“Are you waiting for me to beg for mercy, or are you waiting for me to bleed out?” Ryan's voice was raspy, as calm as a corpse lying on an autopsy table.
Arthur's brow furrowed imperceptibly.
“Do you think... the 【Lantern】 is just a magnifying glass for clerks to see handwriting clearly?” Ryan laughed deeply. “Everything the 【Lantern】 does is merely to reveal the truth.”
Arthur's brow twitched violently, and the combat instinct belonging to the 【Edge】 in his subconscious instantly screamed in alarm!
Boom!
The patterns on his glasses lit up, and a deathly, colorless white glow abruptly flared deep within Ryan's pupils!
—The sun is merciless, and all things are revealed.
Within a blind spot of less than half a foot, this light forcefully illuminated Arthur's eyeballs! Absolute knowing brought absolute agony; a mortal's eyes could not look directly at the unshielded light of a Principle!
“Aargh! What is this—?!”
The blinding light instantly stripped Arthur of all vision! His eyeballs were damaged, and the tactical dagger in his hand, which was destined to slit Ryan's throat, inevitably veered off by half an inch.
Just that half an inch!
Relying on the 【Lantern】's precise calculation of gravity and muscle contractions, Ryan threw himself backward with all his might, letting the blade slice through the skin of his cheek. At the same time, he injected the chaotic information deep within his mind—the 【poison of knowledge】—into Arthur's psyche.
Unsparing knowledge was often accompanied by the disintegration of reason!
“Receive this truth.”
“No... out... Get out of my head!!”
Arthur let out a piercing roar, his hand twitching violently as he pressed it hard against his temple. His brain fell into a brief lapse of sanity.
Buzz!
An ordinary-looking bronze pendant on Arthur's chest suddenly burst with a faint, dark blue light.
“A relic!” Ryan's pupils contracted.
“Stay... on the ground!!”
Under the protection of the secret treasure, Arthur forcefully dragged a shred of clarity out of the madness and illusions! Blood seeped from his blinded eyes. Relying on the ultimate instinct of 【Edge】 toward harm, he delivered a backhand punch wrapped in bone-shattering force, slamming it heavily into the stone pillar beside Ryan!
Bang!
Stone chips flew in all directions! Shrapnel-like debris exploded into the air, and the violent impact sent the already fragile Ryan flying, rolling him several times through the freezing snow.
Blood welled from the corner of Ryan's mouth.
He did not hesitate, not even sparing Arthur another glance. Having failed to finish him, Ryan decisively turned and sprinted away!
The calculation ability of the 【Lantern】 provided the coldest answer within a millisecond: run.
Blind courage was merely pointless sacrifice; only the survivors could glimpse the true face of the Mansus.
“You want to run?! Leave your spot behind!!”
Arthur wiped away the blood seeping from the corners of his eyes, using the faint blue glow of the pendant on his chest to forcefully suppress the stinging pain deep in his brain. Relying on his sharp detection of airflow and the crunch of snow, he pursued like a grievously wounded yet increasingly feral beast, dragging his battered body to keep a tight grip on Ryan's trail!
One after the other, they engaged in a brutal chase of attrition through the blizzard-swept, abandoned corridor.
This was no longer a grand extraordinary duel, but a cold, primitive, and utterly life-draining ordeal of endurance.
Their blood dragged a long, crimson, and shocking trail across the pristine white snow.
In the freezing dead of night, both of their minds and bodies rapidly slid toward the brink of collapse.
Finally, as they rounded the corner at the end of the old academic building, Arthur stepped right into a patch of collapsing ice that Ryan had calculated in advance!
Rip—crack!
The thin layer of ice over the hidden ditch instantly shattered. Arthur's burly frame lost its balance, and he fell heavily into the half-meter-deep drainage ditch. His already broken ribs dislocated once more under the violent impact, causing him to cough up a large mouthful of dark red, clotted blood!
On the other side, Ryan had also finally reached his limit. His mental energy was completely drained, and his vision went black. He fell to one knee in the freezing snow, unable to move even a fingertip.
The wind and snow howled between them.
Less than ten meters apart, Arthur clutched his agonizing chest as he struggled to climb out of the ditch, while Ryan leaned against a damaged stone wall, pressing down on his wounds. Their gazes locked amidst the howling blizzard—
It was not mutual respect between heroes, but two heavily wounded beasts assessing each other's final trump cards.
Neither could kill the other without paying the ultimate price of life and death.
Clutching his broken ribs tightly, Arthur stared at Ryan for a long time. Ultimately, he wiped the bloody froth from his mouth and slowly backed away, blending step by step into the deep night.
Ryan leaned against the ruined stone wall. Only when the perception of the 【Lantern】 confirmed that Arthur's presence had completely vanished over a hundred meters away did he let out a sigh of relief, his strength entirely spent.
Holding onto his last shred of consciousness, he dragged his bleeding body and slipped silently into the shadows on the other side.
At dawn, the heavy snow that had raged all night gradually subsided.
The cold morning light pierced through the clouds, illuminating the devastating state of the old west corridor.
The ruined corridor was a total mess. Shattered Roman stone carvings were scattered everywhere, more than half of the archway's load-bearing wall had collapsed, scorch marks left by the tearing of intense light remained on the pillars, and bloodstains, frozen into a glaring dark red, stained the ice and snow.
A heavy, dragging sound of footsteps accompanied by the clinking of metal shattered the silence of dawn.
A few civil engineering students wearing overalls and carrying heavy hammers, chisels, and cement carts stopped in front of the ruins.
The leading youth, wearing thick sheepskin gloves, looked at the corridor that was nearly half-demolished. His facial muscles twitched violently as his iron crowbar hit the floor tiles with a heavy clang.
“Fucking hell! Which department's lunatic was tearing down the building in the middle of the night instead of sleeping?!”
The youth stepped on the stones smashed by blunt force and looked at the marks on the wall clearly left by the forceful peeling of some secret art. Gritting his teeth, he cursed furiously:
“Look at this stone pillar! It was completely snapped by sheer physical force! Even the load-bearing wall collapsed! Are those military grunts from the School of Military and those bastards playing with secret arts out of their minds?! If you want to duel, go fight on the back mountain or in the ruins! Stop wrecking the public facilities here every single day!!”
Behind him, a student carrying a heavy wooden beam rubbed his sore neck and sighed. His expression was as despairing as a ghost that had worked overtime for three consecutive days and nights:
“Alright, stop complaining, mate. We just patched up the West End lawn yesterday, and today the corridor is collapsed. Hurry up and mix the cement. If we don't fix this before noon prayers today, that old pervert of a professor is going to dock our credits for Engineering Mechanics and Structural Engineering again...”
“I'm fucking done with this!”
The leading youth grabbed a cement shovel and slammed it hard into the mortar bucket, his grumbling voice echoing through the empty ruins:
“I got into this damn school to study machinery and high-rise architecture, but instead, I'm playing janitor and scrubbing floors every day for these lunatics using extraordinary secret arts! Next time I catch them tearing down walls in the middle of the night, I'll mix 【Forge-cast】 waste into the mortar and poison those sons of bitches to death!”
In the dim morning light, the grumbling of the civil engineering students rose and fell, accompanied by the harsh squeak of the cement carts and the clatter of shovels.
Rate on N.U.
