Without giving Varn the chance to spit out another venomous taunt, Ren exploded into motion.
He pivoted decisively, metal boots grinding hard against the marble floor, carving a razor-sharp semicircle accompanied by a piercing screech. His entire center of gravity poured into the spin, transforming it into maximum kinetic force for the strike that followed.
The saber in Ren's hand abruptly shifted direction, its trajectory no longer straight, but curving in a treacherous arc aimed directly at Varn's throat, a clean killing blow.
Ren had no intention of holding back.
Varn froze. He clearly sensed the dense killing intent radiating from the blade, and he understood the game's rule all too well: while activating a teleport crystal, the body is left completely defenseless.
Facing the reaper's edge closing in, he was forced to cancel the item activation.
He leapt backward, his body twisting sinuously like a snake to evade.
Ren's blade swept past by a hair's breadth, tearing only a long strip of fabric from Varn's clothes, leaving behind a regretful howl of displaced air.
Even after escaping the lethal strike, the smile on Varn's lips never faded, on the contrary, it grew more unhinged the moment he realized Ren was genuinely trying to take his life.
The instant the saber cleaved through empty space, Ren left himself no opening.
[Dash]
The burst-speed skill activated instantly. In just a few short breaths, his figure blurred, leaving behind faint afterimages.
Ren reappeared behind Varn, so fast that the assassin hadn't even had time to reorient himself or locate his opponent.
[Stab]
The tip of Ren's sword began to charge. Brilliant blue light coiled around the blade, energy condensing for a piercing thrust.
But at that critical, razor-thin moment...
Another figure suddenly surged forward like a raging gale.
It was Kajiro.
His movement speed couldn't compare to Ren's [Dash], but his draw speed was in a class of its own.
Before Ren could unleash his strike, Kajiro's katana had already slipped from its sheath, ripping through space in a cold, flashing arc.
The activation speed of Kajiro's sword skill was nothing short of astonishing.
He fused the draw and the attack into a single motion, creating a lightning-fast strike Ren had never seen from anyone else.
However, a fatal problem arose.
Kajiro's attack angle was far too wide. In his fury at being deceived, his blade didn't just encompass Varn, it also dragged Ren into its killing range.
If Ren continued with [Stab], he would undoubtedly kill Varn, but the price would be taking Kajiro's thunderous slash full-on from behind.
The entire situation flipped in an instant.
[Dash] still had twenty seconds of cooldown remaining an agonizingly long time against top-tier opponents.
Meanwhile, Kajiro's blade was only a fraction of a second away from Ren's back. Ren was pinned between a cunning enemy ahead and an out-of-control ally behind.
Grinding his teeth hard enough for his jaw to creak, Ren made a split-second decision.
He didn't cancel the skill. Instead, he abruptly twisted the sword's tip toward a completely different direction.
[Stab] activated!
Instead of piercing Varn, the blade tore through empty space beside him.
The immense inertia of the thrust dragged Ren's entire body along, shifting him just far enough, barely, to slip out of the path of death.
In that same instant, Ren felt a blade-sharp gust of freezing wind slash past his back.
Kajiro's katana flashed like a thin beam of light, cleaving the air precisely where Ren had stood a heartbeat earlier.
Still, the price of saving himself was steep. By redirecting his attack, Ren had inadvertently opened a deadly gap in his defense.
Varn, driven by a predator's instinct, seized that opening without hesitation.
He twisted his body and slipped effortlessly past Kajiro's blade, breaking free from the encirclement of the two strongest players present.
Stopping at a safe distance, the flag still clenched tightly in his hand, his deranged eyes locked onto Ren and Kajiro as they overextended.
"Terrible coordination," Varn sneered, his voice dripping with mockery.
Ren shot Kajiro a razor-sharp glance, laced with both warning and fury. Kajiro, however, ignored it completely.
Not a word of apology. His expression remained infuriatingly indifferent as his hands continued to lash out with rapid sword strikes toward Varn like a machine, treating the near-fatal blow he'd almost dealt an ally as nothing more than an insignificant speck of dust drifting by.
That bastard is still just as nauseatingly arrogant. Ren cursed inwardly.
He understood Kajiro's nature all too well, a man who always put the objective above everything else and would mow down anything in his way, even comrades. But now was not the time to settle personal scores.
Shaking off his irritation, Ren poured strength into his legs and shot forward like an arrow.
