Chapter 495: Chapter 495 - Departure of Raven with Hero’s Sword
The sword pushed harder.
The killing intent expanded, pressing against his mana field with the full force of a level-50 artifact deciding this was a confrontation.
His field didn’t move.
The sword’s killing intent hit his anomaly field and did what Rika’s Truth-Sight had done — slid off the edges, unable to fully process what it was pressing against. The level-50 pressure found a target it could not properly measure and returned, essentially, ’error.’
He reached out and took the handle.
The sword fought.
For three seconds, it pulled toward him and away simultaneously, the mana in it thrashing against his grip, the gemstones flaring bright. He felt it the way you feel a large dog straining against a short leash — real force, real resistance, genuinely impressive for what it was.
For what it was.
He closed his hand around the handle and held still.
The sword’s resistance lasted another two seconds.
Then it stopped.
Not gradually. All at once — the mana in the blade going quiet, the killing intent folding down, the gemstones dimming from bright to their resting glow. The sword sat in his hand with the docile weight of a weapon that had taken a full read of what it was being held by and made a rational decision.
He turned it once.
’This will do,’ he thought.
He stored it.
The dimensional pocket accepted the sword without complaint.
He turned to leave.
The spider hit him from the left.
It was enormous — the full span of it, legs included, was wider than a doorway, the body the size of a large man’s torso, the mandibles carrying the wet, dark shine of something that had been designed for structural damage rather than venom delivery. It came off the ceiling of the cave behind the waterfall with the momentum of a thing that had been waiting and had decided now was the time.
It hit his mana field.
He snapped his fingers.
The spider dropped.
Not slowly. Immediately. The full body went from kinetic to inert in the same instant, falling the remaining distance to the cave floor with a wet, heavy impact that sent water spraying from the puddles around the rock shelf.
He looked at it.
He crouched.
His fingers found the abdomen — the poison gland was where he knew it would be, a dense, dark sac behind the primary spinnerets. He extracted it cleanly, pocketing it alongside two segments of the leg casing that had the particular density useful for armor reinforcement.
He stood.
’Merchant guild,’ he thought. ’Check the state of this town’s market. See what the timeline looks like.’
He moved toward the cave entrance, toward the light behind the waterfall, toward the mist and the cold air.
He stopped.
She was at the basin’s edge.
He had heard nothing — the waterfall was too loud for anything to register over it — but his mana sense had already sketched her before his eyes confirmed it. Petite. Tight-bodied. The frame of someone young and built lean, the kind of physique that came from genuine physical activity rather than training for a role.
She was removing her dress.
The fabric came over her head in the unselfconscious motion of a woman who had been coming to this particular basin for long enough to be comfortable here. Her chest was modest — small, neat, the nipples dark against pale skin, her body straight and compact as she stepped toward the water.
He processed this information.
He filed it under ’not my concern’ immediately and moved to leave.
His eyes caught the three figures standing at the tree line.
He stopped.
His mana sense reached toward them and returned nothing.
Not low readings. Not suppressed readings. ’Nothing.’ No heartbeat. No circulation. No mana signature of a living body. They stood with the posture of guards and the biological profile of objects. Humanoid shapes that were not human.
He looked closer.
The foreheads.
All three of them had markings — not tattoos, not insignia burned into skin. Markings that moved slightly, that had the faint luminescence of parasitic mana, the glow of a foreign system embedded in a host that was no longer making independent decisions.
’Puppets,’ he thought. ’Someone’s animated bodies. Here as guards for—’
He looked at the woman at the basin edge.
She was in the water now, the cold of it making her gasp softly, her small tits above the surface, her hands moving through the water with the practiced ease of a routine.
He looked at the puppets.
He looked at her.
He looked at the direction she had come from, the path through the forest.
’Someone sent puppet guards with a girl bathing at a waterfall in a base village.’
’That is an unusual level of resource allocation.’
He filed this.
