I activated the Focus, and immediately every distracting thought vanished from my mind.

I focused solely on the enemy in front of me and her coming attack and her powerful attack coming at me.

I moved my sword, changing its directions faintly. Moving it toward, her real sword, guided by my instinct.

Clang!

Our blades clashed, and I felt a heavy blow across my wrist, but I bore it. I was able to stop the attack. If I had not; it would have taken my like, for it, I could bear some pain.

“Good attack,” I praised, but she wasn’t in the mood as her blue eyes chilled in anger and she came again.

Clang Clang Clang

I defended against the attack, and she moved left and attacked again, before appearing in front of me and attacked again. She is moving around, using the attack from every angle and skill.

I defended, using only Focus, Gale of the Blade, Blitz Steps, and my passive skills.

She is higher level than me in combat skill, around Lv. 25 with all her points moving to the physical attributes. I have not died by her hands, which is already a testament to my skills, but this is a battle, and it is not enough.

I have to kill her and do it soon before she kills me.

Despite knowing that, I didn’t hurry. I am not fighting some novice, but a powerful, experienced warrior.

If I hurry and end up making any mistakes. She will exploit that and kill me. She will need only one chance for that.

So, the plan is to keep her engaged, till I find an opportunity. It is going to be hard, and I am worried about my wrist, which is suffering quite a pressure, but I will need to continue with what I am doing.

“It will not work,” she said as she pressed me with her attacks. “Whatever you mean,” I said.

She didn’t reply immediately and instead appeared in front of me like a ghost before attacking me.

“You are waiting for the opportunity; I will not give it to you,” she replied, to the question, I didn’t ask.

However, I am not surprised; she was able to tell, what I was doing.

Quite a lot of information about me is out. Including my fighting style and half of my skill and given her experience, it is not hard for her to deduct that. Many people, in my place would do the same, if presented with the same options.

She knew what I was doing, and wouldn’t be able to stop me from what I was planning on doing. I will search for the opportunity, that will aid me in killing her.

Rip!

Seconds passed, when her sword was able to avoid my blade and gave me a cut above my stomach.

It is a slight cut, harmless in itself, but with her pain skill. It has become very painful. The pain from an earlier wound had just started to lessen, and now I have received another one.

It had brought tears to my eyes, before she attacked again, wanting to use the opportunity to finish up the job.

This time, I was able to dodge it successfully, before defending with my sword.

I don’t want to do that. Every time, her sword strikes against mine, I feel the throbbing pain in my wrist.

It is worse than the last battle, but I need to do what I am doing.

If I didn’t use my blade to defend and my speed skill to dodge. I wouldn’t be as successful. I have seen how she moves, and it is not an option, I would like to use until I have no other choice.

Hun!

Seconds passed, when I noticed something. That made me want to curse loudly.

The undead have breached the circle and are now coming inside, with some coming toward me.

I knew this would happen, but didn’t expect, that it would happen so soon. I am already having a hard time dealing with the enemy and now with the undead. It is going to be even harder to survive.

She seemed pleased by the undead, and why wouldn’t she be? I would have been too, if I had been at her place.

Clang!

I defended once again, before moving to dodge the attack of the zombie and the skeleton. They had finally arrived; there were three of them, two skeletons and one zombie.

As I moved, the woman moved with me, to stop me from what I was doing.

Rip!

I was able to avoid the attack, but I took the attack of the zombie. I had controlled my body enough that I didn’t let its blade dig too deep, but still, it was injured.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Hehe!” the woman laughed seeing that and attacked me.

I didn’t move my sword forward and instead moved left, not only to dodge but also to get away from the undead, but I didn’t go too far. There are several groups of undead and if I get too close, I might get one attracted to me.

Rip!

I dodged the attack and then another before the undead reached me and once again, I needed to take the attack from the undead to dodge the attack from the woman.

This time, it was a zombie.

“You should surrender; it will save you a world of pain,” she said.

“Thank you for your advice,” I replied.

She will need to beat me to make me surrender and I plan to fight till the breath remains in me.

She said nothing and came at me with the attack. Using a skill, she had not used before. A faint smoke released from her body, which made me feel sleepy.

I had not expected her to have such skill. It is a rare skill, that usually Lv. 30 or above people have.

Her information didn’t say, she has this skill. It seemed like; she had been hiding it.

Rip!

She avoided my sword and gave me a cut across my shoulder. It was not a light cut either and would have affected me a lot. If it had hit my sword in hand.

This time, she didn’t activate her pain skill. Once again, it is not surprising; the pain will counterbalance the sleeping gas and she didn’t want that.

Rip Rip!

I had just got the attack when I received two from the undead. They were lighter, but still the injuries.

Clang Rip!

The next attack came right after and I defended with my sword, but wasn’t able to defend the one that came after and got another cut shoulder.

“Give up. You have been defeated; there is no use in fighting anymore,” she said, and I grinned with sleepy eyes.

