Lucan watched with bated breath, waiting for the most powerful Aura Knight on the field to make his move. Of the two Ironhide boars that were charging at him, the one in the lead was clearly different from its brethren, easily a terrifying six feet tall and far wider in girth compared to the average of the other members of its pack,even before its form was encased in robust rock armor that had been shaped out of earth-attuned mana. There was no need to guess which Ironhide boar was the alpha of the pack, as the leader made its presence known enough.

  Its compatriot, the second Ironhide boar, was trailing behind its kin by a good ten paces, being positioned to its right. If the alpha of the pack of Ironhide boars didn’t finish off Daven Caravine with it’s initial charge, then the second Ironhide boar would crash into him from the side, but in case the initial charge was enough then it could veer away and aid the other members of its pack.

  As the alpha got nearer, Lucan's expression grew tense, but Daven Caravine remained a mask of calm, his sword hand remaining on the hilt of his sword but otherwise, not so much as a nervous twitch could be detected in his form.

  Only when a hand’s distance separated them, a distance so miniscule that Daven Caravine’s death was all but a foregone conclusion, did he finally move. Unsheathing his longblade from its sheathe as he side-stepped the alpha’s charge by the thinnest of margins, he twisted his wrist inwards so that the edge of his blade would be pointing in the alpha’s direction as it ferociously barrelled towards him.

  Only the edge of the longblade that had been forged out of a matte gray, non-reflective metal that the proprietor of Ashfall & Sons hadn’t introduced him to was now glowing an incandescent reddish-orange, hued in the tone of molten metal yet the longblade maintained his form as Daven Caravine casually swung his blade in a horizontal arc.

  There was no force behind his attack, he hadn’t gotten enough time to put his hips’ rotational force and his arm strength behind it. The longblade should have been knocked out of his hands, for the Aura Knight could not have been worthy of wielding it— instead, Lucan’s jaw quite literally dropped open as he barely traced the red line that moved across the beast’s abdomen.

  Daven Caravine, who was now directly in the path of the second, smaller but no less deadlier Ironhide boar’s path, raised his blade and swung his blade down horizontally this time.

  Lucan couldn’t claim to have been keeping track of the man’s movements; those were only visible to him because of the incandescent, shifting blur he had been desperately trying to track.

  Only after Daven Caravine was standing in the midst of two bisected Ironhide Boars, one horizontally and the other vertically, their blood and innards being boiled from the inside even after Daven had dismissed the red-hot glow from his blade, did Lucan finally let go of the breath he had been holding onto.

  He had expected the reinforcement stage Aura Knight to be drenched in blood due to the sheer brutality with which he had slaughtered the Ironhide Boars, but it appeared like even that had been factored into his calculations and the blood had evaporated before it could drench his armor and his exposed face.

  For the first time since Lucan had been introduced to Aura Knights, he felt afraid of those that were tasked to supposedly protect him. He’d known that Aura Knights had effectively left the bounds of what it meant to be human, their physical capabilities being more akin to mana beasts, but to see a Knight in action for the first time in his life taught him that reality to him in a way that he could not hide from.

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  There had been no bravado in the Aura Knight’s actions, no wasted movements as he calmly waited for inferior opponents that had opted to make the mistake of charging at him in a frontal confrontation. He had waited until the Ironhide Boars had entered his striking range and were no longer capable of adjusting their speed and direction by any significant metric. Then he had struck decisively, with the necessary amount of force required to penetrate the rock armor.

  There was no fight to be found here, only a one-sided slaughter by a trained veteran, a killer who had refined his craft on the field of battle.

  “What aspect was that?” The question left Lucan’s mouth before he could consider if asking Janis Caravine that was a wise decision.

  “The Flame’s Aspect of Intensity,” Janis smoothly answered, with any surprise he felt at Lucan’s knowledge about the workings of an Aura Knight or his growing curiosity being kept to himself. “Of the four core elements, the Flame’s songs are the hardest to comprehend. To keep balance, as the way of nature is and as my fellow Knight just demonstrated, it is also the deadliest.”

  Lucan had not let his gaze shift from the battlefield, however his target had changed as Daven Caravine was seemingly content to stand as vanguard, his longblade remaining in hand, but not searching for more targets.

  The duos that had been formed by pairs of knights had adopted an interesting strategy to deal with the Ironhide Boars. One knight met the boar’s charge with a defensive one of their own, their feet planted firmly in the ground, their knees lowered and their entire body weight behind their aura blade.

  To try and meet the Ironhide Boar’s charge head on seemed like madness to Lucan and he expected the defending knights to be blown away by the charge, but somehow, they held.

  They were undoubtedly pushed back across the battlefield as contact was made, their sabatons cracking the stone that paved the road and revealing the earth beneath as they continued to slide backwards. But they remained standing somehow, while their partner, struck at the weak spot where two plates of the rock armor that had been hewn out of earth-attuned mana met, punching through the gap between the plates that was held together by loam, with their Aura Blade.

  A single strike was repeated across the battlefield, cracking through rock armor and ripping through the relatively softer fur and flesh beneath.

  Only in one instance did it fail, as the Aura Knight who was defending against the Ironhide Boar seemed to slip, his right leg being thrown forward while his left tried to desperately compensate. His partner, who had been aiming for the weakness in the Ironhide Boar’s armor, missed as the mana beast lowered its head to better catch the falling knight in his vitals.

  The knight who was on the offensive still penetrated through the Ironhide Boar’s rock armor, but he didn’t instantly kill the beast as his sword strike was shallower than expected.

  Which left the knight who was on the defensive, seconds away from being gored to death. Using his free hand to pull out a long hunting knife that appeared to be made out of bronzium and double-edged with nightsilver, the falling knight called upon Aura Blade and rammed it in one of the eyeholes that had been left in the Ironhide Boar’s rock armor.

  The boar was certainly dead this time, but it was Daven Caravine, who slammed into the Ironhide Boar’s side with a vicious kick that prevented the Knight from being impaled.

  Only after the battlefield had calmed down and the fellow knight had helped his comrade who had been splayed across the ground, with disappointment written all across his expression instead of fear, did Daven Caravine speak.

  “You reacted well for your first excursion,” Daven assessed. “But let this be a lesson to you. Had the Ironhide Boar been at full strength, your aura blade would have undoubtedly faltered and your life forfeit, but even in this weakened state, a mana beast knows how to use its natural endowments far more instinctively than us. Even in victory, you can find defeat if you forget that.”

  “I will never forget it, sir,” The knight, who appeared to be in his early thirties, passionately nodded.

  Not long after, they set off towards Thesali once again.

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