I regressed and became the Sword Ice King-Chapter 428- Festival 159- The Sun Comet 8

"Did you say something, Miss?"

The man’s voice echoed against the metallic pipes with a mild ring.

It startled her back to the present.

Her eyes blinked slowly as she turned towards him.

"What?" She said, her tone dripped with the lingering trails of the venom.

The man flinched.

" I-I heard you speak, Miss. I apologise if I was wrong."

Without speaking further, he continued with his task.

Still, they remained unmoved. Unresponsive to his constant tug and pull.

It baffled her for a moment, but she let the man continue.

Timing was perfect in cases like this, and her line of thought was riddled with other mysteries.

What put them in their state though, had been a wonder to her since she found them.

She even went as far as to inspect their bodies. Signs of mana injection, physical trauma, and mental breakdown.

There were, in fact, different ways to put someone in an unconscious state. Well, temporarily at least.

So, technically. Understandably, at least one of them should have awakened from it. Snapped themselves back to the present– and searched for a way out.

Especially since all should have gone unconscious, mostly from the physical trauma.

They all experienced the same incident with the five masked figures, after all.

But they didn’t.

Why?

The question rang in her head as she stared at them.

Putting her more prominent thoughts aside, she focused on the task at hand.

’Well, I’ll have to be a lot faster than I had planned.’

With the appearance of her mother– well, suspicion, anyway.

’It’s not a suspicion. That woman...she was staring at me just now...I know it.

She’s here.’

But that didn’t make their situation any better.

No, not by a long shot.

If anything, her mother would act out without the necessary finishing touches.

Easily wiping the Academy without fully acknowledging that not everyone had made it out.

Those who didn’t were simply stragglers. The aftermath of a war she never started.

Smart...

’...but manipulative.’

A sigh escaped her lips as she walked towards the man.

Some time had passed now, and none were yet to awake.

It had become evident that these six were not put unconscious through natural means, alone.

Something logically unexplainable was at work here.

And unless she figured it out on time, she might have to leave them behind, altogether.

The thought, though something that once felt natural, came as a rotten egg in her stomach.

Terribly disgusting.

’That woman...hasn’t changed.’

"Hey, you." She said on getting to him.

Arms folded behind her while she dropped to a knee.

The man moved, glancing at her from the young male he had been shaking with rigour a moment ago.

"Ye– Yes, Miss?"

Ciara stared at him for a moment, then turned to the students who were sitting up against the rounded wall of the Pipelines.

Eyes closed and mouths left slightly agape.

She tilted her head. Her eyes peered into their bodies for a second.

Observing and investigating what she needed before a scoff left her lips.

"Do you take me for a fool?"

The man flinched.

Slowly rising to his feet with hesitation. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"Wha– What do you mean, Miss?"

"I mean...you would know..."

She brushed her hand against Marshall’s hair. Shifting it to the side, slightly.

’No doubt about it.’

There were signs of infusion, and that only led to one conclusion.

But even that conclusion had other branches one could have easily missed.

’Infusion of a foreign energy into a human will naturally cause a counter reaction.

One where the body instinctively fights against it...’

When that human doesn’t possess the right amount of mana or aura to fight against the foreign energy, they are immediately put unconscious until the owner of that energy draws it out.

’It would have been a lot easier if they had just done the usual and infused them with their mana.’

The Merlin household could bypass that process.

Instead of searching for the owner of the foreign energy, they copy the energy.

Complex magic and mana casting at work to pull the foreign energy out.

If it were aura, it could have taken a longer process, but nonetheless, they would get it out.

’But...Miasma.’

Her eyes narrowed at the radiant dark crimson energy that sparked to life at the base of his neck.

A sudden pulse that crept with his heartbeat before dispersing to the rest of the body.

’Fuck.’ She cursed as she turned towards the man.

"A Miasma infusion, really?"

The man went silent.

A second passed. Then another, and then a minute, but they remained fixed to their positions.

Eyes staring into each other’s while their heartbeats thumped loudly against their chest.

Another minute passed, and the man suddenly turned around, released a slight cry from his lips and took to his heels.

Ciara followed in motion, though, not by moving her legs but her arms.

Tapping her storage ring, the gun from before sparked to life in her grasp as she aimed it forward.

With a second to waste, the trigger was pulled and the bullet released with a bang.

Silence followed.

The crackling of the gunshot echoed against the Pipelines in the surreal silence as Ciara stared at the hole punctured through the man’s skull.