He did not know her. Her face meant nothing in any memory he had access to. Whatever destiny she carried — and he could see the threads of it, faint and complex, more complex than a base-village woman should have — it was not a thread he had been given the context to read today.
He was not going to waste time on context he didn’t have.
He turned.
He left through the cave entrance, the mist of the waterfall parting around his body, and he rose.
The wings deployed.
The shockwave was an accident.
Or rather: the wings deployed at a power output calibrated for altitude and distance, not for the proximity of a quiet forest basin, and the resulting displaced air hit the waterfall from behind. The column of white water shuddered. The mist blew outward in a ring. The trees at the basin edge bent.
The sound tore through the valley like a hand through paper.
He was already high.
He angled toward the village and did not look back.
Below.
The woman at the basin stood with both hands pressed over her small tits.
The shockwave had hit her chest-first, the displacement wave pushing against her skin hard enough to make the water around her hips surge and slap the basin wall. Her hair had blown backward. Her eyes were wide and aimed at the sky.
She saw nothing.
The clouds above the waterfall had been torn in a line — a clean, directional scar in the white, like a finger dragged through paint. The air still vibrated where the wingtip had passed.
Nothing visible.
But the clouds didn’t lie.
Her hands pressed harder against her chest. The nipples had gone stiff — from the cold, from the shockwave, from the particular physical response of a body that had just been adjacent to a power output it could not quantify.
Footsteps.
The three men arrived from the tree line with the synchronized, slightly-too-smooth movement of bodies that were receiving motion instructions rather than generating them. Their foreheads glowed faintly. Their swords were drawn.
"What happened?" The voice came out with the hollow, careful enunciation of a puppet trying to sound concerned. "Are you all right, my lady?"
She looked at them.
She looked at the scar in the clouds.
She looked at the waterfall — the basin, the cave entrance behind the fall, the rock shelf she had known about since she was twelve years old. The sword she had been planning to retrieve. The sword she had been planning to use. The sword that had been sitting in that cave for longer than this village had existed, and which she had left there intentionally because the time was not right, because she needed more power first, because—
Her jaw tightened.
Her hands dropped from her tits.
Her eyes were fixed on the cave entrance with the expression of a woman doing very rapid mathematics and not liking any of the answers.
’Someone had been in there.’
’Someone with a mana output powerful enough to shockwave the clouds had come out of the waterfall.’
’And the cave had the sword.’
"My lady?" The puppet spoke again.
She raised one hand. The gesture was flat and absolute — the signal that meant ’stop talking, I am thinking.’
The puppets stopped.
She looked at the direction the shockwave had traveled. North-northeast. Toward the village. Toward the teleportation grid.
She looked at the cave entrance.
She looked at the cloud scar.
Her teeth found her lower lip and pressed.
"There was someone here," she said. Her voice was very controlled. "Check that waterfall."
One of the puppets moved immediately, walking toward the cave entrance with the mechanical precision of something that did not have opinions about walking into dark caves.
She pulled her dress from the bank and stepped out of the water.
The cold air hit her wet skin and she ignored it, pulling the fabric over her damp body with the efficient practicality of a woman who did not have time for the ordinary inconveniences of being wet.
Her eyes were aimed north-northeast.
’The sword,’ she thought. ’If someone touched the sword—’
She bit harder on her lip.
The puppet emerged from behind the waterfall. Its hollow eyes found her. It made the gesture that meant ’empty.’ Nothing found.
Her eyes did not change.
Nothing found meant the sword was gone.
Nothing found meant whoever had been in that cave had taken it.
Nothing found meant that the mana output powerful enough to tear the clouds had reached into the place she had been protecting, had taken the thing she had been saving, and had left without encountering any resistance that was worth mentioning.
"You better not have touched what is mine," she said.
Her voice was very quiet.
She looked at the cloud scar.
"Or else."
The words finished in the direction of the village.
The three puppets stood behind her with their glowing foreheads and their drawn swords and their hollow expressions, waiting for the next instruction.
She gave none.
She was already calculating.
"Let’s leave, Rika must be waiting for me."
