I was Drafted Into a War as the Only Human

"Heal yourself, Lucian, and then we go again," Vorn said, his voice calm and cold. He stood at the edge of a shallow crater, peering down at Lucy, who lay sprawled on his back, surrounded by cracks in the obsidian.

Vorn's silhouette blocked the sun for a moment, casting a brief shadow over Lucy's face. Then he stepped back and lowered himself onto the blood-soaked black glass, sitting cross-legged like a monk in meditation. Sunlight blazed back into Lucy's eyes, forcing him to squint as the elf rested his chin against one hand, utterly relaxed.

Distant shockwaves rippled across the battlefield as titanic clashes between generals erupted like thunder. The tremors swept through the air, ruffling Vorn's neatly combed-back white hair—but he didn't flinch. He looked completely untouched, serene even.

The sight made Lucy's blood boil.

He hadn't landed a single meaningful blow. The old elf had danced around his attacks like they were child's play. Worse than the humiliation was the mercy—the deliberate decision to let Lucy live. He didn't understand why, which made it all the more infuriating.

Lucy gritted his teeth as he slowly lifted a trembling hand to his chest. Green light shimmered under his armor as he began to heal. Pain tore through him like a jagged blade. Bones snapped into place with a grinding crunch, and muscle fibers writhed as they pulled themselves back together, thread by thread.

'What a monster, he's even worse than I thought. I couldn't even track his movements, and I'm certain he hasn't used his ability yet. He's sparing me for what?

A bitter chuckle rose in his throat, but it came out as a tight grimace.

'Still, that's the only upside. He's unwilling to kill me. Maybe just maybe I'll survive this.'

His body was nearly healed, but it didn't feel right.

'"Healed" should be in quotation marks,' he thought. 'This isn't like when Alia does it. First off, this hurts ten times worse, and second, my bones don't feel solid—more like wet clay held together with spit.'

His eyes shifted toward Vorn again. The elf had begun rhythmically tapping his pointer finger against his chin, an impatient beat that echoed louder in Lucy's mind than the battlefield itself.

'I need to stall to buy time.' He deliberately slowed his healing, keeping the light flickering beneath his chestplate low and steady.

'Maybe Darfin or one of the others will finish their fight and step in...'

But even as the thought crossed his mind, his stomach sank.

'None of them would help. They're all terrified of Vorn, and let's be honest, they don't exactly like me.'

He exhaled, long and slow, and for a moment, Tara's face flashed in his mind.

'Maybe she would. But she's probably still locked in battle with Fenara. That beast won't make it easy for her. She'll be fighting for her life.'

Lucy let out a theatrical sigh, half-defeated, half-dramatic, as he kept up the weak pulse of green light.

'Guess I'm going to die here.'

The inner sulking was cut short by Vorn's voice.

"Are you almost finished?" the elf asked, his tone casual but tinged with a quiet eagerness he didn't bother to mask fully.

Lucy froze. He had two options: lie and stall further, or admit he was done and prepare for round two.

Lying might buy him more time, but there was a risk that the elf might grow bored. And Lucy didn't want to know what happened when Vorn got bored.

Telling the truth meant he'd have to fight again, but he wouldn't provoke the elf unnecessarily.

After a few seconds of painful silence, Lucy made his choice.

'Right now, he doesn't want to kill me. Best to keep it that way.'

He clenched his fists, forced a bit of strength into his voice, and called out, "I just finished."

"Good, good—then stand!" Vorn called out, placing both hands on his knees and leaning forward, eyes wide with anticipation.

The eagerness on the old elf's face made Lucy chuckle bitterly as he began to push himself up from the scorched, obsidian ground.

'Is this how the legendary Vorn Cain acts when something catches his interest?' he wondered, glancing at the crater beneath him.

It rose nearly to his chest and was wide enough to fit a boulder. A tremor ran down his spine as he hauled himself up over the rim.

'Damn how hard did I get hit?'

Hard enough, apparently.

Just as Lucy pulled himself free from the crater's edge, a sharp force slammed into his stomach—a kick, unexpected, precise.

Not lethal. Not even particularly vicious. But it was fast and firm enough to launch him off his feet. He tumbled backward across the blood-slick obsidian, air knocked from his lungs in a wheeze.

By the time he slid to a stop, pain blooming in his ribs, he was already glaring up at Vorn.

"What was that for?!" Lucy shouted, fury in his voice, chest heaving as he scrambled to a knee.

The old elf stood calmly, arms folded beneath his pale blue robe, the hem of which fluttered softly from the battlefield winds.

"This is a battle," Vorn replied, tone sharp and scolding. "Why would I let my opponent leisurely climb out of a crater? Be mad at yourself, child—you dropped your guard."

Lucy's anger flared, then withered just as quickly. He exhaled long, shaking the frustration from his face as realization set in.

