The Perfect Warrior doesn't blink.
Doesn't take a breath.
Doesn't react.
He simply looks.
And that alone is enough to destroy them from the inside.
His presence was so overwhelming it didn't feel human.
Not mortal.
Not alive.
It was like facing an idea, a raw force — the sensation of standing before something that should not exist.
A God of War in freshly-formed flesh.
Tila tried to step back, but her leg failed.
She gasped.
"Look… he's just… staring at us…"
But it wasn't just staring.
His eyes pierced.
Cut.
Invaded.
Like knives sliding into the skin, climbing through flesh, reaching the heart.
Anaalyn shrank without meaning to, gripping her axe with hands that trembled so much the metal made a faint sound.
Seralyn…
Seralyn was worse.
She was completely frozen.
Her lips barely moved.
"D-damn…"
She wanted to move.
To raise a dagger.
To run.
Anything.
But her body simply wouldn't obey.
Every muscle screamed like she was pinned beneath tons of stone.
If she took one wrong step… if she breathed wrong…
She knew, with absolute certainty:
She would die.
The Perfect Warrior's eyes fixed on her for a single second.
One second that felt like years.
Seralyn felt her stomach lift, her chest lock, her fingers lose strength.
Her vision even darkened at the edges.
And then — without moving his face — the creature spoke:
"Fear."
The voice was calm.
Cold.
Surgical.
"You… are afraid."
Tila swallowed hard.
Anaalyn growled, but even her voice shook.
Seralyn could only think:
If this isn't Bruno… then what is it?
Darkness dripped from his hand like living ink.
Then it solidified.
A sword — long, thin, perfectly symmetrical — formed in his open palm, as if it had been sculpted from shadow itself.
Tila's eyes widened.
"Wai—!!"
She tried to run, tried to stop him, tried anything.
But there was no time.
No warning.
Only movement.
A slash so fast the air couldn't keep up.
So absolute the sound came late, as if the world had forgotten to react.
The entire house was cleaved in a perfect line.
Wall, floor, ceiling, wood, stone — everything split in half like thin paper.
The shockwave hit all three at once.
BOOM.
Tila was thrown into the mud outside.
Anaalyn rolled several times before hitting a tree.
Seralyn was tossed like cloth, sliding across the ground for meters.
The air left their lungs in a single, collective groan.
Dust rose.
Silence fell.
And inside the house, staring at the spot where they had been thrown, the Perfect Warrior simply… counted:
"Three."
One word.
Cold.
Mathematical.
No emotion, yet it scraped his throat like metal.
That was exactly it.
He cataloged.
Classified.
Executed.
Just like they had done with goblins — but raised to a monstrous, calculated, clinical level.
"Get up!" Tila shouted, her voice trembling, her heart racing too fast.
She herself barely had strength to stand, but forced her legs to obey.
Seralyn coughed blood, eyes wide with terror, but alive.
Barely.
So, so barely.
The Perfect Warrior vanished in a single step.
He didn't run.
Didn't dash.
He simply was suddenly beside Seralyn.
The blade whispered through the air — a cut so fine it sounded like silence.
A thin line of blood slid down her face.
"Shit…" Seralyn whispered, leaping aside in the last possible moment, her body reacting on pure assassin instinct.
The sword hit a tree behind her.
Or rather: destroyed it.
It didn't cut.
It obliterated.
The trunk exploded into countless splinters as if ten explosions had gone off at once.
"Now!" Anaalyn roared, charging with her axe raised.
A downward blow — firm, powerful.
Any normal monster would have been split in half.
The Perfect Warrior simply lifted his free hand.
And stopped the axe.
With one hand.
Without effort.
Without moving his foot.
As if catching a falling leaf.
Anaalyn felt her muscles lock, her whole arm vibrate like it was about to be ripped from her shoulder.
"Move, Anaalyn!"
Tila shouted, yanking the dwarf back in desperation.
The shadow-blade passed less than an inch from Anaalyn's neck.
Had Tila been half a second slower…
Anaalyn's head would be rolling on the ground.
The three retreated, breathing hard, staring at him.
