PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

613 Chapter 613 Waltz of shadows.

Unlike what might have seemed due to Sasha, the bandits plaguing these lands were stronger than they appeared. Although quite desperate and insane, to survive the hunt from the Eternal War Maiden Sect, some strength was required.

Revna could sense this fact, so she was not surprised to see how dense and vibrant the Aura of the bandit she was going to fight was. The bandit thought he could use his Aura to intimidate the beautiful red-haired girl. Still, he didn’t hold out much hope about it either, so he wasn’t surprised when she didn’t react at all.

Knowing that fighting was the only way to get out alive, the bandit no longer beat around the bush. The Aura washed over every muscle fiber of the bandit like a tidal wave, instantly bringing his physical strength to his peak state. Revna watched silently as the shadows beneath her feet writhed and filled with mana.

The apparent calm was broken when the bandit made the first move. The bandit tried to score a lightning victory to catch Revna off guard. The bandit used a martial art that allowed him to burst out with overwhelming speed and strike with a thrust of his sword.

The Aura-filled sword in the bandit’s hands almost instantly advanced toward Revna’s face. Yet, the blade missed when she barely changed her stance, tilting and turning her body in a single step. The bandit panicked seeing his attack miss, and believing that Revna might counterattack, he made a desperate horizontal slash with his sword.

However, Revna never attempted to go on the offensive; she just stood silently watching her adversary with nothing but boundless darkness. Seeing the sword cut, Revna crouched down as she turned counterclockwise, taking three short steps, leaving behind the bandit’s back.

Realizing that Revna was in his blind spot, the bandit paled, but contrary to what he expected, Revna jumped back. The bandit turned around quickly and saw that in addition to the strange rhythm Revna was using to move, there was a dark flash surrounding the index finger of her right hand as she passed it in front of her face.

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As he watched Revna’s provocative gesture, the bandit felt a sudden rush of pain and realized a thin cut was on his abdomen. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Revna had attacked him before retreating. Still, what confused the bandit was why she had inflicted such a minor wound on him.

To his exasperation, the bandit realized that the girl he was clashing with was more dangerous than she first appeared and decided to be more cautious. This time, the bandit lashed out with a combo of sword slashes that left little room to maneuver.

.....

Unfazed, though, Revna kept staring and reacting silently, always finding a way to use the least amount of movement to squeeze through the tiny gaps in the bandit’s combo.

Little by little, as the fight continued, little tendrils of shadow enveloped Revna, eventually condensing and solidifying into a long black battledress, looking grim and dangerous.

The bandit had noticed the change in Revna’s appearance and experienced the effect of that change as he fought with her. Revna had been using her shadow manipulation for clothing her body and using the shadows to control it.

Revna was using shadow mana as fuel for her physical prowess instead of her own body. In essence: Revna had made her shadow into a battle exoskeleton to cover the gap in physical power.

By the time the bandit noticed that Revna’s movement and reaction speed kept increasing, it was already too late. Even burning his own Aura in large amounts was barely enough to keep up, and the bandit was beginning to panic.

To further panic the poor bandit, Revna broke the silence with a disturbing phrase. “Thank you for staying alive long enough so I could test my < Freya’s Armor>.” But her subsequent request truly struck terror into the bandit’s heart. “Please, try not to die until I’m done.”

Enraged but also terrified, the bandit circulated his Aura and erupted with a lightning blast of sword slashes, leaving a pattern of silver sparkles in the air. Still, all he saw was a black flash before he heard Revna’s voice behind his back. “<Before light>.”

From Claire, Cecilia, and Sasha’s point of view, what they saw left them speechless. When the bandit started his flurry of sword slashes, a sphere of darkness materialized behind the bandit.

Attached to the dot of darkness by a black thread, Revna was drawn into the black sphere, like a black hole devoured light, leaving behind only a distorted black flash.

The nature of Revna’s movement ability was weird, to say the least, but you couldn’t argue with the speed generated. Not to mention that this movement skill was similar to many of Revna’s other skills. It had a sensory distortion factor from the black flash, which made it difficult to track where she was moving.

