Rune System: The Crimson Knight

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“You want a fight, Mrs. Salazar? Very well, then. Have it your way.”

Less than five minutes later, after a brief conversation in the battle arena, Valeria Salazar charged at Draàl with a battle cry, fully clad in her armor while wielding a sword and a shield. It was clear from her first swing that she wasn’t planning to go easy on her opponent, and Draàl was obliged to feel the same way. He weaved around her strikes at first, nearly caught off-guard by her alarming pace and impressive swordsmanship. Then, acting purely on impulse, he caught her sword by the blade just as she swung towards his neck, disarming her as he delivered a solid kick to her shield. Though she remained on her feet, the force was strong enough to send her sliding several yards backwards.

Draàl dislodged the weapon from his hand, noticing blood trickling slowly from the shallow cut in his palm. In mere seconds, the wound closed up with a faint yellow glow, leaving no trace of its previous existence. He flexed his fingers and glanced upwards, spotting the surprise in Valeria’s eyes right before she masked it with a scowl.

“If it were anyone else, that blow would’ve taken their head clean off,” Draàl said as he shifted the sword from his left hand to his right. “And I’m sure the only reason your blade could cut through my skin is due to the high amount of rune magic you’re channeling into the weapon. The question is, Mrs. Salazar, how long can you keep this up?”

“Long enough to defeat you, my lord,” she replied quickly with a charming smile. Inwardly, though, she muttered a curse. She loathed the fact that he read her easily, already figuring out that she’d expended an enormous amount of rune magic just to make him bleed. Not to mention his speed and reflexes, which were more sharpened than she’d anticipated.

But what really made the hairs at the nape of her neck stand on their ends was the smile he wore—a humorless, menacing grin that looked more terrifying than any frown.

“Let’s find out, then,” he droned as he tossed Valeria’s sword forward. A six-foot flaming staff suddenly burst into his grip, with one-edged blades jutting out from both ends. He took a stance as she picked up her weapon, and the second she stood ready, he attacked.

Both parties retained the pace of their ferocious clash, with Valeria being mostly on the defensive at first. She understood Draàl’s decision to fight with a long-range weapon, knowing he’d want to control the battle from a certain distance. However, such a decision came with consequences if one wasn’t careful enough, and that was what she looked to exploit.

After taking a strong blow to her shield, Valeria spun around as she parried the strike with her blade, creating a brief opening. Then she zoomed in before Draàl could strike again, closing the distance between them and forcefully ramming her shield into his face. Briefly disoriented, Draàl took a dazed step back. But that moment of distraction was all Valeria needed to unleash everything she had.

Without giving him a chance to recover, she quickly reinforced the rune aura in her weapons and struck his upper arm, drawing a fresh drizzle of blood. Roaring angrily, he swung again, but Valeria was too close for his staff to do any damage. She ducked easily, bashed the weapon out of his hands with a sweeping move of her blade, and smacked his left temple with both feet while performing a seamless cartwheel. She lunged yet again as he stumbled backwards, showing no mercy as she peppered his arms, torso, and face with deep cuts and lacerations. Despite struggling to gain his footing in the battle, Draàl remained stubbornly formidable, resorting to shooting fireballs from his palms as he tried to distance himself from his attacker. But Valeria was equally relentless—she followed him closely and swiftly, knocking away every fireball he threw with her shield as she continued to slice him up with her sword.

Then, in a flurry of sharp movements, Valeria seemingly ended the fight.

She sprinted at Draàl, who’d painfully taken the edge of the shield to his cheekbone after she threw it like a frisbee. Slamming her knee into his torso, she brought her gladius down in a diagonal arc that left a long trail of torn flesh across his chest. Then, in a finishing move, she thrust the sword into his lower abdomen, a sick smile forming on her lips when she heard him gasp.

Draàl’s eyes widened with astonishment as he looked down. Blood oozed in red, thick torrents from the gash where several inches of Valeria’s gladius had impaled him, and it would’ve sunk all the way to the hilt if he hadn’t grabbed the blade in time. He stared blankly at the weapon buried in his gut for a moment, then he lifted his gaze. Valeria stared back with a victorious grin, her hands still gripping the hilt of her sword, and an unspoken truth gleamed through the glint in her eyes.

“Was this your plan all along, Valeria?” Draàl asked quietly. “Do you wish to kill me?”

She chuckled softly as she pushed against his feeble resistance, inching the sword further into his thorax. “Not at all, actually. But, if you do die, then that would only confirm a quiet theory of mine.”

Draàl breathed slowly. “Which is?”

Valeria dropped her voice to a gentle whisper as she leaned forward. “You’re not worthy to be the Crimson Knight.”

A crippling wave of weakness and despondency came over him, spreading deep into his core. He lowered his head and entertained the feeling for a second, intrigued by how something that felt so familiar in his past life passed off as alien and strange now.

He hated it.

“When I died, I was a nobody,” Draàl started slowly, keeping his voice low. “Powerful people trampled over me and ruined my already crumbling life, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I’d believed things would be different after I was resurrected, after I was given all this power. But I was wrong. No matter how elevated one is, or even how lowly they might be, there’ll always be people who’ll have reasons to bring them down. The difference is, back then, I was too defenseless to do anything about it. But now…”

Red-hot eyes—glowing with frightening vigor—suddenly angled upwards, causing Valeria’s smile to evaporate instantly.

“Now, I’d rather die fighting than to bend to people like you.”