The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 680: The Elven Demon Hunt (4)
Draven's breath left his lungs in a slow hiss, thin as mist on cold metal.
He let the exhalation steady his pulse, then raised the longblade in a single, unhurried arc.
The sword caught what little light seeped through the Grove's canopy—lambent greens, sickly violets—until the alloy shimmered like moon-water swirling over oil.
That shifting gleam always unsettled onlookers; today it unsettled only the clearing itself.
Roots shivered and clacked beneath the moss, as though remembering an ancient agreement not to interfere.
His grip remained deceptively loose.
Subtle muscle twitches rolled under the glove—index finger sliding half a grain, middle finger tightening just enough to adjust torque.
Every micro-correction said the same thing: this blade would travel only where his will demanded, not one millimeter farther.
Draven's eyes, pale and sharp as split quartz, never left the formless silhouette hovering in front of him.
The shadow-demon broke first.
Smoke compressed into a knife-edge spear and snapped forward.
It ripped a narrow trench through the damp air, the pressure wave rattling dead fern fronds against Draven's boots.
He waited until an instant before impact—a space so small most soldiers never learned to measure it—then swayed left, pivoting on the ball of his foot.
His coat, long and dark, flared like a banner yanked by sudden wind.
That billow wasn't vanity; it was misdirection.
Fabric swallowed the demon's sightline, masking the precise angle of Draven's evasion.
The spear shot through empty cloth and struck a root behind him with a crack that sprayed bark chips.
He never wasted momentum.
The same pivot flicked his wrist; the blade snapped upward in a gleaming crescent.
No full-body weight behind it—only forearm, elbow, shoulder dividing stress like gears in a well-oiled machine.
Steel tore through the demon's smoky flesh where a shoulder should sit.
For half a heartbeat a gash of pure darkness yawned, edges sizzling crimson, then knitted shut with a wet hiss.
Quick regeneration.
Reaction adequate, not exceptional.
He logged the datapoint, eyes narrowing a fraction.
Something inside the demon boiled and churned.
Smoke condensed into muscle and bone, weaving the memory of a face Draven knew too well.
Cort Reinholt—one of his old arms-lieutenants, buried six winters ago beneath frost and white poplar.
The demon wore Cort's features like a tacky carnival mask, stretching the dead man's grin into a wolfish snarl.
It lunged again, wide upswing meant to look desperate, savage, grieving.
Draven saw the tell: the right foot planted too early, hip lagging behind.
Calculated recklessness.
He dropped low, knees folding as if joints were greased hinges, and rolled across damp mulch.
Earth smelled of rot and copper sap.
He rose behind the false Cort, blade reversing in a hook.
The backhand cut tracked an elegant line across the mimic's thigh.
Black ichor spattered the moss, smoking where it landed.
The demon stumbled—not far, only half a step—but it stumbled.
Tissue there slower to mend.
First vulnerability confirmed.
Draven straightened, pushing spare moisture off the longblade with a flick that sprayed glittering droplets into twilight.
His stare remained clinical, the way a physician studies an open wound.
Inside his skull, number strings aligned with angles—distance, speed, tension limits of spectral flesh.
Across the ritual circle the demon wavered, choosing a new tactic.
It inhaled, sinews swelling, and reformed into a mirror.
Armor, stance, the exact spacing of feet at forty-five degrees, shoulders relaxed yet loaded—a fencer's textbook sketch.
Two lean blades materialized, splitting from its palms like shards of night pulled into steel.
A perfect reflection, save for the red gleam in its eyes.
A mimic fashioned for one purpose: copy the master, cancel the master.
Draven's mouth moved—barely.
A ghost of a smile that never touched his eyes.
Predictable.
He feinted a thrust, the point of his blade darting out like a silver needle seeking the demon's heart.
Even before steel met smoke, Draven read the response unfolding in front of him—the reflexive twitch of the shadow's wrists, that perfectly mirrored set of shoulders rolling forward for its own matching lunge.
Timing flawless, commitment absolute.
A textbook counter-thrust.
Draven abandoned the motion in the same heartbeat it began.
Knees bent, he slid one foot inside the creature's stance and rammed his left shoulder into its chest.
