The dust at the bottom of the ravine settled slowly, choking the narrow corridor
of shattered stone.
Cain stood up, his right long blade held low. He had dropped his left sword
during the grapple at the surface, leaving his off-hand free. His breathing was
steady, his eyes locked on the gray-cloaked figure rising from the rubble ten
meters away.
The Executor stood.
He didn't brush the dirt from his clothes. He didn't check himself for injuries.
In fact, no dust had settled on him at all. A faint, invisible barrier of
spatial pressure surrounded his body, repelling the debris completely.
"Isolation tactic," the Executor said. The voice was a flat, resonant drone,
devoid of any adrenaline or anger. "Statistical probability of your survival
remains zero. Surrender to the Law."
Cain didn't waste breath on a reply.
The Executor raised his right hand, his palm facing the ground.
The air in the ravine instantly grew heavy.
Cain felt it before he saw it. The gravity in a ten-meter radius around the
Executor multiplied exponentially. The loose rocks on the ground were crushed
into fine powder. Cain's boots sank into the dirt, his knees buckling slightly
under the sudden, immense weight pressing down on his shoulders.
If he stayed on the ground, he would be flattened into the stone.
Blood Manipulation.
Cain forced his heart rate to spike. The violent surge of pressurized blood
rushed through his veins, hardening his muscles from the inside out. He pushed
back against the crushing gravity, fighting the external pressure with internal
biological force.
He bent his knees and launched himself upward, aiming for the jagged wall of the
ravine.
The Executor's head tracked the movement perfectly. He pointed a single finger
at the wall Cain was leaping toward.
The stone rippled as a localized gravity seal locked onto the surface. If Cain
touched that wall, he would be pinned against it like an insect.
Cain didn't touch the wall.
Mid-air, he routed mana down his left leg. He factored in the agonizing,
half-second delay in his circulation, pushing the command from his mind early.
Mana Materialization.
A flat, invisible hexagonal plane of highly condensed mana formed in the empty
air, exactly where his boot was about to land.
Cain's foot struck the invisible platform. It held.
Using the materialized mana as a springboard, Cain pushed off violently,
changing his trajectory entirely. He shot across the narrow ravine, bouncing
toward the opposite wall. He cast again, a half-second early, forming another
invisible foothold.
Step. Push. Step. Push.
To the Executor, Cain looked like he was ricocheting off thin air, zigzagging
upward through the ravine in a chaotic, unpredictable pattern.
"Spatial evasion," the Executor noted calmly. He raised both hands, preparing to
compress the entire airspace above him.
Cain didn't give him the time.
From his elevated vantage point, Cain drew a short knife from his belt with his
free left hand. He threw it straight down, aiming directly at the Executor's
face.
The Executor didn't dodge. He simply manifested a small spatial shield in front
of his eyes. The knife hit the barrier and stopped dead, suspended in mid-air.
But Cain was already moving.
Exchange.
He forced the mana through his core, ignoring the sharp friction in his chest.
He linked his coordinates with the suspended knife.
The world blurred.
Cain materialized directly in front of the Executor, perfectly bypassing the
spatial shield. He was already mid-swing, his right long blade coated in the
razor-thin, condensed edge of Mana Blade. He drove the steel upward, aiming to
cleave the Executor from the ribs to the collarbone.
The blade struck.
It tore through the gray cloak, biting deep into the Executor's side.
But the feedback traveling up Cain's arm felt wrong.
It didn't feel like cutting through flesh and bone. It felt like striking a
solid block of petrified wood. The Executor's body was heavily reinforced by
divine law, making his physical durability monstrous.
The Executor didn't scream. He didn't even flinch at the deep wound opened in
his side.
His emotionless eyes simply locked onto Cain.
"Direct contact established," the Executor said.
The Executor dropped his elbow, slamming a gravity-laced strike directly into
Cain's chest.
Cain crossed his left arm to block, triggering Resonance Null a fraction of a
second early to absorb the kinetic shock.
The mana layer took the brunt of the vibration, but the sheer, overwhelming
physical force of the divine vessel was too much. The impact shattered Cain's
guard, launching him backward.
He crashed into the dirt, skidding several meters before digging his boots into
the ground to arrest his momentum.
Cain coughed, a sharp, metallic taste filling his mouth.
He spat a mouthful of blood onto the stones beside him.
He looked up.
The Executor stood in the center of the ravine. Golden, luminous blood dripped
slowly from the deep gash in his side, but the man didn't even glance at it. He
simply raised his hand again, the air around him beginning to hum with crushing
spatial pressure.
Cain wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.
His manual tactics were working. He had the speed. He had the angles. He had
successfully bypassed the divine laws using Exchange and Mana Materialization.
But his physical output wasn't enough.
Han Jae-Won's military mind calculated the variables in a fraction of a second.
The Executor didn't feel pain. He didn't suffer from morale loss. He would
simply keep fighting until his body was completely destroyed or Cain was dead.
Cain tightened his grip on his long blade.
He couldn't win a battle of attrition against a machine.
He needed to hit harder.