The Knight turned and threw the bloody handkerchief in the direction of the man in black, but it fluttered harmlessly halfway between them. Sleiss’s eyes grew wide. The assassin should have been just a sparse few steps away from him. He had thrown the handkerchief intending to block the assassin’s vision.

There were murmurs and curses of panic from the crowd. Some of them began pulling out clubs and daggers, but Sleiss stopped them with the show of a hand. Had the man wanted him dead, he would have done it seconds ago. “I thought you were an assassin,” Sleiss said.

Jon drew an arming sword, keeping it in front of his chest. “This one’s on Quill,” he said. Damian’s name was what convinced the crowd of what he was here to do, and that he was doing things by the rules of the alleys. With some hesitation, they put away their blades and bludgeons.

Sleiss sized up the man before him; weaponless and unafraid, this was nothing less than an invitation for him to come hither, an invitation he could only take with utmost caution. He raised his sword high, his hands entangled in a grip that allowed him to cut from any direction he saw fit.

He slid closer to Jon, then hacked down, and when all he heard was the whoosh of air, he returned his blade to the air and cut down from the other side. Jon stepped when Sleiss’s sword was at its slowest and most vulnerable apex, parrying it away then cutting down at the knight.

Sleiss stepped away, letting Jon’s much shorter blade fly past him. Jon followed up with a short thrust, one which Sleiss batted away with his gauntlet hand before cutting upwards at Jon. He ducked and stepped aside in the same breath, then backed away, making distance between him and the knight to strategize.

With just that exchange, Jon got a decent grasp of Sleiss’s fighting style. It was conventional, to say the least, but that was necessary for a relatively unwieldy weapon that had a lot of mass. Oh, it wasn’t slow — the tip was flying faster than Jon’s eyes could track — but he relied on the opponent’s stance and structure to tell him where the weapon was, anyway.

In the end, he had to get past the longsword and get into wrestling range, but wrestling an armored knight when he wasn’t armored, himself, was a fool’s game. He was left with no choice but to destroy the longsword entirely.

He slashed directly at Sleiss. Just as expected, Sleiss swept his sword to intercept Jon’s.

At this precise moment, both sides invoked their magics: Jon, hoping to destroy Sleiss’s weapon, coated the edge of his own sword with magic conjured from sheer concentration, and Sleiss, using his Skill, Butter, also aimed to destroy Jon’s sword and punish him for his apparent recklessness.

When their blades clashed, there was a wave of pressure felt only by the two fighters, stunning them for a fraction of a second as they took in what had just happened.

Instead of cutting straight through Jon’s sword, Sleiss’s sword had only managed to cut halfway through half its width.

For a moment, the two didn’t know what to do. They pushed and pulled, each trying to get their respective weapons free in a way that was to their advantage. Jon pulled out a knife with his offhand, slashing and stabbing at Sleiss, but it wouldn’t get through his armor.

He aimed for Sleiss’s exposed face, but with Perfect Motion, Sleiss bent his body away from the attack, a move which surprised Jon. Judging by Sleiss’s stance, his center of mass should have been more forwards; shifting his center of mass from forward to backwards would have been too awkward to accomplish at such a speed, from that kind of stance.

As if to further mock Jon’s naivety about this world, Sleiss’s gauntleted hand rose up with unnatural speed to bat away Jon’s knife and punch at his face.

Seeing that bone did not win against steel, Jon evaded the punch and broke away, allowing the new slot in his sword to slide against Sleiss’s until they were both finally free of their strange bind.

Once again, the two fighters faced each other. Jon couldn’t begin to imagine what sorts of Skills were at play just a while ago; although “cutting through steel” was an obvious one, he didn’t understand the nuances of whatever Skill allowed Sleiss to move unnaturally. It could be some sort of self-telekinesis, or it might just be something as simple as improving the knight’s reflexes. He didn’t know.

As it stood, just by the sheer uncertainty of the magic at play, Jon considered Sleiss himself to be more dangerous than his longsword. On the other hand, one touch of the longsword would send Jon’s head rolling far too easily.

He noted a crack on Sleiss’s sword, and that was enough of a clue for him to conclude that if he could meet magic with magic enough times, he could win.

Looking at his own half-cut sword, however, it wasn’t going to survive another blow. He still had a few spare knives, at least. His eyes flitted around, and he noted some weapons lying around from the previous fight.

In the worst case scenario, Sleiss’s movement skill might be some kind of self-telekinesis, in which case even cutting his muscles wouldn’t cease movement. Jon would have to lop off entire limbs or deal damage against vital functions, like the eyes or heart, to deal any sure damage against Sleiss.

Once again, he couldn’t do that with Sleiss’s longsword in the way. He had absolutely no choice but to sacrifice as many weapons as he could to destroy that thing.

He closed the gap, and again they clashed blades, magic-on-magic. One look into each other’s eyes and they both understood that they’d adopted the same strategy of destroying the other’s weapon.

Sleiss perfectly aimed for the cut on Jon’s sword, and when they clashed, Jon’s sword was cut in half. Part of it spun in the air and landed on the ground.