Just before it filled with crimson gore, his body fell lifelessly to the ground.

Ciara remained in her position.

Her arm was still stretched out, while her gaze landed on the man’s corpse.

Her gaze narrowed. Crimson eyes glowing with a deep resentment restrained by discipline.

Her lips twitched slightly and turned into a frown. Then a scowl.

"I guess in the end, you never really abandoned your people."

Dropping her arm with a sigh of resignation, she glanced at the unconscious bodies beside her.

"Hah...what a mess..." She muttered. "...the one who’s most likely the owner of that Miasma is the man I left behind."

The man whom Louis is trying to kill.

"How ironic..." She said as she focused her attention on Mariam. "He’s trying to kill the man who holds the key to her life..."

Oh...what a mess.

***

BANG!

A clash of iron projected in the air as weapons struck like a turning cord.

SWOOSH!

BANG!

Another clash resounded from an impactful blow of their weapons.

Synonymous. Continuous.

A flow that failed to break.

Rhythm without the constraints of fatigue. Blood and Sweat splashing against the metallic floor like it were seeds laid out for pigeons to feed.

A strike led to another.

Then an over-extended arm led to an opening.

An opening led to a sudden and quick defence.

And that defence causes a barrage of clashes that failed to break, yet, held its weight in the favour of a crimson-eyed assassin.

Louis’ gaze shimmered with the aqua hue of the Pipelines.

His dagger, an incarnate of death itself, warped through the air in thin lines.

It formed jagged trails in its wake as it laid waste to the odachi which refuted its hungry talons.

Standing atop a narrow platform of iron, they clashed to their heart’s content.

A brutal struggle to stand atop the corpse of their opponent.

But none would yield.

They were surrounded by the tight walls of the Pipelines lined along the narrow pathway.

Evident scars of their conflict are showcased like rare art pieces in a museum.

Bent pipe channels and rung iron that looked like foil paper littered the trail of their path.

Following closely with their ever-quick movement as they dashed and collided at different intervals.

Long carvings were made on the pipes.

Claw-like marks that were far deeper than they presumed were made the centrepiece amongst their artwork of destruction.

The evident showcase of their powers.

Louis, especially.

Though, he considered all this vanity when compared to the end result.

After all, as an Assassin of the La Teuer. The scars or process didn’t matter.

Like many other families, what concerned them was the end result, but theirs was particularly straightforward.

There was only one result to the La Teuer.

And that was death.

But thus far, he had failed to reach it.

The air whistled under the strain of his blow as an eruption of crimson energy exuded from Louis’s body.

His crimson eyes bulged open while his pupils dilated.

A sudden sharpness added to his instincts as he suddenly flipped his dagger down the odachi.

Rubbing his blade against the blade of Nicho’s odachi, which held out long and straight.

Its sharpness sparkled at the tip, just as Nicho suddenly pulled his odachi horizontally towards him.

Straining his hand control to connect with Louis who closed the distance between them.

Louis ignored.

Instead, he lifted his left arm as another blade sparked into life.

A dark one. Devoid of light, and casting an eerie shadow from its straight blade.

It met the odachi with a loud clang, just as his jagged dagger scratched the flesh off Nicho’s neck.

’Shit.’

Nicho’s thoughts snapped as a groan escaped his lips. Teeth bared out in a fit as he pushed his legs to the ground.

"You Son of a bitch."

He jumped back with a single stride, widening the distance as much as he could.

But a simple action like this wasn’t enough to separate him from the hungry Assassin.

No, it never was.

After all, like a shadow, he would always close the distance once again.

Then the barrage of sword attacks would occur, with their blades singing the song.

Or at least, that was what was expected.

Nicho’s eyes bulged open in mid-air as his gaze locked onto the silent assassin’s.

A cold shiver ran down his spine as he did so.

’What now?’

The question slammed the back of his skull like a hammer.

But the answer would not be found by force. No, it was something that would come naturally.

Just like his instincts.

For a fraction of a second, his eyes flared open completely as he forced his entire being to turn to his left, mid–air.

It was a subtle change, but that change came with a reward.

Like a lightning bolt, the tip of Louis’s dark dagger sparked brilliantly as it flew through the air in deadbeat silence from behind– forward.

It nicked away flesh from the other side of Nicho’s neck, as his pupils traced the path of the dagger.

’Shit.’ Nicho thought in bewilderment. ’That was fucking close!’