Lyanna was fast, but the Minotaur was closer.
The beast roared, raising a massive, spiked maul high above the huddled civilians. A mother clutched her children, burying their faces in her dress so they wouldn't see the end.
Lyanna shouted, a challenge to draw its attention, but the creature was too far gone in its berserker rage. It didn't hear her. The maul began to fall.
But something else was falling, too.
Ravi didn't run. He jumped.
From fifty feet away, he simply pushed off the ground. The cobblestones where he'd stood detonated into dust. He launched himself in a low, flat arc, moving faster than the eye could track. To the onlookers, he was just a blur of motion.
He didn't aim for the Minotaur. That would be too much force. He aimed for the space between the monster and the family.
He landed. THUD.
The impact of his landing cracked the pavement, but he absorbed the momentum instantly, standing like a statue directly in the path of the descending maul.
He raised the Widowmaker. Not in a swing, but a simple block. He held the shaft horizontally above his head with one hand.
The Minotaur's maul, driven by hysterical, magical strength and gravity, slammed into the shaft of Ravi's new weapon.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening, like a church bell being struck by a wrecking ball. A shockwave of displaced air blasted outward, shattering nearby windows and blowing dust into a choking cloud.
The civilians flinched, expecting death.
When the dust cleared, a gasp rippled through the crowd.
Ravi stood perfectly still. He hadn't buckled. He hadn't even bent his knees. He was holding the maul back with one arm, looking bored. The Widowmaker hummed, the reddish metal glowing faintly, but it hadn't snapped. Grumbar was a genius.
The Minotaur blinked, its purple-glowing eyes widening in confusion. It pushed down, roaring, straining every muscle in its massive frame.
Ravi just looked up at it. "Are we done?"
He pushed back. Just a little shove.
The Minotaur stumbled backward as if it had been hit by a siege ram. It flailed, trying to regain its balance.
Lyanna arrived a second later, sliding to a halt beside him, her greatsword ready. She looked from the staggering Minotaur to Ravi, her eyes wide. "You blocked that? That thing has the strength of ten men!"
"Sturdy weapon," Ravi said, patting the glaive. "Grumbar really knows his alloys."
The Minotaur recovered. It roared again, shaking its head, and focused its rage on the two warriors. It abandoned its maul, which lay bent on the ground, and lowered its horns, pawing the earth. It was going to charge.
"I'll distract it!" Lyanna yelled. "You flank it!"
"No need," Ravi said quietly.
He stepped forward. The Minotaur charged, a galloping locomotive of meat and rage. The ground shook with each hoofbeat.
Ravi waited. He held the Widowmaker low, the heavy black blade resting near the ground. He wasn't a trained polearm user. He didn't know forms or katas.
But he knew physics. Force equals mass times acceleration.
As the beast closed the distance—thirty feet, twenty, ten—Ravi began his swing.
It was a simple, upward diagonal cut. He didn't use his full strength—that would have atomized the creature and probably half the city block behind it. He used maybe… one percent? Just a casual, practiced motion, like swinging a golf club.
The Widowmaker sang. It was a high, terrified shriek as it tore through the air.
The black blade met the charging Minotaur.
There was no resistance.
It passed through the beast's armor, its thick hide, its reinforced magical bones, as if they were made of smoke. The Minotaur didn't even stop moving immediately; its momentum carried it forward.
Ravi stepped aside calmly.
The Minotaur thundered past him… in two separate pieces.
The top half of the creature slid cleanly off the bottom half, crashing into a merchant's stall in a shower of gore. The legs took two more steps before realizing they were unemployed and collapsing to the street.
Silence. Absolute, stunned silence.
The civilians were staring. The guards were staring. Even the Minotaur's severed head seemed to be wearing a look of surprise.
Lyanna slowly lowered her sword. She looked at the bisected corpse. The cut was impossibly clean. Cauterized by the sheer speed of the friction. It was a blow that defied logic.
Then she looked at Ravi.
He was leaning on the Widowmaker, inspecting the blade. "Huh. Not even a scratch. I should send Grumbar a fruit basket."
He looked up and saw the way she was looking at him. It wasn't suspicion anymore. It wasn't curiosity. It was... fear? No. Awe. Pure, terrifying awe.
He realized he might have overdone it.
"I... uh... I think I hit a weak spot?" he offered weakly. "You know, like in the armor gaps?"
"Ravi," Lyanna said, her voice trembling slightly. "You cut through three inches of enchanted plate and a torso as thick as a barrel. With one swing."
"Sharp blade," he countered, sweating. "Very sharp."
Suddenly, the silence was broken by a slow, sarcastic clapping.
They turned to see Celeste standing on a nearby balcony, her monitoring device in hand. She was grinning like a predator who had just cornered its prey.
"Fascinating," she called down. "The reading on my monitor just spiked off the chart. The kinetic energy output of that swing was equivalent to a small meteor impact. And yet..."
She leaped down, floating gently to the ground with a feather-fall spell. She walked up to Ravi, ignoring the gruesome carnage around them.
"...your heart rate didn't even elevate," she finished, staring up into his face. "You weren't exerting yourself. That wasn't a desperate attack. That was casual."
She turned to Lyanna. "You see now, Princess? He's not just lucky. He's a biological anomaly. A living weapon."
Ravi groaned. "I am right here, you know. And I'm not a weapon. I'm just a guy who wants to not be yelled at for saving people."
"Oh, you won't be yelled at," Celeste said, tapping the data crystal. "But you have definitely lost your 'F-Rank Weakling' anonymity. The Council will hear about this."
Ravi looked around. The crowd was murmuring, pointing. "The One-Swing Weakling," someone whispered. "Did you see that?"
He sighed. So much for keeping a low profile.
"Let's just... go," Lyanna said, stepping between Celeste and Ravi again, protective instinct overriding her shock. "The guards can handle the cleanup. We need to debrief."
"Debrief?" Ravi asked. "Does that involve ale?"
"Lots of it," Lyanna confirmed.
As they walked away, leaving the mess behind, Ravi glanced at the Widowmaker. It felt warm in his hand now. Content.
He had exposed more of his power than ever before. He had drawn the attention of the entire city. And yet... it felt good. For a moment, just a brief moment, he hadn't been hiding. He had been strong. And he had saved them.
But he knew the questions were only going to get harder from here. And Celeste's data didn't lie.