SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant-Chapter 414: The Fall of the Thal’zar [XXVIII]

Chapter 414: Chapter 414: The Fall of the Thal’zar [XXVIII]

The air recoiled.

The ten legendary blades adjusted again without visible signal. Their orbit loosened and reformed into a layered circle at uneven heights, some near the fractured ground, others suspended beneath the torn ceiling where moonlight spilled through broken stone. Each sword angled toward a different approach, covering space with quiet precision. It no longer looked ornamental. It looked like a trap closing.

Valttair had not moved.

The intelligent Void Creature finished regenerating its severed foot. The new limb held, but its surface was denser, slightly uneven, as if the tissue had been forced back together too quickly. The half-formed wings along its back tightened, membranes trembling under strain.

Icarus maintained [Plague Dominion]. The stone floor retained its faint grey sheen, subtle but invasive. Each step across it drained maná in small, constant increments. Around the perimeter, the rifts widened further, disgorging Void Creatures in heavier waves. Their forms pushed through distortion only to be erased almost instantly.

Two of Valttair’s swords continued their work at the edges, cutting down each arrival before it stabilized. Bodies fell in measured succession, piling into dark mounds beneath the open sky.

The remaining eight blades advanced.

They did not strike wildly. They moved in crossing patterns, forcing rotation, limiting footing, denying rhythm. One descended from above while another sliced horizontally, a third curving in to cut off retreat. The creature was compelled to turn, guard, shift. Space narrowed around it like jaws tightening.

It answered with force.

The Void Creature lunged directly at Valttair, claws reinforced with condensed corruption, choosing impact over defense. The strike aimed for his center, committed and heavy.

Valttair displaced.

[Morgain’s Phase Dash].

His form blurred sideways in a single burst, leaving behind a brief distortion in the air where he had stood. The claw tore through stone instead, splintering the floor.

He was already within range again.

[Morgain’s Pressure Fang].

Three precise cuts followed without pause. The first opened the base of the left wing. The second carved into the inner elbow. The third struck along the shoulder seam where regeneration remained imperfect.

The wings split in two clean lines.

The creature’s momentum fractured. Its balance shifted a fraction too late, claws scraping against broken stone as it struggled to re-anchor its weight.

For the first time, its posture changed.

The shift in the creature’s posture did not go unnoticed.

Icarus stopped observing.

The chamber darkened by degrees as he layered his response without flourish. [Mana Rot Field] thickened across the central zone, the invisible corrosion intensifying beneath Valttair’s feet. The air itself felt heavier, not oppressive in weight but in friction, as if every breath now dragged through unseen residue. At the same time, [Vector Spread] amplified the significance of every wound already carved into the battlefield. The cuts on the Void Creature deepened in effect, their edges turning hostile to regeneration, and the faint infection anchored through [Plague Dominion] sought to branch outward along the smallest channels of mana disturbance.

Then came the directed strike.

[Organ Decay Pulse].

There was no projectile, no visible discharge. The attack moved inward rather than outward, a focused collapse aimed at Valttair’s torso, targeting organ and core through layered space. The air trembled once, subtle but dense, like a stone dropped into still water.

[Morgain’s Coreguard].

A thin plane of condensed mana formed along the edge of his blade at the exact instant the internal pulse reached him. The contact was silent, but the pressure split sideways and dispersed, redirected rather than absorbed. The pulse fractured into dissipating fragments before it could anchor into flesh.

At the same time, faint distortions manifested around his chest as [Pestilent Chains] attempted to latch onto his core. They were not visible in full, only suggested by minute warps in the air, like heat rising from stone. One of the floating swords shifted slightly and cut through that space with surgical precision. The invisible bindings snapped before they fully coiled.

Another blade adjusted its path and plunged into the area where the [Mana Rot Field] was most concentrated. It did not strike ground alone; it carved through density. The grey sheen across the stone flickered where the sword passed, the corruption there thinning as if displaced by raw pressure rather than cleansed.

Icarus felt it.

The infection had implanted. He could sense the anchor point within Valttair’s mana flow. Yet it did not propagate. It did not branch or multiply as it should under [Vector Spread] and intensified rot. The corruption remained contained at its point of entry, stagnant rather than blooming.

Valttair was not purifying it.

He was ignoring it.