In Sleiss’s mind, this should have been the decisive blow. Although his longsword had suffered more damage — spider-webbed cracks were already obvious all along the edge of the blade — Jon only had knives now, and against a longsword in open terrain, he was as good as dead.

Which was why he didn’t expect Jon to be able to parry four consecutive strikes from his longsword — with nothing but daggers! If anything, weren’t those daggers even more durable than his sword?

Jon wouldn’t let Lastifer’s dagger go to waste, after all. He used it to receive attacks, while he used an ordinary steel dagger to reply.

Sleiss also underestimated the man’s adaptability. Who would’ve thought that it was possible to pick up a sword with one’s foot? Marcello’s two swords soon found a new home in Jon’s hands, and he relentlessly struck Sleiss’s longsword, expanding the cracks that were already there.

For the first time, Sleiss took two steps back in retreat. The most number of steps he’d ever needed in his entire military career was one, and only to evade attacks by a hair’s width. Even though he was a king killer and now only lived as a sellsword, he still had chivalric pride.

He took rapid steps forward and swung with Butter. Jon met this attack with one sword, but Sleiss’s sword cleaved right through it in one slash, buying him just enough time to step back and out of reach. Sleiss didn’t relent; Jon met his next attack with the other sword, but that, too, was cleaved right through.

He can amplify the Skill. He still couldn’t tell what the Skill’s conditions were, but that didn’t matter right now. Sleiss was still attacking, and Jon was right back to good ol’ daggers...and versatility.

His foot was beside the head of William’s halberd. In a move that made Sleiss pause and think for too long, he hooked his ankle under the axe head, kicked it up, then caught it by the broken shaft, holding it in his hand — primed to heft the whole thing right at Sleiss.

The sight of Jon’s throwing stance shook Sleiss out of his shock, and he just barely lunged away from the path of the halberd-turned-throwing axe. He, however, was not the target.

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Jon had put some magic into that throw. He didn’t know if it would’ve worked, but it did. The halberd’s axe edge hit Sleiss’s sword.

The sound of it ringing and shattering sent the knight’s heart into disarray. This was a weapon which had accompanied him through his most difficult times, tempered by hundreds of battlefields. It was the very same weapon which struck down a tyrant, ending years of cruel and unjust reign, and beginning his own journey as a man hunted by his own country.

Half of it remained. Sleiss steadied himself. It was just a weapon — an incredibly durable one, at that. The one who had struck down his king was, after all, not his sword, but himself. The one who had weathered his difficulties was himself, and no one — and nothing — else.

He held it with one hand, treating it like any other sidearm. It was much lighter than he was used to, but that’s just how it was.

Jon approached him with Larry’s rapier. In terms of reach, Jon had the advantage. In terms of technique, the field was lopsidedly in Sleiss’s favor.

The fact was that Jon didn’t really know how to use a rapier. In his first life, he had encountered and picked up a number of techniques from the sabers of pilgrims, the chain whips of eastern monks, and the machetes of rebels and gangs.

The variety of enemies and techniques he had encountered were so vast, and yet, there was no one in that era who’d seriously wielded a rapier to kill someone. Perhaps nothing spoke better of just how slanderously bad of a military weapon a rapier was, than the fact that no one he’d met ever tried to kill him with one.

Feeling the heft of the weapon in his hand, he could already see its disadvantages listing off in his mind. It was too damn long, giving the enemy ample leverage against him if he whiffed an attack. It could do some cuts and slashes, but he was facing an armored knight, so it was useless for anything other than an aimed thrust through Sleiss’s gaps.

Standing three meters away from Sleiss — practically point-blank range for a duel — he swiftly decided that the rapier in his hand was more of a liability, and that he’d rather have daggers in his hands than this thing.

He propped it up beside his head, holding it by the handle like a javelin. Once again, Sleiss couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Jon kept on pulling moves every other attack that he’d never even heard about. Truly, there existed no treatise to counter a man like Jon, so determined to reach his target that the form of his weapon was, to him, only a mere suggestion of its proper use.

Jon threw it with furious madness, imbuing it with magical power...and trickery.

Sleiss sidestepped, expecting the rapier to sail right past him — but the rapier shifted, following him. He could do nothing but gawk at the intricacy of its basket hilt as it came to rest under his arm.

He didn’t even feel it penetrate his armor and pierce his right lung. It would’ve come out the other side if it weren’t for the basket hilt, which slammed up against his chest. He finally felt the weight of the weapon, which he carried between his flesh and bone.

He staggered backwards, just barely stopping himself from tipping over from the momentum of a kilogram of steel sticking itself in him.

The adrenaline of the moment stopped him from feeling any pain. “What!” he blurted out, surprise written all over his face. “How!”

It was an honest question, one that Jon wasn’t inclined to answer — but if he were, it wasn’t that he had turned the rapier into a homing missile. Instead, he guessed how Sleiss would evade and where he would be when he did. Jon’s magic very slightly punted the rapier in a horizontal direction, ultimately appearing to track Sleiss when Jon’s guess proved correct.

The ensuing demonstration of penetrative power took just a little bit more magic than that.

