Kaelith noticed the flexing muscles of the surrounding soldiers and their tight grips on their hilts; they were just waiting for a signal to attack. If I keep bickering with this captain, maybe I can buy a little more time, he thought to himself.
At that moment, Captain Bojr's mocking voice echoed across the deck.
"Kaelith... Kaelith... Kaelith," he said, shaking his head. "Your appearance promised far more than that limited intellect you harbor. Honestly, I couldn't believe you were capable of making such idiotic decisions." An arrogant laugh spilled from his lips.
"What kind of decisions?" Kaelith asked. His tone was as cold and expressionless as an iceberg in the open sea.
Captain Bojr replied with a shrug. "First, strangle one of my crew to death, then sever my first mate's head from his body, and as if that wasn't enough, go and try to free the prisoners I'm supposed to deliver... But I won't deny your credit," he said, the dark gleam in his eyes becoming more pronounced. "Thanks to you, I am stronger than I've ever been."
As Kaelith tried to decipher what the man meant, Bojr's face twisted in disgust.
"Look at your face, Kaelith. Pathetic. Still, I must thank you for all you've done. Now, I will offer you as a flawless sacrifice to my god!" He raised his arm into the air and roared: "Attack!"
The moment the order was given, two archers drew their bows and released their deadly arrows at Kaelith. Deftly parrying the air-cleaving arrows with blood magic, Kaelith realized a dangerous truth. If I keep standing in front of the door, the arrows I deflect will hit the prisoners inside, or Boran.
He dashed forward to change his position, feinting a counterattack. They've placed two swordsmen at the very tips of the crescent formation so they can immediately intercept an incoming attack, he analyzed the situation. If I keep expending my blood magic at this rate, my power might run out at the most critical moment.
Swiftly drawing his daggers, he lunged forward for close-quarters combat. The soldier facing him yelled, "We weren't born yesterday!" and met Kaelith's strike with his thick sword, trying to throw him back with all his might. With an agile leap backward, Kaelith evaded the blow. There are more than ten of them here. If I can't even take down a single soldier easily, we're in trouble.
When he sprang back to his feet, sword strikes began raining down on him. While one soldier tried to thrust into his gut, another swung aiming for his neck. Forced to parry both the swords and the incoming arrows from afar simultaneously, Kaelith was virtually cornered. Right at that moment, the door behind him shattered with a massive crash.
Boran burst out of the darkness like a lifeline.
"YOU KEPT REPEATING HOW STRONG YOU ARE!" roared Boran. His voice resembled thunder. "I HOPE YOU REALLY ARE!"
Encouraged by the path he opened, the other prisoners slowly began to emerge onto the deck. Boran's eyes instantly locked onto the largest man on the deck, Tergha, who wielded a colossal warhammer.
"What's your name, bastard?" Boran grinned. "When I kill you, I'll take that hammer from your dead hands."
Without uttering a single word, Tergha threw his massive frame at Boran. He swung his heavy hammer ruthlessly, bringing it down on Boran's stomach. Instead of staggering from this bone-shattering blow, Boran looked at the blood trickling from his mouth and burst out laughing.
"AH HAHAHA! BLOOD... MY BLOOD IS FLOWING, BEAUTIFUL! It's a great honor to fight someone as strong as you!"
Before he even finished speaking, he drove his iron-hard fist straight into Tergha's cheek. Tergha didn't even look like he felt the impact. He raised his hammer high, moving once more to crush Boran's head. However, with an inconceivable reflex, Boran caught Tergha's hammer-wielding wrist in mid-air.
"DON'T TRY TO FINISH THIS SO FAST, BIG BOY, WE'RE JUST STARTING TO HAVE FUN!" Boran roared, and as he firmly gripped the hammer, he drove a heavy kick into Tergha's gut. Thrown backward, Tergha was forced to leave his weapon in Boran's hands.
Watching this savage clash from the corner of his eye, a faint smile appeared on Kaelith's lips. Yes, exactly like this, Boran. You are exactly the kind of comrade I've been looking for.
But this brief distraction cost him dearly. The soldier named Rajan capitalized on Kaelith's opening and plunged his sword deep into his abdomen.
