Chapter 321: The Weeknd Morning 4
"I won’t go with you. My mom told me not to go with strangers. She’ll be really mad if I do."
The masked woman tilted her head slightly. The fabric of her tight ninja suit shifted with the movement, hugging the full curves of her breasts and the flare of her hips. Her eyes narrowed behind the mask.
"As you wish," she said, her voice low and calm.
Then she moved.
It was almost too fast for the eye to follow.
One moment she stood still, the next she exploded forward in a blur of black fabric and wooden blades.
The ground beneath her feet cracked slightly from the force of her push-off.
Leaves swirled in her wake. The air itself seemed to part around her body as she closed the distance in less than a second.
Lor’s eyes tracked every detail.
The way her powerful thighs tensed.
The slight shift of her shoulders as she raised the right-hand sword.
The wooden blade flashing in the dappled sunlight, aimed precisely at the side of his head — a clean, professional strike meant to knock him out cold without killing him.
She was good.
But she was not good enough.
Right as the wooden blade reached the peak of its arc, only inches from his temple, Lor’s lips curved into a small, almost lazy smile.
"Slow," he said.
His right fist glowed with a soft, concentrated light of pure wind and kinetic mana.
The glow was faint, almost invisible in the bright forest light, but the power packed into it was anything but.
He swung.
The punch was faster than the woman’s charge.
There was no wasted motion. No big wind-up.
Just a clean, brutal forward drive of his fist that connected squarely with the center of her masked face.
BAM!
The impact was deafening.
A loud, sharp sound echoed through the forest like a tree snapping in a storm.
The force of the blow traveled through the woman’s entire body. Her head snapped backward.
Her feet left the ground.
For a split second she hung in the air, limbs flailing, before her body was launched backward like a human bullet.
She slammed into a massive oak tree behind her with another bone-rattling impact.
The trunk, thicker than a man’s torso, shuddered violently.
Bark exploded outward in a cloud of splinters. A deep, vertical crack split the wood from the point of impact all the way up the trunk.
The entire tree groaned, leaned, and then toppled sideways with a long, slow crash that shook the ground and sent birds exploding from the surrounding branches in panicked flocks.
Dust and leaves swirled in the sudden silence that followed.
Lor lowered his fist slowly. The faint glow around his knuckles faded.
He stood in the middle of the path, looking completely calm, as if he had just swatted a fly instead of sending a trained fighter flying through the air.
The woman lay crumpled at the base of the fallen tree.
Her mask had cracked slightly from the force of the punch. A thin trail of blood ran from under the mask down her neck. She was still breathing, but the impact had clearly knocked the wind and the fight out of her.
Lor walked toward her at a leisurely pace, the dirt path soft under his shoes. He stopped a few steps away and looked down at her with mild interest.
"This is what I wished for" he said quietly.
The swing behind Lor continued its gentle, creaking motion as if nothing had happened.
Lor waited, watching the masked woman’s chest rise and fall, waiting to see if she would try to get up.
But she was knocked out cold.
.
The forest was quiet again.
Sunlight still filtered through the leaves in soft golden patches, but the earlier violence had left its mark.
The massive oak that had taken the full force of Lor’s punch now lay on its side, roots torn from the earth, bark shattered in a wide crater where the woman’s body had struck.
Dust still hung faintly in the air. Birds had returned in cautious numbers, hopping among the branches higher up, but the undergrowth remained still.
On the wooden swing, Lor sat with one leg casually braced against the ground, the other hanging free.
The rope creaked in a slow, steady rhythm as he rocked the swing gently back and forth.
Across his lap, face-down, lay the unconscious woman in the tight black ninja suit.
Her hands were bound tightly behind her back with thick wooden cuffs that had grown directly from a nearby branch under Lor’s control.
The wood was smooth but unyielding, molded perfectly to her wrists so that any struggle only made the restraints tighter.
Her mask had been removed and tossed onto the grass nearby.
The cracked surface still showed the impact of his fist.
A thin trail of dried blood ran from the corner of her mouth down her neck and disappeared into the collar of her suit.
Lor looked down at her with mild curiosity, one hand resting lightly on the small of her back to keep her steady as the swing moved.
Her eyes fluttered open.
At first everything was blurry.
A dull throb pulsed behind her forehead.
Her stomach felt heavy, pressed against something firm and warm.
The world swayed gently from side to side. She blinked several times, trying to focus. The canopy above her shifted with the motion.
The scent of pine and crushed leaves filled her nose. Then a calm, almost cheerful voice reached her ears.
"Good afternoon."
She froze.
"You took a rather long nap," the voice continued, light and conversational. "Time to wake up."
Kuri’s vision sharpened.
She was lying face-down across someone’s lap.
The gentle rocking motion, the creak of rope, the feel of wood under her cheek — she was on a swing.
Her hands were bound behind her back. She tested the restraints and felt the hard, smooth wood dig into her wrists.
Wooden cuffs.
Perfect, seamless, as if they had grown around her arms rather than been fastened.
How?
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