The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 681: The Elven Demon Hunt (5)

Discard: sister's eyes, comrades' blame.

His sword traced a diagonal guard, point down, deflecting the first attack.

Steel kissed steel.

A memory of Cort's laugh hissed in his ear, but he let it pass.

He pivoted, cut through the afterimage of burning rafters, and severed a straw-thin cord of magic that tethered the vision to the demon's core.

The creature winced—an almost imperceptible flinch, but there.

Linked illusions drained its energy.

Repeat procedure, bleed it dry.

Another figure lunged—Elise, hair aflame, screaming his name.

Draven's blade split her echo from crown to sternum; the phantom shredded into red mist and vanished.

The demon's stance wavered.

Outside the circle Sylvanna's breath caught.

To her, Draven seemed to fight ghosts—cutting down memories she could not see—but even without context she recognized the pattern.

Every swing, every step reclaimed ground inside the demon's psyche.

He wasn't merely defending; he was scraping marrow from its treacherous bones.

Faces blurred now, edges softening.

Cort again, but younger; Clara, but older; Vaelarien fading to silhouette.

The cries lost coherence, turning into crackling whispers.

Draven advanced, footsteps measured.

One.

Two.

Three.

Each beat a heartbeat.

He timed his breathing to the rhythm, a living metronome in a symphony of ruin.

He sidestepped a desperate slash—too wide, telegraphed by panic—and punished the overreach with a snap thrust to the demon's elbow.

No bone to break, but energy lines snapped like harp strings.

The demon shrieked; the vision mosaic shattered, shards of light scattering into the canopy.

Only ragged smoke remained around those twin blades.

Draven's voice cut through the haze, words flat iron. "Show me what's real."

For a second, silence.

Then the demon obeyed.

Visions.

The clearing wavered, as though someone had dipped the whole scene into water and given it a slow swirl.

Pale mist thickened, then tore apart in ragged curtains.

From those rents stepped Clara—barefoot, skirts sodden, curls plastered to her cheeks.

Black water lapped around her ankles, each ripple a soft slap against unseen stone.

Tears carved gleaming tracks through the soot clinging to her face, yet no sound escaped her trembling mouth.

She lifted a hand toward Draven, fingers shaking, but her gaze slipped past him—as if she already knew he would not come.

Behind her, shapes resolved into stark tableau:

Garen, armor dented, throat a purple ring of bruises.

Elise, one shoulder caved where falling rubble had crushed bone to chalk.

Captain Roth, helmet split down the eyeline, staring with empty sockets that still managed to accuse.

Their mouths opened in silent screams, a choir held on the knife-edge of eternal blame.

Farther back, Vaelarien hung in mid-air, thorns corkscrewing through wrists and calves.

Blooms of red spread slowly along the vines, petals of pain opening in slow motion.

His eyes, normally bright with calculation, glistened now with wet betrayal—an unspoken How could you? that cut deeper than steel.

The demon moved among them like a puppeteer hidden behind its stage flats.

Every time it pivoted for a strike, the illusions pivoted too, weaving themselves into the arc of its blades.

Draven had no choice but to see his sins flicker in and out of the sweep of steel and smoke.

Each parry became a refusal not of an enemy but of memory; each counterattack risked slicing into a loved one's echo.

The pace of combat slowed, no longer measured by footwork but by breaths drawn against rising dread.

It had become a tug-of-war, psyche against shadow.

Draven's vision narrowed to a tunnel.

He tasted iron at the back of his throat—a reflex response to the mind's silent alarm—but forced his diaphragm to expand, slow, deliberate.

Inhale. Process data.

Distance: three paces.

Illusion density: maximum.

Energy signature: spiking each time Clara wavered.

Blade trajectory: left twin sword, high diagonal.

Exhale. Discard lies.

Clara is dead.

Garen is dust.

Elise is gone.

Their echoes cannot bleed him.

His pupils flicked from Clara's pleading eyes to the demon's shoulder set, then to Vaelarien's twisting vines.

None of those sights earned more than the half-beat needed for assessment.

Remaining in motion, he let his soles feel the subtle throb of the Grove's heartbeat underfoot—an ancient rhythm pulsing through loam and root.

That grounding beat competed with the illusions' pull on his mind, anchoring him to reality.