"You shouldn't take your eyes off your opponent, Kaelith!" Rajan laughed.
Despite the cold steel in his gut, Kaelith didn't show the slightest sign of pain. He looked at Rajan with cold, dead eyes. "Rajan... It's amusing you even think such feeble attacks could affect me."
As Kaelith spoke, the deep wound in his stomach exhibited an anomaly under the influence of blood magic, beginning to close on its own. Flesh and veins knitted together in seconds, as if they had never been severed. Seeing the man he had impaled mere seconds ago miraculously heal, Rajan recoiled in terror.
That pure shock on Rajan's face satisfied Kaelith. "You should have acted as if nothing happened. Now you've brought about your own end."
Kaelith lunged like a ghost with daggers in both hands. When he swung his right dagger straight at Rajan's head, Rajan raised his sword, thinking he had blocked the blow and saved himself. But Kaelith was a master of dual-wielding combat; the dagger in his left hand had already slashed deeply across Rajan's defenseless torso.
In a desperate bid for survival, Rajan gathered all his strength and tried to counterattack, but Kaelith was much faster. Flowing like water, he slipped under the blade and sliced Rajan's exposed left shoulder. As Rajan staggered and tried to raise his sword again, Kaelith was already behind him, leaving a rapid succession of bloody lines across his back. With every strike, Kaelith's speed multiplied.
"How... How are you getting so fast?" Rajan wheezed, his knees trembling from blood loss.
Instead of answering, Kaelith merely offered a mocking laugh. Every deadly arc his daggers traced in the air brought Rajan one step closer to the end. With final desperation, Rajan mustered his remaining strength and made a hopeless lunge at Kaelith's chest.
"Too slow," whispered Kaelith. Swiftly ducking under his opponent, he unleashed his finishing technique: The Lotus Kiss.
The flawless silvery arcs carved by the daggers converged at a single point, and Rajan's head severed from his shoulders, rolling across the deck seconds before his lifeless body collapsed to the floor.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Boran and Tergha's superhuman struggle raged on. Tergha had stood up without a word and was charging at Boran like a bull. Boran pulled back the massive hammer he had seized and brought it down on Tergha's chest with all his might. Though the sound of cracking ribs was heard, Tergha unflinchingly closed the distance and clamped his massive hands around Boran's neck.
Boran's breath caught instantly. With the distance closed, he had no room to swing the hammer. In retaliation, to break free from Tergha's choking grip, he began raining merciless punches onto the man's face, jaw, and nose with his free hands. It was like a life-or-death battle between two savage bears; one squeezing the life force out of his opponent, while the other threw bone-shattering punches.
Starved for air, Boran's strength drained with every passing second. Tergha's face, meanwhile, had turned into a pool of blood from the blows; his brow was busted, his jaw shattered. Both had pushed past their physical limits. With one last hope, Boran clasped his hands together and began hammering them down on Tergha's head like a sledgehammer.
"SON OF A BITCH! DIE! DIE!" roared Tergha, digging his fingers in even deeper, yet Boran continued striking like a silent killing machine.
Ultimately, Tergha's consciousness gave out under the heavy blows; his hands went slack, and his giant frame slumped to the deck. Boran, too, collapsed to his knees, his last bit of strength spent, wheezing desperately to draw air into his lungs.
Boran's epic victory tore the fear from the veins of the prisoners cowering in the corner. "Let's kill them! We can do this! Their numbers are dropping!" war cries began to rise across the deck.
However, this wind of hope was cut down like a knife by the dark and deadly aura that suddenly descended upon the deck. The oppressive power radiating from Captain Bojr was at least three times stronger than what Aektal had emitted. This heavy sensation, making even breathing difficult, instantly shattered the prisoners' zeal to fight.
"I," Bojr began, his voice deep enough to drown out all the sounds of battle. "Am among the chosen ones meant to enact the earthly plans of Vorgul, the God of Death. Pitiful mortals like you cannot impede our sacred purpose. I am the inevitable."
As if completely ignoring Bojr's divine tirade, Kaelith cut him off mid-sentence by launching a blood dagger straight at him. The dagger cleaved the air but shattered to dust against an invisible shield, similar to the one in his fight with Aektal. This time, it wasn't deflected; it was obliterated.
