Wave-Wiping

In great peril, the fur-shrouded wolf-men crashed wildly through the once smooth and symbolic snow.

They had the ability to run on two legs, but because they were so engulfed in fear and doubt, they often tripped and stumbled.

Causing their maddening dash to become more of a four-footed scramble.

Red Dragon instantly thrusting right through the middle of their forces, leaving a bloody and irrational line throughout the field that had stained the snow artistically had not helped my situation by any means.

They did not stop as their eyes shook at the sight to their sides, rather they rambled and charged even faster and exasperatedly.

As the swarms got closer, I could hear their rabid pants through hot breaths.

Keeping my sword perfectly still, I ensured that the invigorating green flames around me stayed invigorated.

If I lost them here, would I even be able to survive such a sea of haunted hounds?

My thoughts stopped there.

Subtly yet substantially directly, I met eyes with one of the wolf-men.

They possessed eyes of a greasy yellow and their tongue was hanging down their chin.

Its face was blistered with small drops of sweat and I knew from one look at its strained hands that it had no sentient control.

It was like a wild animal.

No. It was a wild animal.

For it jumped like a crazed beast.

Its four limbs flailed unpredictably in the air as a silhouette engulfed the little white around me.

I didn't feel cold as a swirling tongue and ripe teeth threatened to tear my head from my neck.

But I felt lively.

The verdant flames danced and slid across each other in my peripheral vision as they moved at a consistent speed no matter how slow my mind made the world seem.

As the beast got closer my blackened blade only drew outwards slower.

Something was missing.

In that moment, my surroundings darkened.

The world became a land of black smudges.

My blade had stopped completely by now.

The noise ceased to form itself.

Somehow, as if by an act of uncalculatable luck.

The sight of the soon-to-be deceased verdurous flames shifted downwards sullenly.

I had already forgotten the method on how to reactivate this strange... aura.

Yet there was one way to draw the flames out in my mind.

To feed them.

Well not to actually feed them.

But I needed to feed the emotion that had sparked from that one touch from Red Dragon.

I needed something to move and yank my mind out of this controlled world.

The Red in my eyes concentrated into unstable levels.

My right hand gripped my blade tightly as I found myself twisting.

My body yanked itself, causing a motion of momentum to pick me up like steady wind.

And soon, the flow took me by storm.

Cherk.

A basic red slit formed on the right of the beast.

A basic red slit that soon transformed into a beautiful blood-red lotus.

The lotus soon bloomed into a bloody parade as the snow was demonized by a red spray of thick beast blood.

Had I always been that fast?

Or was it the effect of the Aura? (Named it Aura subconsciously.)

Those questions that I would have commonly found myself asking in situations like these...

Were nowhere to be found.

Not in this land of flows and streaks.

I no longer worried about the verdant flames that caressed my pale body.

I just drove my sword the way the wind willed.

The green flames around me had long become blurs to my hollowed rose eyes.

They made me stronger.

Faster.

Precise.

Each of my strikes landed in the ideal spot.

As time went on, I wasn't even using strategy, just driving my sword through my opponent's thick fur faster than they could claw and grapple me.

I was

Their traumatized mental states only made my mission easier.

My hand did not lose its grip on the crow-black sword even once.

I highly doubted the strength being exhorted with each smooth draw was mine.

It felt as though I had made no contact with my enemies as the blackened sword drew and dove through hounds and beasts.

The only sign of an impact was the bellicose waves of reeking blood that rose and swooped down in short intervals.

None of the beasts that met my blade held any significance.

They were all spectacularly unvivid brown blurs that soon fell as the sound of snow crumpling beneath one's corpse sounded.

Again and again.

To the point where it became a part of the killing sequence to me.

The bursts of blood after every sword thrust only reddened the shade of my attire.

If I was scruffy and slightly primitive looking before, now I looked like a psycho.

My white hair dashed and wavered in the soft drifts of cold air.

The only sound that remained continued to bombard my ears.