He didn't advance.
Didn't rush.
He just turned his head toward them.
The sword dripping shadow.
The eyes lifeless.
"Two."
The Perfect Warrior was still holding Anaalyn's axe as if analyzing it — the weight, the shape, the force — cataloging everything with inhuman precision.
Then…
His fingers tightened.
So hard the metal handle began to groan, bending.
One more squeeze and it would turn to dust.
"You bastard…" Anaalyn growled.
Tila tugged her arm lightly, eyes still locked on the creature.
"Be patient. We have zero chance if we don't think."
"Patient?" Seralyn spat blood.
"He's gonna attack us with your axe? Really?"
It was the last sentence before horror unfolded.
The Perfect Warrior spun, raised the axe — and unleashed a single lateral swing.
Right to left.
Surgical precision.
Strength no living being should have.
"DUCK!" Seralyn screamed, diving to the ground.
Tila dragged Anaalyn down.
A moment later—
The world split.
Entire trees fell in half like leaves.
Stones parted like butter.
The ground cracked in a perfectly straight, impossibly long, impossibly clean line.
The slicing wind passed over them like invisible blades.
Silence.
Until Seralyn whispered, eyes wide:
"…that's not… a warrior…"
Anaalyn, trembling, finished:
"It's a… death mandate."
Tila swallowed hard.
The Perfect Warrior looked at them again.
And spoke, emotionless:
"One."
"Why is he counting?" Tila whispered, retreating a step.
Seralyn wiped blood from her mouth.
"He's not playing with us…"
Anaalyn grasped her hand.
"…or worse… he's holding back."
The answer came before they finished.
The Perfect Warrior tilted his head, eyes empty, calculating the distance.
Seralyn took a deep breath — the kind only someone who has accepted death can.
She lifted the dead goblin like a stone.
Anaalyn swallowed.
"I have a plan."
Tila turned. "Is it good?"
Seralyn gave a tense half-smile.
"No. But it might work."
She raised the goblin.
"I'll throw this at him… and use myself as bait. You two attack from the sides."
"You're insane!" Tila almost screamed.
"That's suicide, Seralyn!"
"It's that… or everyone dies."
A heavy silence.
Anaalyn gritted her teeth.
"Fine… elf!
Tila, let's go!"
The two ran to the flanks, vanishing among debris and trees.
Seralyn stayed alone, facing the Perfect Warrior.
The wind itself seemed to hold its breath.
She slowly sheathed her daggers without breaking eye contact.
And, as if mirroring her…
the Warrior also sheathed his sword.
Predator and sacrifice.
Seralyn spat blood on the ground.
"Come on, bastard."
For a moment — she saw his face tilt, curious.
As if trying to understand her stubborn, useless defiance.
And on that perfect, immovable face…
…a smile appeared.
Small.
Cold.
Inhuman.
He was enjoying this.
In a single step, the world tore.
His speed stopped being human — stopped being possible.
In a blink Seralyn couldn't finish, he was already on top of her.
"SHI—!"
She threw the dead goblin with all her strength.
He moved his hand.
Nothing more.
And the goblin became mist — a red cloud of shredded flesh that burst in the air like diluted paint.
That blood-mist drifted before his eyes…
blue, deep, frozen…
…and he didn't blink.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't show disgust.
Nothing.
He simply kept coming.
Seralyn crossed her blades—
A mistake.
But the only movement she had.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The blows hit like giants crushing her ribs, her shoulder, her waist.
She flew twice, but he pulled the force so as not to kill her — like someone playing with a fragile toy.
"Ghh— AAH!"
Something tore inside her. Not fatal… yet.
She hit the ground and slid, kneeling, coughing dark blood.
The Warrior stopped in front of her.
Didn't breathe.
Seralyn lifted her bloody face and laughed — because it was that or cry.
"Okay… I'm still alive…"
But she knew:
He wasn't trying to kill her.
He was testing how much she could take.
The smile grew slowly.
Wide.
Wrong.
Too open.
Not human.
A face pulled into a gesture he didn't remember how to make.
A predator's grin — a silent warning:
This is where you die.