'He lured me into a false sense of safety just to teach me a lesson.'

What the young human didn't know—couldn't yet know—was that this lesson would become one of the most important of his life.

Without another word, Lucy rose to his feet, his gaze locked on the elf—no more distractions.

He dropped into his stance: sword held high overhead in his left hand, right arm lowered, left leg forward and firm. His breathing slowed, centered.

Vorn chuckled softly, the sound dry and amused. "Truly a fast learner."

And then the fight resumed.

But this time, Lucy wasn't the one who moved first.

Vorn came at him, not with the overwhelming speed or crushing power he had demonstrated before, but with something far more deliberate.

He held back. His movements were just a fraction faster than Lucy could comfortably follow, his strikes just slightly stronger than Lucy could reliably block. Every attack pushed Lucy to the brink, but never tipped him over it.

The old elf wasn't trying to break him, not yet. He was testing him, measuring every twitch, every reflex.

And though Vorn never said it, the unspoken promise hung in the air:

'If you fail this test... then I was wrong about you.'

Vorn's strikes came down like hammers—just as vicious and unrelenting as Fenara's. Each blow carried the weight to crack ribs and shatter bones if Lucy didn't block with precision or dodge in time.

The air felt thick, and Vorn's movement blurred the space around him. One moment, Lucy blocked a downward blow with the flat of his sword, sending vibrations through his body, then in a blink, Vorn was gone.

Behind!

The hairs on the back of Lucy's neck rose, his instincts screaming just before a blow rushed in from behind. He spun, parrying just in time—barely. The impact reverberated through his arms, numbing his hands as he staggered back.

'How the hell do I counter this?' Lucy gritted his teeth, backing up under a relentless hail of attacks. A side kick whipped into his ribs, knocking the wind from his lungs, followed by a veiny hand that reached for his throat—he ducked under it, stumbling away.

Vorn never stopped. His rhythm was erratic, like the beating of war drums out of sync—unreadable. Lucy couldn't find space to summon his fire or breathe long enough to channel a second strike through his spatial technique. Everything was happening too fast.

Every attempt to find an opening was met with another strike. It was a storm without pause. A brutal, beautiful rhythm of destruction.

But somewhere deep inside the chaos, Lucy's mind sparked.

Two ideas...

One seemed distant, as he didn't understand mana control enough to push him to the next level. But the second was something he could attempt now.

'The wind.'

He couldn't fly with it yet. He couldn't slice trees in half or summon gales like Llarm—but Llarm had once said he could use the wind to feel the entire battlefield, like his skin stretched outward.

'What if I narrow that? Just a few feet. Just enough to feel him.'

With a sharp breath, Lucy focused. He called on the air, not as a weapon, but as a sense. He spun the breeze into a barely-there bubble around him, invisible and silent. No pressure, no push. But it responded to movement.

The wind trembled—something shifted behind him.

Lucy twisted, sword swinging up to intercept a punch—but he was too slow again. Steel clashed against knuckles that felt like iron, forcing Lucy to stumble backward, absorbing the force with a grunt.

More strikes followed—two, three, four. Each time Lucy felt Vorn move in the air around him, but he was always just a blink behind.

'It's not enough. Still not fast enough.'

Then something clicked.

A wild thought. One, he didn't have time to analyze.

Instead of reacting with his vision, Lucy shut his eyes mid-step and leaned into the winds, seeing through them.

There. Directly in front. The pressure dipped. A sharp shift downward.

'A sweep.'

Lucy leapt.

Vorn's leg swept through empty air where his ankles had just been.

And in that same motion, Lucy brought Ayas' blade down in a wide arc. The sword screamed through the air, the wind around it slicing like a whip.

CLANG.

The blade struck something solid, unyielding.

Eyes snapping open, Lucy saw Vorn's left hand gripping the blade's edge, fingers curled tightly around the steel like it was nothing more than a wooden stick. His gaze locked with Lucy's, calm... yet undeniably amused.

'He caught it.' Lucy thought, stunned. The heat of combat froze in that instant.

Inside Vorn's mind, something sparked.

'This child, he just made me speed up.'

Without warning, he flung Lucy through the air with a twist of his arm.

Wind howled in Lucy's ears as he flew backward, flipping mid-air. But he didn't crash. Instead, he gently twisted his body and summoned the wind beneath him, catching himself in a controlled glide before landing softly on the scorched glass, boots skidding through dust and blood.

The air was still for a breath.

Then Vorn's voice broke the silence, low, but burning with curiosity.

"Lucian... tell me, how do you draw from your mana?"

Lucy blinked, disoriented by the sudden change in tone.

"From the source in my chest," he answered hesitantly, brow furrowed. "Then I push it through the rest of my body when needed."

'Isn't that how everyone does it?'

But Vorn's following words shattered the foundation of what Lucy thought he understood.

"Why don't you continuously circulate it through your body?"