The knife was different from the mechanism. The intent it carried felt closer to something human, faster, shaped by instinct rather than engineering. Lucien found that marginally more interesting and significantly more dangerous.
Daniel came forward without preamble. No feint, no setup. Just direct and clean, the knife moving in tight controlled lines that gave nothing away until the last possible moment. Lucien caught the first exchange on his guard, the second on a step back, and the third on nothing because he had already moved off the line before it arrived.
The Haki flickered. He had pushed it a fraction too hard on that last read and it went soft for a moment, Daniel's intent blurring at the edge. He defaulted to eyes and instinct and took a cut across the forearm for it. Shallow. Present.
He reset. Let the Haki settle back to a level he could hold without forcing it.
Cael's voice, dry and unhurried somewhere in the back of his head. It is not a tool you pick up. It is a state you maintain. The moment you grip it, you have already lost the thread.
He stopped gripping it.
The next exchange was cleaner. Daniel's combinations had a shape to them, the same structure repeating with minor variations, and once Lucien had the shape the Haki filled in the gaps without being asked. He started reading two moves ahead instead of one.
He took the fourth combination on the guard deliberately, let it land harder than was comfortable, and used the contact to confirm what he had already read. The follow-up came exactly where he expected it.
He stepped off the line. Let it pass wide.
Then something changed.
Daniel pulled back further than the combination required. His free hand went to his coat. Lucien felt the intent shift, sharper and wider than the knife had been, something that wasn't designed for one person.
He moved before he fully understood why.
The concussive blast caught the container stack to his right and split it open, the force throwing debris across the cleared space. Lucien had already put two rows between himself and the point of detonation, ears ringing, dust settling over everything in a slow pale curtain.
He looked back through the haze.
Daniel stood where he had been, coat open now, and the inside of it was considerably more populated than the outside had suggested. Compact canisters along the left lining. A second knife sheathed at the hip. Something at the small of his back that Lucien couldn't identify from this distance but felt wrong in the way things felt wrong when they were built to end arguments quickly.
A Major in the Germa Army. Of course.
Lucien exhaled and adjusted his grip on the sword.
Daniel came through the dust without hurrying, a canister already in his free hand, knife in the other. He threw the canister wide to Lucien's left. Lucien felt the intent on it immediately, not the canister itself but what it was meant to do, push him right, into the angle Daniel was already adjusting toward.
He went left instead. Straight through the canister's arc.
The blast clipped his shoulder and sent him into the nearest container hard enough to ring his teeth together. He pushed off it before he had fully registered the impact and closed the distance while Daniel was still adjusting his line.
Inside the knife's range now. That was better.
Daniel adapted faster than expected, switching from the knife to a short telescoping baton that came from his sleeve in a single motion, the reach advantage re-established before Lucien could capitalise on the gap. Two strikes came fast, both aimed at his sword arm, clinical and deliberate. Lucien took the first on the forearm, deflected the second, and felt the numbness spreading up toward his elbow.
Smart. Methodical. Disarm first, finish after.
He switched the sword to his left hand.
Daniel paused for a fraction of a second, recalibrating. Lucien used it, pressing forward with two quick cuts that forced Daniel back toward the desk. The man blocked the first on the baton and took the second across the ribs, the blade kept flat, not because Lucien was being generous but because the angle didn't give him the edge.
Daniel didn't make a sound.
He reached behind him with his free hand and Lucien felt the intent spike hard and immediate. He threw himself sideways without looking. The device at the small of Daniel's back discharged in a directed burst, a focused pressure wave that shattered the desk behind where Lucien had been standing and sent wood fragments across the room like shrapnel.
The lamp went with it. The cleared section dropped into near-darkness, lit only by the thin light coming through the ajar door at the far end.
Lucien landed on his hands and came up fast, sword extended, trying to locate Daniel in the dark.
The Haki found him before his eyes did. There. Seven feet. Closing fast.
He sidestepped. Daniel passed close enough that Lucien caught the sleeve of his coat, used the contact to redirect him, and drove an elbow into the back of his neck as he went past.
Daniel stumbled. Stayed up.
He was breathing harder now. So was Lucien.
They circled each other in the dim, neither committing, both reading. Lucien kept the Haki open, steady, not gripping it. Daniel's intent was more fragmented now, less pattern and more response, the methodical system beginning to show its edges.
Lucien moved first.
He came in on the right, felt Daniel preparing to respond to the sword, and shifted the attack left midway through, using the half-second of misread to get inside the baton's range. Daniel brought his knee up. Lucien took it on the thigh instead of where it was aimed and used the impact to drive his forehead into Daniel's nose.
Bone gave.
Daniel's head went back. Lucien followed him down, got a hand on the wrist holding the knife before it could find an angle, and drove the pommel of his sword into Daniel's sternum once, twice, a third time until the arm holding the knife stopped having anything useful to offer.
The knife hit the floor.
Daniel reached for the coat lining with his remaining functional hand. Lucien caught the wrist, pinned it, and looked at him.
Daniel looked back. Blood on his face. Breathing in short increments. Still not making a sound.
"How many more?" Lucien asked.
Daniel didn't answer. The intent that came through the Haki wasn't words, just direction, a last reach toward something in the coat lining that Lucien couldn't identify and didn't intend to find out about.
He brought the pommel down across Daniel's temple, hard and final.
The warehouse went still.
Lucien sat back on his heels and stayed there for a moment, listening to the dust settle and his own breathing even out. His forearm was bleeding steadily. His shoulder felt wrong in a way that would matter more tomorrow. The thigh where the knee had connected would bruise purple by morning.
He looked at Daniel. Chest rising in shallow increments.
He stood, cleaned his blade, and looked at the ruined space around him. The desk was gone. Two container stacks had been split open. Whatever the facility had been storing was now scattered across the floor in pieces.
He turned toward the side exit.
He didn't see it.
In the far corner of the warehouse, half-concealed behind the surviving container row, a small Den Den Mushi sat fixed to the wall on a bracket. Its eyes were open. Had been open the entire time, the small shell angled to cover the cleared section, the desk, and most of the fight.
The line was live.
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Remember 1 Chapter For Every 50 Power Stones.