Chapter 289: Three-Man Party

Lys’s breathing sharpened.

‘Shit, these aren’t like the golems or the chicken-monsters. They don’t just charge blindly. It seems they are used to covering for each other.’

Knowing fighting them head-on, like he did until now, was not an option for him; he would surely lose badly against them in this three-on-one battle, so he tried to talk it out.

“Stop! This village has nothing to do with whatever you’re after; just listen to me for a second….”

As if his words didn’t reach the man, the first knight answered with another slash. Lys caught it on Sword-Shield again, felt the passive redirection bite into the man’s guard, and used the opening to shove him back. The second knight immediately filled the space. A boot caught Lys in the ribs, making him fall on his back a little farther away. 

Pain shot through his ribs. He realised this kick just might’ve broken one or two of his ribs. He still rolled around on the ground to avoid the next attack, came up on one knee, and barely turned the next spear thrust with the edge of CorpseSlayer.

The cursed sword drank a thin thread of blood from a shallow cut he had opened on the spearman’s forearm. 

Just with this small victory, he realised something valuable.

Monsters always charge without coordination with each other. They overcommitted, driven by their instinct. 

But these men were different. Though they didn't talk with each other while fighting, every time he created a gap, another blade or spear point of theirs was already closing it. It was as if they were used to just using a specific fighting style, which made them cover for each other's gaps and blind spots. 

Lys realised that if he could just somehow learn that style and find a pattern in it, he could also overpower them. Defeating them by finding loopholes in their own fighting style.

His arms still ached from the long fight against the swarm. Basic Regeneration and Enhanced Stamina kept him moving, but the margin was thin. He had to fight smart, fight dirty. Otherwise, it was inevitable that he would lose to them and possibly be killed.

Without giving him much time to think about what pattern or fighting strategy they were using, a spear scraped across his left shoulder, tearing the sleeve of his tunic and skin. Lys hissed, stepped inside the man’s reach, and drove the pommel of CorpseSlayer into the side of the helmet. The knight staggered. Before Lys could follow through, the third man gave a large kick into his back and sent him stumbling forward.

He hit the dirt hard, rolled, and came up with dirt in his mouth and blood running down his arm.

‘Fuck….I can’t trade blows with them like this. They’re better at this than I am.’ He realised after this kick.

So he stopped trying to fight the way they expected.

He spat dirt from his mouth and forced himself back to his feet.

Blood ran warm down his left arm where the spear had torn him open. His ribs still screamed from the earlier kick. Across from him, the three armored men reset their positions with the same unhurried professionalism as before. With Sword, Longsword, and Spear. They did not rush. 

They closed the space again, covering one another’s angles and blind spots the way they had from the first exchange.

Lys’s breathing slowed.

‘I see… So they fight like a party!’

The realization settled in his mind with sudden clarity after seeing this exact formation of them a couple of times by now. The sword-wielder pressed and tested. The heavier longsword user waited for the committed opening. And the spearman almost never led first; he hovered patiently, and only struck when Lys overextended or when one of the others forced a blind spot from him. It was the same basic triangle any experienced adventurer party used in the field: pressure, power, and punish. All with practised coordination.

Though he never played many games and such in his Earth time, but this much he knew very well. Adventurers from fantasy setting stories also fight to cover their own shortcomings, or so he read before. That is the only possibility he could think of at this moment. 

 Yes, he realised these three fought like adventurers. Most likely they were adventurers before.

‘Well.. If that’s the case… then maybe this is going to be easier than I thought.’

He stopped trying to win cleanly, knowing that won’t work with these guys.

On the next exchange, he deliberately fought the first knight a fraction slower than he could have. He let the man’s blade trace a shallow cut across the outside of his sword arm. It was a little painful, bloody, but not disabling. 

At the same moment his free hand snaked out, seized the leather-wrapped scabbard still hanging at the knight’s waist, and wrenched hard.

The man stumbled forward, pulled off-balance.

Exactly as Lys had predicted, the spearman saw the opening and drove in for the finishing thrust.

But unlike the way the spearman had thought, Lys was already moving. He released the scabbard, twisted, and clamped his free hand around the incoming spear shaft. Using the man’s own momentum, he yanked. The spearman had no choice but to follow or lose the weapon. He came forward in a forced lunge, and met the CorpseSlayer, which Lys had kept low and waiting for precisely this moment.