Impact rippled through the demon's amorphous torso, the texture like half-formed clay trying to remember what muscle felt like.
The blow was barely a nudge by ordinary standards, yet balance is a tyrant; nudge it at the right moment and an empire topples.
The mimic's centerline skewed three degrees—just enough.
A black ripple spasmed across its surface, as if the memory of stability had torn.
Draven saw the glitch and filed it away: instability under rotational stress.
His sword, still angled downward from the aborted thrust, flicked up in a tight hook.
Steel rasped past the demon's jaw, carving a shallow crescent that hissed and closed like a cauterized wound.
No real damage—information.
It copies patterns, not intent.
Break the pattern and it loses the script.
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He let the thought settle, cold and precise, then obeyed his own instruction.
The next exchanges abandoned elegance.
Draven's footwork shortened, staccato shuffles instead of sweeping passes.
His blade became a blunt conversation: an elbow jab to the ribs that weren't there, a heel clipping the demon's ankle-analog, a flourish that ended not in a cut but a palm strike against its temple.
Crude by any academy's standards, but the demon's mimicry lagged half a heartbeat, forced to improvise muscles it had never practiced.
Smoke limbs tangled.
A parry arrived half-formed, meeting Draven's blade flat-on instead of edge-to-edge.
The jarring clang sent shivers of unstructured magic through the clearing; silver motes rained like sparks, dissolving before they touched moss.
He pressed the advantage.
Feint high, whip the blade low.
Drop a shoulder, snap the point toward an eye.
Each move chained into the next with no rhythm the demon could anticipate.
It hesitated between copying and defending, caught in the paradox of a mirror asked to reflect chaos.
Draven felt ground slick beneath his boots—mulch churned by earlier rolls—and used it.
He pivoted deliberately on the treacherous patch, letting his trailing foot skid.
To an onlooker it looked like a stumble.
The demon lunged, hungry for that opening.
Too eager.
Draven's leading foot planted firm; the skid turned into a whip-cord sidestep.
Black claws slashed empty air.
Momentum hurled the demon past him, off-balance, arm overextended.
Sword edge whispered.
A shallow cut bloomed across the creature's weapon hand.
No deep wound—Draven judged flesh density a fraction of a second too thick for severance—but enough to matter.
Ichor hissed, the wound knitting slower than before; fingertips flickered like dying candles.
The howl that peeled from its many throats was part pain, part indignation.
Twin blades it held warped at the edges, outlines flickering where confidence faltered.
The Grove itself echoed the sound—leaves shuddered, fungal lanterns dimmed, as though resonance of rage tried to rewrite the scenery.
Draven's expression never changed.
Observations scrolled behind pale eyes: regeneration delay 0.4 seconds, blade integrity at 94%, target's morale dipped.
Numbers told him how many exchanges remained before the demon lost structural coherence entirely.
Beyond the ritual ring Sylvanna clenched her bowstring hard enough to numb her fingertips.
She had trained beside Draven for months, seen the elegance of his crystalline forms, each movement worthy of a master's hall.
What she witnessed now was different—an anatomy of violence stripped to tendon and bone.
Beautiful, in a way raw lightning is beautiful: you admire it only because it hasn't killed you yet.
Draven heard her faint intake of breath and understood what she saw, but spared no thought for pride or shame.
Efficiency ruled; artistry waited for audiences.
Today's audience was a monster that stole dead men's faces.
The demon backed off three paces, smoke roiling at its feet.
Space widened between them, filled with a hush that carried the copper tang of rain about to fall.
Its shape convulsed, mouths swallowing mouths until a blank mask surfaced—smooth, reflective, featureless.
Then new eyes opened.
Too many eyes.
Color drained from the world for a blink, and the clearing spun like a coin on cracked stone.
Draven steadied himself with a grounding breath, feeling pulse and gravity align.
The demon's blank mask rippled.
Pictures bled through, projected as if a lantern lit inside its skull.
He saw Clara first.
Little sister, standing in black water up to her ankles, skirts soaked, sobs catching on each exhale.
Eyes swollen.
Mouth open in pleading that never reached sound.
Behind her, the faces of comrades—Garen, Elise, Captain Roth—pale and slack with the moment of death.
A choir of failures arrayed like broken statues.
