CHAPTER 93: SORRY

A casual flick—steel whispered. A hooded fighter’s head lifted away from his shoulders and spun into the night like a tossed coin. The body stood, uncertain, then crumpled. Gasps rippled around the circle, but momentum crushed fear; they pressed in harder, tighter, more disciplined. A

"Seven, Four, and Nine—rear assault! Three, Two, Six—flank and distract! I’ll pin him front with One—cripple the leg on any opening!" a hooded captain barked. His voice cut cleanly through the chaos. For a heartbeat, the formation breathed as one organism.

They moved. Rear blades flashed. Side palms slammed qi into the ground. Front-line pressure scissored in.

leon flowed between them like water refusing to be held. Feet whispered over grit. Daggers snuck and sang. Wherever he passed, space thinned; intent sharpened; a cold, gray kiss of Void grazed the world. Heads fell cleanly. Throats opened with neat, surgical lines. The masked face never changed.

Humans. His species. His hands didn’t tremble. The Dungeon had already burned hesitation out of him.

The tighter they coordinated, the faster they died. Panic fuzzed edges. Commands snarled into each other. Courage buckled. Soon only two hooded fighters remained—both breathing like bellows, both staring at the dead ring of their comrades turning to pixel-dust and drifting away.

They met each other’s gaze. A nod. Decision.

Bloodshot eyes. Bulging veins. A surge—life force burning like oil on a pyre.

They lunged at speed, their auras ballooning hot and ugly.

"Good," leon murmured, stepping into them. The first met a dagger that wasn’t there, only to find the other blade already carving under his ribs. The second chopped down on an afterimage and ate a gray arc of Void Slash to the neck. Silence. Then thumps. Then dust.

The clearing fell still. Only five remained—the cultivators who had captured him earlier. Their eyes were wide, reflecting the last motes of dissolving comrades. Evidence erased itself. The ground was clean by cruel design.

"We thought you’d bring a bandit," Nux said, tone unruffled, as if his world hadn’t just shifted a few inches. He wanted words. He wanted time.

"Bandit?" leon snorted. "Why would I need a gang when I can personally crush you?" His gaze slid to Nux, and that faint, unsettling essence coiling around the Baron’s son made leon’s skin prickle. What are you hiding, pretty boy? What affinity stains your qi? Why do you feel like a coiled blade wrapped in silk?

Nux frowned. No pill. No support. A space vortex at will. A mortal turned blade-dancer. Nothing added up. He filed the questions away and angled his head slightly. Two guards moved—steel out, qi humming.

"Don’t think it will be easy," one of them called. "Those mercs were weak. They don’t use qi; they wear it. We know better."

The bolder of the two slid a sword free. Qi poured along the spine, thick and clean, then bloomed into elemental flame. Heat punched the air. The temperature climbed several degrees; the night shimmered.

"This is real fire," the swordsman said, voice low and sure. "Feel it."

He came in hard—no flourish, just direct murder. Blade and body one line.

leon met the strike—barrier flashing up—

—and cracked. Like glass under a hammer. Threads splintered. Shards of light flew.

"Not as strong as I thought," the swordsman sneered.

The barrier snapped back, thicker, denser, mana layered and compressed. The second clash hit with a bell-tone clang that ran up bone. Sparks sprayed. The sword skated; the daggers bit. They traded in a staccato blur—angle, bind, slip, break, re-engage—neither ceding ground.

Then the ground betrayed leon.

Hoarfrost veined outward in a spiderweb from his boots. The dirt glazed slick. His heel slid a finger’s width—enough.

He shot a look across the field—past Nux—to a guard with an outstretched palm rimed in white. "Now! Finish it!" the ice-user barked, already weaving another sigil. The patch under leon’s feet deepened to mirror-smooth ice.

The swordsman didn’t hesitate. He felt the rhythm of a cripple and drove through with all the thunder he had, eyes hard. "You should be proud," he said, fire wreathing his blade until the steel itself began to glow. "Forcing me to use my talent is an honor. In your next life, try not to be my enemy."

His lungs filled. Qi roared.

"Fire God Incarnate!!!"

Flame detonated up the length of the sword—no longer a weapon but a pillar. The air screamed. The earth blistered. Heat hammered the clearing like a forge-breath. The technique wasn’t the gaudy spray of lesser arts; it was focused, devouring, the kind of flame that ate other flames.

Ice boiled to steam under leon’s boots. The shockwave slapped his mask. His coat snapped like a flag. For a heartbeat the world narrowed to red-white light and the iron taste of cooked air.

And leon smiled.

He let the slipperiness take him—not fighting it—dropping his weight, turning with it, breath thinning to a razor’s edge as the Divine Thief Dagger Sutra slid into a higher cadence. His right dagger drank a thread of Void, the blade graying to ash-glass. His left traced a crescent across the fire stream—not to block, but to divide—a thief’s cut meant for locks, not shields.

The inferno split a hair’s breadth. Enough.

He vanished through the seam he made—Light Steps stuttering the world—reappearing inside the swordsman’s guard where heat could not fully form. A single syllable slid out of him like a grin.

"Borrowed."

Both blades moved once—quiet, contemptuous, final.

The fire pillar collapsed into a rolling bloom behind the swordsman as his stance faltered. He stared at leon—confusion dawning—then at the neat, impossible line now crossing his chest. He tried to lift the sword again. His hands forgot how. Knees hit dirt. Body followed.

Steam swept the field. In it, leon stood, daggers lowered, mask turned toward the ice-user who’d set the trap. The frost at his feet hissed and fled from the heat still radiating off the sundered technique.

"Cute trick," he said softly. "Try it again."

The ice cultivator swallowed. His next sigil wavered.

From the flank, two more guards finally committed—one with earthen chains, one with a crackling lash of lightning. Alex’s fingers hovered at a hidden blade. Nux’s eyes never left leon, the strange, coiled aura around him tightening—as if he were finally deciding whether to show his hand.

Wind changed. Ash drifted. The clearing held its breath.

And leon moved.