Restart Again: Volume 2 by Adam Scott (best adventure books to read .TXT) 📗

charge, his stony face now chiseled with the hard lines of anger, but a loud shout from behind him gave him pause. He spun just in time to deflect Lia’s opening lunge, a powerful stab aimed directly at his heart. The parry sent him skidding to the side across the smooth stone floor, and Lia shifted quickly to interpose herself between me and him. “You’re not getting up there,” she said with easy confidence. “Throw down your swords now, and I’ll let you live.”

His reply came in the form of a dashing overhand strike, which Lia gracefully dodged. The speed at which he moved impressed me. Age appeared to have had the opposite effect on the General as it did on most people; the strength behind his attacks could easily match a seasoned soldier in their prime, and his battlefield experience was most likely unparalleled. Unfortunately for him, he was engaged in combat against an opponent with abilities he had certainly never seen in his long years of fighting.

“You’ve made a fatal miscalculation,” the Strategist hissed at me as the battle began before us. “The three of you together would still stand no chance against my General.”

“An impressive amount of confidence for someone who, just moments ago, openly admitted he knew nothing about his opponents,” I shot back.

He ignored my quip. “Not that you’ll have the chance to fight him together. You’re otherwise engaged with me, and your Shield...well, just look for yourself.” Far behind where Lia and the General fought, Val was sitting on her knees, staring blankly past the combat before her. “Hardened steel might never bend, but when it breaks, there’s no putting it back together.”

I pressed the blade harder against his throat, drawing up beads of blood along the pale blue metal. “You speak like a man who has never been punished for his insolence,” I mocked. “That will change.”

He fell silent after a sharp intake of breath, and we resumed watching the duel below us with total focus. It was immediately clear why the Strategist was so confident in his champion; putting aside his physical prowess, the General had an amazing ability to analyze and adapt to his opponent’s techniques. Whenever Lia gained the upper hand over him with a new feint or tricky maneuver, it only seemed to invigorate him further. If the technique came up a second time he countered it perfectly, as though he had trained against it for years. Despite the hard lines of age on his face and his snow white hair, he moved with the strength and speed of a soldier in his prime.

As the fight continued, Lia’s talents became more apparent as well. Her usual style of lightning fast attacks and graceful dodges served her well at the beginning of the fight, but as the General adapted to her movements, she was pushed to the back foot. Just when it appeared that he was in a position to end the fight for good, Lia completely changed styles and fought back with renewed strength. What were once calculated stabs were now powerful two-handed swings, and her dodges became jarring parries. Even though she had put her own spin on it, it was clear that she was emulating my fighting style.

Every second that passed tightened the knot in my stomach. I lacked the necessary mana to confirm it with Detection, but I knew that Lia was burning through her energy reserves faster and faster as the fight continued. The General began to slow as well, and both fighters panted loudly and shouted out with frustrated exertion as they attacked. Each of them took minor wounds over the course of the fighting: Lia landed two consecutive jabs on the General’s right thigh, which were answered in turn by a long, shallow cut above Lia’s left eye that coated half of her face in blood. As my past lives had taught me, the winner wouldn’t necessarily be the most skilled fighter, but instead the one with enough stamina to hold out until their opponent made a mistake.

The tide of battle shifted in an instant. Lia had switched to a two-weapon fighting style after drawing the old training dagger from her belt, and was effectively driving the General back. The first parry from the dagger caught him by surprise, and she landed a solid cut on the inside of his dominant arm. They separated momentarily, each desperately trying to catch their breath, then charged in for another deadly exchange of ringing steel. When Lia attempted the same gambit a second time, the General was ready; he turned his strike at the last moment, catching the dagger’s hilt at an awkward angle that wrenched her arm down. His second sword came down on it a moment later, and the force of the combined blows shattered the dagger’s cheap steel blade.

His newly freed swords sliced in a quick sideways arc, impacting the forearm bracer of her sword arm. The blades skittered down the hardened leather until they caught the armor gap at her wrist, where they bit deeply into the flesh of her hand. Lia screamed as her sword fell from her hand and clattered on the stone at her feet. She spun backwards, using her momentum to throw the shattered dagger back at the General to cover her retreat. It caught him in the side of the face, slicing a bright red gash through his cheek and bottom lip. He roared as he recoiled, covering his face with his sword arm.

The Strategist craned his head backwards to look at me with contempt. “If you have any last words for the girl, now would—” His taunt was interrupted by a pained yelp as I tugged down on his pinned arm, violently dislocating his shoulder. My eyes never left Lia; blood streamed from her hand as she dug through the pouch on her waist. She retrieved one of the glowing orange orbs I had given her before our mission and crushed it over her wounded hand,