Chapter 65: Intense Battle (2/2) , Conquering The Moment To Kill

[5-star Arcane Martial Art: Hell Rampage Strikes.]

Rudrean rolled his shoulder once.

The glaive felt different in his hand now. Same weapon. Different intent.

Rockwon’s saber lifted. The scales across his body shifted, darkening from light blue to sapphire as he poured more of his Arcane Path into his guard. He had felt the shape of something new form in the air, and the experienced fighter in him understood, even before the boy moved.

He committed.

The first swing came in low.

Diagonal slash. Flame trailing in a thin crimson line behind the glaive’s edge. Wind humming along the blade. Rockwon’s saber met it cleanly. The impact felt almost gentle.

Then the second came in from above.

Same weapon. Same speed. But the wind from the first strike rotated into the second now, and the flame layered over itself, and the impact landed twice as hard.

Rockwon’s arm shook.

"What is this?" he hissed.

Rudrean did not answer.

The third strike came from the right.

Heavier. The flame had begun to spread along the glaive’s edge in a continuous burning arc, the wind compressing around it in a tightening helix. Rockwon parried, but his footing shifted half a step backward.

The crowd had gone strange. Not silent. Not loud. Confused.

"Wait. Who’s the early-stage Core Genesis again?"

"That kid. The one with the ribbons."

"Then why is the Soul Tree expert the one giving ground?"

"He’s not giving ground, he’s adjusting."

"He is giving ground."

The fourth strike landed across Rockwon’s guard. The scales on his forearm fractured. Light flickered through the cracks like trapped lightning trying to find a way out.

The fifth swing arrived from below.

By now the glaive was a streak of compounding crimson and cyan, the air around it warping from the heat and pressure. Rockwon’s saber held. Barely. The fifth impact drove him backward three full meters across the cracked arena floor.

The betting board on the upper tier flipped in real time. The odds on Rockwon collapsed.

"Fuck. Fuck. I had everything on him."

"Switch! Switch the bet!"

"You can’t switch mid-match, dumbass."

"Fuck you!"

"You want to die?"

Rockwon’s breathing was no longer measured. He could feel the pattern now. Each strike was not a strike. Each strike was a deposit, building toward something terminal. And he had no way to break the rhythm because the Combat Art’s flow let the boy fall directly into the next swing the moment he completed the previous one.

He needed a disruption. A real one.

His left hand dropped to his belt pocket.

He had been carrying the artifact since before the match started. A Tier-3 weapon-breaker, a single-use disc capable of destroying a weapon of Tier-4 or lower, shattering it with impunity. Designed to ruin a duelist’s day at the exact moment they thought they had won.

He had thought he wouldn’t need to use it here in an easy match.

But it turned into a life and death for him.

His thumb flicked across the disc.

It dissolved into a wave of refined dark energy that traveled up his arm and into his saber. The blade absorbed it in a single deep pull. The pale crystal darkened to deep glassy black shot through with violet veins, and the entire weapon began to vibrate at a pitch that made the air around it hum unpleasantly.

The sixth swing came down at him from directly above.

Their weapons met.

For a fraction of a second, the air went silent.

Then the Cerulean Inferno shattered.

The glaive came apart in Rudrean’s hands, fracturing across the length of the blade in a single clean line, the manifestation collapsing as the violet artifact energy ripped through its Tier-3 structure faster than the weapon’s mana could repair. The shards turned to drifting light and dissipated.

Rockwon’s saber kept moving.

The black blade arced toward Rudrean’s neck, the artifact’s residual energy still trailing violet behind the edge.

Rockwon’s eyes flashed with relief.

He had felt the seventh strike coming. He had felt what it would have done. And he had broken its foundation at the last possible moment, and now there was nothing in the boy’s hand, and the saber was already swinging, and this was over, this had been the worst fight of his career, and now he could finally finish it.

He smiled, relieved. But...he shouldn’t have done that.

He shouldn’t have smiled and felt relieved.