Kaelith leapt back in shock. Bojr had destroyed his blood magic without lifting a finger, and was now letting out a grating laugh that echoed across the deck.
"Kaelith, ah Kaelith... What a massive fool I was to think you were smart. In truth, we wanted to make you one of our disciples too. Had you not tried to rescue these prisoners after killing Aektal, you would have already earned my favor. You possessed that flawless cold-bloodedness the god of death desires. But this disloyalty has greatly annoyed him. Now, he wants your soul and your will personally. And I will be the one to offer him that will! Can you imagine the reward I will receive for this?"
Kaelith gritted his teeth. I'm going to have to exhaust those damned techniques of mine again. Condensing the blood in his hand, he shaped a new dagger, keeping his other hand in a defensive stance against any dark magic that might come his way.
Without giving Kaelith a chance to breathe, Bojr lunged at him with extraordinary speed and thrust his sword straight for his heart. Though Kaelith managed to parry at the last second, Bojr's blade had come down with a power so heavy and abnormal it made the very air scream.
This guy definitely doesn't possess the strength of a normal human right now. It's impossible for a mere cleric to execute such a sword technique.
When Bojr, without losing momentum, swung his sword again at a reverse angle, Kaelith was forced to sacrifice the blood dagger in his right hand to parry the blow. Just as I suspected... Either his prayers are designed to neutralize my blood magic, or this man has an unstoppable power.
When Bojr's free hand began to glow with a deadly light, just like Aektal's had, Kaelith realized the danger and instantly dove to his left. Bojr was ruthlessly rubbing the power gap between them in his face.
"Had you jumped even a second later, you'd be a corpse right now, boy," Bojr smiled. First, he unleashed that devastating beam attack from his left hand; the moment Kaelith dodged, he reached Kaelith's landing spot with unbelievable agility and brought his sword down toward his neck.
"You're too slow, Bojr," Kaelith said, and with a sudden maneuver, hooked Bojr's sword with his own dagger and disarmed him. Stripped of control, the sword slid off the deck and sank into the dark waters of the ocean.
As Kaelith looked at his disarmed opponent with a proud expression as if he'd won the battle, the arrogance on Bojr's face did not fade.
"I don't draw my power from a simple piece of steel!" bellowed Bojr. "I DRAW MY POWER FROM THE SUPREME GOD VORGUL, YOU FOOLISH CREATURE!"
As Bojr spread his arms wide, a colossal scythe, exuding the stench of rot and death, materialized out of nothingness. This weapon, where deep green and blood-red auras intertwined, trembled as if it were a demonic entity with a consciousness of its own.
Roaring, Bojr swung the scythe through the air, cleaving three people around him in half in a single strike, regardless of whether they were soldiers or prisoners. The scythe practically devoured the spilled blood mid-air, growing even larger as the power it radiated intensified.
This scythe isn't divine at all, Kaelith thought in horror. It just fed on people's blood and grew stronger. What kind of freakish monsters are these? The deep green aura of the blood-fed scythe was completely replaced by dark crimson.
"Your turn has come, Kaelith!" shouted Bojr. "I am sending you, just like everyone else here, to my god Vorgul, into eternal torment. May your fire be plentiful!"
From his left hand, Bojr fired the largest and fastest death ray Kaelith had ever seen. With incredible reflex, Kaelith dodged to the side, narrowly escaping death by a hairsbreadth; the beam instantly reduced a soldier standing right behind him to ashes.
However, the moment Kaelith planted his feet, thinking he had evaded the danger, he saw that Bojr was already waiting for him at that exact spot. Time seemed to stop.
"You're done, Kaelith. Farewell."
The colossal scythe plunged into Kaelith's chest with merciless sharpness. The clothes on Kaelith's chest instantly rotted away to nothing, while his skin began to take on a deadly deep green hue. Everyone on deck watched in sheer terror as Kaelith, whom they thought invincible, fell in this manner.
As Kaelith's consciousness slowly faded, the sounds of the world turned into a hum. As his vision went black, from within the bottomless darkness enveloping his mind, he heard a single, echoing voice that made his soul tremble:
"YOU ARE WEAK!!!"