It was an... unpleasant sound.

It was that of a dog kennel.

I heard through ballarding barks, pain, and grit.

Fear and weakness.

Determination and failure.

Nevertheless.

I felt trapped by the deafening howls and squeals.

No matter how far I struck my blade and how many times I drew blood.

The sound never decreased.

No path cleared for me as one had for Red Dragon.

Every time I killed a hound, I often found myself meeting 2 more.

It was an endless cycle.

I now felt no thrill.

No movement, in pushing my blade forwards.

Just the toll that the world took as another life became a far-off wisp.

What was going on?

Why was everything working this way?

Following the bait of the cycle of life?

I stopped my flow abruptly.

Raging and insentient beasts charged at me.

My hand drew out, letting the gleamless black blade point itself perfectly in line with them.

A slow and meaningless drive sent a rabid wolf-man charging straight for my head.

Chrck.

The end of his reign wasn't as flashy as one would expect.

He had wedged himself halfway down my black blade in a brutal effort for victory.

It was slow and dull.

A thin layer of blood seeped through his thick hazel fur.

His eyes rolled over as I attempted to shake his corpse off my blade.

But another beast was upon me.

I might've felt critical or terrified in this situation.

But everything just felt so bland and pointless.

Another beast wedged itself down my blade.

Pushing the first beast towards me and letting a slippery and faint red stain the black steel.

Its waving hands soon dropped down as it lined on my blade too.

I attempted to shake the corpses off-.

Another one came.

And then another.

And then ano-.

5 bloodied corpses slid themselves sullenly off my black blade.

It was a kebab of sorts.

As their eyes rolled over in canon and their bodies became frail, the green flames surrounding my figure dimmed.

I had lost the will of spirit for battle.

I now realized that it was unexpectedly silent.

The rabid barks.

The endorsement of unescapable sounds.

It was all in my head.

My figure shook twice as I tried to picture the illusion I had been bombarded with.

My eyes soon grasped the features of the black blade in my hand.

In half-realization, my hand unclenched brazenly.

Swiftly yet stubbornly losing its nonsensically tight grip.

The blade dropped, causing the snow beneath it to part before it had even landed.

I felt displeased.

A sleek wave of realization struck me. What had happened?

Was it an illusion?

Why were my questions so... hollow?

What was that blade?

Questions I would barter later arose. A strange emotion of anxiety caused my heart to clench. Feeling odd I shook my head in a hope to brush these emotions away.

My eyes darted across the battlefield.

All behind me, stuffed piles and thinned hordes of wolf-men lay.

Their furs were now ragged and forever stained.

The perfect white that had presented itself to me merely a few minutes ago was merely a sight in my mind.

One that would soon diminish with the passage of time.

The two images flashed before me as my eyes wavered.

But the land was not all silent.

"Guaragharghargh... GUAAAARGH."

The sound of an intense drum battled through the white expanse.

My ears perked and my head jerked to the right.

Within my vision, a colossal Yeti stood far above the curve upon which I had rested.

Its face was mortified and vengeful, seeing it's fallen.

Yet it seemed that it was stuck in place.

Its sleek white fur had joined to form such thick hordes that its face was hard to interpret behind the nests of white that had sprouted among its skin.

The air finally settled as it continued to look at only one, Red Clothed man.

Red Dragon, who had been staring it down with his desolate gold eyes was twirling his red blade in his right hand carefree and jovial.

His hair seeped under his hood as his clothes trembled from some sort of non-existent wind.

Our strengths differed to the level that worlds apart seemed like an understatement to me within that moment.

He who faced a yeti, and I who meagerly faced hounds.

Vigar had given up defending me halfway through the fight, seeing me doing just fine. He took the role of the cast instead. Keeping my arm steady and incapable of interrupting my spiritual lapse which would break my aura off.

I kept my eyes heavy on Red Dragon.

Calling him Adam didn't fit into this scene well.