He didn't charge in head-on to compete with Kajiro for the kill. Instead, he moved in a zigzag pattern, repeatedly unleashing disruptive slashes at Varn's flanks and arms.
Ren's objective was crystal clear: he had to seal off every opening, deny Varn even half a second of stillness to crush the teleport crystal in his hand.
The battle turned into a three-man danse macabre beneath the flickering lights of the Boss room, where the reluctant coordination between Ren and Kajiro formed a suffocating pincer that pressed in on the assassin, Varn.
Varn cast a quick glance around, the sharp mind of a predator instantly analyzing the situation.
Less than thirty seconds had passed since he made his move, yet the haze of shock clouding the room had already dissipated.
The other players were snapping out of it; they were rushing this way like moths drawn to the radiant glow of the flag.
The window for escape was shrinking with every breath.
Varn curled his lips into a cold smile, one born of calculation rather than madness. He abruptly changed his fighting style.
Instead of slipping away as before, he deliberately exposed openings, allowing Ren's and Kajiro's strikes to carve deep, bleeding wounds into his body.
Varn's hand suddenly shot out, clamping down on Kajiro's katana blade the instant it swung toward him.
Fresh blood poured forth, staining both his palm and the hilt crimson, yet Varn didn't so much as flinch. He locked eyes with Kajiro, who had been relentlessly targeting the arm holding the flag with ruthless focus.
Varn understood the man in front of him all too well. Kajiro wasn't fighting for justice, he was simply another greedy beast trying to tear a legendary prize from the jaws of a rival predator.
For a master of disguise and emotional manipulation like Varn, this was the perfect script to turn the tables.
He leaned in close to Kajiro's ear, his whisper slithering through the dungeon's roar like a spell. "You crave it too, don't you? To the point of madness? Then take this…"
After all, the flag had never been the true objective of their real plan. It was merely poisoned bait, tossed to a swarm of ants so they would tear each other apart.
Varn's next move defied all expectations. Instead of throwing the flag to the one who desired it most Kajiro, he snapped his wrist with brutal force and hurled the treasure toward Ren, the only one whose sole aim had been to stop his escape.
"Take this toy, Ren! Let's see how long you can protect it!"
Varn burst into laughter, the shrill sound echoing through the trembling chamber.
The legendary flag traced a brilliant arc through the air, its radiance streaking like a meteor straight toward Ren.
Pure instinct made Ren reach out to catch it. The moment his palm touched the ancient fabric, a surge of power flooded his body, along with an oppressive weight that made it hard to breathe.
He had obtained the object everyone in the room desired, but at the same time, Ren realized he had just become the eye of a new storm.
Kajiro's expression shifted instantly. The former indifference vanished, replaced by naked hostility.
His katana, which had been tearing forward at wind-splitting speed to claim Varn's life, faltered for a single, infinitesimal beat as its target disappeared...then, like an irreversible physical reflex, its trajectory twisted abruptly.
The cold blade now pointed straight at Ren, carrying the full momentum of a sword skill that hadn't yet been withdrawn.
From the outside, the strike looked incredibly devious. It didn't resemble a deliberate attempt to murder an ally at all, instead, it looked exactly like a tragic accident, a disastrous slip caused by an enemy's deception at the very last instant.
Varn had calculated everything with terrifying precision. By throwing the flag to Ren at the moment he vanished, he had turned Ren into a living shield, one meant to absorb Kajiro's unfinished, murderous fury.
Ren barely had time to see the thin flash of the katana sweeping toward his face.
He was clutching the flag tightly, his arms not yet raised in defense, while the razor-sharp wind from Kajiro's blade had already kissed his skin.
If this strike landed, everyone would think Kajiro had merely "slipped up" after being thrown off by Varn, but Ren knew better. In Kajiro's eyes, there was no shock, no remorse, only a bone-deep, merciless coldness.
"Watch out!"
Kirito's shout rang out from afar, but the sound itself seemed slower than the blade rushing in.
Varn seized that moment of chaos perfectly. As every gaze, including those of the players charging in...was glued to the flag in Ren's hands, he let himself leap backward.
His blood-soaked hand crushed the prepared teleport crystal in a lightning-fast grip.
"The real game only starts now…"
Varn's body faded into emerald light.
He vanished before everyone's eyes, leaving Ren standing alone at the center of a ring of players whose eyes burned red with ambition.