I Became The Novel's Biggest Antagonist-Chapter 181: [Flashback] [Isaac Crawford] [7]

They were deflecting his bullets.

No—they were doing more than that.

They were interfering with his mana.

He fired again.

And again.

Each shot met the same bizarre resistance. Every time one of those black swords intercepted the bullet, the mana woven into it shuddered and bent, the trajectory thrown off just enough to spare the target. The bullets still detonated, still unleashed their devastating blasts, but never where Isaac intended.

His jaw tightened.

Mana roared through his body, responding to his irritation, pressing harder against its own borders.

They spread out, rushing him from multiple angles now that they had closed the distance.

Fine.

If precise shots wouldn't do, he would erase the ground they stood on.

He planted his feet.

This time, he poured mana into the rifle without restraint. The weapon's silver veins flared, bright enough to cast harsh, cold light on the masked faces rushing toward him. The air grew heavy, thick with the density of gathered power.

Then he moved.

In one smooth motion, he swept the barrel horizontally and pulled the trigger.

-BOOOOM!

The bullet he released was a compressed spear of annihilation, tearing across the battlefield in a low, sweeping line. It did not aim at any single man; it aimed at the space they occupied, the very ground beneath their feet.

The impact ripped a swath of earth apart, a violent storm of stone and dust erupting as the wave crossed their charge.

Two of the masked swordsmen were caught full-on before they could react. Their bodies vanished in the silver blast, swallowed entirely in the explosion. Armor, flesh, and bone disintegrated.

But the others—

Isaac's eyes narrowed.

The survivors moved through the chaos with inhuman calm, black blades tracing arcs that seemed to bend the very path of force itself. He felt his mana stutter when they cut through the edge of the blast, the wave of destruction thinning, diverted, split. The sweep should have blown them away; instead, it parted around them, reduced just enough that their armor and wards could endure.

The shockwave rolled past Isaac's troops, sending men staggering back, cloaks whipping in the wind. Shouts rose in the distance.

The masked swordsmen did not slow.

Five came at him from the front, three from the right, two from the left.

Fast.

They were faster than most knights, their movements were clean—no wasted motion, no flourish, only killing intent.

Isaac's rifle dissolved into silver motes.

In the same heartbeat, a revolver appeared in his hand.

He moved forward.

The first swordsman's blade fell in a straight, brutal cut aimed at Isaac's neck. Isaac slipped inside the arc, his coat flaring as he pivoted. The revolver snapped up.

-BANG!

At this range, there should have been no defense.

The bullet slammed into the man's chest—and the black armor drank the blow, absorbing the brunt of the mana. Cracks spiderwebbed across the breastplate, but instead of bursting outward, the impact seemed to sink inward, like a stone vanishing beneath dark water. The swordsman's body jerked, but his free hand shot forward, fingers curling into a fist aimed at Isaac's throat.

Isaac's expression did not change.

His left hand came up, fingers closing around the man's wrist mid-strike. He twisted.

Bones snapped.

The masked man's arm bent at a sickening angle, but the figure made no sound. No scream, no grunt—nothing. Isaac drove his knee into the man's ribs, sending him flying back into the path of another attacker.

He spun.

Steel hissed past his cheek—another black blade narrowly missing his eye as he bent backward, the edge cutting a lock of his hair instead. He felt the cold kiss of its mana-distorting presence, like a jagged line scraping against his senses.

He fired twice without looking.

Two flashes of silver.

Two masked figures reeled back, one clutching a ruined shoulder, the other thrown off balance as a bullet grazed his thigh. The black armor could dampen the force, but not entirely. Blood spattered the dirt, bright and red.

They kept coming.

The three from his right side closed in simultaneously, blades stabbing in coordinated thrusts aimed for his heart, his throat, his gut. Their timing was perfect; a lesser fighter would have been skewered on the spot.

Isaac stepped forward instead of back.

He ducked under the first thrust, twisting his body so the second blade scraped across his coat instead of piercing flesh. The third cut came in low; he kicked off the ground, twisting his hips in midair and bringing his boot down hard on the flat of the sword, forcing it into the earth.

He landed inside their guard.

His revolver shot three times.

-BANG! BANG! BANG!

At this range, the bullets punched directly into their armor at close quarters, the tremendous pressure of his mana compressing into each shot. Even with their dampening plates, the impact was too much. The three men were hurled backward, crashing into the dirt with enough force to crack stone.

Still, they did not cry out.

There was something wrong about that silence.

Isaac's lip curled.

Another blade came for the back of his head without warning.

He tilted his head.

The sword passed where his skull had been a heartbeat earlier, slicing through empty air. Isaac's hand shot back, gripping the attacker's masked face. He slammed the man into the ground at his feet.

The earth cracked.

He raised the revolver, aiming down.

Something shifted.

For a split second, his mana surged on its own—too fast, too eager, as if something had stoked a fire already threatening to burn out of control. His vision sharpened, then blurred at the edges. A faint, static-laced ringing filled his ears.

His finger hesitated on the trigger.

…What?

It was subtle.

But he knew his own mana better than anyone.

There was a tremor in it now, a jagged instability that hadn't been there moments before. It roiled under his skin, restless, like a caged beast sensing blood.

He fired anyway.

The bullet erupted from the barrel—but its path wobbled.

For the first time, not because of an outside interference, not because of a black sword—because his mana, at the moment of release, had lurched. The shot still hit its target, but not cleanly; the masked man's head was not obliterated as it should have been. Instead, the bullet tore through the side of his helmet, shattering the mask and leaving half his face intact.

