Elven Lies II Chapter 158: A Strike From The Past

CHAPTER 158

A STRIKE FROM THE PAST

“I don’t have time for you fools.”

The blood moved.

The crimson droplets struck Zilong’s forearms before his blow could land.

Not like liquid.

Like chains.

The Red Demon Commander’s limbs jerked as the floating blood hardened into glowing crimson bindings.

Zilong roared.

The bindings snapped almost instantly under the brute force of his strength—but the strike had already slowed.

Enough.

Anfaleen did not move.

He did not need to.

Hans felt the difference immediately.

This was not mana.

Every knight trained to sense magic could feel its structure—the way power gathered, shaped,

and released.

But this—

This had no structure.

No incantation.

No formation.

The blood simply obeyed.

Zilong lunged again.

This time the ground itself betrayed him.

Thin crimson lines had begun crawling across the shattered stone beneath their feet, spreading outward like veins beneath skin.

His next step crushed through them.

The lines burst apart—

—but the blood only rose again.

More of it.

From fallen soldiers.

From broken bodies.

From the wound he himself had carved across Anfaleen’s ribs.

It drifted upward, joining the silent storm circling the warlock.

“If you escaped once,” Anfaleen said quietly, “you should have stayed gone.”

Zilong swung again anyway.

Because stopping had never been his nature.

Beyond the ruined courtyard, Delimira halted mid-stride.

The infected surged past her through the collapsing corridors. Chris shouted orders behind them, but her eyes had fixed on the battlefield above.

The blood rising into the sky.

For a moment she did not understand why the sight felt familiar.

Then memory answered.

Aelok.

The moment he had steadied his wound earlier.

A thin strand of life binding itself together.

The same principle.

But that had been a thread.

This—

This was a tide.

Her breath caught.

Aelok hadn’t invented it.

He had learned it.

Across the outer flank, Xandor slowed.

Only slightly.

Most would have seen chaos in the drifting blood.

He saw a pattern.

The droplets were not moving randomly.

They were arranging themselves.

Angles.

Distances.

Lines that would soon become geometry.

A ritual was forming.

The battlefield itself was becoming its circle.

Xandor exhaled quietly.

“So that’s how he kept getting away.”

Yet he did nothing.

His blade cut down another guardian without even turning his head.

At the centre of the rising crimson storm, Anfaleen finally spoke.

“Life resists death,” he said softly.

“Death resists life.”

The blood circling him pulsed once.

Like the beat of a heart.

“But blood…”

His gaze lifted to Hans.

“…makes them obey.”

Hans tightened his grip on the blade.

The sky above the ruined fortress had opened.

The ground beneath them had become something else entirely.

And the warlock standing before him was no longer fighting a battle.

He was building something.

“We need to hurry—this feels wrong.”

Hans moved first.

He could not afford to let the ritual finish.

Light erupted beneath his wings as he surged forward again, blade cutting a golden arc through the storm of rising blood.

The strike came fast enough to sever stone.

“It is true—you are faster than all—but faster ain’t enough.”

Anfaleen did not step aside.

The blood did it for him.

A crimson sheet gathered in front of the warlock and hardened an instant before the blade arrived.

Steel met blood.

The impact rang like striking tempered glass.

The barrier shattered into a rain of red shards—but the fragments simply dissolved and flowed back into the spiral above him.

Hans landed hard.

So it repairs itself.

Behind him, Zilong did not bother thinking about it.

The Red Demon Commander lunged again, six arms striking together with enough force to cave in the walls of a fortress.

This time, the blood did not bind him.

It diverted him.

Thin crimson lines shot across the ground like living veins and exploded upward beneath Zilong’s feet.

The impact twisted his charge sideways.

His fists smashed through the rising blood, but the angle was ruined.

The blow missed Anfaleen’s skull by inches and shattered the tower behind him instead.

Anfaleen watched the strike pass with mild interest.

“You see the problem now,” he said calmly.

His fingers moved slightly.

The spiral of blood above the battlefield tightened.

The air thickened.

“You insist on fighting the man.”

His gaze shifted between Hans and Zilong.

“But the battlefield belongs to me.”

Zilong roared and swung again anyway.

Blood splashed apart beneath the blow.

More rose to replace it.

Hans attacked again.

Three precise strikes in quick succession—each aimed to disrupt the forming ritual.

The first split a ring of floating blood.

The second carved a path through the crimson storm.

The third nearly reached Anfaleen’s throat.

Nearly.

A single droplet expanded into a curved shield just before the blade arrived.

Steel scraped across hardened crimson.

Hans pulled back immediately.

This isn’t defence.

It’s circulation.

The blood wasn’t forming spells.

It was moving like a living system.

A battlefield with veins.

“If steel cannot cut it…”

Light bled from Hans’ free hand.

A second blade formed.

Across the collapsing ruins, Xandor watched the exchange without slowing his steps.

The pattern had grown clearer now.

The droplets.

The veins in the stone.

The circular flow around the warlock.

This was not simply blood magic.

It was infrastructure.

He almost smiled.

