Chapter 485: Tactical Battle (Part. I)

Vergil’s first lunge was a clean cut, straight for the eye. The blade left its sheath like a silent bolt of lightning—and slammed into an invisible wall. The impact rang like a broken bell, a metallic vibration that reverberated up his arm and rippled through the forest. Yamato’s edge didn’t meet flesh; it met elastic resistance, as if it had struck the surface of a lake made of brute force. The tiger didn’t even blink. It simply tilted its head curiously and took a step forward.

“Barrier active… reactive to the vector of the cut.” Vergil retreated half a step, his feet marking two diagonal lines in the ground to test the terrain. “Directional repulsion.”

The beast let out a low growl. The air around it seemed to bend, as if a silent furnace heated the space. Its metallic-gray fur bristled, its black stripes gleaming with an oily sheen—and its dagger-sized claws dug into the ground, cracking the earth. Vergil took a slow breath, turned the scabbard in his left hand, and tried again: this time, a thrust. The blow was straight, with no angle to slide. Yamato’s tip vibrated, deflected at the last instant by a microscopic push. The sword sliced through the void a hand’s breadth from the target, as if an invisible hand had touched the edge.

“It’s not armor. It’s flux.” He felt it in his bones. “A laminar layer of miasma, following the fur. It prevents shear; it transfers the vector.”

The tiger moved. It didn’t leap; it walked. Slow, heavy. Each step was a promise of catastrophe. And suddenly, the blow came—a horizontal swipe that dragged the air along with it, like a black tide. Vergil crossed the scabbard and blade in an “X,” parrying the impact. The block caught the claw; the rest didn’t. The pressure wave threw him backward like a cannonball, opening a ten-meter furrow in the ground. Twigs and rocks exploded into spray.

He rolled, rose to one knee, his mouth tasting metallically of blood. He smiled.

“Brute.”

The beast turned its snout to the sky and let out a roar that dislodged the treetops. Vergil closed one eye, calculating the pulse. There was a beat—not of the creature’s heart, but of the barrier. It swelled and contracted with the monster’s breath, expanding as it inhaled, thinning as it exhaled. Tiny, narrow, miserable windows of time.

“Time rifts. Three-tenths of a second, on the exhale.”

He lunged upward on the next exhale. One step, two, a downward “S” cut—and again the repulsion pushed the blade, transforming the perfect curve into a frustrated arc that streaked sparks in the void. The tiger swung its hips with predatory elegance and tried to crush him with its hind paw. Vergil slid under, his shoulder scraping against the gray fur and feeling an instant sting—the miasma burned like quicklime.

“It’s not just anti-catalytic; it’s corrosive.”

Another swipe. He slipped within range, trying to stick to the beast’s chest—a dead zone for a large quadruped—and move up its flank with short thrusts. The Yamato wouldn’t penetrate. Each strike deflected at the angle of least penetration, like a magnet rejecting a magnet. The beast understood his intention and threw its weight against him. It was like facing a wall that had decided to fall. Vergil released his grip on the blade for a moment, thrust the sheath between the creature’s ribs, and used it as leverage to gain momentum, leaping over the tiger’s shoulder. The tail swept through the air. He was still spinning when the tail collided with his ribs. The world became a crooked line. The impact threw him against a trunk, which gave way with a miserable crack.

He landed on his feet, but one knee touched the ground. His body protested. With each breath, a spark. He stood up.

“Cutting doesn’t work. Piercing doesn’t work. So…”

He put Yamato away.

He clenched his hands.

The silence between one roar and the next became a metronome. Vergil advanced with his guard down, like a boxer who’s decided the ring is the entire forest. The tiger lunged chest first, trusting the barrier. Vergil’s first punch was in the air—literally. He didn’t aim for flesh; he aimed for the invisible layer. Fist clenched, shoulder squared, hip aligned: the blow landed like a stamp. The barrier wavered, generating a seismic crack that ran across the creature’s surface and exploded on the ground at its feet.

“Compression. If the blade shears and slides, the impact pushes and infuses. Let’s see.”

A second punch, identical, but a tenth louder. A third, in the same spot. The field trembled, like glass about to shatter. The tiger felt it. Its head lowered, its body arched… and the counterblow came vertically, a hammer blow that fell like a comet. Vergil shifted his weight diagonally, barely lifting his feet from the ground, and the blow passed inches from his skull, in a whirlwind that sent leaves flying. He paid for his boldness: the secondary wave grazed him and threw him sideways, rolling over rocks.

He rose, spitting blood, his lip split. The tiger wasn’t giving ground; it seemed larger with every step. Its aura grew as the fight dragged on, as if the entire forest was feeding the colossus.

“You pull the field from the environment… hence the general distortion.” Vergil analyzed as he retreated in an ellipse, forcing the beast to turn—turning is difficult for quadrupeds the size of a car—”If it’s a flow, it has direction. If it has direction, it has backwater.”

He began to discreetly throw gravel with the tip of his foot, in a semicircle. Each pebble that entered the tiger’s zone deflected, describing small arcs. The arcs converged and, by the milliseconds, revealed current lines. Three main bands, following the thicker stripes. Nodes of convergence: base of the neck, frontal armpit, and between the shoulder blades.

“Entrances.”

Vergil entered range again, this time without hesitation. A short sequence: a jab in the air to gauge elasticity, a cross to the armpit node, a hook to the lower sternum. The field collapsed. The third blow almost touched—almost. The barrier countered and spat his fist out. The beast solved the equation simply: it bit.

The jaws closed where Vergil had been an instant before. The crushing crack swept through the space. He escaped with a tiny sidestep, feeling the wind from his fangs sweep across his collar. He responded with a downward elbow, aiming for the top of the skull, and followed with a twisting knee to the same node in the armpit. The field wept.

“It works. But not enough.”