A massive force surged through the blade, sending a wave of numbness through Allen’s entire arm.
A searing, tearing pain radiated from the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.
He forced down the churning blood in his chest.
His body trembled slightly from the sudden surge of adrenaline—the most primal instinctive reaction when facing lethal danger.
However, a composed and punchable villainous smile remained on his face, as if that earth-shattering blow had been nothing more than a gentle breeze.
Allen knew in his heart that the Livia before him was completely different from the one he had known in past cycles of reincarnation.
That high and mighty Knight Princess who strictly adhered to the spirit of Chivalry and sought an honorable victory was now using tactics she once despised to achieve her goals — verbal distractions combined with a preemptive sneak attack.
Allen had originally intended to exchange some pleasantries himself and find an opportunity to strike first.
He hadn’t expected Livia to not only have the same idea but to be one step faster than him.
‘Where did this girl… learn this kind of dark psychology?’
Shaking an opponent with “talk-no-jutsu” before launching a fatal blow was supposed to be Allen’s specialty!
“Greetings, Lady Livia, I am Allen de Laval,” Allen said with forced composure and a mocking tone.
“According to the rules, you only get one sneak attack before a formal greeting, you know? Consider that your one use.”
Livia’s figure instantly retreated to 10 steps away, as if that thunderous assault had never happened.
She stared warily at Allen, her deep blue eyes filled with unconcealed confusion.
“How were you able to block that?”
“Why wouldn’t I be able to?” Allen countered, keeping his mouth running.
“By the way, a duel requires a witness. Where is yours? A sneak attack like that without any sense of martial ethics is considered an invalid duel.”
Livia seemed to completely ignore Allen’s trash talk.
She simply tilted her head slightly and pondered for a moment.
Then, as if she had figured out a key detail, a hint of curiosity at discovering something new appeared in her voice.
“Can you predict your opponent’s trajectory? Allen de Laval, it seems you really aren’t an ordinary person.”
‘No way.’
‘The insight of this Feng Aotian is too ridiculous!’
‘She saw through my trump card with just a casual test?’
The greatest advantage of his “Villain Reincarnation”—using information disparity and Future Sight for a surprise kill—had been easily exposed.
It was predictable that once she knew he possessed predictive abilities, Livia would never give him another chance to use feigned weakness for a counter-kill.
Future Sight was indeed powerful, but it wasn’t invincible. It was limited by Allen’s own reaction speed and physical capabilities.
Livia possessed an overwhelming advantage in physical fitness and swordsmanship.
As long as her attack speed was fast enough — fast enough that Allen’s body couldn’t keep up with his mind’s predictions — then even if he could “see” the future, he would be powerless to change it.
“Livia, you cheated just now, didn’t you?” Allen immediately shifted to attacking her weaknesses, his voice laced with irony.
“Didn’t we agree not to use Engraved Marks? Your Rapier should mainly be used for thrusting against my longsword, yet you used a slashing motion. With that amount of force, your sword should have broken long ago. You used the Star Emblem to reinforce it, right?”
He recalled Livia’s strange Charm from earlier. Pausing for a moment, he deliberately twitched his nose to sniff the air and continued his offensive.
“Also, what’s with that strange scent on you? What, has our cold Lady Livia started learning from those pretentious noble ladies and begun using perfume?”
The ice-like expression on Livia’s face finally melted a little.
Instead of getting angry, she showed a very genuine smile that Allen had never seen before.
It wasn’t the shyness of a young girl, nor the sternness of a knight.
It was more like the excitement of meeting a worthy opponent — the kind of smile mixed with madness and pure joy when a hunter finally finds prey worth pursuing with all their might.
“Does it smell good?” she asked softly, her tone carrying an indecipherable meaning.
“It certainly does—” Allen instinctively started to answer.
Before Allen could finish his sentence, the two of them moved again at almost the same instant!
“—Smell good!”
Allen’s roar mingled with the whistle of the blade tearing through the air.
This time, he no longer held anything back. The Black Sword in his hand had already switched to its activated state and [Crest Suppression Mode].
Livia, on the other hand, turned into a bolt of white lightning.