Before the bandit recovered his sword and defended himself, Revna went on the offensive for the first time. Cloaking both hands in thick shadow, Revna lashed out with a crosscut strike, projecting two blades of darkness that left a dark gash on the bandit’s back from which blood gushed.

Amid the overwhelming pain, the bandit again heard Revna’s chilling voice speak in an emotionless tone. “<Nott – Edge of Night>.”

Turning, the bandit could see Revna withdraw again with almost artistic grace. Revna felt cathartic pleasure seeing the man in front of her in pain, but this was far from enough. “Tell me, do you want to dance?”

The strange question made the bandit forget his pain and anger, quickly overwhelmed by an ominous and fatal foreboding. Without waiting for a response, Revna intensified the Mana output that powered Freya’s armor.

The next moment, the bandit could see how at least a dozen black dots materialized around him. Confused but fearful, the bandit planned to get out of the area of effect of whatever Revna was doing. Nonetheless, his speed was nothing compared to Revna’s sudden acceleration.

Virtually materializing out of the closest orb of darkness to her, Revna appeared briefly before disappearing again and emerging in the next sphere of darkness.

In less than three seconds, Revna went in and out of her hyper-accelerated state at least a dozen times. Each time she did, she would appear already performing a slashing attack on her victim.

It was like watching a movie scene frame by frame, but there was more to it than that. One detail that Claire and the rest noticed was a strong artistic and dramatic element to how Revna posed whenever she stepped out of the shadows to attack. However, only Claire and Revna probably knew that she was incorporating dance steps into her ability, specifically, waltz steps mixed with a few other styles.

After the last flash of shadows from her, Revna appeared a few feet from the bandit, posing dramatically and somewhat erotically, barely holding her posture and her rapid breathing. Meanwhile, the dozen or more cuts she had made on the bandit began to spit blood in streams.

At the same time, Revna finally managed to control her breathing. Then, from her seductive lips, accompanied by a puff of steam, came the name of the ability that had generated so much tension in her. “<Nott – Shadow Dance>.”

Bloodied and dying, the bandit stopped caring about anything other than killing the damn bitch that had left him in that state, no longer thinking about surviving. Maintaining a look of bottomless hatred, the bandit took advantage of the moment Revna recovered after using one of her ultimates.

The bandit unleashed his most powerful sword skill, gathering and burning all the remaining Aura within him. “Go to hell, you wretched bitch, <Wind Suppressing Slash>.”

A dense, piercing silver Aura shot out from the bandit’s sword, emitting a loud hiss as it swept through the air. The next instant, the Silver Aura erupted into a storm of silver blades threatening to tear Revna apart. Revna was brutally torn to pieces by the silver edges this time, having no viable escape route. Or so the bandit thought until he saw the woman crumble into a heap of scattered shadows.

“I’m surprised you fell for such an obvious bait. Did you really think I would reveal myself so easily in such a vulnerable state?” From the air above the bandit’s head came Revna’s voice.

Being familiar with the shadow lures used by Revna, the girls weren’t as surprised by the move she performed. Still, they had yet to recognize her grit and her ability to play with her opponent.

Using her voice, always seductive but now devoid of any emotion other than hate and contempt, Revna spoke one last time to the bandit. “As much as I’d like to keep making you bleed, it looks like you won’t last much longer, so let’s get this over with while it’s still fun for me.”

Even while airborne, Revna raised and crossed her hands above her head. Revna posed like a dancer as an endless river of tendrils of shadow entwined through her hands to form a sphere of swirling darkness.

Unable to move due to his injuries and the depletion of all his Aura, the bandit had to stand there as he watched as Revna slowly lowered her hands in his direction.

Before dying, the bandit witnessed the world around him seem to vanish as it was engulfed in a sprawling vortex of darkness. Hundreds of tendrils of shadow formed a massive tide of darkness that devoured and tore the bandit apart, leaving behind nothing but bloodstains and the awful sound of his body being crushed.

Exhausted and slightly pale, Revna fell to the ground and squeezed the ragged breath out of her before speaking one last time and walking away from the battlefield with a posture full of pride and domination. “<Nott – Devouring the Moon>. Scum like you deserves nothing more than to be devoured by eternal darkness.”