“I still have my sword in my hand,” I replied, and she attacked me again.

Rip Rip Rip!

Her attack cut through the cloth of my thought, but the next one after that, gave me a cut across my left before I received another one from the zombie.

It was a new one; two more undead had come, taking their number to five.

Normally, these undead aren’t a problem for me; I would need a second to finish them off, but now, I am powerless to do anything against them. If I tried to attack them, the woman would finish me off.

I would need a single attack to finish half of them, but the woman will not give me that opportunity.

It is a good thing; I had added that attribute point, I had got from my recent level up into the vitality. It is helping me deal better with the injuries along with Eudo’s scripts.

Though, I will have to do something soon or she will end me.

She is expecting me to do something in the next few seconds. She is alert, ready to deal with anything, I threw at her.

Rip Clang Rip!

Seconds passed, and I received more and more injuries from the woman and undead, while the sleep in my eyes became so intense that I was barely able to hold it onto the bay.

Still, some symptoms have started affecting me. Lethargy, tiredness, and irritation make things extremely dangerous.

She had come close thrice to finish me off. If she had succeeded, she would have brought me too close to death. I would have become her hostage, and the result of the battles would fall into jeopardy.

While I had told the army to keep fighting, even when I got killed and captured. It couldn’t be said, it will happen.

I am the leader and even though I am weak. I am the most important person, whose command they are following. It is likely, that they will surrender if I get killed or captured; it is quite common.

Clang Rip!

I defended against the attack, nearly losing my rapier, before getting injured by the undead.

Nearly every part of my body is injured, my eyes are sleepy, and my mind is tired. I just wanted to give it up, but I didn’t. Instead, I kept fighting every moment, irritating the woman who was trying to finish me off.

She is using every skill to attack me and a lot of them have injured me, but she still has finished me made or forced me to surrender.

Another minute passed, and I was barely holding on against her attacks. I don’t think I would be able to hold her back for long; she thinks the same too as her attacks become daring.

She wants to finish me off; wants the reward, that is promised to her and every person part of the horde.

Seconds passed, and I received another injury from the undead, when she came at me, once again.

She is fast and her attack is powerful, she is also very close to me.

I didn’t behave anything odd, instead; I moved my sword to defend against the attack as I have been doing, with lethargic movement.

She tried to avoid my blade like she always does, but I didn’t let her, and it moved to clash.

There was no change in me until our swords were centimeters away from each other. When my eyes sharpened and nearly all the tiredness vanished.

Focus is an amazing skill. It lets me focus on a thing I want, but it also helps in dealing with skills like sleeping gas or other type of soul/neurological skills.

I didn’t fake the sleepiness. She would have noticed that immediately.

Instead, I lowered the power of the focus, till the skill was barely active.

Let the mist affect me and defend as I usually would. It was an enormous risk, but it was the only thing, I could do to make the enemy so confident of her victory, that she provided me a window to mine.

Clang!

She noticed the change in me as our weapons clashed, and I parried her sword, with Quick Parry. Even with the skill, it would have been hard to achieve this without resistance, but there is a thing called perception.

Till now, I had gone from being a relatively strong opponent to the one barely able to hold against her.

Add to that, a novel skill that she is pretty proud of, which made her even more confident. Making her lower her guard; allowing me to successfully parry her sword.

With her sword parried away, I moved forward, and her alarm flashed in her eyes. When she saw my speed, she finally began to retreat.

She should have done that when I parried her sword, but she still had confidence in her ability to kill me.

Now, seeing my speed, she finally understood the trouble she was in.

I didn’t reveal all my strength, including my speed. I kept 30% back, which I am using. Once again, against an opponent like her, it is not that useful, until it is used at the right time, right moment.

I don’t know if it is. I will know in a second.

Hun!

She begins retreating instantly, but my sword already reached her. It was about to touch her when her skin turned stony grey.

For a moment, I thought it was a skill, but no; it is a fucking spell and a Grade III at that.

I wanted to curse, but I didn’t. Instead, I activated the Sharpness and powered the enchantment on my rapier to the max.

Usually, I do not do that because it is unnecessary, especially after I have changed the core of the rapier. 25% power is more than enough to pierce through anything, also using full power damages the enchantments and the metal.

Which will damage it without a doubt; the new core is too powerful for the rapier. I had been warned to not use over 60% of the power, but now I am using it.

I love this rapier; it was my mother's, but now to kill the enemy, I am going to damage it. There is no other option. If I didn't kill her, that sword of hers would kill.

Puch!

With the full power of the enchantments and Sharpness, my sword touched her rocky skin covering her, before piercing through her head, killing her.

The spells may be powerful, but these enchantments are made to break through spells. To give us a chance, against the monsters, that mages are.

I wanted to collapse to the ground, but I didn’t. Instead, I removed my sword from her head and moved toward the undead, who were coming to do the job that the women failed to do.