Across the fractured floor, the Void Creature attempted to reassert itself, but another floating blade cut across its exposed flank in a clean transversal strike. The wound opened deep along the ribs. Dark blood spilled freely this time, thicker than before. Regeneration followed, but slower. The tissue struggled to knit under compounded pressure.

The regeneration slowed.

The wound along the creature’s ribs remained open longer than it should have. Tissue knit together in uneven layers, darker than before, the movement less fluid. Its breathing grew harsher, wings half-formed and trembling under strain as it rebalanced its weight across fractured stone.

Valttair lifted his sword.

It was a small motion.

The ten floating blades responded at once.

For the first time since their manifestation, they abandoned lateral pressure and aligned in descending vertical formation above the chamber, each positioned at a slightly different height, edges angled downward like a silent execution platform suspended in the air.

The atmosphere shifted.

The Void Creature felt it before the strike came. Instinct tightened its spine. It stepped back once. Then again. Its claws scraped against stone that moments earlier it had advanced across without hesitation. The unfinished wings flexed reflexively, seeking balance that was no longer certain.

A thought pierced through the fear that coiled in its chest.

’I can’t die now... After having won this... With this we can return... return to conquer our world that was taken from us.’

The fear was not merely of pain.

It was of interruption.

Valttair’s blade angled forward.

[Morgain’s Linebreaker].

He moved in a straight, cutting advance, the sword in his hand carving a linear path of condensed mana that tore across the chamber floor. Two of the suspended blades synchronized with the charge, descending in parallel arcs that reinforced the primary strike, their trajectories converging into a single, layered wave.

The air split.

The pressure drove forward with intent to bisect.

Icarus intervened without delay.

[Septic Mirage] bled into the space between them, distorting depth and shifting angles by fractions, bending the perceived alignment of blade and target. At the same instant, he cast [Miasma Collapse] in crossing detonation, compressed spheres bursting not outward but diagonally, forming a shock screen designed to fracture the incoming line.

The chamber convulsed under the collision.

The reinforced wave tore through plague haze and distorted perception alike, its trajectory altered but not erased. It struck the Void Creature’s left side as it attempted to pivot, shearing through the partially formed wing in a violent cut that split bone and membrane in one motion.

The creature was thrown sideways.

It crashed against a fractured wall, the severed portion of its wing collapsing uselessly beside it. Dark blood spread across stone, regeneration struggling to keep pace under sustained pressure.

The Void Creature remained against the fractured wall, one wing ruined, regeneration lagging under pressure. Its breathing came uneven now, not from exhaustion alone, but from calculation under threat.

It understood something with brutal clarity.

It would not win here.

Not against him.

The floating swords shifted again, their vertical alignment tightening, edges lowering by degrees. The next exchange would not maim. It would divide.

The creature moved first. Away.

It pushed off the broken stone and retreated across the chamber floor, claws scraping hard against debris as it redirected its path toward the deeper corridors of the castle. There was no proclamation. No defiance. Only pure survival.

One of the floating swords reacted instantly, cutting across its path in a low horizontal sweep. Another descended from above, slicing through the trailing edge of its remaining wing. Dark flesh tore away and fell in heavy fragments against the stone.

The creature did not stop.

It staggered once, then forced its body forward with violent momentum, wings folding tight against its back as it launched through a fractured archway and disappeared into the inner structure of the castle, leaving a thick smear of dark blood along the stone behind it.

It fled.

Icarus’ expression broke for the first time.

"You ungrateful son of a bitch... he’s abandoning me," he muttered under his breath, violet light flickering unevenly within his core.

The remaining rifts began to thin. Without the creature’s pressure anchoring the chamber, the density of emerging Void forms diminished. The flow slowed, then staggered. The air no longer trembled with mass invasion.

The ten swords reoriented.

Two continued eliminating the last of the creatures attempting to stabilize from the remaining distortions. The others lowered gradually, their angles shifting inward.

Now only two figures remained at the center of the fractured chamber.

Valttair.

Icarus.

The moonlight spilled cleanly through the torn ceiling. The air was no longer saturated with swarm and chaos. It had become concentrated. Compressed.

Valttair stepped forward.

’It wants to escape. Well, I’ve weakened it enough; I suppose they’ll take care of it. For now, I’ll eliminate Icarus; he’s a much bigger problem than a simple Void Creature.’

His expression did not change.

"It seems you will have my full attention," he said calmly. "A privilege for you, Icarus. I hope you endure it... at least for a while."

The extermination phase had ended.

The duel began.