Because Rudrean did not retreat. Did not flinch. Did not even slow.

His empty right hand was still in motion.

The seventh strike had not ended just because the weapon was gone.

The weapon had only ever been a channel. The strike itself, the compounded flame and pressure and momentum of six prior swings, that was held inside him, in his arm, in the line of his body, waiting for release.

Nihil Fury Blades poured into his right hand.

Ten. Twenty. Forty. Sixty.

Eighty.

Ninety.

Ninety-seven.

He stopped there. His limit had moved to ninety-seven after he broke through to Core Genesis and increased his stats further, thus increasing his overall capacity and control of arcane. in this fight, and it was already past anything he had ever channeled before. If he put one more Nihil Fury Blade, it would go past the line where the blades would tear his attack apart instead of empowering it. In this case, his arm and half of his body would shatter if he went overboard with this.

So this was it.

And it was enough.

Five thousand omni-defense ignore from the first ten blades.

Eight hundred and seventy percent damage boost from the remaining eighty-seven.

All compressed into the residual force of six escalating swings, all routed through his open right palm, in a chop that traveled the half meter between his hand and Rockwon’s chest in the time it took the saber to finish its own arc.

The saber reached him first.

It struck the side of his neck.

The blade did not cut.

He poured the rest of his Mana into a defensive bulk around his neck, and further boosted with 70% damage reduction from Aelira’s Arcane Path, it only managed to shatter his defense and inflict a shallow cut at the end.

Rockwon’s eyes widened in shock and dread filling them in milliseconds.

Romen and his heirs had stood up, mouths open wide in disbelief.

The public was going mad since the beginning, so that hadn’t changed much.

And so, in front of everyone’s eyes, Rudrean’s hand reached Rockwon’s chest.

The chop landed. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

For a single instant, nothing visible happened.

Then the world around detonated.

The entire arena floor cracked outward from the impact point in a radiating web of fractures that ran clean across the hundred-meter ring.

The barrier formations along the arena’s edge lit up in emergency red as they absorbed the overflow. The crowd in the front rows was thrown back into their seats by the pressure wave, several drinks flying out of their hands, several wagering tokens scattering into the air.

Rockwon’s body did not exist anymore.

Not in pieces. Not in fragments. The chop had passed through him with so much omni-defense ignore that his scaled armor, his Combat Art, his Arcane Path, his Soul Tree-stage Magic Suit, none of them had been there for the impact. The attack had destroyed all of it as if it were nothing, and the compounded force of six prior swings, combined with the boost from Nihil Fury Blades, had erased the body.

A single line of refined crimson, cyan, and violet hung in the air where Rockwon had stood, slowly dissolving into harmless dust.

Then it was gone.

The arena was silent.

Rudrean stood at the center of the cracked floor with his right hand still extended, the Combat Art ribbons coiling slowly around his arm, blood from a single shallow cut sliding down the side of his neck.

He lowered his hand.

The crowd did not cheer.

The crowd did not even breathe for a long moment.

Up in the booth, Romen Velkar was still holding his drink. His face had gone the color of old paper. The greasy heir’s mouth was open. The red-haired one had sat back down without realizing it. The other two had not moved at all.

Rudrean turned. Slowly. Deliberately. He looked up at the booth.

His eyes were cold mist again.

And then the audience exploded into cheers and roars.

Rudrean’s lips moved as Romen was staring at him without blinking, half blank, half unwilling.

Romen heard it. He read the lips.

’Disgusting piece of trash. Stay in your lane from now on...or I’ll scatter you into a fine mist.’

...

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!!"

Romen destroyed stuff in his residency while screaming.

After venting for half an hour, he called his men.

"I am going to call stronger people from the family!" Romen ground his teeth. "A peak Soul Tree powerhouse!"

He looked at his subordinates and hissed. "They must be here for the mission, and I want them fucking dead! All of them! Keep an eye on them, and tell me when they leave this resort!"

"Follow them all the time!"