The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 723: Hunt in the Shadows (End)

"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.

When Draven finally spoke, his voice arrived soft—too soft for a battlefield—yet every syllable cut clean, separating air into razor-thin layers. "I am Dravis Granger, adventurer of the Aurelion Guild." His eyes, pale and depthless, never left the giant's. "I hunt what stains these woods."

The name meant nothing to the slaver, and that confusion leeched the last of his bravado. "Liar… you—"

Steel brightened the night. Vaelira's eyes barely registered the motion—only the result: a black seam drawn through flesh and air. Head and torso parted like poor theatre props. For an instant the bearded visage remained suspended, mouth working soundlessly, red steam shooting from the severed neck. Then gravity resumed its law. The skull hit first, a dull thud; the torso followed, folding inward as if its bones had turned to parchment.

A collective gasp shuddered through the human ranks. Not horror—these men were killers—but something colder: calculation thrown into chaos. Their towering champion, undone in a single gesture. Several faltered; one outright stumbled, boots splashing crimson puddles.

What unfolded next barely qualified as battle. Draven moved—and the clearing changed shape to accommodate him. He stepped, and lines of misfortune spread before his soles like cracks through ice. A slaver lunged: Draven's left sword whisked the man's spear aside, right blade punctured the hollow at the base of the throat, withdrew without resistance. The corpse collapsed, joints folding like a marionette with strings cut. Another came swinging low. Draven pivoted, heel grinding marl, and the strike skittered off empty space; a palm-heel drove into ribs, edge followed, carving between two vertebrae. Bodies fell soundless, as though even the air conspired to muffle their exits.

Vaelira matched him stride for stride, but her battle was thunder where his was silence. She called the wind, fed it through leaf-steel until her sword wailed. Each arc hurled a crescent of compressed air that sheared mail from flesh. She leapt, cloak snapping, landed amid three soldiers, and the ground erupted in a mini-cyclone that lifted them long enough for her descending blade to find necks. Crimson spray hissed on chilled wind, drifting away as pink mist.

Across the battlefield an enemy mage finished a glyph. A ribbon of red fire snapped toward her—too quick to dodge fully. Vaelira swung, wind coiling from her palm into a squalling vortex. The spell hit the funnel, dispersed in a shower of sparks that died on wet leaves. She hurled the spent vortex back; it struck the mage like a battering ram, snapping his spine over a rune-etched staff.

"We hold!" she shouted, voice raw, amplified by wind that made every syllable boom like a temple bell. Somewhere to her left, an elven pikeman caught her rally cry, lifted his weapon, and drove it through an advancing slaver's visor. A chorus of defiant whoops rose despite fatigue.

Yet the tide refused to slow. Figures kept stepping from the fog—unblemished armor, identical insignias. Vaelira's shoulders ached with each parry, each lift of her arm feeling weighted by sandbags. She stole a glance at Draven; even he had slowed, dark hair plastered to his forehead, breath misting in quick bursts. The blade-work remained precise, but fractions of inefficiency crept in—angles millimeters off, ripostes requiring an extra half-step.

A spear grazed her pauldron, jarring her focus. She counter-thrust, sliced hamstring, spun back-handed to cut the tendons of a second opponent. Sweat stung her eyes; blood—hers? someone else's?—trickled warm down the slope of her collarbone and under breastplate.

"They're too many," she gasped, voice hoarse. Four of her vanguard still fought nearby, backs together, faces ashen. Others lay unmoving—unconscious? slain? She dared not look too long.

"We're not here to win," Draven answered, tone glacial even while blocking a slash aimed at his kidneys. "We're here to trim the rot."

Trim the rot. The phrase settled heavy. He saw this slaughter as pruning overgrowth—necessary, impersonal. She envied the detachment yet hated it too; every elf lost was a story severed.

Draven paused, eyes flicking like a hawk surveying fields. His lips shaped a single word—so quiet she read it more than heard it. "Summoning."

At his back, five human captains regrouped, their officer barking sharp syllables. The line straightened. A fresh wave advanced—rows of pikes leading, archers nocking behind, mages already tracing crimson sigils across forearms to bleed power. The earlier waves had tested; this would crash to kill.

Vaelira forced her aching legs wider, braced leaf-steel before her. The air thickened around the blade, charged with newborn lightning that crackled along the fuller. She drew deep on reserves of wind, the forest answering with a sorrowful sigh—branches rustling in distant canopies.

Opposite her, Draven's hands began to blur. Fingers etched sigils faster than quills across paper, thumb sealing lines, forefinger carving curves. Pale runes sprang to life above his palms, each one a shard of ice-blue radiance. The temperature plummeted; her exhale fogged.

Every rune spun free, flattening into crescent blades of luminescence. Dozens, then scores, orbiting him like moons cut from winter. Each locked onto a target.

"Loose," Draven whispered.

The spectral blades screamed outward, curving through the mist on serpentine trajectories. One slashed an archer's bowstring a breath before a shaft launched. Another sliced beneath a pikeman's helmet, leaving only the faint hiss of severed arteries. A third decapitated a chanting mage; his spell detonated inside his own circle, fire teleporting inward and cooking him in a burst of steam and charred linen.

Vaelira raised her arm and let the wind go feral. A tornado the width of a cart wheel barreled from her sword-tip, scooping dead leaves, stones, and stray blades. It slammed into the left flank of the formation; soldiers spun like dolls, armor clanging. Lightning chased the vortex, lancing from her blade in branching arcs that danced along metal plates and found the gaps beneath.

