Kana wasn’t aware—wasn’t aware her lips had curved into a grin the entire time. Sparks erupted with every clash, her daggers moving like lightning, his shadows striking back like fangs from the dark. The rhythm thrilled her.
Her [Bolt Dagger Style] tore through him. Each feint, each misdirection he tried—she met it head-on, intercepting with strikes fast enough to scrape sparks from the night air.
She inhaled sharply. Time to shift the tempo.
Professor Dufer’s warning echoed: Too much presence. Too obvious. Too heavy-handed.
Fine. She’d make that flaw into bait.
Kana let her intent flare. A broad motion, her wrist swaying toward his shoulder—the same spot she’d marked once before. Von reacted on instinct, shadows rushing to intercept.
Her grin sharpened. The dagger twisted, cutting low instead. Steel ripped across his leg. Not deep, but enough.
Von hissed, retreating in a blur of shadows. He reemerged across the field, his stance tighter, his gaze sharpened.
But Kana didn’t give him room to breathe. She lunged forward the instant he materialized. The ground cracked under her heel, and her daggers flashed.
Von vanished. A shadow-step. He rose behind her.
Kana spun mid-air, her left dagger colliding with his in a spray of sparks. Her right hand thrust forward—miss. His body dissolved into smoke.
He reappeared at her flank, his dagger slicing for her ribs.
Kana’s grin widened. She leaned into the strike, twisting at the last second, letting the blade nick her clothes but not her flesh. Her counter swung upward, aimed for his throat.
Von caught it with a brutal clash that rang through the night. The force sent them both skidding back.
For a heartbeat, they stood locked, shadows writhing around him, mana crackling faintly around her arms.
“Show me more!” Kana’s voice carried across the clearing, wild and electric.
Von’s answer came not in words but in action. The shadows around him exploded outward like a storm, forming dozens of afterimages. Each blurred figure lunged, daggers striking from every direction at once.
….
Von knew himself. The red-eyed girl had changed. Every clash told him that. Every step, every flicker of her blade—she had learned to twist her skills into feints, to turn her presence into a trap instead of a weakness.
Five minutes.
Five whole minutes and he hadn’t touched a strand of her hair.
Could the young truly grow this fast? Months ago she was reckless. Predictable. But now—now she was reading him like a veteran.
Von had always been proud of his ability to adapt. To take the beating, retreat, reflect, and come back sharper than before. That was how he had survived so long. But tonight… tonight he realized something bitter: the girl in front of him had already outpaced him. She was surpassing him in real time, in this very duel.
The amount of coin this time… not worth it.
He shifted, preparing to vanish, the syllables of his escape skill already rising in his mind. [Dissap—]
“Show me more.”
Her grin carved into him like a blade. Mockery. Daring him. Challenging everything he was.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
She thinks I’m running.
His blood boiled. Him? Von—the most feared shadow assassin on the continent? Reduced to prey before some unknown little girl?
His hand trembled as he reached for the vial. A yellowish liquid. He hated it. He feared it. But he pulled the cork free with his teeth and swallowed.
The burn came instantly—fire in his veins, acid in his lungs. His heartbeat spiked, strength flooding his body as his lifespan drained away. He would pay the price later.
No—he would live. And she would die here.
“Excellent!” she whispered when she saw his change.
[Shadow Form].
Von dissolved into black smoke, reappearing in the curl of her shadow. His dagger drove upward in a clean arc—[Silent Strike], the killing blow that had ended nobles and generals alike.
Steel rang.
She had blocked. Somehow, impossibly, she had blocked. Her arms shook from the force, her eyes widened in shock at the sudden spike in his strength… but she was still smiling. That infuriating, hungry grin.
He grunted.
Von pushed harder, shadows spiraling from his blade to crush her guard. “You asked for more,” he hissed, voice guttural, strained from the potion tearing at him, “then choke on it!”
He feinted again, shadows flickering, his dagger splitting into afterimages, stabbing from angles that should have been impossible to follow.
