Michael appeared before the Dullahan like a storm given shape.
Every ounce of his strength poured into his arm as he swung Void Slayer in a single, devastating arc.
Boom!
The Dullahan took the full force of the blow and was blasted backwards, smashing through gravestone after gravestone, its momentum refusing to die until the wreckage finally stopped it.
The undead horse watched.
Then it neighed.
Void Slayer gleamed with three distinct energies wrapped around its blade.
Blood energy, drawn from the depths of his daylight bloodline.
Void energy, the sword’s own ancient power bleeding outward.
And the third.
The one that turned heads and dropped jaws in any serious circle of fighters.
Aura.
Only one in a thousand swordsmen ever touched it.
Not talent alone.
Not hard work alone.
Both, refined together over years of gruelling training and hard-won epiphany, until mana itself transformed into something purer and far more dangerous.
And yet here stood Michael, a man who had only recently picked up a sword, wielding it as though it had always belonged to him.
If anyone who understood the true weight of that fact were to witness it, the shock alone might have been enough to do them in.
The horse wasn’t interested in standing still while the Dullahan recovered.
Its mouth opened wide.
Dark mana gathered between its jaws, pulling the surrounding air inward, concentrating into a dense and writhing ball of energy that hummed with something deeply wrong.
It was chilling.
The kind of energy that didn’t just destroy what it touched but erased it.
The horse fired.
Boom!
The blast tore through the dungeon, obliterating everything in its path as it screamed toward Michael.
Michael ducked low, letting it pass over him, and felt the heat of it graze the top of his head.
Then he moved.
Closing the distance to the horse in an instant, he raised Void Slayer and brought it down.
The Dullahan was already back.
It intercepted the strike before the blade could land.
Clang!
Steel met steel, sparks scattering across the ruined graveyard in every direction.
“Neigh!”
The horse screamed.
The Dullahan looked at it.
Then it looked at Michael.
It had blocked the attack cleanly.
So why was there a long, deep gash carved into the horse’s side?
“You don’t know much about me,” Michael said with a quiet smile.
He opened his hand.
And let Void Slayer fall.
The Dullahan stared at him.
It had no head with which to express its bewilderment, but the stillness that followed said everything.
Was this man serious?
It wasn’t going to question another fighter’s choices.
With its sword now free and its opponent unarmed, it raised the great sword and brought it straight down, intent on cleaving Michael clean in two.
Michael swung his empty hand upward to meet it.
The Dullahan would have pitied him if it could.
Perhaps it was Michael who was truly the headless one. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Clang!
The Dullahan recoiled.
The block had connected.
Michael’s hand was still empty.
No weapon.
Nothing visible.
Nothing a common eye or ordinary perception could detect.
But Michael wasn’t fighting with common eyes.
Through his sword heart, he had forced his way to mastery of a technique that took most swordsmen lifetimes to even approach.
Heart Sword.
The ability to materialise a formless, invisible weapon that existed beyond the reach of normal senses.
Invincible because it could not be seen.
Invincible because it could not be touched by those who didn’t know it was there.
The heart sword always took the shape of the wielder’s most beloved blade.
The sword that lived in their chest before it ever lived in their hand.
For Michael, that sword was Void Slayer.
Which meant the blade currently pressing against the Dullahan’s great sword was an invisible twin of the very weapon now floating freely in the air beside him.
With a thought, he directed Void Slayer forward.
The Dullahan felt the shift and tried to pull back, realising too late that it had walked directly into the trap.
It fought to break free.
It couldn’t.
The blade was already moving.
“Neigh!!”
The horse appeared from nowhere, its wound sealed, throwing itself into the path of Void Slayer and taking the blow across its hide.
The sword bounced off.
But the hide was gone now.
Stripped away by the impact, leaving nothing but exposed bone beneath.
“Alright,” Michael said, and his voice had lost its warmth entirely.
“You’re both getting on my nerves.”
He reached out, grabbed the Dullahan by the arm, and with a full three hundred and sixty degree spin, sent it hurtling through the air.
It flew.
It had no way to stop itself.
“Now,” Michael said, turning to face the horse alone.
“Just you and me.”
The undead horse met his gaze and neighed.
Long and loud, it gave a command.
Every undead mob in the dungeon that had been locked in combat with the twin headed wolf snapped to attention and turned as one, abandoning the wolf completely and converging on Michael.
“Oh, so now we’re calling in help?” Michael said flatly.
“Blood Bullet.”
He fired.
A concentrated burst of blood energy wrapped in aura, aimed straight at the horse with no room to manoeuvre.
The horse had no time to dodge.
The blast connected and bone fragments exploded outward from the impact, the creature screaming in pain as the attack tore through it.
Michael didn’t give it a breath to recover.
Before the Dullahan could return, he closed the distance at full speed.
Void Slayer in his right.
He cut the undead horse into pieces.
It was clean and final.
The horse dropped and did not rise again.
As for the horde still converging on him, a single casual swing of Void Slayer scattered them like leaves in a storm.
“Alright, big guy,” Michael said, looking toward the Dullahan as it made its way back.
“Just you and me now.”
[Warning!
Warning!]
[An unknown being that should not be interfering has forcefully interfered in your fate.]
[Warning!
Host life is in danger!]
[Processing a way to balance the sudden change in Host fate…]
[Calibrating!]
[Host, try to survive until calibration is complete!]
[Host just needs to stay alive until calibration is over!]
Michael went still.
His system had never done that before.
It had never lost its composure.
Never flared like something genuinely frightened.
He turned the information over quickly in his mind.
His life was in danger.
The Dullahan?
No.
The Dullahan was dangerous, but not at that level.
Not enough to make the system scream.
So what was it?
Shimmer.
A rift tore open in the air ahead of him.
Michael stared at it.
A rift.
Inside an active dungeon.
That was not supposed to be possible.
The laws that governed dungeons made it impossible.
And yet it hung there in front of him, wide and undeniable, edges rippling like disturbed water.
From within the rift, a hand reached through.
Dark in complexion.
Robust with muscle that spoke of something beyond ordinary training.
But it wasn’t the look of the hand that made Michael’s chest go cold.
It was the pressure.
Just the hand.
Just one hand, extending through a tear in reality.
And the weight it carried was suffocating.
Crushing.
The kind of presence that didn’t announce itself with noise or spectacle, but simply existed and made everything around it feel smaller by comparison.
Domineering in a way that bypassed logic entirely and settled directly into instinct.
“I’m going to die.”
That was the only thought that formed in Michael’s mind.