Chapter 111: Silent Steps
Under the gentle illumination of the training field's ambient mana lights, Kuroka moved like liquid shadow—barefoot and soundless, her long twin tails swaying in perfect balance. Volundr observed from a distance, his arms crossed, noting how she threaded through the terrain using spatial warping with minimal senjutsu, flickering in and out of presence like a ghost.
Her breathing never changed. Her aura, already hard to track, was now nearly invisible, even to his finely attuned senses.
"Again," Volundr said calmly.
Kuroka let out a mock sigh but obliged, vanishing in a blur and reappearing atop a tree behind him. "You're no fun, King~" she purred playfully, but her amber eyes remained razor-sharp.
To test coordination, Volundr summoned Caelum to join the session. He instructed them to move in tandem against simulated golems, light and shadow working as one. Caelum's radiant constructs illuminated the fog, while Kuroka danced through the beams, striking with pinpoint accuracy.
Despite the effectiveness, Kuroka frowned during the debrief. "You fight too clean, lil' King," she said, tracing an arc in the dirt with her toe. "Too many lines and plans. You ever think what happens when the enemy doesn't care about your script?"
Volundr raised an eyebrow. "Then we write a new one mid-battle."
She smirked. "No. You throw out the script and improvise."
For the first time, Volundr didn't counter her point. He simply nodded, filing it away like a sharpened dagger in his mental arsenal.
Kuroka noticed that—he wasn't dismissing her, nor treating her like a volatile outsider. He listened. Genuinely.
That night, as she reclined on a high balcony overlooking the estate, she watched Volundr training alone, tweaking his constructs and shifting formations mid-use.
"…Hmph," she muttered to herself, lips curling faintly. "Not bad, King. Not bad at all."
Unspoken between them was a growing respect—subtle, but very real. She was no piece on his board yet… but he treated her as if her voice already mattered.
The forest clearing was transformed into a battlefield. Simulated enemies—shadowy constructs animated by Volundr's mana—moved in coordinated waves, overwhelming and relentless. The mock mission was simple on paper: extract a "target" from the center of hostile territory. In practice, it was a trap—a tactical ambush with pressure from all sides.
Volundr observed from an elevated platform, arms folded. This exercise wasn't for victory. It was for analysis—he wanted to test how Kuroka handled a no-win scenario.
At first, her team struggled. Constructs pressed from three sides, cutting off escape routes. Caelum's light nearly blew their cover. But just as the "defeat" countdown neared, the battlefield changed.
A thick, shimmering fog rolled out—not conjured from magic, but coaxed from the natural mana veins beneath the forest. It wasn't just mist; it was spiritual fog, interlaced with illusory patterns and senjutsu threads. The constructs paused, confused. Their formation broke.
Inside the fog, Caelum was guided by Kuroka's whispers and spiritual pulses, led around pitfalls and ambushes like a ghost on a string. Phantom doubles of the "target" began appearing across the terrain—decoys made by Kuroka's illusions.
Volundr's constructs adapted slowly, reacting to threats that weren't there. Real attacks came from unexpected angles—using terrain, misdirection, and miscommunication. In under five minutes, Kuroka's team extracted the target and vanished into the mist.
As the fog cleared, Volundr stood silent. He reviewed the results: zero losses, rapid extraction, enemy forces disoriented.
He descended quietly. "You inverted the terrain," he said, tone neutral but thoughtful. "Turned chaos into cover. And used illusions not just to hide—but to command movement."
Kuroka stretched like a cat, tail flicking. "Told ya, King~ Not every battle needs a blade. Sometimes, they just need to believe they're already dead."
Later that evening, Volundr sat alone, revising his core battle plans. Pages once filled with rigid formations and linear engagements were now annotated with shadowed trails, fog tactics, and misdirection routes.
He had always prized precision. Now he began to respect fluidity.
And while Kuroka wasn't officially part of his peerage, her fingerprints were already smudged across his evolving doctrine. She wasn't just a combat asset—she was a tactical muse.