The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 722: Hunt in the Shadows (6)

Vaelira's mind, trained for battlefield patterning, couldn't help dissecting the display. She saw how his left heel always settled a thumb-width behind the right, how his breathing synced with the giant's swings so exhale matched impact and inhale filled the half-beat of retreat. She noticed the near-invisible rotations of his wrists that turned blocks into parries, parries into ripostes. It was art rendered in inches and breaths.

Another wave of slavers spilled from the treeline—halberds, nets threaded with anti-mage glyphs, mancatcher poles glittering with barbs designed for elven limbs. Their boots thudded in practiced unison, a drumline of iron intent. Farther back, mages pressed bloodied palms to glowing runes, chanting in harsh consonants. Heat rolled off their circles, warping the starlight above them.

Vaelira's pulse spiked. Her vanguard was still scattered among the trees, locked in skirmishes with corrupted elves—the other front of this nightmare pincer. If these new troops broke through, the center would fold.

She forced her gaze wider. Wind-sense fanned across the clearing, mapping motion like ripples on a pond. She counted helmets, measured rank spacing, felt the ground vibrate under coordinated marches. Forty here, thirty pushing left, a reserve beyond the ridge—too many for her depleted line.

"Don't analyze unnecessary things." Draven's voice cut through clamor as if spoken into her ear alone. Steel rang as he batted the spectral claw aside, pivoted, and carved a shallow arc across the giant's thigh. "Analyze their forces."

The reprimand burned embarrassment across her cheeks. She inhaled, banished fascination, and let strategy settle like cool water. Patterns emerged: the mages anchored everything, their chanting the metronome guiding infantry tempo. Kill them, the formation unravels. Simple—except the mages were shielded by a wedge of tower shields interlocked overhead.

She scanned for weak points, saw gaps where uneven terrain forced a stagger. Good. "Yrel, Tannis, on me!" she shouted, trusting the wind to carry her order. Two wardancers disengaged, sliding to her side with nods. She flicked her wrist; air currents condensed around their boot soles, ready to catapult them through that opening.

While she planned, she still watched Draven. The giant swung the spectral claw in a backhand meant to tear flesh from bone. Draven ducked so low his cloak brushed mud, letting the swipe shear empty air. He popped up inside reach, thrust one sword through the bicep, twisted, and withdrew before the corrupted flesh could grip the blade. Blue mana licked the wound; crimson tried to close it but sputtered, confused by the foreign signature.

He's poisoning its regeneration, Vaelira realized, awe coiling with horror. Each cut wasn't just damage—it was sabotage.

A pair of slavers rushed her right, thinking to flank. She spun, wind coiling around her blade. The first man's net sailed; a gust snatched it mid-arc, flipping the net backward to entangle its owner. The second thrust a spear. She sidestepped, sliced the haft, then raked the broken stub across his throat. His eyes widened, more in surprise than pain, before he toppled.

She pivoted again, searching the periphery. And froze.

Bodies littered the ground, yet enemy silhouettes kept materializing from the mist like phantoms—same uniforms, same serrated short-swords. For every foe she felled, another stepped through the veil, boots crushing leaves with identical discipline. No ragged edges, no signs of fear. It was as though the forest itself birthed endless replacements. freeweɓnøvel.com

A chill crawled her spine. She tried to spot differences—mud splatter, armor dents—but each newcomer looked pristine. The notion of infinite ranks gnawed at logic until realization dawned: they rotated units. The front line fought until winded, then melted into fog while fresh soldiers took their place, creating the illusion of immortality.

Her breath caught. "Draven, they're cycling squads," she called, voice hoarse. "Numbers aren't falling—just rotating!"

His reply was a clipped "Noted." Then, without breaking rhythm, he lunged inside the titan's guard and drove a pommel strike into the jaw, shattering corrupted teeth. Dark blue mana erupted, crackling like frozen lightning, momentarily overriding the crimson.

Vaelira allowed herself a single heartbeat of admiration before channeling wind beneath her allies' feet. "Leap!" she barked. The wardancers launched, vaulting over the shield wall. She followed, skidding under a spear thrust, slamming her shoulder into a shield carrier. The impact knocked the woman sideways; gaps opened. Vaelira shot through and drove her sword into the nearest mage's spine. A gout of scarlet fire burst upward, then collapsed into smoke. Chanting faltered, tempo breaking.

