Bido was cautious.
That knight was clearly on guard against her now.
A fatal wound wasn’t necessary.
She wasn’t thinking of cutting into his flesh, either.
All she needed was to graze him.
A small wound.
That alone would be enough to set it.
Bido lowered the tip of her blade even further.
Not to the height meant to strike flesh,
but to the height meant to make it graze.
Then she stilled her breathing.
Maintaining the sword’s resonance, she matched the “grain” of the flow.
The red scales beneath her eyes grew even thicker.
Traces of the resonance the sword was emitting.
Kyle was watching the change head-on.
The red scales beneath her eyes.
Her pupils deepening into crimson.
And besides that, nothing.
‘What kind of Mirkin is this?’
Enhancement? Transformation?
It probably wasn’t a domination type.
At least, not right now.
Before Kyle could finish his judgment,
Bido moved.
Even the sound of leaves being stepped on followed a beat late.
One span of distance.
Bido blinked once.
Her vision sharpened, and Kyle’s breathing and the scrape of his armor reached her as one.
That was “distance.”
Bido moved the tips of her feet half a beat ahead.
Before Kyle could raise his sword,
her center of gravity had already shifted to the “next place.”
Clang—!
Their swords collided.
This movement was not a speed an ordinary young girl could produce.
And the strangest thing of all was—
the grain of the power.
An unfamiliar energy, one that could not be explained by human vitality alone.
There was a sensation riding in along the blade.
Kyle instinctively did not meet her head-on.
Instead of fully blocking, he deflected.
The blade slid across the silver plate armor.
Only the sound of metal remained; it did not touch flesh.
Kyle’s “deflection” was not defense, but confirmation.
A method of not stopping the blade,
but clearing its path in advance.
Bido pressed on more densely.
The second strike was not for the arm, but the shoulder.
The third was not for the chest, but beside the ear.
A sequence that left only trajectories meant to “touch,”
not trajectories meant to “cut.”
While the sound of fallen leaves followed late,
only sword met sword first.
Clang—.
The brief ring
erased a handspan of distance between them.
Bido immediately continued the offensive.
The continuous flow was not meant to bring her opponent down.
Somehow—
she would touch him.
Only that will remained to the end.
Kyle received her attacks as he retreated one step, then another.
He angled his armor, changed his stride, and broke the angle of her sword tip.
But he did not counterattack rashly.
‘It may be the kind that reacts to my attacks.’
‘The moment it takes hold, I don’t know what might erupt.’
Kyle bought time with defense.
Mirkin was not easy to maintain.
He knew that all too well.
And yet—
Bido’s red eyes grew even darker.
The scale patterns also became clearer.
And Bido felt it.
A sensation that had not existed on the moonless night.
As if she were forcibly aligning the sword and herself,
a very thin, yet unmistakable burden.
Jincheong waited.
For a single chance.
While Bido held on,
there was not much he could do.
But “once” would be enough.
He forced his trembling hand down and pressed it to the ground.
As Bido’s stabilization spread beneath him, the texture of the earth returned to his palm.
The “answer” of the earth that had grown distant returned, ever so faintly.
And then he saw it.
The moment Kyle deflected Bido’s blade and moved his next foot,
the soil where the tip of that foot was meant to land sank ever so slightly.
A level impossible to notice by sight.
But fights were decided by openings like that.
Kyle’s balance twisted, half a beat off.
Even so, Kyle did not panic.
Rather, in that instant, he explosively circulated his Idrin and righted himself.
‘Do they think this much will finish me?’
The moment his foot found purchase again—
the girl’s sword was already thrusting in.
Kyle dodged.
Not quickly, but precisely.
Without leaning his body far back,
he simply cleared the path the sword tip would pass through.
That composure—
looked like arrogance.
But at that moment,
the angle of the sword shifted ever so slightly.
The tip of Bido’s sword grazed the edge of Kyle’s ear.
It was not a cut.
A thin scratch at most.
Rather than blood flowing, a stinging heat rose first.
Kyle thought it was “only that much.”
But immediately after,
a sensation that should have been familiar was cut off.
At the very instant his Idrin was about to surge,
the flow vanished as if severed cleanly.
It was not that his strength had left him.
Nor was it that his attack had been blocked.
It was simply—
as if that sensation had never existed in the first place.
Kyle’s eyes widened.
He instinctively opened the distance.
Farther than he had when he first saw Bido’s red eyes.
“…Mirkin?”
Kyle drew in a breath,
then stopped as he was.
Not in his body,
but inside, a sensation of his hand groping through empty air.
Instinctively, he tried to draw up his Idrin again.
But what rose was not heat, but emptiness.
As if the muscle he had been using until just now had never existed.
Kyle retreated another step.
Even as he stepped back, his gaze did not leave Bido.
