The woman had already expected it, quickly twirling around, putting her foot right onto the stone and swinging her blade broadly, hoping to defeat Cades from her incredibly unfavourable position before he was able to bring down his blade that had no momentum either, causing the two blades to meet in the middle, both silver as they touched, a small shockwave of mana that had been covering the weapons, the woman's mana much greater than Cades own, to spread out, quickly dissipating and not really causing any physical chaos.
Finally, Cades entered the flow, feeling everything move around him as he got lost in his thoughts, but ignored them, simply looking forward to a way to beat them, feeling as if time both stood still, allowing him to easily fight them as he was hoping, and yet, he felt as if time had sped up, his eyes no longer taking up every little detail, his mind no longer complaining, simply intent on fighting back, simply intent on battling this out and defeating everyone, simply wishing to emerge victorious and slaughter his opponents, as if everything else became nothing and this was all that mattered, as if this was him, as if the fight was him.
The swordswoman's blade was such, having cut into Cades own blade slightly after the shockwave that had not really put either of them off, but being unable to free herself she was just being pushed down further and further, Cades body subconsciously reinforcing himself with a great deal of mana that neither of the two could compare to in terms of the pure amount he was using just to take care of one of them, something he should've been able to do with a lot less mana, and quite a bit more efficiently.
But Cades didn't care, he was simply watching as the knees of the woman who had been standing in a bad position already gave in, her body falling down and struggling to resist the blade that was still pushing her down, her feet which she could've maybe used to attack his legs unable to evade, her eyes rolling around in her skull, unable to see, but perhaps trying to evade her fate desperately, searching for any way out she might not have seen, but Cade didn't care, Cades was simply logical, he was not thinking anymore, he was not thinking about anything other than the fight, he was thinking about how to kill them best, and he was watching the magician right now, a despairing look on his face under the mask, or at least Cades felt something like that, courtesy of his rank.
Perhaps desperate to save his ally the mage send another mana expulsion his way, trying to once again dissolve his vision, but that was of no matter anymore, he was in total control, the battlefield was his, his mana was controlled completely, if anything was gone it would just fill right back in, something that was quickly proven as the expulsion was proven meaningless, though it did make Cades hesitate for a small moment and give the woman the tiniest of respites.
Just then, the subconscious Cades seemed to have an idea, an idea in which he could utilize his current, almost absolute control over his mana, his ability to move the mana already out of his body to such a degree and force, an ability to do with his condensation of everything and such, but more so, a bit... sharper, for lack of a better term.
After all, if he was able to create walls and shields, domes and perhaps even armor at some point, why had he never thought about creating something sharp, something like a blade, a sword, a spear, an arrow, perhaps even a kind of magical golem with enough time, though the last one was probably just high fantasy, nothing he would be able to do right now, or even in the near future, probably not for quite some years, unless he devoted a lot of time, alchemy, artificing and a lot else into it to create one of mana crystals, a powerful one, no questions.
The current Cades was barely of mind to think about that, but the future one would definitely be ecstatic about that new idea of his brain that had been too stuck in it's ways when it came to this new kind of magic that he had never really encountered on ehetria, mostly reading about efficient ways to use mana that were pretty much useless to him as is.
Almost without thinking he let go of the blade with his left hand, pointing to his exact left, right where he knew the mage to be standing, a few hundred feet away, and he shot them, not really in the form of a sword, lance, spear, arrow, rather than that, just in the form of a big cylinder with a sharp ending, the simplest form he could think of with a passable penetration force, perhaps even one that would surprise him, he assumed, as he put his hand back on the blade and exerted even greater force onto the woman who was somehow still holding on, seemingly believing that her partner would do his best to save her, believing in him, something that could indeed allow one to gain great stamina for a period of time, if one was certain about that.
The result was disappointing.
His newly devised attack had indeed managed to break the shield apart that the man had been holding erect since the beginning of the battle, since he hadn't been attacked even once, but the man had just stepped to the side and evaded the now dissipating sharp pillar that had been smashed across the foreign mana, already having erected another barrier soon afterwards, expecting more of them to come, something Cades wouldn't have had a problem with, but well, he was intent on first killing the woman right now, and he had her right where he wanted her to be, struggling against his blade that was now almost touching her neck, even causing blood to start coming down, her own blade having been forced into cutting the woman who had look of fear in her eyes, brown, the only part of her he could really see, and, ironically, one of the rarest colours he had seen as of late.