Chapter 326: A Wolf and a Hare

Slowly, Azriel pushed himself upright, fixing a grim stare on Mirius, whose mouth curved in quiet pleasure.

His chest heaved. He kept his eyes on the former Dusk King’s right hand—then his vision flickered, and his breath stopped in his throat.

For a heartbeat the Forest of Eternity vanished. In its place: silver fire—everywhere—rising, swallowing, drowning him. The world stuttered between the two images: Mirius, and a sea of argent flame. Then it snapped back—Mirius a few meters away, Ranni’s body limp at his side.

Azriel bit his lip until blood ran. His face tightened. He clawed at the side of his neck, reopening the half-closed gouge, tearing skin anew.

“Get out of my head, dammit..!” he hissed.

Mirius tilted his head. The pleased look vanished, leaving his face an empty canvas.

“Whatever your ties to Neo Genesis and the Supreme Archon… one thing is certain: you’re crazy.”

Azriel bit down until his gums bled. He sank into a stance.

He could not summon his soul armor. He could not call his soul weapon. His affinities were dead weight; his skills and sword art, unusable. And Mirius—by choice—was using none of his own.

All Azriel had were his hands and feet, his body and mind, and the tightest control he could force over his aura, wrapping it around him like a makeshift carapace. He could not afford to spend mana carelessly; he needed it to keep his body alive—and to spend it all at the right moment.

Mirius vanished.

Azriel’s eyes went wide—wide, and in that instant Mirius was already there, inside his guard, his left leg whipping through.

Azriel ducked.

There was no sound. No shockwave.

Only a calm, harmonious wind whispering past Azriel’s blood-wet ears. Mirius’s heel hung over his skull in a completed arc—no explosion of dirt, no spray of leaves, no screaming gale.

Panic surged. His body shrieked. His heart hammered like a drum against bone; his mind pounded back.

Death. Death had just passed inches above him. There was nothing flashy in that kick, and yet every instinct agreed…

That was a perfect, flawless strike.

Azriel pursed his lips and leapt back—yet Mirius blurred again. Azriel could barely track him, relying on instinct and battle-scarred habit to steer his body. A right fist bloomed inches from his face; he twisted at the last possible heartbeat, narrowly avoiding a skull-shattering blow. Knuckles scraped his cheek, splitting skin, drawing fresh blood.

He darted sideways. Mirius was already there. Another overhead punch; Azriel slipped beneath it and gave ground—too slow to escape without cost. Flesh parted; the meat above his right shoulder tore open.

It repeated. Again, and again, and again. In dead silence. Only the scuff of feet on ripped earth as they traded inches—back and forth, back and forth, an unbroken loop.

They drifted farther from Ranni and her fallen soul echo.

Stars still held the sky; dawn had not yet come. Alone, with only their eyes open—the two who had set this night on fire—they kept moving in the ruined fringe of the Forest of Eternity.

Frustration rose, and with it a thought:

‘If this keeps up, I will die soon. I should already be dead. Is he holding back… or is he more injured than I thought?’

Had Instructor Ranni carved him deeper than Azriel realized?

Strangest of all: even as he shaved past death each time, the world felt distant, thinned—as if he were dreaming.

He clicked his tongue, a dry, weak sound. Enough defense.

‘Break his rhythm. If I’m careful, I can take a strike—tank it—and counter.’

He slipped another punch by a hair. They slid apart a few meters—

—and then closed again, drawn together like magnets.

They crashed into range. Another fist streaked toward Azriel—yet his right hand was already moving, reacting before his eyes could register the strike, predicting Mirius’s line. At the last instant Azriel’s open palm slapped the knuckles, redirecting the blow past his cheek; his fingers clamped the wrist in the same motion. Mirius’s brows lifted in surprise, and Azriel’s other fist snapped toward his face—only for Mirius to catch that wrist.

Azriel had expected it. He drove his heel into Mirius’s stomach.

Mirius twisted to tear free—a torque that should have flayed skin like sandpaper—but Azriel’s grip held, iron and unyielding. The kick landed. Mirius skidded back across the dirt as Azriel dropped into a low guard without a heartbeat’s pause.

Mirius coughed a thread of blood, wiped his mouth, and smiled.

“That was smart. You’ve fought too many times, taken too many grievous wounds, to not even flinch at the state of your body.”

Azriel said nothing.

