
The impact staggered him.
The Blood Control Magic wavered with him. The spines lancing through the assassin's legs melted back into liquid in an instant and spattered on the floor.
As if he had no nerves left at all, the ruined, hole-riddled man reached behind his back with both hands - and came up with two fresh daggers.
His charge had lost its speed. He shuffled forward now, one dragging step at a time.
But Lugner was in worse shape. His body would barely move.
The moment the dagger reached his throat again, Lugner opened his mouth wide. With the last of his Mana he forced the mouthful of blood in his throat out, straight into the face of the man about to run him through.
"Agh! Agh! Agh!"
The daggers hit the floor. The assassin clawed at his own face, screaming, and his legs gave out under him. He dropped to his knees with a heavy thud. His head sank lower and lower until it nearly touched the boards, his spine curling further with every second, until at last he collapsed flat.
It was poisoned blood. Since he could not separate the toxin out, Lugner had simply used Blood Control Magic to deliver the poison and the blood together.
The venom that had been killing him turned out to be the best ally he had.
"Let's try it together, then... Human."
Watching the assassin's face rot away to bare white bone, the corner of Lugner's perpetually cold mouth lifted a fraction.
He could not have said why. His body was all but paralyzed by the poison still in him, and Lugner had always been the restrained, level-headed sort, yet something in him was leaping. Right then he wanted to throw his head back and shout:
Look. This is my (Blood Control) Magic.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
To be thorough, Lugner loosed a string of Killing Magic into the body on the floor, cutting off any possibility that the man was still alive.
His Mana was all but dry, barely enough to hold the wound at his neck closed. He tipped over and went down at last, arms and legs flung wide - sprawled like the character 大 (big) - and lay there dragging in air.
Both his palms, and the fountain pen still in one of them, had been dyed red.
The office was a wreck. Nothing left in it but two ragged, fading sounds of breathing.
"Demon... Race... die..."
Within the minute, the assassin's groaning stopped. He choked out the last of his curses in broken pieces, and then there was nothing.
"You got careless, Lugner."
The door creaked open and Nanoda stepped in. She had sensed something the moment Lugner began drawing on his Mana, and had come at once.
She had not intervened in the fight.
For all that Lugner had been serving as a lord, one of the very few Demon Race who had gone the administrative route, he had never once let his magic training slide.
And an assassin of that caliber made a fine whetstone for him.
Nanoda was certain of it now: Lugner had surpassed the average Demon Race general.
If the man hadn't ambushed him first, the fight might never have been this hard.
More than once she had wanted to step in, and each time she had held back. She had chosen instead to trust her subordinate - to trust what Qual and Jane had told her.
Lugner really had come a long way since his days under Aura. His temperament had changed a great deal too.
"Being a lord really is a high-risk occupation. I remember Aaron went through several assassination attempts himself. I was the one who came running to save him back then."
"Good work, Lugner. Can you still stand?"
"Sorry, boss. Looks like I'll have to take two days off."
Lugner shook his head against the floor. "I've embarrassed you. This is the first time in my life I've been in a state like this."
"No. Your opponent was genuinely strong. He was no ordinary man."
Nanoda walked over to the assassin's corpse. The face had been eaten away entirely by the poisoned blood. Craters torn open by Killing Magic. Wounds large and small, everywhere.
____
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