Chapter 364: A Battlefield Of Red
Ren chuckled softly under his breath, brushing ash and splinters off his shoulder.
"I should've known." He muttered, his voice carrying just far enough for the surrounding Knights to hear. "The second team wouldn't stray far from the first."
The armored figures didn't respond. They just moved, almost in sync, shifting their stances like wolves circling prey.
"Alright then." Ren said, standing tall as the last of the smoke cleared. His Vine Armor slithered from beneath his sleeves, wrapping tightly across his arms, chest, and legs in a living weave of emerald and bark. "Let's dance."
The first knight launched forward, boots flaring with light as he crossed the distance in a blink. His spear stabbed toward Ren's gut, fast, straight, and lethal.
Ren twisted, narrowly avoiding the strike, then lashed out with a Push. A burst of force cracked through the air and slammed the attacker sideways into a tree trunk.
The man bounced off with a metallic groan and landed on its branch in a roll, already recovering.
But the second knight was already there. A sword arcing down towards Ren's head. He raised his bracer covered arm just in time.
The enchanted steel met the barrier from the bracers with a thunderous clang, sparks and air pressure exploding outward from the impact. Ren staggered back, but kept his feet under him.
"They're good." He muttered.
From his flank, the third Knight moved, a woman this time, dual daggers flashing. She blurred, appearing just behind him.
"But not good enough."
He dropped low and let his Vine Armor lash out. Tendrils whipped from his side like snapping snakes, slamming into her mid-lunge and throwing her into a branch above. The wood cracked, with leaves raining down.
Ren leapt backward, gaining space, only for the first Knight to return, faster than before. He wasn't aiming to kill, not because he was merciful, but because he knew he couldn't catch Ren with a fatal blow.
Instead, he was trying to wear him down. Jabs, cuts, slashes. Always aimed at forcing movement, drawing out mistakes.
But Ren didn't give them any.
He ducked under a sword swing, Pushed the attacker into the air, then spun and caught a dagger with his bracers. The dagger skidded off, gouging sparks. He followed with a punch, but the woman twisted under it and rolled away.
They were trying to box him in again. Triangle formation. A coordinated attack meant to crush him between converging pressure.
Too bad he'd seen it coming.
As they closed in, Ren burst forward, towards the knight with the spear. A risky move.
The knight readied for impact, thrusting out.
Ren sidestepped the blow with centimeters to spare, grabbed the shaft with one hand, and slammed his bracer into the man's throat.
A Push erupted at point blank range.
The man's neck snapped with a wet crunch, and he was launched into the trees like a ragdoll, crashing into a tree trunk, before his body fell, swallowed by the foliage below.
One down.
Ren turned, not even breathing hard. The remaining two stared at him from opposite ends of the canopy, now hesitant, but still locked in.
He grinned. "Really?" He said, voice filled with mockery. "That was it?"
His Vine Armor hissed and flexed, spreading over his shoulders.
"I expected more from the famous Rosefields. The way you all talk yourselves up. Your family, your blades, your pride… and now you're down one already?"
He cracked his neck, then lowered into a loose stance.
"Disappointing."
There was a beat of silence, before the words hissed out of the mouth of the second Knight. "Prepare to die."
It seemed that the death of their comrade and Ren's words had lit a fire in them. Their eyes blazed beneath their visors, their rage flaring hot.
Gone was the patience and cautious circling. This time, they surged at Ren like twin arrows loosed from the same bowstring.
Ren dropped low, preparing to intercept, when something shimmered in the air.
Thin, red threads.
They glinted like hair thin wires of blood, connecting the two knights by their hips and hands.
The threads snapped out like lines from a spider's web, latching to the branches and the trunks, cutting through the very air around them and creating a deadly web in the clearing.
Ren leapt upward, and nearly lost his head.
A thread zipped across his path, cleaving a branch in two as it passed.
He twisted in mid-air, slamming a Push against the air to throw himself sideways just in time. But the woman on the right flicked her hand, and one of the threads danced like a whip.
It kissed his arm.
Pain exploded through him.
His left arm spun away in a blur of blood, severed cleanly at the shoulder.
Ren crashed down onto a thick bough, gasping, the scent of iron flooding his nostrils. His Vine Armor writhed over his chest, responding to his injury, but the limb was gone.
"You're done." The Knight snarled, threads tightening in the air around her like dozens of tripwires.
"You should've stayed down." The other hissed.
But Ren wasn't out of the fight just yet.
He surged forward, sending a Push at the ground to vault himself sideways and twist through the threads.
One zipped across his ribs, slicing his armor and skin, but he endured it, closing the distance between himself and the woman.
She flicked her wrist, ready to catch him in the web, but it was too late.
Ren's right hand was already raised.
"Push."
A burst of force bent the air, smashing her backward into her partner. The two stumbled.
And that's when Ren acted.
He had grabbed one of their threads, wrapping and covering it up with his vines, insulating it as best as he could like it was a piece of wire. Then, he flung it like a noose.
The thread snapped forward, catching the male Knight by the torso.
He tried to cut it, but Ren kept power running through his vine, reinforcing it against the hit.
Then he yanked.
The vine thread contracted, tightening the thread around the Knight's body.
Then, Ren released the insulation.
The thread activated, slicing through armor and flesh like a hot knife through butter.
The Knight didn't even get a chance to scream.
His body fell to pieces, collapsing in a wet pile of meat and steel at the base of a tree.
Ren's eyes were bloodshot now. He staggered, his shoulder still gushing blood from where his arm used to be. The Vine Armor desperately crawled over the stump, trying to stem the flow.
The last Knight, the woman, froze.
And then, the air shifted.
Ren's body tensed.
Crunch.
Boots pressed against branches.
More of them.
He turned his head slowly.
Three more figures emerged from the trees, leaping onto nearby branches.
The second Rosefield team.
Ren was now surrounded by four Rosefield Knights.
He smiled.
Because if they thought this was enough to kill him, then they didn't know a damn thing about who he was.