Jon charged at Sleiss, who tried to hack him down with a broken longsword. Jon parried it away with a dagger, and he was finally able to slip into martial arts range.

Sleiss was a trained knight, and he knew how to wrestle — but he discarded all pretense of knowing anything in front of Jon. Still, he knew no better than whatever he’d trained to do.

So, he lowered his body and pushed forward, expecting to meet Jon’s body. All he grappled, however, was air.

Jon had long ago stepped aside, allowing Sleiss to sail past him. He grabbed onto the rapier’s grip in Sleiss’s chest, and its blade sticking out his back, as handles with which to pull and manipulate Sleiss’s momentum.

It was in that moment, however, that he’d forgotten about Sleiss’s Skill. The knight was supposed to fall — which he did — but not without kicking the back of Jon’s knee, collapsing his stance, then he kicked his back. It was an otherwise impossible move made possible only through a Skill.

In the end, they both ate dirt in opposite directions.

Jon rolled back onto his feet, but Sleiss was faster, even with the rapier skewered through him. Jon was still standing up when Sleiss attacked with his broken longsword. He’d never let it go.

Jon met the base of the longsword’s blade with an ordinary steel dagger infused with magic. The dagger shattered, along with the rest of the longsword’s blade, leaving only an inch of steel from the hilt — yet Sleiss still didn’t let go of it.

Jon was down to a dagger, and Sleiss, to the hilt’s crossguard and a gauntleted hand.

They faced each other, taking these last few seconds to recover.

Sleiss chuckled. It may have appeared that he had the upper hand, being heavily armored, and Jon, left with nothing but a twiddly knife...but he was well aware that that wasn’t the case. “Before our last joust,” he announced with the last of his pride, a thick Weissian accent punctuating his words, “I thank you, Herr Reaper.”

He charged forward, throwing a straight jab with his gauntlet. Jon dodged. Sleiss threw a hook with the hilt. Jon dodged that, too. He punished the gutsy move with a cut to Sleiss’s unprotected sword hand, taking his fingers.

Sleiss dropped the remnants of his sword. Jon saw an opportunity to attack Sleiss’s face and he went for it, but the knight twisted his body back around and batted away the knife — and it slipped from Jon’s grasp.

For a moment, Sleiss held hope that he might dominate this battle at the very last moment.

Although he’d batted away the knife, Jon’s hand was unharmed and still all too close to his face. He dismissed this; the best Jon could do now was poke his eye. It was scarcely a decisive blow.

His hopes were dashed when a fountain pen flashed into existence in Jon’s hand. He saw the gleam of its adamantine nib...and the spots of red around its grip.

It was far too close now. Although Perfect Motion allowed him to move his body exactly to his will and with unerring precision, his body was still subject to the laws of physics. He simply could not accelerate any of his limbs, nor his head, nor his torso fast enough to get away.

Perhaps he could still salvage the situation. A mere stab to the eye didn’t kill anyone outright.

Jon had put magic into that pen.

Sleiss saw the glow of it.

A miniature explosion of magic stirred Sleiss’s brain, and he died well and truly standing. The remaining force burst out the other side, hitting the inside of his helmet.

His helmet popped off. Jon quickly pulled back the pen before Sleiss’s body began to give way to gravity. As the helmet hit the ground, so did its owner.

Jon stared at the knight’s head of half-white, half-gray hair, thinking about the man’s last words. “Thank you,” he’d said. What a strange thing to say.

[Curious?]

Jon turned away.

[Do you want something for him?]

He snapped out a black handkerchief from a pocket, and tossed it over Sleiss’s face, watching it flutter until it covered the old man’s one bloodied eye, and the other, tired one.

[That’s all?] Such a little thing.

Jon looked up and scanned the crowd around him. They had gone deathly quiet and still.

“Talk to Quill,” he said, walking out the fence gate. The guard at the gate could only stare at Jon’s back, getting smaller as time passed with no sound.

With this, the Houses’ power slipped just an inch more, and a certain back-alley playwright was more than happy to funnel his newfound caffeine empire’s profits into stuffing the Houses’ most important personnel into sand-filled barrels, ready to be shipped off and dumped into the Middling Sea.

***

[“Herr Sleiss ex Reich” has been slain by your hand. You may lay claim to one of his Skills: Perfect Motion / Butter.]

[A quick choice, as always.]

Name: Jon Fuze

Level: 5

Kills: 53 → 54

Kills to Next Level: 3 / 25 → 4 / 25

Skill Proofs: 3

| Skill Claims |

> Hastened Sight (Unlocks Lvl. 10)

> Perfect Motion (Unlocks Lvl. 5)

| Skills |

> Summon Scribetool (Tier 1)

***

Theater. Opera. The stage was empty. Sleiss awoke in one of the audience seats. “My dear Jon took care of you well,” a woman beside him said. “I was going to do this, anyway, but he put in a word for you.”

Sleiss looked at her, averting his eyes the moment he realized who she was. “Lady” —

“Hush. Be straightforward, and answer me with certainty…and clarity.” Ravena smiled. “Would you like a second chance?”