The cursed blade punched up under the breastplate and straight into the chest cavity with each of Lys’s pulls and the momentum the spearman himself had. The man made a short, wet sound and folded instantly. His grip on the spear loosened, and it was now in Lys’s hand.

[EXP Gained: 530]

Lys took the spear and, without thinking much, threw it toward the longsword-holding knight in front of him. The knight ducked and let the spear move past him. Both knights were now at the same distance from Lys, on each side.

Lys stepped sideways and looked at the two remaining knights, glancing between them. The easy coordination between them had fractured the instant their third member dropped dead. Both of them were confused at this sudden turn of events.

“You three were adventurers before this, weren’t you? That’s why you fight like a party instead of proper knights. ” Lys spoke in an almost conversational way. 

“I knew it the moment you kept covering each other’s gaps. So? What is it going to be now? Your triangle’s broken. You’ve been fighting this way so long you must not remember how to stand alone, right? How are you going to manage without him? You all came forward together because of your formation, right? You all were too confident because you had each other to cover for your gaps. But now what? I just killed your friend.”

The taunt might not have landed if it wasn’t Lys who was using them on these two.

More than the words themselves, something else moved beneath them: his Aura of Intimidation, released in a controlled pulse. Lys felt the skill’s effect settle over the two remaining men almost instantly, by the way they were moving now. Their stance shifted. Discipline cracked just enough for Lys to notice.

Both charged at him at once, exactly as he had hoped.

Lys did not meet them head-on. At the last instant he dropped his weight, twisted, and used the first knight’s own momentum against him. A hard shoulder check and a carefully timed trip sent the longsword-wielder stumbling directly into the path of his partner. 

Armor crashed against armor. For a single precious second, both men were tangled, not used to fighting by just the two of them.

And getting this precious chance, Lys’s blade flashed.

Steel bit through the weaker joint at the wrist. A gauntleted hand, still gripping its sword, spun away into the dirt. The man whose arm he cut down screamed in a high and raw wailing sound, clutching the spurting stump.

The larger of the two recovered first. Roaring, he came at Lys with the longsword in a furious overhead cut. 

Finally getting his confidence back, Lys sidestepped, let the blade bury itself in the packed earth, and answered with a low, vicious swing across the back of the man’s knee. The armor held, but the force still buckled the joint Lys struck. The knight dropped to one knee.

Lys was already behind him.

He raised his CorpseSlayer and let it fall in a single clean motion, driving down between the neck and the shoulder plate.

[EXP Gained: 610]

[CorpseSlayer: Level 4 – 1703 / 1600]

[Congratulations… LEVEL UP]

[Level 4 → Level 5]

[10 Skill Points Awarded]

---Cursed Sword of the Fallen Witch---

Level 5: 103 / 3200

Skill Points: 50

New Skill Unlocked:

Soul Devourer (Level 1 – Upgrade: 25 SP): The user can absorb the souls of those killed by CorpseSlayer. Each absorbed soul permanently strengthens the user.

‘Hmm, it seems killing humans gives way too much EXP compared to usual small monsters. But now what the fuck is this soul devourer?’ Lys asked himself.

The notification burned bright across Lys’s vision. For a fraction of a second, he stared at the new skill name, Soul Devourer, feeling an instinctive unease at the wording. Then the remaining knight, the one missing a hand, forced himself upright with a wet snarl and charged in pure desperation.

Lys turned to finish it, without delaying this fight any longer.

But before he could cut the man’s head from his body with the CorpseSlayer, a spear suddenly flew out of the dark.

Lys ducked on pure reflex. The spear still clipped CorpseSlayer’s blade with a sharp metallic ring, spoiling his killing stroke and forcing him to take a step sideways. His head snapped toward the source of the throw.

A woman in a dark dress stepped through the hole in the wall. Behind her came more soldiers, fanning out with practiced speed. The moonlight caught the sharp lines of her face and the cold interest in her eyes as they settled on Lys and on the cursed sword in his hand.

Ines’s mouth curved in a small, almost amused smile.

“Well, well, well. Look who it is.” Her voice carried easily across the blood-soaked ground. “Isn’t that the same boy who made a mess of my plans back then?”

“Well, I guess you certainly live up to the rumors and reports I got about you. Hmm, Interesting ....”