He had to control his breathing. He had to control his aura—hard work, all edge and focus—and being out of sync with reality did not help. His instincts hissed to dodge, not strike.

But his mind did not drown. [Soul’s Crucible] kept him level, whether he wanted it or not.

Mirius moved. Azriel moved first—before sight, on intent—meeting a horizontal kick that cut for his abdomen. He’d already dropped, ribs grazing the earth, and scythed a sweep at Mirius’s supporting ankle. Mid-motion Mirius aborted the strike, snapping upward into a sudden leap, body pivoting unnaturally. He twisted in the air and chopped straight down.

Azriel slid aside by inches, breath sharp, then sprang back, frustration creasing his face.

He tried again.

Again Mirius broke a line mid-flow, an impossible adjustment that stole the beat from Azriel’s prediction.

Again.

Each attempt to read him made Mirius less readable, until the pattern inverted—unpredictable before the predictable. A raking counter cost Azriel a ragged bite of flesh from his left arm. Blood sheeted from old wounds and new, soaking the torn earth.

They fell back into the old dance—Azriel slipping, shaving past impact, letting death miss by a whisper.

“You know,” Mirius said, stepping through a straight that Azriel veered under, “leaving the great clans didn’t make me blind to what happened there.”

Azriel leapt back—only to duck as a heel flashed where his face had been, then recoil again as a fist almost cratered the spot he’d occupied a heartbeat earlier.

“I know about Prince Lioren. Princess Jasmine. Prince Caleus. Princess Celestina.” Mirius kept talking as he pressed forward, voice unhurried, his hands merciless.

“Heirs and heiresses, and the rest of the royals—none of them different.”

Azriel slipped through the gap, a breath ahead of the next strike. Their fight had no spectacle, no glittering technique—only consequence. One mistake and he died.

A wolf and a hare.

“Except you.”

A hawk and a rabbit.

“You were different, Prince Azriel.”

A spider and a fly.

“I respect you most of all.”

A shark and a fish.

“Huh?”

The word stalled Azriel’s mind. His focus nearly broke; he dodged the next strike at the last possible instant.

Mirius stopped. Azriel did too, fighting to steady his breath, confusion cutting through the haze. His throat was raw; blood dripped slowly from his lips.

“Out of all of them, you were always different,” Mirius said.

“While they chased the same validation, courting the strong and stacking achievements—only to sit a throne that would crumble to humans long before the void swallowed it—you looked elsewhere. You took another path. Whether the rumors about you were good or bad, true or false, there was always one basis that held true…”

His blindfolded gaze cut into Azriel. The prince’s breath hitched.

“You were never after the throne.”

“…”

“That is why I respect you most. I still can’t grasp your connection to Neo Genesis, or whether your two missing years tie to it… but through all those years, to my eyes, you were looking at something different from those spoiled heirs.”

He exhaled.

“Honestly, after you became the Young Hero of CASC, I thought I was mistaken—that you were aiming for the throne. But meeting you tonight, I’m glad you proved me wrong. You’re after other things. One of them, I can even name: the reason you came to me to gather ingredients… a phoenix feather, a phoenix tear. It doesn’t take a genius to realize.”

Mirius touched the hole in his chest, wiping away a line of blood.

“You’re trying to create a potion tied to a phoenix’s gift. You’re trying to cheat death.”

For a moment, Azriel said nothing. Then his lips curved into a mocking smile, sharp and taunting. He was about to answer—about to fire back with a comeback, something biting to throw in Mirius’s face—but the smile wavered.

It fell.

The words died in his throat.

He pressed his bloodied lips together, tasting iron, and forced out:

“…It’s not for me.”

“What?”

“The potion is not for me.”

“Then… for whom?”

Azriel chewed the words.

“…My sister.”

“What…?”

“The potion is for my sister.”

Mirius actually flinched. He looked past Azriel to the ruined village lost beyond sight, then over his own shoulder to where Ranni lay unconscious, then at the shredded edge of the Forest of Eternity around them.

“You did all of this… for your sister? Not for yourself, but for her?”

He asked it as if unsure he’d heard right. Azriel’s face held no humor, only iron. He nodded.

“Yes. Everything I did was for her.”

Mirius stared at him for a long moment. Then he sighed—and the look he gave Azriel next was the very opposite of what Azriel had hoped to see after speaking those words.

“Then you are truly no different from me.”

A look of disappointment.