Seralyn's blood ran cold.
She had faced mages, assassins, cruel soldiers…
But she had never imagined she'd see that smile on the face of the person she trusted most.
Her body locked.
His eyes — Bruno's eyes — showed nothing she recognized.
He raised his arm.
A vertical punch, top-down, with power to turn bones to dust, organs to paste, life to nothing.
Seralyn could only whisper:
"Bruno… please…"
The fist dropped.
The ground screamed first.
But before impact—
CLANG! CRASH!
A club and an axe smashed into the Warrior's back like twin meteors.
Tila and Anaalyn roared, driven by pure desperation:
"GET OFF HER!"
The hit was so strong the monster even staggered slightly, his punch diverted — slamming into the dirt beside Seralyn's head, carving a crater.
Seralyn breathed, shaking.
Alive by less than a second.
The Warrior turned his head slowly toward the two.
The smile remained.
Wider.
Wrong.
And now aimed at them.
No words.
No sound.
He simply flicked his wrist —
and the sword darkened.
Black as void, as if dipped in a world without light.
Then he dragged the blade through the air in a slow semicircle.
SSSHHHHRUM—
The air snapped.
A black shield unfurled around him, like wings of crushed shadow.
Opaque, vibrating, distorted — alive in a way that felt more instinct than magic.
Tila and Anaalyn didn't have time to understand.
I M P A C T
A low thud echoed as the Warrior took one step and struck the shield forward with his sword.
The sound was not from this world.
KRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
A screech — metal, thin, sharp —
so loud it pierced ears, skull, chest,
soul.
Tila fell first, hands on her temples.
"AAAH—!! M-my head—!"
Anaalyn tried to lift her axe, but her arms trembled, useless.
"What… is that?!"
Pain.
Noise.
Pure sensory annihilation.
They tried to breathe, but the sound pressed everything — bones, nerves, vision —
as if the shield crushed the world around them.
The Warrior walked toward them calmly, as if he had infinite time.
No emotion.
No humanity.
Just those eyes.
Blue, impersonal, precise.
Eyes not fighting…
executing.
"Zero."
The word left the Perfect Warrior's mouth not as speech,
but as verdict.
Short.
Cold.
Mathematical.
And worst of all…
completely emotionless.
Tila swallowed hard, dizzy, blood humming in her ears.
"Z–zero…? What does that mean…?"
Anaalyn tried to rise, but her body wouldn't obey.
"I… don't know… but nothing about him is good."
Seralyn, injured, still near the door, breathed fast — not from lack of air,
but pure panic.
"This counting…" she murmured, eyes locked on the creature as if she finally understood something terrible.
"He's not taunting us. Not provoking."
The Warrior took a step.
The shadow-shield vibrated.
The dark sword whispered, hungry.
Seralyn's stomach twisted.
"He was evaluating."
Tila's eyes widened.
"Evaluating… what?"
Seralyn clenched her fists, ignoring the agony throughout her body.
"Threats."
The Warrior raised his sword.
Cold.
Perfect.
Clinically precise.
Anaalyn's eyes widened.
"So that counting—"
"Was the distance between us…"
Seralyn finished, voice breaking.
"Between us and death."
Tila shook.
"And zero means…"
Seralyn couldn't finish.
But the Warrior finished for her.
He brought the blade back — preparing a strike no mortal could survive.
A cut that would split the world open.
"Execution complete."
His voice was clean, effortless.
And in that instant, they understood:
The count wasn't time.
It was threat level.
And "zero" meant only one thing.
There is no margin left.
They are already dead — only the swing is missing.
But he didn't swing.
He simply let the sword fade into smoke.
Then turned his back, completely calm, walking toward the ruins of Revan's house.
He picked up the scorched Diary from the debris, flipped a page… and began walking in the direction they had come from.
Tila's legs nearly gave out.
"…we lost."
"We lost badly," Seralyn said, trying to stand.
Tila rushed to support her.
"Hey, can you walk, Seralyn?"
"I've been worse… thanks for asking."
"You're welcome."
Anaalyn wiped blood from her mouth, breathing deep.
"And now—"