The Rapier in her hand danced into a dazzling blur of afterimages as she lunged forward with resolute momentum!
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The two collided instantly. Their figures were so fast that most of the audience in the arena couldn’t track them with the naked eye.
They could only hear a series of dense, airtight metallic clashes, like a rainstorm hammering a tin roof.
Blade light flashed and figures blurred, kicking up a small whirlwind in the center of the field.
Allen completely abandoned all fixed sword techniques and threw himself into pure combat instinct.
As a monster tempered through countless cycles of death and reincarnation, his moves were spontaneous and lacked any formal pattern.
Using his Future Sight, he seemed to become like one of those legendary, headache-inducing Soul-like game bosses, perfectly utilizing the techniques of “Input Reading” and “Delayed Attack.”
On one hand, he precisely predicted Livia’s next move to perform the most extreme parries or thrilling dodges; on the other, he would suddenly accelerate or deliberately delay his own attack rhythm.
He created a maddening, unpredictable pressure that forced Livia to respond with even greater speed and strength, draining her stamina.
Livia had also abandoned her elegant, lethal dance of swordsmanship that Allen had long since figured out.
Her current swordsmanship possessed no sense of beauty; every strike and every move was aimed purely at the most efficient slaughter.
That Rapier, which should have been light and agile, swung with a heavy and violent momentum like a battle-axe in her hands.
She had completely transformed into a berserker, discarding all unnecessary defensive and dodging movements.
She relied entirely on absolute strength and speed, attempting to crush everything before her with the most arrogant posture.
This bizarre scene caused deep confusion for everyone in the stands who knew anything about combat.
On the surface, Allen, whose moves were more tricky and eccentric like a standard villain, was the one being suppressed and placed in constant peril.
He was doing his best just to hold on under Livia’s stormy offensive. Simply staying alive had exhausted all his focus.
He seemed to have reverted back to the small-fry villain in the original story, the one who was casually crushed by the Feng Aotian.
But the problem was that Livia’s style of completely abandoning defense for offense was almost an attempt at mutual destruction.
Yet, even in the gaps of the opponent’s frantic attacks, Allen still couldn’t find any opportunity to effectively counter-attack or truly threaten her.
Within a few short minutes, the two had already tested and fought each other for hundreds of rounds.
This dazzling, no-holds-barred struggle to the death made the “bloodthirsty” audience cheer in excitement.
After the initial shock, waves of cheers and shouts rose and fell, nearly blowing the roof off the arena.
“That Allen de Laval… Isn’t he a member of the Robe Nobility without an Engraved Mark?”
“Yeah… How is it possible… How can he have this kind of strength?”
Amateurs watched for the excitement, but experts looked for the technique.
The Sword-Bearing Nobles who possessed Engraved Marks were all pale-faced now, cold sweat dripping from their brows.
They asked themselves: if they were the opponent for either of these two, even if they used their Engraved Emblem Power, they probably wouldn’t last ten moves before being instantly killed.
It was terrifying! What was going on with these two? Were they really human?
……
In the most distinguished VIP seats, Crown Prince Charles and his sister, Princess Charlotte, were also deeply shaken by this battle.
They had expected to see a standard noble swordsmanship duel, but they hadn’t expected to see such a primitive, violent clash that exceeded the limits of their imagination.
“Reno,” Charles Durand’s expression was more serious than ever before as he turned to the advisor beside him. “In your opinion, who will win?”
The chief spy, Reno de Marco, stared intently at the two figures that had become a blur of afterimages.
His Engraved Mark bloodline wasn’t powerful, but his swordsmanship and assassination skills were at the peak of perfection, so he could naturally see the clues.
He pondered for a long time before slowly speaking.
“Prince, Lady Livia will win. Allen de Laval is strong—very strong. In terms of swordsmanship skill and combat instinct alone, he might be on par with Lady Livia, and his combat power is even approaching that of a powerful Crestbearer. However… he is ultimately a mortal.”
“…I was thinking the same thing,” Charles echoed in a low voice.
“Will he die?” Princess Charlotte couldn’t help but ask worriedly from the side.
This was her first time meeting the legendary Master Laval.
The youth with black hair, golden eyes, and a pitch-black longsword had left a very deep impression on her.
He had a strange, complex aura that mixed cynicism with tragic determination, like a tragic hero destined for destruction.
Especially considering that his father, Viscount Bernard, was about to become the Minister of Finance, she instinctively felt a sense of appreciation for this young man’s talent.
Therefore, when the word “mortal” came out of Reno’s mouth, her heart suddenly sank.
Mortal.
In the face of a true genius of the Engraved Mark, this word was synonymous with fragility.
She suddenly understood that this brilliant “mortal” might truly fall here today.
“Charlotte, this is a duel to the death,” Charles reminded her in a serious tone. “Death… is perfectly normal.”
“I know,” Charlotte replied softly.
‘But I am also just a mortal.’
She pursed her lips and continued watching this cruel slaughter with a heavy heart.
……
On the other side, at the Stern family’s seats, the atmosphere was depressed to the extreme.
The Count of the Borderlands, Friedrich, and his eldest son, Conrad, had their hearts in their throats.
Their hands gripped the armrests tightly, fearing they would see blood spray in the next second.
The young Damian and Marcel, however, didn’t understand the cruelty of the battlefield at all, nor did they understand the weight of death.
They just watched their sister’s invincible figure and excitedly waved their small fists, shouting for her to keep going.
“Livia…” Friedrich stared blankly at his daughter in the arena.
Her past obedience, coldness, and docility had vanished without a trace, replaced by a smile filled with madness that he had never seen before.
That smile was too dazzling—so dazzling it made his heart skip a beat, like a flower blooming wildly in blood and fire.
After witnessing his sister’s overwhelming power for the first time, Conrad felt that his past ridiculous jealousy and resistance were incredibly childish and pointless.
Livia had always been letting him win, and she didn’t even care about giving up the family’s succession rights.
Her strength was a height he could never reach in his entire life.
However, the Stern family had personally forced such an eagle, which should have soared in the sky, out of the family cage.
“I’m sorry… Sister…” he whispered in a pained voice that only he could hear.
As for Marianne, Victor, Guillaume, and the others, they were all breaking into a cold sweat for their “God’s Messenger.”
Only Anna still held a nearly blind confidence in Allen.
They knew that the duel on the field had reached the limit of what mortals could achieve.
And Allen, standing in the eye of the storm, had only one thought—
Find a chance to break the deadlock!
Even under the Engraved Mark suppression field of the Black Sword, the Stellar Power lingering on Livia’s blade was still incredibly resilient.
It prevented his monomolecular blade, which was sharp enough to cut through most metals, from snapping her weapon.
If things continued to stall like this, he would definitely be the one to run out of stamina first!
He had to gamble.
Allen no longer sought a perfect plan; instead, he deliberately exposed a fatal flaw in his defense, actively pushing himself to the brink of death.
Future Sight triggered instantly, and countless fragments of possible death endings flashed, collided, and vanished in his mind.
Finally, his consciousness locked onto a tiny gap in Livia’s frantic offensive rhythm.
‘Now!’
Allen suddenly ducked to the side, narrowly avoiding Livia’s sword that was aimed straight for his heart.
The cold tip of the blade nearly grazed his ribs, leaving a burning trail of blood.
The sharp pain hit him, but he ignored it, throwing his body forward. At an incredibly tricky angle, he lunged straight for Livia’s left shoulder.
Livia seemed to have already predicted that Allen would take such a risky, injury-for-injury approach.
Almost at the same moment Allen moved, she flicked her wrist.
She gave up on pulling her sword back for defense and instead swung the blade horizontally with the momentum of her thrust.
Squish!
Two muffled sounds of sharp blades cutting into flesh rang out almost simultaneously.
Allen’s Black Sword precisely pierced Livia’s shoulder blade. Hot blood instantly soaked her white dress, dyeing it a stinging red.
However, at almost the same moment, the blade of Livia’s Rapier, carrying cold killing intent, deeply sliced open Allen’s side.
Blood sprayed out.
The two had finally drawn blood.
After a brief, dead silence, the audience suddenly erupted into a wave of sound more fanatical than anything before.