Old Bloom stood under the Spiritual Body’s halo, staring intently at the heterochromatic-eyed youth and the silver sword in his hand.
The silver sword was enveloped in a silver glow, its blade slightly curved, unstained by blood and free of dust.
Evidently, this silver sword was a Spiritual Attachment used to bind “Spiritual Bodies.”
As long as a “Spiritual Body” was attached, this silver sword could strike the undead.
Old Bloom couldn't help but look at the ground; the two corpses had not yet grown cold.
Their flesh was torn and exposed at the breaks, heads rolled nearby, expressions still present but unable to comprehend fear anymore.
The old warlock’s fingers tightened.
He was not a coward, nor was this his first encounter with death.
But the battle just now, the rhythmic slaughter by the silver-haired youth, was truly unforgettable.
The recent fight was as precise as a butcher weighing his prey before slaughter.
Old Bloom stared intently at the silver-haired youth’s face.
That face was overly calm, extraordinarily handsome, and against the backdrop of night and blood, it showed no anger, no pity, and no joy.
Only coldness—
Cold like a piece of metal scrap forged countless times, affixed to a youth too young to possess such precision.
His fingers trembled slightly, his voice becoming disjointed.
“Who are you?”
“Who sent you—”
“Do you know…?”
He was halfway through his sentence when Zieg moved.
Not an attack.
Instead, his gaze shifted slightly, his heterochromatic pupils flashing for an instant in the night.
He stood, gripping his sword, his internal gravity nodes silently adjusting.
In the three seconds Bloom was shouting, he had already completed his next tactical analysis:
“Black Iron I-rank, Warlock type.”
“A Black Iron I-rank has five slots, plus a zero-cost cantrip card that warlocks inherently possess outside of slots, making a total of six ability configurations for a warlock.
Currently, it’s unknown whether the opponent has completed the I-rank tempering and filled all card slots.
However, the opponent’s deck structure is clearly a two-distribution, meaning two identical cards are used to enhance spiritual bonuses, forming a dual-card spiritual resonance build that strengthens the spiritual suppression field.”
“Given the current battlefield situation, if I actively push forward for a beheading, I will enter the dual-undead spiritual pressure convergence space, falling into a flanking angle, which will restrict the release space for my sword art square and expose my open stance.
At the same time, to prevent accidents, the “Qing Zhuo Shield” within my body must constantly be in a pre-activated state, ready to block sudden ranged attacks, such as spell waves or source stone firearms.”
“If I cannot push forward, I can only use spatial containment to lure the undead into moving first.”
“Facing a warlock whose deck consists of summoned creatures—I must first deal with the ‘guard’ before attacking the ‘master.’”
These judgments, like an electric shock to the nerves, instantly expanded and contracted within his consciousness network, converging into a single decision:
—First clear the monsters on the field, then cut down the warlock.
Bloom’s “Do you know” hadn’t finished echoing when Zieg stepped forward.
His steps were light, like walking on a snowy night, yet they carried a premonition of a coming strike.
The “Clear Stream” within his body sank, and he adjusted the gravity nodes beneath his feet, shifting his center five degrees to the right and lowering his stance.
His shoulder rotated slightly, his left arm extended a little, deliberately exposing an unclosed opening on the left side of his upper body.
This was a flaw.
It was bait.
He knew—the enemy would come.
And Bloom, as expected, grew anxious.
The old warlock watched him advance silently, his gait steady, as if he intended to leave no superfluous words for this conflict.
That extreme calmness instinctively terrified him.
“—Quick! Move!”
He croaked, his spiritual command already issued.
The undead on the left responded to the command.
The phantom glided through the air like a silhouette, suddenly abandoning its previously slow drifting position.
Her body leaned forward, like a taut piece of tattered cloth, her cloak flaring as if tearing in mid-air, her black hole-like maw suddenly opening, diving down towards the opening Zieg had deliberately left on his left shoulder.
And at this moment—this was the timing Zieg was waiting for.
He didn’t draw his sword, nor did he look up.
In that instant, his toe lightly touched the floor tile, and an invisible “Clear Stream” tightened from his foot like a taut chain.
Not an explosion, but a build-up of momentum.
This was not evasion, but a firm step—rhythm!
What he wanted was not “speed,” but the window within the time difference—
One in front, one behind.
Slight distance shift.
He caught it.
