Chapitre 125: Cora - 3
"Bandits!"
Chaos erupted around me—armor clanked, slaves shrieked, and I froze in fear: fear I would die a dirty death at the hands of avaricious men or worse.
I finally understood what had been bothering me all this time, the reason why I had a faint hope in the elf's words. I could still use magic.
With a swift motion, I summoned a blade of mana, thinner than any smithed sword, and sliced through the shackles binding my wrists. I collapsed to my knees, gasping for breath, my lungs burning with the effort. All around me, the sounds of battle raged—swords clashing against armor, men grunting as they were thrown to the ground, and the sickening sound of fists striking metal. One of my elven escorts drove a dirk into the neck of a raider, while three more elves vanished in a blaze of fire.
The other slaves huddled around me, their bodies trembling in feigned terror, but their eyes remained alert, watching the battle unfold.
Dozens of enemies overwhelmed most of the elves, leaving only the one who had spoken with me still standing. He rolled to grab his dual swords, effortlessly cleaning the blood from their blades with a flourish. I wished I could have seen his expression beneath his helmet. The odds were staggering—thirty-seven to one—yet he moved like a shadow, weaving between enemies and their weapons, slicing spear shafts and parrying the edges of blades with deadly precision.
After the initial clash, the bandits retreated, forming a tight ring around the knight. Then, with a simple grunt from their largest member, they rushed in all at once.
The knight, with his twin swords poised in a defensive guard, gathered mana around him. Streams of light coalesced into spectral blades, one for each opponent.
A spear led the charge, but the knight sidestepped it, slicing the shaft cleanly in two. His right sword deflected another thrust aimed at his midsection, angling the jagged wood away, while his left blade severed the hands of the man wielding it. Four of the spectral swords flanked the knight, pushing back daggers and longswords, piercing the chests of their wielders.
Two more bandits pressed in from behind, but the elf pivoted on his back foot, delivering a horizontal slash that caught one bandit across the face, dropping his jaw to the ground. Simultaneously, he raised his left sword to intercept an axe strike from a large female raider, deflecting the blow and responding by driving a needle-thin blade of magic between the gap in her armor.
The spectral swords continued their assault, disarming four more bandits and gutting them through their flimsy cloth armor.
The magic constructs converged to shield the knight from an incoming fireball. The flames crashed against the barrier and dissipated harmlessly. As the smoke cleared, the knight dropped the barrier and launched into a cleaving strike at a bandit attempting to leap over the ring of swords.
The bandit conjurer shattered the knight's constructs with large bursts of mana, but the elf was undeterred. The remaining thirty men charged in unison, but the knight leaped into the air, pulling massive roots from the earth beneath his feet like a rising fountain. From his elevated position, he sent the roots crashing down, impaling the most eager of his adversaries—leaving twenty-three still standing.
Fire greedily consumed the roots, but the knight used the cover of smoke to drop behind the bandits' line. With a flash, his magic duplicated his swords, which materialized behind the necks of eight raiders. In an instant, nine heads rolled to the ground.
Disoriented, a trio of bandits launched a desperate attack—one wielding a mace, another a dagger, and the last casting a spell. The knight stepped back, letting the mace swing harmlessly past him, then angled his sword to deflect the dagger before following through with a thrust into the raider's throat.
In the same fluid motion, the sixteen spectral swords hurled through the air like spears, turning the spellcaster's chest into a pincushion. The mace arced down through the fading smoke, but the elf twisted around it like a leaf in the breeze, severing the hands of its wielder with a swift stroke.
From behind, shards of mana flew toward the knight, but he deftly lowered his swords, tracing an arc in the air. All of the magic constructs shattered against the steel as it danced around him.
The knight summoned roots from the earth, which shot up and ensnared the spellcaster, binding his arms and legs before dragging him down into the soil, smothering him in the dirt.
The battlefield fell silent, the only sound the rustling of leaves and the crackling of dying flames. I stared in awe, unable to move.
ix opponents squared off with the knight, their eyes wild with desperation. They were clearly outmatched, but they had numbers on their side— less than a minute ago. The knight stood in the center of the clearing, his twin swords poised and ready, his posture calm, almost casual.
The bandits hesitated for a split second, then charged all at once, their movements erratic and uncoordinated. The knight didn't flinch. With a fluid motion, he brought his swords up, crossing them in front of his chest. The blades gleamed in the dim light, and I caught a glimpse of something else—wisps of light, like tendrils of mana, coiling around the hilts.
The first bandit came in with a wild swing of his axe, but the knight sidestepped effortlessly, his right sword arcing downward in a swift, precise cut. The bandit's weapon clattered to the ground, his arm nearly severed at the elbow. Before the man could react, the knight spun, bringing his left sword up in a graceful sweep that caught another bandit across the chest, staggering him backward as the metal armor protected from the cut but not the force.
The remaining four bandits tried to surround him, but he was always one step ahead, weaving between them with a grace that seemed almost unnatural. The knight raised his hand, and the ground beneath the bandits erupted.
Thick roots shot up from the earth, ensnaring one of them by the ankles. The man struggled, trying to hack at the roots with his sword, but the knight was already on him, his blade flashing as he sliced through the bandit's defenses and left him crumpled on the ground.