The exposed skin was pale.

His eyes were empty.

A knight? A commoner? Someone else? Isaac barely registered it before another wave of wrongness washed over him.

His mana pulsed, then faltered.

One of the swords slashed toward his ribs.

He moved to dodge.

His body did not respond quite as fast as expected.

The blade grazed his side.

The black metal did not cut deeply through his coat and armor, but the contact sent a harsh, discordant shiver spiraling through his mana channels. It was as if a thousand tiny hooks had dragged across his nerves all at once.

He hissed softly through his teeth.

Not from pain.

From anger.

Mana surged up in response—more, more, more—like a reflex. It pressed hard against the confines of his body, battering against the careful discipline he had forged over years of training. For a heartbeat, he smelled smoke that wasn't there, saw the flicker of memory—

Blood.

Screams.

Over a hundred lives extinguished in a single moment when he lost control.

Not now.

He forced it down.

His focus narrowed to a single point.

Another black blade descended toward his shoulder. He stepped aside, but the timing was off by a fraction; the sword bit into his coat, scraping the armor beneath and sending another jag of mana-scraping sensation through him.

The masked men seemed to sense it.

They pressed in harder, all at once.

From a distance, it would have looked like a collapsing storm—coats flaring, black blades weaving a tight, suffocating web of cuts and thrusts, their formation tightening around Isaac like a closing jaw. Dust swirled, kicked up by their quick footwork. The air growled with their synchronized movements.

Isaac moved through it like a shadow of steel and silver.

His revolver thundered in a relentless rhythm, each shot aimed to maim or kill, each step taking him half a fraction off the lines of their cuts. He bent, slipped, twisted—letting blades pass inches from his throat, reappearing at the edge of their vision only to drive a boot into a knee, an elbow into a throat, a bullet into a vulnerable joint.

But with every clash, every touch of those black blades against his weapons or his aura, the strain on his mana grew worse.

Sometimes his bullet veered when he knew his aim was perfect.

Sometimes, when he tried to pull more power, it did not surge smoothly—it lurched, as though the channels inside him had grown jagged. The silver lines along his revolver flickered once, dimming before flaring again.

"Damn this…"

He planted his heel, twisting to avoid another cut to his leg. One of the masked men lunged in low, blade grazing his boot. The moment the black steel brushed the mana that clung naturally to him, his whole body jolted.

It felt like something had just bitten into the flow of his power and torn away a piece.

He realized it then.

They were not just deflecting his bullets.

Those swords were feeding on his mana—drinking it, pulling at it, warping it.

His mana, unstable even at the best of times, reacted badly.

Snarling silently beneath his skin.

"Lord Crawford!"

A distant voice, faint, as if underwater. One of his knights, perhaps. Isaac did not look. He could not afford to. A single moment of distraction would be enough.

The masked swordsmen circled him, adjusting their positions with unerring discipline. Three to his front. Two behind. Two on either side. The remaining one, limping from an earlier shot, hung back, blade still raised, ready to step in as soon as an opening appeared.

They came in together.

Eight blades descending in a kill pattern, angles overlapping to cut off any simple retreat. It was a merciless formation designed not for intimidation, but efficiency—this was how one killed a monster.

Isaac's pupils narrowed.

His revolver vanished.

The long rifle materialized in his hands once more, even as he moved.

He poured mana into it without thinking.

Too much.

The weapon's channels flared an almost blinding white, the air around him bending under the pressure. The ground at his feet cracked, pieces of stone lifting from the force alone.

For a heartbeat, the world slowed.

He could feel his mana raging—boiling, clawing, desperate for release.

He lifted the rifle, point blank, toward the densest knot of enemies.

If this shot left his control—

The thought cut off.

Everything exploded.

Not from his rifle.

From the side.

A roar of heat and fury tore through the battlefield.

A column of fire erupted between Isaac and the approaching swordsmen, a blooming vortex of crimson and violet flame that screamed as it expanded outward. It slammed into the masked men like a physical wall, hurling them back in all directions.

Their formation shattered.

Coats ignited. Armor clanged as bodies crashed to the ground or against jagged stone. Masks cracked. Those closest to the epicenter were thrown like rag dolls, black swords tumbling from their hands as they rolled across the dirt.

The sudden shift in pressure broke the rhythm that had been building in Isaac's mana. The boiling storm inside him stuttered, then dropped a fraction, finding a new equilibrium in the wake of the external explosion.

Heat washed over him.

He did not flinch.

The flames coiled, twisting and folding in on themselves.

From the heart of that torch-like bloom, a silhouette emerged, floating gently down as the fire licked at the edges of her form like a cloak of living light.

She touched the ground a few steps in front of him, the fire drawing back into a neat, swirling circle at her feet before vanishing completely.

A woman in a flowing black gown.

Long dark hair cascading down her back.

A pointed hat perched atop her head, tilted just so.

Purple eyes glittering with mischief.

Nimue smiled at him, lips curling into that same amused expression he was beginning to recognize as her default.

"My, my," she said lightly, placing a hand over her chest in feigned concern. "Lord Crawford, you looked like you were having such a hard time, I simply couldn't stay still."

Her gaze flicked to the scattered swordsmen, some struggling to rise, others lying motionless amid scorched dirt and shattered stone.

Then she looked back at him.

Her smile turned coquettish, eyes half-lidded as she leaned in just a fraction.

"Did you need help?" She asked sweetly.