CHAPTER 379: TWO V/S ONE (1)

Third Person’s POV

The battlefield fell silent as the two vanished beyond.

The sun blazed overhead, merciless and unrelenting, and yet on her chest the icy knife refused to melt, as its blue core pulsed faintly with malevolent light while the black spiderweb like streaks became even darker, making her face paler by every second.

Only after an hour under the glaring sun did the blade dissolve into mist, and scatter into a wave of blackish blue powder.

But its corruption lingered as the demoness’s chest remained webbed with blackened veins that spread like spider cracks across porcelain, her face pale as bone, and lips stained an unnatural shade of blue.

Each shallow breath rattled in her chest like a dying ember clinging to ash.

Her brother looked down at her, his shoulders heavy with grief.

A long and hollow sigh escaped him, and seemed to carry with it the weight of defeat.

He knew there was nothing for him in this trial anymore; forget about victory, he had effectively lost his chance for the opportunities this trial had, like that magical tree.

If his sister’s life was to be saved, his only path lay far from this cursed trial.

He lifted her gently into his arms.

His gaze flickered once more to the towering tree where Ethan had stood moments before, and a storm of hatred surged in his chest, but entwined with that hate was something worse.

It was the fear of that man whose eyes were darker than any abyss he had ever glimpsed.

Suppressing the trembling in his hands, he clenched his jaw and vanished into the shadow of the distant forest, leaving behind only dust and silence.

---

Meanwhile, in the clearing, the instant the sibling duo disappeared, a strange, suffocating silence fell like a heavy shroud.

Even the rowdy werewolves, who had moments ago jeered and clamored like bloodthirsty spectators, had gone still.

A few of them trembled, unable to stop recalling how loudly they had mocked earlier, only to realize now how close they might have come to catching the icy flicker of Ethan’s gaze.

But they were fortunate indeed, as his eyes were fixed elsewhere.

Ethan stood poised on the branch with an expression as calm as stone, and his eyes were thoughtful.

He looked not at his enemies but upwards, towards the endless sky, and beyond it, towards the looming silhouette of the black castle in the distance.

Looking at the pure blue sky, two threads of thought were intertwining within his mind.

The first had struck him the moment he had loosed his surprise knife at the woman, as at that moment, he had felt a subtle ripple brushing against his senses.

He had immediately recognized it to be a fluctuation high above, and it had been like the faintest tremor on still water, though it failed to escape his keen senses.

A prickling awareness crawled over his skin, and he realized that it was an undeniable sensation of being observed, watched, and most likely being judged.

Yet not a flicker of that suspicion touched his face.

His gaze simply lingered on the fortress far away, casually, and he pretended that he had merely glanced at the sky in passing, as he understood, with an unshakable certainty, that unseen eyes were scrutinizing this trial.

He exhaled softly and shook his head inwardly as a thought passed in his mind,

’Let them watch; they can’t do anything to me anyway, and

he had no time to waste on their games for now.’

The second thought, however, was far sharper, and it ignited something ruthless in him.

’It’s about time I teach those punks and bitches a proper lesson... and take Velcy back.’

His crimson gaze swept downward and met the pole like Alrin’s sharp eyes and, beside him, the long-haired, deceptively delicate werewolf girl with her sharp platinum-gray irises focused on him.

For the briefest heartbeat, a flicker of wordless understanding sparked between the three of them.

It was an unspoken recognition that the next exchange would be the deciding factor, and none of the three wanted to retreat from this fight and give up.

They had too much pride and belief in their abilities to do that.

Suddenly, two short knives were conjured in Ethan’s hands, their edges dancing with intermittent flashes of dark blue light, as if frost and shadow quarreled across their surfaces.

Without any hesitation or wasting any time, he bent his knees and leapt.

The branch splintered beneath him, and an instant later, a small, nearly invisible white claw sliced clean through the air where his heart had been, while a jagged, brown, bony spur erupted upward from below and skewered the crown of the tree, or to be exact the point where he had stood.

And if Ethan had been even a heartbeat slow, he would have been impaled.

Instead, he twisted mid-air in a smooth flip, his black clothes fluttering behind him.

As he descended, his arms moved with deadly precision.

The first knife tore through the air like a silent assassin, and curved not towards where Alrin stood, but where he would be in the next instant.

As Alrin moved to dodge Ethan’s attack instinctively, his brown eyes widened in disbelief as he realized that the blade seemed to anticipate his evasive movement and was moving exactly in the place he would be in the next moment.

And what angered him was that he had already poised his mana and his body’s momentum in that direction, and now suddenly changing his motion would undoubtedly cause him to sustain internal injuries and extreme discomfort.

But remembering the fate of the blond demon girl just moments before being stabbed by that knife, he clenched his teeth and forced his body to a halt.

His mana roiled like a storm in his body, and many of his mana veins cracked and blood started pouring down his nose, but he had dodged that deadly knife by a hair’s breadth.