Then came the scent of smoke.

Charred timber.

A memory ambushed him—flames leaping along rafters, shout of Get out! Get out!

His childhood home, devoured in an orange maw.

Heat licked across his cheeks, so vivid his skin prickled.

The demon used that opening, thrusting one blade through the mirage of the burning doorway.

Draven stepped into the memory, not away.

His sword whipped through the illusionary inferno in a downward X, severing the phantom like a painter slashing a ruined canvas.

Cinders scattered into bright spirals before dissolving into harmless ash.

He saw it then: a ripple of pain along the demon's otherwise smooth mask, the tiniest shiver of strain in its stance.

Linked illusions cost it energy.

Good.

He pivoted, blade reversed, and batted aside a ghostly spear aimed by the projected form of Captain Roth.

The impact rang like a cracked bell, but the spear shattered into mist.

Across the circle, the demon's shoulders hitched—imperceptible to most eyes, blatant to Draven's.

Outside the ritual line, Sylvanna held her breath.

She could hardly parse what Draven fought: air? echoes?

Now and then she glimpsed a flicker—Clara's wet skirts, Garen's ruined helm—but mostly she saw Draven carve emptiness with practiced economy.

Nothing wasted.

No motion repeated.

A dance equal parts brutality and restraint.

She recognized the pattern: a butcher trimming fat from a carcass until only muscle remained.

Except the carcass here was a demon's reservoir of stolen grief, and Draven was paring it down slice by deliberate slice.

He pressed forward, feet adjusting in micro-steps to avoid slick moss.

A shriek formed of three voices rose—Clara's, Elise's, Vaelarien's—and collided with his eardrums like shattered glass.

The demon charged within that sound wall, hoping to mask its lunge.

Draven dropped low, blade gliding across fungus-slick earth, the tip tracing an arc that discouraged careless advance.

Smoke legs tried to leap over; the sword reversed direction mid-swing with whip-crack speed, catching a phantom ankle.

Ichor spilled in beaded strands that hissed against soil.

The wraithly visage of Clara flickered, her tears pausing mid-fall.

The demon faltered—again, small.

Again, enough.

Patterns: hurt illusions, hurt the core.

A new projection materialized—a younger Cort, alive and laughing, torchlight glinting off a silver tankard.

He strode forward, arms open, begging Draven to remember happier days.

The demon's left blade followed under that camouflage, intent on skewering ribs.

Draven fired an elbow into Cort's smile.

The memory burst like soap film, scattering sparks of gold that guttered out before touching ground.

The hidden blade he intercepted a thumb's width from his side, angling his sword so the attack slid along his guard rather than impaling flesh.

The demon hissed frustration.

Its smoke halo rippled, static flickers chasing one another like lightning trapped beneath water.

Draven rotated his wrists, disengaging.

A ragged hush swept the clearing—wind exhaling through branches newly starved of illusions.

He marked the rocky earth: fewer projection roots snaked from the demon's feet now, their glow subdued.

Energy pool dwindling.

Faces blurred—Cort again, but younger; Clara but older; Garen mid-laugh turned mid-scream.

Their edges lost definition, the way dried ink fades under summer sun.

Draven's advance became a metronome of three measured steps:

One—heel-ball-toe, sword in high guard.

Two—exhale, weight low, left hand loose for balance.

Three—hips canted, point angled to invite overreach.

He repeated, each cycle tightening the noose, each breath stripping a veneer from the demon's mask.

Desperate, it spawned the blaze memory again—charcoal roof beams crashing, sparks spiraling upward.

But the fire was thinner now, flames washed-out.

Draven walked through the heatless flicker, cloak unscorched.

His blade licked once, twice, bisecting the illusion at its seams.

Ash dissolved soundlessly.

The demon recoiled, a child caught drawing blood with a stolen knife.

Sylvanna's heart pounded.

She took one involuntary step closer to the edge of the ritual ring before catching herself.

From her vantage everything looked impossible—Draven vs. nothing, yet that nothing bled, faltered, bled again.

She sensed, rather than saw, his tactical calculus: carve illusions, expose source, strike.

Another shriek fractured the air.

This time only one voice—Vaelarien's—ragged and raw.

A last ploy to pierce Draven's emotional armor.