Chapter 98: Chapter 98: An Attack
The silence between them stretched, thin and taut as the high-altitude air.
Damon kept his eyes on the horizon, but his Incubus Celestial Eyes tracked the subtle shift in the spiritual energy around the ship.
Lark felt it too. His posture shifted from rigid to coiled, one hand dropping to the hilt of the slender sword at his hip.
A shadow passed over the sun.
Not a cloud but something faster.
Damon looked up.
Five figures rode on the backs of enormous, slate-gray raptors.
The birds had wingspans wider than the ship, their feathers edged like blades.
The riders wore dark, non-descript leathers, their faces hidden behind featureless iron masks.
They carried not swords, but hooked chains and weighted nets.
"Bandits?" Lark’s voice was tight, disbelieving. "At this altitude?"
"Not bandits." Damon said, his voice calm. He didn’t need his eyes to know.
The killing intent radiating from them was too professional.
’They probably a mercenary. Kai’s doing.’ The thought was a cold certainty in his gut.
The lead rider raised a hand. Without a sound, the five raptors dove.
The attack wasn’t messy. It was a coordinated pincer. Two birds swept in from the port side, chains whirling.
Two more came from starboard, nets shimmering with suppression runes. The fifth rider stayed high, a crossbow leveled at Damon’s chest.
Lark moved first.
He didn’t draw his sword. Instead, his hands just touch his sword on his waist.
The air around him chilled, and a dozen jagged shards of blue-white ice crystallized from the moisture in the sky.
With a flick of his wrist, he sent them screaming toward the port-side attackers.
’Ice affinity?’ Damon the look at her sword that now.
’It must be form her sword. A good cover. Nothing like the golden light of the Solaris family.’
The ice shards shattered against the lead rider’s chain, but the force knocked the man sideways in his saddle.
The second rider’s net fell short, tangling in the ship’s railings. Lark was already moving, his footwork a graceful, gliding dance across the deck.
He drew his sword, and a stream of condensed frost. He parried a swinging chain, the metal screeching as it froze and brittlely snapped.
He was good. Elegant and precise.
He fought like someone who’d been trained by masters, but still holding back the true depth of his power.
The starboard attackers reached Damon.
A weighted net, humming with energy designed to stifle spiritual power, dropped toward him.
Damon didn’t dodge. He let it fall.
To the riders, it must have looked like a victory. The net settled over him, the runes flaring to life, seeking to clamp down on his cultivation.
Damon stood still inside the dimming mesh. He reached up, not with spiritual energy, but with pure, physical force.
His fingers, reinforced by the Body of the Incubus Lord, closed on two of the lead ropes. He pulled it.
The motion was simple yank.
The rider holding the other end was ripped from his saddle with a choked cry.
He slammed into the ship’s deck with enough force to crack the polished wood, his mask splintering.
Damon stepped out of the now-limp net, his movements unhurried.
The second rider on his side cursed, hurling his chain. The hooked end shot toward Damon’s throat.
Damon didn’t use Sword Aura. He didn’t need to. He side-stepped, the chain whistling past his ear.
As it retracted, he grabbed the chain. He used the rider’s own momentum, spinning and heaving.
The man was a Earth Spirit Realm cultivator, maybe the Fifth Level.
But Damon’s base strength, even restrained to the appear like the Third Level of True Spirit Realm, was still monstrous.
The rider flew off his bird like a discarded doll, arcing out over the endless drop below. His scream was swallowed by the wind.
The high rider fired his crossbow. The bolt was black, fletched with crow feathers, and it moved faster than sight. It was aimed at Damon’s heart.
Damon didn’t look at it. He brought his Heavenly Wooden Sword up in a casual, almost bored parry.
The bolt struck the wood. The wooden sword didn’t break.
The bolt simply... deflected, shooting off into the clouds as if it had hit a mountain.
The sword didn’t glowed. Damon hadn’t channeled visible Qi. He’d just moved it into the perfect place, at the perfect time, with perfect force.
From the shadows of the doorway, Mei watched, her earlier teasing smile gone.
Her eyes were sharp, calculating. She saw Lark’s competent but she was staring at Damon.
He fought like a ghost. No wasted motion. No grand techniques.
Every block, every step, every grab was the absolute minimum required to end the threat.
Lark had dispatched his two attackers, leaving them frozen and crumpled on the deck.
He turned, chest rising and falling slightly, frost still curling from his blade. He saw Damon standing calmly, the second rider’s broken body at his feet, the net a useless heap.
The high rider, seeing four of his men down in seconds, hesitated. His raptor circled, shrieking.
Damon looked up at him. He made no threatening gesture. He just stared, his golden eyes flat and empty.
It was enough. The rider wrenched his mount’s head around and fled, diving into a thick bank of clouds below.
Silence returned, broken only by the moan of the wounded man on the deck and the steady hum of the ship’s core.
Lark lowered his sword, the frost on it melting away.
He looked from the incapacitated men to Damon, a new, wary respect in his eyes. "You... you didn’t even use a technique."
"Didn’t need one," Damon said, brushing a speck of lint from his black robe. He walked over to the groaning rider with the broken mask.
He knelt, his voice low and pleasant. "Your employer. Who is it?"
The man spat blood, his eyes wide with pain and fear. "I don’t know any—"
Damon’s hand shot out to press a single finger against a pressure point on the man’s neck.
It was a simple nerve cluster, knowledge from the Sword Master memories.
The man’s body arched, a silent scream tearing from his throat as agony flooded his system.
Damon held the pressure for a three-count, then released. "Who is it?"