Another bandit lunged at the knight's back, but the knight didn't need to turn. A blade of solid light materialized in the air, intercepting the strike and shoving the bandit back with such force that he stumbled into the path of a second bandit. The knight followed up with a swift, backhanded slash, and both bandits fell.
A massive mallet came spinning through the air, but the elf slid beneath it, driving an upward thrust into the gap between the bandit leader's cuirass and tasset.
One of the bandits tried to break away, to flee, but the knight was faster. With a flick of his wrist, he sent a tendril of light snaking through the air, wrapping around the bandit's throat and yanking him back. The knight's sword followed, and the bandit crumpled to the ground, lifeless, while massive roots surged forth to bind the dying leader. The knight placed a glowing, green hand on the back of the leader's head.
The clearing fell silent, the only sound the soft rustle of leaves in the breeze. The knight stood among the fallen, his swords glinting in the fading light, his expression unreadable beneath his helmet. I stared at him, unable to tear my eyes away.
He had moved with such lethal efficiency, such deadly precision, that it was as if the entire battle had been a choreographed dance of a grand ball, and he its master.
The roots around the leader grew into the hand of the elf and separated themselves from the ground. The knight dragged the leader over to a tree, stringing him upside down, connected the ends of the plants in his hand to the branch of the tree with a flash of green magic.
The roots grew thick and burly around the bandit, completely encasing him- save his head. It formed a second trunk, grotesque and unnatural, next to the tree. Without a word, he kicked the man's face with a sharp, precise movement, breaking his nose. The bandit jolted awake, a pained groan escaping his lips as blood dripped down, blinding him.
The knight stepped back, allowing the muffled groans to fill the silence of the woods. I felt a shiver race down my back. This was a stage for torture.
The knight turned to me, his eyes—visible now through the narrow slit of his helmet—fixing me with a piercing gaze. I couldn't tell what he was thinking, but there was a gravity in his stare that made me feel small, insignificant. He sheathed his swords with a deliberate slowness, the metal sliding into place with a soft, chilling hiss.
I swallowed hard, unable to find my voice. The knight turned away, leaving the bound and broken bandit to hang in his leafy prison, blood still dripping.
With a grand gesture, the roots of the forest surged to life, weaving through the fallen attackers like tendrils of a living creature. They coiled around the bodies, and I watched in awe as the earth seemed to absorb them, pulling them into its embrace. The blood, which had stained the ground moments before, was drawn away as if the forest itself thirsted for it.
The slaves who had been huddled near me, cowering in fear, slowly rose to their feet. Without a word, they moved to gather our fallen, treating them with a reverence of tending to a sleeping child.
They also began to collect the scattered weapons.
The knight leader, shed no tears for the dead. Instead, he walked over to me. He stopped just a few feet away, and for a moment, I feared what he might do next. But then he spoke, his voice low and filled with a strange, calm certainty.
"We are elves," he said, his tone carrying the weight of ages. "We do not perish like men."
He held my gaze for a moment longer, then turned away, leaving me with a sense of both dread and wonder. As I watched him walk back to his people.
Green specks of light began to condense on the corpses of the elf warriors, swirling and gathering like a constellation being drawn into existence. The air around them shimmered with an ethereal glow. I watched, entranced, as these specks of light—each one a tiny mote of life—emerged from within the bodies of the fallen warriors.
The ground beneath them responded to the presence of these lights, roots and tendrils of the earth creeping up to cradle the bodies in a tender embrace. The earth itself seemed to hum with life, resonating with the pulsing energy of the magic that now flowed through the clearing. It was as if the world refused to accept the finality of death for these beings, rejecting it as an unnatural aberration.
The specks of light began to merge, forming intricate patterns across the wounds that had marred the elves' bodies. Where blood had once flowed freely, the light now danced, weaving threads of pure energy into the gashes and cuts. Flesh knitted together under this delicate touch, bones realigned, and the pallor of death slowly receded, replaced by a soft, glowing vitality.
As the last of the wounds closed, the earth began to shift once more. The roots and tendrils that had cradled the bodies now grew more robust, twining together to form protective shells around the elves. These shells were not mere cocoons of earth and root; they were crystalline, their surfaces smooth and gleaming with an inner light. The crystals sparkled with a myriad of colors—greens, blues, and purples—that shifted and flowed like liquid glass.
I realized then that the magic was not just preserving the elves; it was transforming them. The crystals that encased their bodies were like the chrysalis of a caterpillar, a temporary shelter for something far more wondrous to emerge. The world itself had wrapped them in these gleaming cocoons, before enveloping the cocoons with gigantic petals, nurturing them for a rebirth.
Inside these crystalline structures, the elves lay still, their features serene, as though they were merely sleeping. The green specks of light continued to dance around them, embedding themselves in the crystal, adding layers of protection and magic to the shells. I could feel the power radiating from these cocoons, a living, breathing force that pulsed in harmony with the heartbeat of the earth.
These were not mere warriors lying in their graves; they were beings suspended between life and death, wrapped in the very essence of the world that refused to let them go. I had witnessed something sacred—magic itself intervening to defy mortality, to ensure that elves would not perish like ordinary men.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone