Chapter 206: Evolution of Thread Manipulation

Mateus lowered his posture. That made me feel as if someone dropped ice on my back. I trusted my instincts and immediately leaped backward.

The next moment, his swords rushed at my afterimage from both directions and chopped it into bits. He immediately followed up with up and down slashes, which I repelled by rotating my spear.

With a heavy impact, the blade of the longsword ran up right next to me, and then swooped back down.

“Khh, you… Were you holding back until now…?” “I thought you could be sold off, unlike that other brat.”

He replied with a laugh, flashing his teeth. Due to his low posture, the downward swings had more force in them, and the recoil from them also added power to the upward swings.

Actually, he was also increasing that recoil by swinging both of his swords at the same time.

In this situation, my low height was playing against me. Normally, attacks from the lower position could be easily blocked by shields and such, but in my case, those attacks were coming right from the front.

These blows were heavier than before, making them harder and harder to block.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, there came another report. From Michelle standing behind me.

“Nicole, I—I can’t stop the bleeding!” “Tie it at the tip of the shoulder! Also, sandwich the arm between stones and block the big artery!”

Cloud’s arm was severed a little above the elbow. If it was a minor injury, you could stop the bleeding by burning the affected part, but it wouldn’t help with an injury this big. Because the blood would rip open the mouth of the burned tissue from within.

For that reason, your only choice was to stop the blood flow itself.

“Are you sure you should be paying attention to them?”

The moment I directed my mind to Michelle, Mateus threw an overbearingly strong blow at me. I missed my timing to block it and it flung the spear off my hands.

“Kh—”

I forced my numbed hands to move and set up the piano wire. While the threads were more suited to my battle style, I wasn’t so sure about that this time. I didn’t think I could block his blows with a steel thread.

Even so, I had no choice but to hold out.

If I lost, Cloud would die. As for Michelle and me… We would probably be caught and sold off as slaves.

All that would await us after that was a dark future. Of course, Lyell and the rest would set out to rescue us, but the time until they managed that would be enough to break a person.

Perhaps I should have at least grabbed my weapon before rushing here? That thought momentarily crossed my mind, but on another thought, Cloud was about to be killed when we arrived.

If I was late even by a second, he would most likely have been dead.

As such, what I did was the most optimal choice… We even let the guards know on the way. It should have reached Cortina and Maxwell too.

As long as I held out, the victory would be ours.

However, the war of attrition was hard with him as my opponent. Slashes with so much power put into them were my biggest weakness. I couldn’t even ward them off, let alone block.

My only choice was to dodge them.

If my gauntlets were with me a bit longer, I would have a way to fight.

“A bit longer—?”

At that moment, I suddenly had a faint revelation.

I only had one piano thread with me, however, there were surely other threads around.

For example, my hair. If I pulled them out, couldn’t they serve as threads?

No, I don’t think my hair would be strong enough to do the job. But now that I realized that it was possible, I decided to change perspective to the inside of my body.

Maybe muscles, or nerves, or even blood vessels.

They were mostly composed of fiber.

My Gift of Thread Manipulation worked through contact. In other words, I should be able to meddle with the insides of my body without any limits.

As I was focused on thinking, my feet stopped for a moment. And Mateus wasn’t one to miss that opening.

Once again, attacks from two sides rushed towards me. His attacks weren’t so fast that I couldn’t follow, but the centrifugal force made them extremely heavy.

I couldn’t possibly stop them with a single piano thread.

Thus I directed my consciousness within me and tried to manipulate my muscle fibers. It was something I just thought up with no real proof that it would work, but there was a clear response.

I immediately swung my arm upward and flicked off his right sword.

It gave off a sound that was a mix of breaking and crushing. My fist landed on the side of his sword and successfully flicked it upward.

However, the price I had to pay for that stunt was not light.

After all, it wasn’t as if I was strengthening my entire body. My right fist broke, and the index finger got bent in the direction it wasn’t supposed to bend.

I forced myself to endure the shock that spread through my body. There was his other sword to dodge.

His blade continued to approach. Since my right arm was facing upward, I could not avoid it by ducking underneath. That only left the option to dodge it from above.

Thus, I kicked the ground and jumped over the sword with a backflip.

I landed on the ground with a roll, which would normally have left a big opening. However, Mateus couldn’t just keep throwing his attacks like nothing, either.

Because his right sword got flung upwards, it failed to offset the force of his left sword and his body got twisted in a grand manner.

Thanks to that, he couldn’t follow up with another attack and I gained a little time.

I used that opportunity to sever the pain nerves of my right arm from within, as they were starting to flood my brain. It was just simple anesthesia, so Maria should be able to easily heal it along with the injuries.

Along with my free treatment, the pain spreading through my right arm disappeared as if it never existed.

Mateus, on the other hand, was frozen in place with a shocked face. It was supposed to have been a decisive blow, so he couldn’t believe I managed to overcome it.

Not to mention, I was composedly confronting him despite my right hand being in tatters. There was no way he could see this as normal.

Making use of his shock, I withdrew even farther behind and fully fixed my posture. And thus, the situation had entered an even bigger deadlock.