Chapter 237: I Won’t... Let You Die in Here
One sword strike, and three lives were ended.
Fast. Precise. Ruthless. The timing had been exquisite to the smallest detail.
The sudden reversal shocked everyone present.
Ryan’s crimson-gold eyes narrowed slightly as he looked toward the source of that sword aura.
A flash of surprise passed through Vera’s and Ilyss’s tightly drawn expressions. Rex’s eyes went wide.
Lillian clapped a hand over her mouth, her ice-blue eyes instantly flooded with wild joy as she cried out, “Senior Eleanor!!”
There, at the stone doorway, stood Eleanor, holding her sword in one hand, its tip angled toward the ground. Her crimson hair fluttered slightly in the heat haze.
Her face was still pale, her breathing somewhat uneven, and even the arm holding the sword trembled faintly—it was obvious that forcing out such a powerful strike while her severe injuries had yet to heal had placed an enormous burden on her.
And yet her back was ramrod straight, and her molten-gold eyes were as sharp as ever, locked firmly on the last—and most dangerous—enemy on the field: Shiloya, who had just been shocked out of her magical eruption by that single strike and was now staring back at Eleanor in fury and alarm.
There was not the slightest hesitation, nor did she answer Lillian’s cry.
Eleanor drove off the ground and charged once more.
Her steps were a little unsteady from weakness, but neither her speed nor her resolve diminished in the slightest. The flowing-flame longsword in her hand became a straight streak of red light, thrusting directly toward the opening Shiloya had exposed in her shock—her lower abdomen.
“You’re asking to die!!” Shiloya snapped awake from her shock and let out a shriek of rage and humiliation. In hurried panic, she gathered a mass of blazing white flame into a shield before her while retreating sharply.
But the speed of Eleanor’s thrust far exceeded anything Shiloya had anticipated.
Thud!
The tip of the flowing-flame longsword barely pierced through the edge of the not-yet-fully-formed fire shield and drove hard into Shiloya’s lower abdomen.
The shield prevented the blow from reaching its full potential, but the blade still sank in several inches, and the burning sword force drove deep into her body.
“Urghhh!”
Shiloya let out a howl that mixed fury and pain. The agony from her abdomen and the chaos caused by foreign magic entering her body made her breath hitch, and even the flames raging around her dimmed for an instant.
Now!
No words were needed. Pure battlefield instinct made Ryan and the others seize that fleeting opening.
Ryan’s figure flickered. Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss came later and yet arrived first, and in the instant Shiloya’s injury disrupted both her focus and her Mana, its icy edge swept across her throat like the flick of a serpent’s tongue.
Vera lifted her hand lightly, and a highly condensed Wind Needle shot out in silence, entering precisely through Shiloya’s mouth, which was wide open in pain, and piercing straight into her brain.
Ilyss’s violet eyes flashed coldly as a point of lightning compressed to the extreme struck an instant later, hitting Shiloya squarely in the chest over her heart.
Rex roared and hurled the broken half of his sword, pouring the last of his Mana into it, and drove it savagely into Shiloya’s back.
Several attacks landed almost simultaneously, all striking vital points.
Shiloya’s body convulsed violently. Madness, savagery, unwillingness, and agony flashed through her crimson eyes in rapid succession before all of it faded into a dead, ashen gray. The flames around her went out as suddenly as if someone had cut power to them. Her body swayed once, covered in horrifying wounds, then toppled backward with her face turned to the sky, utterly devoid of life.
The battle ended almost as abruptly as it had begun, within only a few breaths after Eleanor entered the fray.
The cave fell suddenly quiet, save for the hiss of flowing magma and the ragged breathing of those who remained.
Thump.
Eleanor could no longer hold herself up. The flowing-flame longsword slipped from her hand and struck the ground with a clang, and her body sagged backward in total collapse.
“Senior Eleanor!” Lillian, who was closest, cried out and lunged forward, barely managing to catch her before she hit the ground, though the impact dragged Lillian down into a seated position as well.
Lillian held Eleanor tightly. “Senior! How are you? Don’t scare me!”
Resting against Lillian’s arms, Eleanor coughed violently several times, an unhealthy flush rising across her pale face.
She forced her heavy eyelids open and looked first at Lillian’s tear-streaked face, then at Vera, Ilyss, and Rex as they gathered around her. At last her gaze passed over all of them and fell on Ryan, who was sheathing his sword and walking over from a short distance away.
Her gaze paused for a moment on Ryan’s golden eyes. Then, with some difficulty, the corners of her mouth lifted into a smile unlike any she had shown before.
“I... I’m fine.” Her voice was hoarse and weak, but every word was clear. She spoke to Lillian, and to all of them. “Thank you... for saving me... from the spider cocoon just now.”
Her eyes turned back to Ryan, who had now come close, and she stared fixedly at his expressionless face as though trying to confirm something.
Then, as if gathering the last of her strength, she drew in a light breath and said in an even softer voice, though it remained perfectly clear:
“Ryan Velt.”
Ryan stopped.
His crimson-gold eyes met hers in calm silence.
“Do you still remember...” Eleanor’s breathing was strained, but her eyes remained stubborn, “what I said before?”
Ryan lifted an eyebrow slightly.
Eleanor tugged faintly at the corner of her mouth. That faint smile held an almost childlike seriousness. “We agreed... that once we got out... we’d have a fight.”
The light in her gray eyes was weak, but unwavering. “So... I won’t... let you die in here.”
As soon as the words fell, it was as though the final string supporting her had finally snapped. Her eyelids drooped shut, her head tilted against Lillian’s shoulder, and she passed out completely. Only that faint trace of a smile at the corner of her mouth seemed not yet to have fully disappeared.
“Senior Eleanor! Senior!” Lillian called out anxiously.
Vera immediately stepped forward to examine her, then let out a breath of relief. “She only collapsed from exhaustion, and her old wounds haven’t healed yet. She doesn’t have any new fatal injuries.”
Ryan stood where he was, looking down at the unconscious Eleanor.
At the tight furrow in her brow that remained even in sleep.
At the old and new wounds layered over one another beneath her torn, bloodstained clothes.
At the flowing-flame longsword lying beside her, its brilliance restrained.
This duke’s daughter, who had always stubbornly stood in front of him, glaring at him with those fiercely unyielding gray eyes, constantly shouting that she wanted to duel him—someone he had long regarded as fairly capable, but too stubborn and therefore a little troublesome...
Just now, it had been she who, dragging along that battered body, had struck the deciding blow at the most critical moment and said those words.
What a... thick-headed young lady.
Silently, he gave her a new evaluation in his heart.
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