And still—her grin remained.
…
Boris almost lost himself as he watched the duel unfold. Steel flashed, shadows coiled, sparks lit the clearing like fleeting stars. Kana and the shadow man moved too fast for ordinary eyes, but Boris forced himself not to gape. He had a role to play.
They had a plan—simple, but dangerous. Boris would stay hidden, creep close enough without being noticed, and wait for Kana’s signal. When the time came, he would unleash his new skill and pin the assassin down. Because surely, the shadow man would try to run the instant he realized his tricks were useless.
Hiding had always been Boris’s strength. Even with his bulk, he knew how to make himself small or at least feel very small. Back in the village, he had been the undefeated champion of hide-and-seek. Even now, beasts in the forest sometimes passed him by as though he wasn’t there at all. Tonight, he relied on that old gift.
He crouched low, pressing into the roots of a tree, every step was cautiously taken, every breath slow. The clash of blades masked the faint rustle of his movements.
Closer. A little closer.
The plan was simple… but Boris’s heart thumped harder as he stole a glance at Kana.
She was grinning. Wide-eyed, alive, almost radiant in the chaos. She wasn’t fighting to finish it—she was enjoying it.
His stomach sank. She didn’t forget the plan… did she?
He tightened his grip on the haft of his spear, palms damp. Even from here he could tell—at that speed, he might never land a strike. But that didn’t matter. He just needed one chance. One signal.
Any moment now.
Any moment…
…..
Kana staggered back a half step, her dagger vibrating from the last clash. The shadow man’s blows had changed—heavier, sharper, every strike rattling her bones. His speed hadn’t doubled, but his strength had tripled. That yellowish potion…
Such a thing exists here? A potion that gives raw power, there should be a side effect..
Another strike came. Kana’s mind shouted to block, but her instincts screamed otherwise. She twisted instead, parrying with the edge of her blade. Sparks burst between them. Her arms ached from the impact, her grip slipping by a fraction.
She couldn’t keep blocking. He would break her defense in minutes. No—seconds.
So she stopped thinking. Her body knew.
Her [High Awareness] didn’t flood her with thoughts—it stripped them away. The world slowed into clean lines and simple choices: angle, momentum, intent. A dagger swept low. She bent, not because she planned to, but because her body moved.
Parry. Deflect. Twist. Her muscles remembered something her mind didn’t, abandoning the rigid rhythm of the [Bolt Dagger Style]. Instead, she followed the flow. The flow of her body. Reacting to the battle itself.
She lunged, rolled, and came up under his guard in a blur of motion. Her blade flicked out, slashing at his leg. Von blocked, but the impact forced him to step back. His eyes narrowed, surprise flickering there.
Kana grinned, blood humming in her veins.
She pressed harder. Each movement less rehearsed, more instinctive—acrobatic spins, feints layered inside feints, blades flashing in unpredictable arcs. And slowly, slowly, the shadow man faltered. His enhanced strikes still landed with crushing weight, but his breathing grew ragged, his responses just a fraction slower.
Kana felt it—the rhythm faltering. His movements, once sharp as steel, dragged with exhaustion. Each block bled effort, each counter carried strain. She could finish this.
But the same truth clawed at her. Her dagger no longer felt like a dagger—it was a weight, dragging her arm like a sword forged from stone. Sweat stung her eyes, dripped from her chin. Her lungs burned, forcing her mouth open as she fought for breath. Her heart pounded, loud, almost drowning out the clash of blades.
Across from her, his eyes locked with hers. Sharp. Calculating. The intent was clear, written in the way his stance shifted, in the subtle pull of his shoulder. He was going to vanish. Run.
Kana’s lips curved, her exhaustion twisting into something dangerous.
Not tonight.
She leapt back, her dagger raised, and shouted with a voice that cut through the night—
“Now!”
[Bolt Dagger Style – Progress: 27.23%]