I knew that in the gap of a blink, he would be gone.

All that would transfer to me would be a sonic boom and a dead yeti.

Well, who knows.

He himself had supposedly stopped doing -S- Rank quests, years ago.

Would it be closer than expected?

I ordered Vigar to carry the black blade as my eyes followed Red Dragon in dense anticipation.

"Vigar, hold the blade."

My voice was hushed by my own eagerness.

Red Dragon stood before the beast in a relaxed and calm mindset.

He rolled his shoulders back and straightened his back.

"It's been a while since I've done this much."

His voice was not dimmed in the slightest before the freak of nature that stood proudly and camouflaged with the snow behind it.

Despite his moment.

A small gap in my mind voiced its own little snarky opinion.

'That's a mask. He's not this calm. And if he is, that's an issue on its own."

I shoved the little shit to wherever it had come from and kept watching with steady eyes.

As if the action was so programmed and trained that he knew it off the back of another man's hand, Red Dragon's eyebrows rose cheerfully.

His body fell flawlessly and smoothly into a bit of a squat.

A position perfectly pronounced as though was about to to leap flawless-.

Boom.

A faint white ring expanded but I could not focus on it for any longer.

For a dreamy second, Red Dragon's body rotated in the air, unmoving and still.

For a short instance, Red Dragon's robes stopped rapidly flapping and started calming. They drifted in the wind as his right hand held his blade by his left.

He looked like no more than a straight black pole in the sky to me-.

Boom.

Swift streams of wind instantly curved and formed an image of speed.

A small silhouette peacefully landed behind the Yeti, sheathing his sword brilliantly. Despite being on the other side of the encasement, his voice was clearer than any rabid pant. It was youthful and astray from his usual self.

"Twister."

The Red Dragon had returned.

A flash of red emerged from his blade as time seemed to catch up.

BOOM.

As if a detonation had occurred, a rubicund storm sprouted from the ground beneath the Yeti.

The Yeti's arms flailed as a thin but deadly red streamed upwards, scarring its face.

Chaos and magnificence roared for 3 straight seconds.

The Yeti's body twitched in tiny intervals as it seemed to hop and dance in despair.

After the damage had been dealt, the Yeti stomped around with its hands on its bloody face.

Huge leaks of blood met the floor, forming sickly puddles.

The Yeti slowly unveiled its face as its hands dropped to its sides.

The hidden face had clear emotion, the white hair had been sunken and wet.

It was rageful. Spiteful and intoxicating.

The entire middle strip of the yeti had been coated red, causing a strange image to be perceived.

As the Yeti started charging madly, a thick river of blood crashed out of its back.

As if a thin slit had always been there, a dam broke out.

Pfeeuerch.

The sound slushed through my earbuds.

I watched with a hand over my eyes as a thick stream of blood seeped into the snow below.

Before, the Yeti might have been camouflaged in this situation.

But now it was no Yeti.

Just a bloodied corpse. Its white hair had long sunk. Its body had gone cold.

It had never stood a chance.

One move.

That was all it took for the Red Dragon to draw blood on an -S- Rank.

I was left both impressed and visibly confused.

My white hair that scrunched over my face was brushed to the side with a hand.

Why was he scared of this place?

He could easily defeat the titans in a single move.

So why was this swordsman so scared?

I felt a riddle bundle up in my mind.

We spoke few words as we traced our steps back, pushing and lightly jumping over corpses of wolf-men.

"Good job." His blood-stained katana was fully exposed for my sight.

"Thanks." My voice trailed off despite my response being so small.

To be truthful, I wasn't necessary at all. The fact that I was panting on our return journey and that Red Dragon was relaxed and only occasionally coughing on cold air showed our differences far and wide.

If he had that killer move prepared, then I sure as hell wasn't putting in too much work.

Well. It didn't exactly matter as of the current now.

Since now, it was time to cure a certain dragon.

My -S- Rank psychological welfare should be more than enough.

Right?