“So that’s how you intend to survive the siege.”

Above the battlefield, the spiral of blood tightened again.

Hans’ strike now burned the blood.

The oozing sound and smell of burnt iron.

Yet he found no upper hand.

Anfaleen seemed unbothered.

If I cannot force him to summon his spirit…

I lose this battle.

He was running out of aura. It was so far his aura grade of sixties could carry him.

Think! Hans, think!

He paused his relentless strikes. This could not be solved with brute strength.

Observing Hans, creating some distance. Anfaleen exhaled slowly.

“You have done well,” he said to him.

There was no mockery in the words.

Only evaluation.

“You even forced me to accelerate the process.”

His gaze shifted briefly toward the broken sky.

Toward the distant horizon where reinforcements would eventually come.

Then back to Hans.

“But let us not pretend this ends differently.”

The blood storm pulsed again.

This time the ground answered.

Crimson veins spread through the shattered stone beneath the battlefield.

They crawled outward in widening circles.

Zilong crushed one beneath his foot.

It burst like a vein cut open.

Another appeared beside it.

And another.

Hans felt the change immediately.

The battlefield was no longer just terrain.

It was becoming a ritual.

And the warlock standing at its centre was its heart.

Anfaleen lifted his hand.

The floating blood began to rotate faster.

For the first time since the fortress fell—

The air itself felt heavy.

Not with mana.

With life.

Hans understood what that meant.

And for the first time since the duel began—

He realised they might already be too late.

Amid the chaos of battle, another memory surfaced.

The words of his ancestors.

This strike was never meant to kill.

It was meant to strip power away.

They had called it—

Hans dove straight toward the eye of the rising blood storm.

Light erupted from his wings as he plunged through the crimson spiral.

His blade struck the ground.

Hard.

The moment the sword of light pierced the eye of the blood storm.

The blood reacted instantly.

It shivered.

Then convulsed.

Like a living thing that had been stabbed.

It almost felt like his own carnage seed.

But he had no time for deep thoughts.

He wanted it stopped and here it was.

Crimson droplets scattered wildly across the battlefield, striking the ground as though the ritual itself had been wounded.

Hans’ voice carried through the collapsing air.

“Aura Blow.”

Every fragment of aura within him emptied in a single instant.

It surged through the blade.

Into the ground.

Into the blood.

Cleansing.

Pushing.

Purifying.

The crimson veins running through the battlefield flickered—

and died.

For one brief moment, the ritual collapsed.

His aura was gone.

Hans remained crouched, breath tearing through his chest.

The crimson veins that had crawled across the shattered stone faded like dying embers. What moments ago had pulsed with unnatural life now lay still, the battlefield returning briefly to its ruined silence.

Above them, the swirling storm of blood scattered.

Drops fell.

Some struck the broken courtyard.

Others splashed across shattered armour and fallen bodies.

For a fleeting moment—

the warlock’s design had been interrupted.

Zilong saw the opening first.

The Red Demon Commander surged forward with a roar that shook the fractured walls. Six arms drove toward the pale figure at once, fists falling like siege hammers.

The strike connected.

Anfaleen crashed into the shattered stone.

Dust exploded outward.

But the warlock did not collapse.

Anfaleen’s body slid across the broken ground before stopping. He straightened slowly, brushing fragments of stone from his sleeve as though the strike had merely inconvenienced him.

His eyes remained fixed on Hans.

Not angry.

Just surprised.

“So,” he murmured.

“I was right.”

His eyes narrowed.

“You are indeed a descendant of Atelier.”

He was not looking at Hans.

He was studying the technique.

The very strike the Ancient had once described.

The blow that had brought down the Mage King.

“You will grow dangerous for him. I must pluck you out when you are just a bud.” He stared at him.

A thin stream of blood slid down his side from the wound Zilong had carved earlier. Instead of dripping to the ground, it halted midway.

Suspended.

The single droplet trembled.

Then another rose beside it.

And another.

Across the battlefield, the fallen blood began to answer again—slower now, but far more deliberate.

Zilong halted mid-stride.

Hans forced himself upright despite the emptiness inside his chest.

He could feel it clearly now.

The strike had broken the ritual.

But it had not ended the warlock’s control.

Anfaleen lifted his hand.

“It looks like you can’t do that thing a second time—and unfortunately for you,” he murmured, “that method only removes the structure.”

The suspended droplets gathered together, forming thin crimson strands that curled around his fingers.

“It does nothing to the source.”

The air grew heavier.

Not with mana.

With life.

The blood threads wrapped slowly across the wound in his ribs.

Zilong had aimed for the heart.

The place every mage protected most.

But the torn flesh closed.

Zilong’s eyes narrowed.

Hans felt the realisation settle like cold iron in his gut.

Destroying the ritual had not weakened Anfaleen.

It had forced him to change methods.

And whatever came next—

would not resemble warlock magic at all.

Anfaleen flexed his hand once.

The crimson strands tightened around his arm like living veins.

Then he looked at them both.

“Now,” he said calmly,

“let us begin properly.”

***