Behind her, Yrel gutted another caster, while Tannis cleaved a rune circle in half, scattering burning glyph fragments. The infantry formation shivered, lost its steady beat, stuttered.

Even so, more soldiers came—pale faces, empty eyes. Professional. Unrelenting. Vaelira's lungs burned; each breath tasted of copper and smoke. She parried a strike, drove wind into her elbow, shattered an attacker's breastplate. Blood sprayed warm across her cheek.

And still they advanced.

She risked a glance at Draven. He and the titan circled within a crater of churned mud. The giant's movements slowed—regeneration struggling against blue infection—but his sheer mass remained terrifying. Draven's chest rose faster now, dark hair plastered to his brow. Yet his footwork never lost its metronomic beat.

Vaelira's jaw clenched. Precision. That was his secret. She echoed the word in her mind as she deflected another blade, used a gust to yank a shield from a slaver's grip, then impaled him through the sternum. Every motion trimmed of excess, every ounce of magic placed with intent—that was how one survived impossible odds.

Her gaze flicked to the treeline. Faint torchglow shimmered deeper in the forest—more troops waiting. She finally grasped the scale: a legion dedicated to elf-hunting, marching under the southern crest. Their commander must be grinning somewhere, certain his vise would close.

Draven's voice sliced through the night, cold as river ice. "The elves can't split their forces. Your vanguard bleeds on two fronts. These tactics are herding you."

Vaelira parried, wind swirling off her blade to slam three slavers backward. "They want us thin," she agreed, breathless. "If my line collapses, the heart-groves fall."

Silence answered—then a sliver of humor, dry as autumn leaves: "Correct. Strategy lesson complete."

She would have glared if survival allowed. Blood trickled from a cut above her eyebrow, stinging her eye. She wiped it, smeared crimson across her gauntlet.

"So you'll cover our rear?" she shouted across clangor, a desperate strand of hope threading the words.

Draven's laugh drifted deceptively soft, more exhale than mirth. It chilled her worse than the spectral claw. "Me? No." He pivoted, caught the titan's next swing on crossed blades, twisted, and sliced the monster's hamstring. Thick red steam billowed from the gash. "I'm going to hunt my own thing."

His gaze swept the chaos—slavers pouring from mist, corrupted elves shrieking in the distance—yet seemed to pierce beyond visible threats, as though he tracked an enemy no one else perceived. "This forest has two cancers," he murmured, voice a knife drawn on destiny. "I'll carve out the one that hides."

The one-armed warrior staggered upright, boots sinking ankle-deep in blood-slick mud. Pulses of ruby light leaked from the raw stump where his hand had been, each throb illuminating the twisted grin carved across his beard-shadowed face. The glow swelled, threadlike strands knitting into a translucent fist that crackled and flexed, joints of sheer malevolence snapping into place with a wet pop.

Vaelira's breath clouded in the sudden chill that rolled off the thing. It smelled of hot iron and damp earth—like spring lightning striking a graveyard. Even at two sword-lengths she felt the weight of it, a psychic pressure shoving at the inside of her skull. The giant's remaining eye—an ember buried in soot—lifted to Draven, and for the first time since the clash began, real, human fear rippled through the crimson aura wreathing his shoulders.

"You… you're Draven. Aren't you? Draven Arcanum von Drakhan." The words rasped out, half-prayer, half-accusation.

Draven didn't blink. His twin blades hovered in an effortless guard, tips drawing tiny concentric circles in the air, as though measuring the exact diameter of the warrior's panic. Moonlight caught the steel, ran down the fuller, and spilled across his gauntlets in ghost-blue streaks. In their reflection Vaelira saw her own face—mud-flecked, eyes wide, a smear of someone else's blood across her cheek—and for the briefest heartbeat she felt like a child peering through smoked glass at forces too large to name.

The silence stretched, taut as a bowstring pulled past its point of break.

"I heard he was a mage," the warrior tried again, anger re-kindling to mask terror. "Not a swordsman. Not some ghost in the mist." He spat into the dirt; the phlegm steamed where it landed.