Unholy Player-Chapter 174: Sword Practice (Part 6) [BONUS]

"You’re good with your swords," Rhys Graves said, his stance balanced and gaze sharpened with a faint flush of focus, "but I feel like something is missing."

He kept his position, and so did Adyr. They had been sparring long enough for both to recognize the other’s skill. Technically, they were equals.

Rhys moved with a distinctive rhythm, his drunken twin-dagger style unpredictable, each slash and feint impossible to read in advance. Adyr fought differently—his two blades acted with a kind of independent will, constantly shifting their purpose mid-exchange as if two separate minds were locked inside him.

That was what made him dangerous—but also what kept him from pushing further.

"Yeah," Adyr acknowledged, resetting his stance and nodding once. The realization gnawed at him. Every time they crossed steel, he felt his technique sharpen by a fraction. Yet there was a wall between him and true mastery. No matter how hard he pressed, he couldn’t scale it.

Even the system was adamant about not acknowledging his swordplay talent—it still refused to register anything.

Rhys paused, his whitened hair and measured gray eyes giving him a sage-like air. "Your swords are smart," he observed calmly, "but they don’t seem to truly work together."

Adyr hesitated. "What do you mean?"

Rhys merely smiled before attacking.

He closed the distance in a heartbeat. One dagger thrust straight for his neck; Adyr turned it aside with his right-hand blade. Almost in the same breath, Rhys’s other dagger surged toward his gut. Adyr’s left-hand sword answered, its edge sweeping up for a vicious counter. Rhys had to twist aside and break away.

He reset his posture with practiced ease and spoke again, his voice like a rasp of steel on stone. "An army can be as strong as you like, but what makes it deadly is always the commander’s orders."

Adyr narrowed his eyes, trying to parse the meaning. Rhys was comparing his swords to soldiers and himself to their commander. But what was the disconnect?

Both blades already had their own traits and responses. They fought like two separate warriors under his control. Why would Rhys imply that was a flaw?

Then, in a flash of insight, Adyr murmured, "I’m not actually acting like a commander."

A sharp smirk curled Rhys’s lips. "Looks like you’re starting to see it."

That was the truth. Adyr thought he had let the swords act on their own, but it was a convincing illusion. Every strike still funneled back through one mind, one set of hands, one will.

Rhys didn’t give him time to dwell on it. Daggers glinting, he pressed in with a fresh assault, his voice merging with the clash of metal. "I understand what you’re trying to build. But your perspective is wrong."

His dagger smacked Adyr’s defending blade aside with a shower of sparks. "Take a step back," Rhys urged as he pushed him.

Adyr yielded a pace, his thoughts racing even as his body obeyed.

"They’re not just tools," Rhys continued, dagger spinning for a strike at Adyr’s ribs, "and you’re not their hands. You’re their commander."

Adyr parried with one sword and twisted clear of the next cut with the other.

"Stop trying to control every movement," Rhys pressed him harder, his boots sure and his strikes remorseless. "Observe. Command. Give them purpose—then trust them to follow it."

Rhys feinted high and kicked hard into Adyr’s chest. Caught off-guard and off-balance, Adyr stumbled back, arms pinwheeling.

For an instant, his center of gravity failed him entirely.

And Rhys rushed in, daggers poised to finish it.

Adyr appeared utterly exposed—his arms flung back, his chest a perfect target.

Rhys’s lips twitched with satisfaction as one dagger whipped toward Adyr’s heart.

Then, in a single seamless motion, Adyr let his body collapse backward, using his trailing right sword as an anchor against the floor. The blade dug into the ground, locking his weight and breaking his fall at the last instant.

That brace gave him just enough leverage to sweep his left-hand blade upward—a sharp, decisive arc that scythed toward Rhys’s throat as the older man committed to his strike.

Rhys’s eyes brightened with a predator’s glee. The edge was close enough that a hair more would have bled him.

"That’s it," Rhys breathed, his own dagger still hovering just shy of Adyr’s chest.

He drew back with a quiet, pleased laugh, his voice carrying the weight of hard-earned respect. "That’s what happens when an army’s commander stops micromanaging and lets them do their job."

And Adyr finally understood.

—

While Adyr’s Earth body kept a measured, almost friendly spar with Rhys Graves, refining his understanding of dual-swordplay, his other body faced Lucen, driving relentlessly against his defenses.

As the minutes passed and Adyr’s strikes fell one after another, Lucen’s thoughts began to quicken.

From the start of their training, Lucen had kept his mouth shut. He had offered not a single word of advice, choosing instead to silently observe Adyr working toward his own style. But especially in the last half hour, he had noticed something.

Although his stats were vastly superior, Lucen had been keeping his strength in check, relying purely on sword technique to repel the younger man’s attacks. Even so, he was starting to exert himself more and more just to match Adyr’s strikes.

Adyr’s hands and feet, his grip, his posture—every movement was refining itself at an accelerated pace, as if some unseen part of him had woken up.

What changed? Lucen wondered, brow furrowed as he guided yet another blade aside. Unaware that Adyr was doubling his progress with the practice of his other body on Earth, Lucen couldn’t grasp the reason this sudden mastery was unfolding before him.

Compared to Lucen’s untroubled state, Adyr looked more fatigued, his breath rasping slightly uneven, but he pressed on regardless.

With every strike, Lucen could feel a shift. Adyr’s right-hand sword moved with a deliberate protectiveness, as if its purpose was to shield its wielder at any cost. The left-hand sword, by contrast, had taken on a colder, lethal intent—slicing and angling toward Lucen as if already imagining his blood.

And Adyr felt it too. Something was stirring inside him. The sensation was elusive, like a long-lost memory finally surfacing, threading its way into his hands and feet, bleeding into every action.

Clang!

His left-hand blade glanced off Lucen’s scabbard and rebounded, the impact forcing his balance slightly off-center. For an instant, Lucen thought he’d retreat or hesitate.

Instead, something strange happened.

Lucen tracked the movement keenly, and his eyes narrowed. Adyr’s right-hand sword—the one that had always fought like a loyal guardian—slipped behind the recoiling left-hand blade as it sprang back. It caught the rebound, then drove it forward with a powerful push that sent the left-hand sword hurtling into an unexpected attack.

Lucen’s eyes flared as he hastily altered his own sword’s trajectory to parry, swinging to intercept. But even as he moved, Adyr’s right-hand sword pushed again, bending the left-hand blade’s path mid-arc and turning its target from Lucen’s left shoulder to his now-exposed right.

The blade carved a deadly line through the empty space Lucen had left when he overcommitted.

With a sharp inhale, Lucen abandoned the block, retreating two full steps to clear the strike. The slash whistled past him, close enough to stir his hair, and for the first time in the spar, genuine surprise lit his eyes.

"You got it, right?" Lucen’s face was blank, but his voice and gaze gave him away—a quiet, restrained eagerness.

Adyr exhaled, lowered his swords, and nodded, his lips twitching in quiet satisfaction. "Yeah."

His eyes fixed on something in the air, a translucent system message hovering before him.

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