This was not becoming stronger.
It was the act of “erasing.”
Kyle seized that conclusion,
suppressed his breath, and regained his composure.
A knight was not a being that fought with Idrin alone.
The brutal training continued since childhood.
Experience on the battlefield.
The “orthodox forms” carved into his body in order to survive.
And above all,
stamina and senses that, by sheer physical ability alone, far surpassed ordinary people.
Kyle took his stance again.
The tip of his sword lowered until it seemed it would scrape the ground.
This time,
there was no leisure.
—
“Ugh….”
Bido had definitely locked it.
Kyle’s Idrin, the grain of that flow.
It was at that moment.
In the instant she cut off the flow of that tenacious vitality,
the sword howled violently.
It was not a sound.
Not from the bone blade,
but from within Bido’s bones, or from the air before her eyes—
it was the sensation of something splitting apart.
The area beneath her eyes burned.
The palm gripping the hilt also tingled with heat.
Red scales
sprouted faintly not only beneath her eyes, but on the back of her hand as well.
‘…So this is.’
Real combat was different from training.
It was different from resonance matched only within fixed movements and a fixed time.
On the day she had stopped Roan—
it had been a moonless night.
The stabilization had been thick,
and even when the sword’s pressure tried to rise, it had been pressed down beneath it.
But not now.
Bido was expanding the stabilization.
All the way to Jincheong.
That meant the suppression wrapped around herself had grown thinner.
The sword’s cry
pushed away the “stability” Bido had been holding on to.
It was not as bad as the night of the rampage.
Her vision did not overturn as it had then.
And yet—
as if submerged underwater,
her body felt as though it were following a beat late.
“Bido…?”
Jincheong’s voice came from far away.
Bido gritted her teeth.
She took one deep breath.
‘Right now… I’m here.’
She forcibly seized the sword’s resonance and matched it to her breathing once more.
The scales that had sprouted on the back of her hand subsided.
To be precise—
they had not disappeared, but had been pressed down.
And she could feel it clearly.
The knight who had opened the distance before her.
The empty place inside him.
The key to that man’s Idrin was now in her possession.
Kyle’s eyes changed from wariness to certainty.
He now charged first.
His movements without Idrin were not as explosive as before.
Even so—
it was not a speed an ordinary person could produce.
The tip of Kyle’s sword ran low.
This time, it was not a stance meant to deflect,
but to crush down.
Their swords collided once more.
But this time, their positions had changed.
Kyle’s attack.
Bido’s defense.
Each time Kyle’s sword came down, the air was pressed down first.
Even without Idrin,
that pressure was precise like a “technique.”
Each time Bido received it, it was not her wrist but her shoulder that rang first.
It felt as though it was not the bone blade,
but the inside of her own bones trembling with it.
The area beneath her eyes burned,
and the scales she had pressed down beneath the back of her hand stirred again.
Because she had spread the stabilization.
Because it reached as far as Jincheong,
the suppression left for herself had grown thin.
‘I’ll hold on now.’
Bido repeated that to herself as she matched the sword’s resonance to her breath once again.
If she fell even one beat out of sync,
she would be the first to collapse.
The blade was fierce.
The pressure crushing down could not be explained by simple muscular strength alone.
It was merely the pure physical ability and technique of a trained knight.
Right now, Kyle could not use Idrin.
But that did not mean he had become weak.
Only his tactics had changed.
The blade that had deflected was now pressing down.
Bido lowered her stance once, ever so slightly.
She did not receive him head-on, but broke the angle and let it slide.
At that moment—
Kakak.
A strange sound mixed in, different from the clash of metal.
A tiny crack ran across Kyle’s blade.
A sword not wrapped in Idrin
was at a disadvantage in enduring continuous collisions with a dragon weapon.
Kyle’s gaze narrowed.
And in that instant, an opening appeared in Bido’s field of vision.
Jincheong did not wait.
‘The last one.’
He scraped together the strength he had left and drew up his Arkin.
Thanks to Bido’s stabilization beneath him, he caught the texture of the earth once more.
The ground rose.
A long rock stretched out
and locked Kyle’s line of movement like a “lock.”
It caught his ankle, twisted his waist, and bent the trajectory of his sword arm.
“Grrk…!”
Kyle gritted his teeth.
“How dare you…!”
“Something like this…!”
He tried to tear through it with force.
But without Idrin, it did not break in a single breath as he expected.
What was needed was not strength, but time.
And that “time”—
was all Bido needed.
Jincheong’s hand trembled again.
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed Bido’s wrist.
“Let’s go, Bido.”
Bido nodded once.
Without sheathing her sword, she turned.
The two ran at the same time.
The forest began to flee again.
Behind them came the sound of rock being ground apart.
And farther away, the sound of a blade tearing through the wind.