Free Web NovelChapter 43: Aurenfall XIll
Leon moved first.
He came in low, faster than any of the Titans could properly track, and rather than committing to a kill he hit the lead one square in the side of its front leg with a flat palm strike laced in ki. Not lethal. Just enough to rip its balance out from under it mid-stride.
The Titan stumbled sideways, massive frame crashing into the one beside it, both of them tangling for half a second.
That half second was all Lena needed.
She closed the distance in a blur, rapier already glowing as she channeled mana into it.
"Silford Sword Craft: Searing Edge."
Flame wrapped the blade from hilt to tip, and she drove it clean through the joint of the staggered Titan’s foreleg, the strike precise, surgical, nothing wasted.
The third Titan reared back and spat a fireball directly at her.
She didn’t block it. She moved through the space it wasn’t, a sharp pivot off her back foot that carried her sideways and under the arc of flame, her whole body flowing through the dodge like it had been choreographed in advance. The fireball detonated against a tree behind her, throwing sparks and bark in every direction.
She didn’t break stride.
The fourth Titan lunged, claws raised, and Lena spun beneath the swing, rapier flashing as lightning gathered along the blade this time.
"Silford Sword Craft: Heaven’s Thread."
She zigzagged between the last two Titans, blade cutting precise arcs of crackling light, the lightning jumping from each strike into the next target before the first wound had even finished registering. It wasn’t brute force. It was efficiency, the kind that came from years of training and the kind of control that made every motion count for something.
Both Titans went down within seconds of each other.
The clearing went quiet, the fight over almost as fast as it had started.
Lena straightened, breathing controlled, rapier lowering to her side.
Leon stood a short distance away, watching with the same calm expression he always wore.
"Not bad," he said.
"I had help," she said, glancing at the Titan he’d unbalanced for her.
"Barely."
She smiled despite herself, walking over to claim her tokens.
The leaderboard updated.
Four B rank kills, two thousand points added to her total.
---
RANK 1 — LEONIS SILFORD — 6,240 pts
RANK 2 — LENA SILFORD — 3,400 pts
RANK 3 — CEDRIC ARDEN — 3,200 pts
---
Lena had pushed past Cedric.
Leon glanced at the placement, gave a small nod of approval, and stepped back.
"I’ll head deeper," he said. "You’ve got this section handled."
"Wait—" Lena started, but he was already crouching slightly, azure light gathering around him again, frost spreading outward from his feet.
He pushed off.
Up through the canopy, breaking into open sky, and then he was gone again, a streak of blue cutting across the horizon toward the deeper sections of the forest where the heaviest mana signatures sat waiting.
Lena watched the spot where he’d disappeared for a second.
Then sighed and turned to claim the rest of her tokens.
...
Back at the broadcast booth, Hosk could barely keep up.
"The Silford siblings, ladies and gentlemen! Did you SEE that teamwork? He unbalances, she finishes, like they’ve rehearsed this a thousand times!"
Vera nodded, scanning her notes quickly. "It’s clean. Genuinely clean. You don’t see coordination like that even among trained adventuring parties, let alone two children who are what, seven? Eight?"
"And now he’s off again!" Hosk added, watching the drone struggle to keep pace with the azure streak crossing the sky. "Where is he headed this time?"
"Somewhere deeper," Vera said. "And if the last few minutes are anything to go by, I don’t think anyone wants to be standing where he lands."
...
In the stands, Yuki’s tails had not stopped moving once.
She watched the screen, golden eyes bright, completely unable to keep the proud grin off her face as the broadcast replayed the Titan fight from three different angles.
"That’s my master," she said, to absolutely no one in particular, several times in a row, with increasing volume each time.
The people sitting near her had stopped reacting to it entirely.
Hosk’s voice carried over the broadcast, energy climbing.
"And there he goes again, folks! Leonis Silford continuing his rampage through the forest, B rank after B rank falling without so much as slowing him down!"
The footage showed Leon weaving low through the trees, ice trailing behind him in thin curling wisps, each beast he passed dropping before the camera could even properly frame the kill. The leaderboard ticked upward steadily beside his name, climbing past seven thousand, then past seven five hundred.
Then something cut across the sky.
A bolt of lightning, fast and precise, aimed directly at where Leon’s flight path was about to intersect.
"Wait—" Hosk started.
Leon tilted, barely, a small lazy adjustment of his trajectory that put him a meter to the side of where the bolt struck. The lightning hit a tree instead, splitting it cleanly down the middle in a shower of sparks and splinters.
Hosk’s voice jumped an octave. frёewebηovel.cѳm
"IT SEEMS PRINCE CEDRIC IS MAKING HIS MOVE!"
The broadcast cut immediately to a wider shot. Leon, hovering a short distance above the clearing where the bolt had originated, looking down without much visible concern. And standing below him, sword crackling with restrained lightning, was Cedric.
The crowds across the continent reacted instantly, a roar splitting in two directions.
"CEDRIC!"
"GO GET HIM!"
But underneath that, smaller, scattered, a different sound was building.
"Leonis!"
"The dark horse!"
"Take him down!"
It wasn’t the majority. Cedric was still the prince, still the favorite, still the name most of the continent had been rooting for an hour ago. But there was a new current running through the crowd now, uncertain but growing, a section of people who’d watched a forgotten E rank tear through hundreds of points in minutes and decided that maybe, just maybe, they wanted to see more of that.
Vera leaned into her microphone, voice tight with anticipation. "This is genuinely unprecedented. The current points leader, by a massive margin, facing the second place competitor directly."
Leon descended slowly, landing a short distance from Cedric, the frost beneath his feet spreading outward across the clearing floor.
Cedric’s expression had nothing pleasant left in it.
His jaw was tight, his grip on his sword white knuckled, lightning crawling restlessly along the blade like it was feeding off whatever he was feeling. The smug composure from the ballroom was gone entirely, replaced with something rawer.
His face said everything his mouth hadn’t yet.
*I’ll kill you.*
Leon looked at him, unbothered, hands loose at his sides.
Around them, in the distance, other participants who’d caught wind of what was happening through their own leaderboards or simply heard the commotion made the smart decision and kept moving, pushing deeper into the forest to claim what points they could while the top two were occupied with each other.
Nobody wanted to be standing nearby when this actually started.
The drone above them adjusted its angle, locking in.
The forest went quiet around the two of them.
Lightning gathered fully along Cedric’s blade.
