Chapter 81: Void Blades
There were five long blades floating all around him, hovering in a wide circular formation as he sped through the air.
The edges of each dark sword blurred and reappeared in a strange, flickering manner, constantly shifting through the air as if distorting the space around them.
Leon didn’t back down from the challenge for a single second, charging towards Yeon also with explosive speed while shouting his name back at him, "Yeon!!"
His voice echoed through the burning reception hall as he kicked off the ash-covered floor, meeting his brother’s desperate assault head-on.
Two of the floating blades immediately vanished into thin air, reappearing right behind Leon in a fraction of a second.
The dark swords materialized out of empty space, aiming straight for his exposed back with lethal precision before he could even turn around to face them.
Leon didn’t panic though, his instincts razor-sharp as he summoned Aegis behind him in a flash of radiant light.
The green shield appeared in the air behind his back instantly, forming a barrier to cover his blind spot.
He didn’t wait for the blades to reach the shield and instead moved the shield rapidly towards the incoming blades.
Pushing the shield forward into the path of the attacks, he forced a direct contact before the weapons could complete their full trajectory.
The blades collided heavily with the shield and were immediately deflected away into the air. They bounced backward like cheap toys, shattering their trajectory and sending them spinning harmlessly off course into the crumbling side walls.
The remaining blades kept charging at him from the front though, cutting through the thick smoke as Yeon pushed his construct to maximum speed.
Knowing Yeon’s talent and how troublesome his talent could be, trying to block them directly would simply be too troublesome.
Attempting to defend against every flickering weapon would only waste precious time and give his brother room to set up even more complex attacks.
The best way to handle the situation was to attack Yeon directly, striking the user before he could reach him with the blades.
By targeting the source of the blades, he could completely shut down the assault before the incoming weapons could touch his body.
Leon raised his glowing golden sword high above his head, slashing downward towards Yeon with absolute force.
The divine blade cut through the air in a swift, blinding arc, channeling all his raw physical strength into a single decisive strike.
A powerful arc shot out from the force of the slash alone, tearing through the smoke-filled air like a golden shockwave.
The flying wave of compressed force slammed directly into Yeon’s torso before he could maneuver his surfboard out of the way.
It sent Yeon flying backwards through the air like a broken leaf, his dark surfboard shattering beneath his feet under the sheer impact.
As he tumbled through the dust, a thin red line was cut cleanly from his shoulder down through his torso, spraying blood across the ruined entrance as he crashed hard onto the concrete floor outside.
Yeon grunted in pain, his back slamming into the hard ground meters away with a heavy, sickening thud.
The sheer impact of the shockwave knocked the air straight out of his lungs, sending a shower of loose gravel and broken glass skittering across the pavement as his body skidded to a violent halt outside the ruined guild entrance.
He placed a hand on his chest, feeling his warm blood trickle down his fingers through his sliced clothes.
A sharp, burning sensation spread across his torso, and he gritted his teeth tightly to keep from screaming out in pain as he stared up at the smoke-filled sky in complete disbelief.
The long blades he had summoned wavered weakly in the air before vanishing completely into thin air. The dark, flickering swords lost their physical form in an instant, dissolving back into nothingness as Yeon’s grip on his mana slipped from the sheer shock of the injury.
They weren’t like normal blades that were forged from metal or shaped out of elemental energy, and instead were formed through the spatial void in the air itself.
Yeon didn’t just create physical weapons; he reached straight into the fabric of space to pull forth deadly armaments carved directly from the void.
Due to this unique property, they existed half in between the void and reality, making them absurdly difficult to counter or predict during combat.
They defied conventional physics, drifting effortlessly through physical matter whenever they phased out of the mortal realm.
Whenever they were blurred, blocking or deflecting them was extremely difficult, since they were still in their intangibility-like ’void’ state.
A normal sword, shield, or armor would simply pass right through them without making solid contact, leaving defenders wide open to a sudden strike the moment the blades solidified.
The moment they reappeared though, shifting fully back into reality to deliver a physical blow, one could finally block or strike them.
It was a fleeting, microsecond window where the dark weapons became tangible objects subject to physical forces and magic.
The reason Leon had pushed the shield towards the two blades behind him was precisely to take advantage of that split second they weren’t in their ’void’ state to deflect them.
By forcefully shoving Aegis into their path at the exact moment they materialized out of thin air to strike, he had caught them during their brief physical phase and bounced them away.
He didn’t want to go through unnecessary struggle with the remaining blades charging from the front, so he simply attacked Yeon directly instead.
Rather than playing a tedious game of timing his blocks against floating spatial weapons, hitting the caster was the most efficient way to end the assault immediately.
Yeon’s Void Blade Forge was a terrifyingly powerful S-rank talent, but its only major drawback was that Yeon had to constantly maintain a delicate balance between the ’void’ and ’reality’, or else his creations would simply disperse back into the void.
The moment his concentration broke from the severe wound to his torso, the spatial link fractured, forcing the remaining blades to collapse into nothingness and leaving him completely defenseless on the ground.