That deviation—
The wraith plunged from the left wing, its spiritual trajectory suddenly lowering.
Her position, accelerated by the impact, created a quarter-second rhythmic gap between her and the other ghost.
That was a subtle displacement imbalance—not a mistake, but the cost of ‘must attack.’
And this instant was the starting point of the concerto frequency interruption.
“I see it…”
“—The disharmony.”
He gripped the sword hilt tightly.
Beneath his palm, the silver sword vibrated slightly, as if sensing its master’s intent, and a sharp desire suddenly rose from the calm metal.
“All things have disharmonies; that is precisely the angle for the sword to cut into—”
The undead’s claw was already upon him.
Her cloak billowed in mid-air, her claws tearing through the space ahead, creating ripples of faint purple spiritual essence.
Her mouth was wide open, as if to swallow Zieg whole into a spiritual scream.
Zieg’s left foot slid, his body rotated slightly to the right, and the “Clear Stream” beneath his feet guided his steps to bypass the enemy’s attack axis.
At the same moment, the sword lifted upwards—
The sword tip pointed to the ground, the sword back pressed against his shoulder, slanted across his front.
The hanging stance was complete.
The silver sword intercepted the undead’s frontal assault, accurately catching the opponent’s descending front claw.
Crack!
The sound of spiritual essence rubbing against metal was like a sharp knife scraping crystal.
The impact force transferred to his wrist, but Zieg’s wrist was like a whip, smoothly deflecting it.
And this was another disharmony he sought.
“Wherever there is disharmony, it can be—”
“Cut!”
The next instant—
He twisted his wrist, flipped the sword, and counter-slashed!
The silver sword suddenly thrust out from a low position, its trajectory not a direct rush, but rather a misaligned slash into the illusory core of the undead’s abdomen, following the momentum of its pouncing attack.
That was the most fragile, most unstable core structure of spiritual essence, the critical point for all “created summons” to exist.
The silver blade swept in diagonally!
Crack—
It wasn’t the sensation of cutting flesh, but rather like a paper cutter slicing through a canvas floating in the air.
Silver light exploded in the gloom, carrying an extremely faint silver spiritual flame, flashing for an instant before extinguishing.
The wraith let out an extremely sharp, broken sound, no longer like a cry, but like the twisted wail of a torn rag doll erupting just before death.
Her cloak billowed, and her fragmented Spiritual Body, like dust caught in the wind, began to violently contract in the air.
Her face—the blurred features collapsed.
Her shoulders—detached like smoke.
Her chest and abdomen—tore apart and disintegrated.
There was no blood.
No sound of a physical body shattering.
Yet the entire image seemed to lose its right to “be maintained” and began to rapidly disintegrate in the air.
The strike was complete.
Zieg’s feet did not stop.
The moment that single sword cut through the wraith, he had already pre-charged, his left foot lightly pressing the floor tile, and the “Clear” point within his body triggered again, instantly adjusting gravity into a sliding vector.
His foot almost skimmed the ground, drawing a slightly rising ripple of airflow, and he moved like a shadow gliding through water, instantly sliding along the ground to the right.
The second wraith had not yet completed its repositioning—
She should have been echoing the first ghost’s attack in sync, but due to her teammate’s sudden disruption, she fell into a rhythmic pause, her body now low, her claws just beginning to open.
Zieg was already closing in.
The sword in his hand naturally sank, dropping from his side to below his waist in a sliding posture, then arcing upwards from left to right—
His movements were like ripples in water coiling back, he drew not just a single sword, but a flowing blade shadow unfolding around his body.
—Horizontal Cut!
The silver sword struck, leaving a shallow crescent arc.
The cut was extremely low, extremely circular, its angle far more slanted and encompassing than a conventional sword art’s sweep.
That was a special trajectory formed by the “Clear” attached to the sword body reducing its weight—
Allowing the blade to no longer be limited by the physical axis of shoulder and arm rotation, but to be “pushed along” by the string of gravity.
Crack!
The silver blade cut into the Spiritual Body like slicing through mist, resistance almost imperceptible.
And precisely as the blade cut in, the “Clear” erupted with an extremely subtle vibration along the sword spine, creating a piercing, layered chain reaction.
The spiritual essence disintegration reaction activated.
In this instant, there was no sword hum.
Only the sound of wind.
And the sigh, not belonging to reality, as the wraith dissipated.