Cries—human, pained, terrified—rose like smoke. The line broke. Some turned to flee, slipping on gore-slick ground. Spectral blades harvested them mid-flight, leaving only twitching torsos.

Vaelira's arms trembled now. The grand gust spent, she barely controlled its dissipation so it wouldn't whip back into her allies. Her lungs burned raw; every inhale rasped through a throat lined with fire. She tasted blood—not metaphorical: she'd bitten her lip sometime in the melee.

Just ahead Draven skewered a swordsman through the sternum, withdrew, pivoted, and hamstrung another in a single, fluid flourish—but the follow-through lacked earlier crispness. His shoulders rose with each breath; fatigue etched lines beside mouth and eyes.

Still the humans came.

Ten, fifteen, twenty bodies pushed through thinning fog—some limping, some fresh. Vaelira's vision doubled for a second. She blinked hard, willed the image steady. Her sword felt forged of lead. She forced wind into her legs, launched a weak dash, cut down a spearman, parried another's overhead chop. The clang numbed her fingers; she nearly dropped the hilt.

"Commander!" One of her wardancers—Eleran—clutched a bleeding arm, called to her with desperation. Two slavers closed on him; she faked left, hurled a gust that staggered both, buying him a heartbeat. But saving one here meant losing ground elsewhere. She could almost see the battlefield as a ledger now: columns of lives, profit and loss measured in heartbeats.

She pivoted toward Draven. His cloak was ragged at the hem, cut by errant blades. Blood spattered his cheek—a fine mist, already drying. Yet his eyes remained frosted steel, scanning, computing.

"They're too many," she managed again, voice thinner.

He flicked free of another clash, let one blade hook a pike and yank the wielder off balance. A twist, a downward drive, and the man lay still. Only then did Draven answer, tone chilling in its distance. "We're pruning."

Bodies at his feet confirmed. Yet endless silhouettes still swarmed. She wanted to shout that pruning a forest of enemies with two fighters was madness. She swallowed the impulse.

The slaver captain bell bellowed, rallying survivors. A final rush surged, less disciplined now but desperate. Vaelira hefted her sword, wind swirling in weary eddies.

Draven's hands blurred once more, but slower—runic arcs stuttering as exhaustion cramped muscle. Still, blue sigils ignited, carving new spectral edges. He whispered, "Summoning."

The air warped. Static popped across Vaelira's skin; her hair lifted though no wind blew. She smelled ozone, sharp and metallic, overlaying blood's copper tang. The runes fractured mid-flight, each splitting into shards that elongated into translucent daggers. They whistled outward, thinning enemy ranks like scythes through barley. Two dozen slavers dropped before their charge met resistance.

Vaelira used the opening. She gathered what wind remained, funneled it into a detonating pulse that burst outward. The blast lifted soldiers, flipped shields, quenched torches. Lightning laced the edges, snapping joints and nerve endings.

When the echo faded, only groans and the soft crackle of dying fires remained. The mist parted, revealing a clearing turned charnel house. Blood pooled in depressions, reflecting moon shards. Weaponry lay scattered like broken toys.

Vaelira's knees wobbled. She stabbed her sword into the mud, leaned on it while lungs fought for air. Around her three surviving elves straightened, eyes wide with shock and relief. No fresh enemies emerged. The silence felt louder than the previous carnage.

Draven wiped his swords on a fallen cloak, sheathed them with mechanical economy. His shoulders slumped a degree, breath ghosting fast. For a heartbeat he looked older—no, wearier—as if every life he'd taken tonight had added a pebble to an invisible sack he carried inside.

He turned, started walking toward the deeper forest, each step deliberate despite obvious fatigue.

"Where are you going?" Vaelira called, pushing herself upright. Her voice cracked; she swallowed copper and tried again, steadier. "Where?"

Draven paused. Moonlight silvered the planes of his face as he glanced back. The pale glow in his eyes had cooled to embers, but beneath them burned something darker—an iron resolve sharpened to a lethal point.

"Summoning," he said, the single word weighing more than any speech. "There are still things to hunt in these woods."

Leaves swirled around his boots as though drawn by gravity to that intent. Without another syllable he stepped beyond the corpses and melted into shadow, cloak trailing the scent of frost and steel.

Vaelira watched until even the rustle of his passage died. Only then did she release the wind bound tight in her chest. It escaped as a shaky exhale, and with it came the tremors—delayed fear ricocheting through muscle and bone.

Tonight she had seen Draven bleed, hesitate, fatigue. Yet he'd also moved like judgment incarnate, carving a legend from flesh. Whatever he hunted now, it must be dire indeed.

She pivoted to her surviving troops. "Form search teams," she ordered, voice soft but certain. "Gather wounded, salvage supplies, burn the rest." Her sword tip dragged a line through mud as she gestured. "We'll hold this ground until dawn."

Orders relayed, elves scurried into action. The forest, sensing reprieve, whispered through leaves overhead. Vaelira sheathed leaf-steel, touched the cut at her brow, and felt fresh blood seep. A sting, but small compared to the weight settling on her.

Draven's silhouette lingered in her mind—alone against deeper dark. And in that dark, unseen rot still festered, awaiting his precise, merciless scalpel.

The battle was over, but the war had only just begun.