Chapter 449: Chapter-449
The Seventh Prince cut down another charging vanguard with a fluid, blindingly fast arc of his pitch-black blade. As the soldier crumpled to the stone floor, the Prince’s head suddenly snapped upward. His piercing blue eyes, visible through the slits of his matte-black mask, locked right onto the secondary staging platform.
He felt it—a gaze that wasn’t filled with the chaotic panic of the battalion, but rather a cold, terrifyingly sharp scrutiny.
For a fraction of a second, through the swirling dust and dim torchlight, his eyes met Heena’s. She was looking down at him not as a subject looks at royalty, nor as a mortal looks at a monster, but as a master strategist looks at a piece on a board. That single glance told the Regressor everything he needed to know: ’She’ was the anomaly. She was the one who had shattered his perfect timeline.
A dark, dangerous curl entered his eyes. He didn’t know who this girl was, but she had to die.
Before the Prince could even gather his aura to blink up toward her, Heena moved. She didn’t just drop; she launched herself off the platform like a striking viper.
The air screamed as she descended, her dark cloak snapping behind her. The Prince brought his pitch-black sword up in a flawless, instinctive parry, expecting to easily deflect a desperate aerial strike.
’Clang!’
The screech of metal on metal echoed violently through the hall. The Prince’s blue eyes widened behind his mask as a massive wave of kinetic force traveled up his arm, forcing his back heel to crack the stone tile beneath him. He hadn’t just met a dagger; he had met a concentrated wall of terrifying, raw physical power.
Heena didn’t give him a single microsecond to recover. The moment her boots touched the ground, she exploded into a masterclass of formidable, close-quarters combat. She didn’t rely on the System’s flashy magic; she relied on her own brutal, unforgiving mechanics.
She spun into his guard, her low center of gravity making her a ghost to his high-angled slashes. ’Swish!’ The Prince ducked his head back just as her dagger shaved a thread off his matte-black mask. Infuriated, the Prince unleashed a violent, omnidirectional burst of his blue aura, meant to blow her away.
"Predictable," Heena hissed.
Instead of retreating to dodge the blast, she stepped ’into’ the eye of the storm. She twisted her torso with unnatural flexibility, letting the edge of his aura graze her shoulder armor while she drove her knee straight into his exposed midsection.
’Oof!’
The air exploded from the Prince’s lungs as he was forced back three full steps, his boots skidding across the bloody floor. He had never been struck like this in any of his past lives at this point in time.
"Who the hell are you?!" the Prince snarled, his muffled voice dripping with venomous rage as he stabilized his stance, his black sword humming with an even denser, unstable blue light. He lunged forward, unleashing a flurry of slashes so fast they formed a web of lethal black lines in the air.
Heena’s eyes blazed. She met the storm head-on.
’Clang! Clang! Sparks flew in blinding bursts as she parried, deflected, and redirected his strikes with her twin daggers. Her movements were terrifyingly efficient—no wasted energy, no theatrical flourishes. Every time his sword came close, her blade caught it at the perfect angle to slide the danger away, while her feet shifted seamlessly, constantly probing his blind spots.’
The surrounding battalion soldiers stood frozen, their breath caught in their throats. They weren’t looking at a young lady in distress; they were looking at a formidable, absolute apex predator driving a Royal Prince into a corner.
The Prince, growing desperate as his future knowledge failed him, tried a feint—dropping his shoulder to bait her into a counter-thrust, preparing to take her arm off with a hidden spatial slash.
But Heena saw right through it. Instead of biting the bait, she planted her foot, swung her body weight with devastating momentum, and delivered a brutal, sweeping kick straight to the side of his knee.
’Crack.’
The Prince let out a muffled groan as his leg buckled. Seizing the opening, Heena drove the pommel of her dagger straight into his jaw through the fabric of his mask. The impact sent him spinning through the air, crashing heavily onto one of the long dining tables, shattering the thick wood into splinters.
Heena stood in the center of the clearing, her breathing perfectly controlled, her daggers dripping with the black residue of his aura. She looked down at the struggling Regressor with a gaze that was utterly chilling.
"You talk too much for a sickly prince," Heena said, her voice echoing with a terrifying, absolute authority. "Get up."
The Seventh Prince erupted from the shattered ruins of the dining table, his blue eyes bloodshot with a mix of humiliation and pure, murderous intent. He had never been brought to his knees like this—not by an unknown woman in a dusty frontier hall. With a guttural roar, he unleashed his aura completely, the blue energy flaring up like a pillar of fire, cracking the stone pillars around them.
"I will tear you apart!" he snarled, launching himself at her.
Heena didn’t even blink. "With what legs?" she muttered coldly.
As he closed the distance, his movements were frantic, fueled by desperate rage rather than his usual calculated precision. He unleashed a barrage of overhead slashes, his black sword cutting through the air with deafening shrieks. Heena met the assault with a formidable, unyielding defense. ’Clang! Clang! Clang!’ She deflected the heavy blows with agonizing efficiency, letting his own momentum throw him off balance.
She parried a desperate thrust, stepped inside his guard, and drove the heel of her boot violently into his fractured knee again. The Prince gasped, his posture breaking completely. Before he could recover, Heena spun, her dark cloak whipping through the air, and delivered a devastating backhand elbow straight across his masked jaw. The force of the impact tore a piece of his black mask away, drawing fresh royal blood that splattered onto the stone floor.
She had him completely cornered. Her dagger was already moving in a lethal arc, aimed directly for the gap in his armor at his collarbone.
’Thwack!’
A sharp, whistling scream cut through the chaotic din of the hall, coming from the shattered entrance behind her.
Heena’s danger instincts, honed to a razor’s edge, flared violently. She didn’t hesitate. Forgoing the killing blow on the Prince, she threw her entire body backward, twisting mid-air with unnatural flexibility.
A heavy, black-fletched arrow streaked through the exact space where her throat had been a millisecond prior. The sheer velocity of the projectile was so intense that the wind pressure cut a thin, bleeding line across her cheek and embedded itself deep into the stone pillar behind her, shattering the rock.
Heena landed flawlessly on her feet, her hand immediately flying to her daggers as she snapped her head toward the doorway. "Who—"
But the doorway was empty, save for the swirling dust.
A sudden, ominous silence fell over the hall. Heena whipped her head back around to pin down the Prince, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
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