"Good luck."

Lilya managed a strained smile as she watched Wang Yu step out from the tower gates. She didn't really know what else to say. Among everyone here, not a single soul possessed the strength to face Ethan Harris head-on. Their only hope lay in the enigmatic Wang Yu, whose true power even they could not fathom.

Normally, when Wang Yu said something was possible, it was. Still, Ethan Harris had been one of the most powerful legends in his prime. That fact weighed heavily on her heart.

"Don't worry. If I can't win, I'll make sure to get you all out of here."

Wang Yu shut the heavy doors of the spire and jogged toward the storm sweeping ever closer.

Fighting spirit surged through his body. The power of the Chariot began to awaken, tearing at the fabric of the void to reshape the very world around him. His Void Engine activated.

At the same time, partial control of the system passed to the girl suspended in the void. From within the Seed of Eden, crystalline reserves of mana began to break down at a ruinous pace, dissolving into a pure tide of magic that circled Wang Yu's form—the Chariot: Spellweaver.

There were few records about this knight of legend who could summon the rain save for his absolute strength. So little had been written because so few had survived long enough to write anything at all.

"He's not one to seek battle... and yet he's coming to us. Just what could our enemies be after?"

His pace quickened. The void twisted the laws of the material realm around him. Friction, air resistance, and more were all forcibly erased.

A blur streaked through the storm. In his hand, a sphere of fire, condensed to its very limit, flared white-hot as he drove it toward the slowly advancing Ethan Harris.

A low hum filled the air. Ethan raised his sword. Fighting spirit roared through him, his muscles swelling with terrifying strength. The blade in his hand flashed once. In that same instant, Wang Yu, having entered the curtain of rain, erupted in flame.

Fire and smoke engulfed the sky. The Chariot's force swept outward, pressing every obstacle back into the earth. The shattered ground beneath his feet was repaired in an instant, soil knitting together under the will of the earth.

Blood surged like a tide, pumping from his chest into the wound on his palm. It was gone in seconds.

Rain lashed down. The deluge drummed against his skin, but Wang Yu felt nothing.

He stood still. So did Ethan. Two figures in the rain, watching each other, neither willing to strike first...

Something had cut the sphere from afar cleanly and precisely, shattering its structure and detonating it mid-charge.

That blast could have torn through a legendary knight's defenses. If not for Avia's quick reflexes to rein in part of the explosion, Wang Yu's hand might have been reduced to ash.

"Was that a slash?"

The thought flickered through Wang Yu's mind. He had felt a trace of something. Ethan had raised his sword, and though the distance between them had been immense, the slash had cleaved through space itself to strike his hand.

"Rain? I see..."

It wasn't hard to piece together. The downpour was no mere rain. The droplets themselves resisted the influence of the Chariot—meaning they were part of Ethan's body.

More precisely, they were part of his domain. Though Ethan's blade appeared limited in reach, every drop of rain that fell was within his scope. His perception and blade spread out for miles.

"Truly powerful..."

Wang Yu crouched low and burst forward again. Now that he understood the nature of Ethan Harris's strength, he wouldn't give his opponent time to dictate the pace of the battle. As he charged, elemental magic rained down beside him—Avia cast spell after spell toward their foe.

But Ethan merely raised his sword. His strikes vanished from sight, so fast the eye couldn't follow them. Every spell winked out as if erased by an unseen hand. The very structures of magic were sliced apart, undone by countless slashes hidden in the rainfall.

Wang Yu focused with absolute precision, using the Chariot's omnidirectional perception to trace the changes in space. The spells were never meant to harm Ethan; they were there to lighten his burden, to intercept some of the pressure from those invisible blows.

Blades of air burst from every angle, sharp enough to flay reality itself. Wang Yu didn't doubt for a moment that any one of them could cleave through his flesh and bone alike.

He crossed his arms, never breaking stride. Void energy twisted the air around his hands into hardened shields, deflecting the nearest strikes with a harsh metallic screech.

The force behind each slash was immense, but not unstoppable. They could be blocked with materials of sufficient durability.

Yet there were simply too many of them. Hundreds of slashes streamed down from the storm, from above, from behind—from every direction.

Blood boiled from Wang Yu's back, surging forth in violent torrents. The Blood Tempest art seized it, reshaping and hardening it under his legendary-grade fighting spirit.

Dozens of crimson arms burst forth, fists hammering, palms striking, fingers locking—all to intercept the endless rain of blades.

Each arm shattered on contact, fragments scattering through the storm, never whole for more than an instant, but that was enough. His bloodpool roared, replenishing and regenerating, keeping pace with the destruction.

And so, through a rain of slashes that fell like divine punishment, Wang Yu advanced, relentless and defiant, closing the distance inch by inch. No matter what, he had to bring Ethan Harris into the range of his Chariot's power.

His feet struck the ground, and the world ignited. Where boot met stone, a surge of fire burst forth: the modified seventh-tier hypermagic spell Scorching Step. An eruption of propulsion like nothing before sent Wang Yu flying forward. This was a raw, unrestrained spell that left a burning wake behind him, the flames licking so close it might as well have been a point-blank explosion.

Reckless, yes, but the speed it gave him was more than worth it. His body lifted from the ground, and his forward rush multiplied fivefold. At such velocity, a non-legend's body might well be torn apart by its own momentum. Two kilometers vanished in the blink of an eye. The distance between Wang Yu and Ethan Harris vanished in mere heartbeats.

The rain-born blades that had pursued him could not keep up. They fell uselessly behind until Wang Yu pierced through a denser wall of rain and felt the downpour thicken as he drew closer.

A shrill clang split the air. Ethan's sword, a streak of steel in the storm, hesitated for a moment before it slashed an immense cross through the air. A colossal blade of fighting spirit tore through the void, flying faster than Wang Yu's charge. Even before impact, he could feel the merciless strength that would rend his flesh and bone alike.

His heel struck the ground, channeling recoil, void energy, and a hurricane of magic into one fluid motion. All three forces fused. In a blur of impossible motion, his body sidestepped ten meters, dodging the titanic blade without losing an ounce of speed.

The strike tore past him, carving through everything in its path. A hill in the distance split apart as though cleaved by a god, the gash extending toward the unseen horizon.

He'd avoided the first slash—but there were two in all. Behind him, through the rain, another massive slash descended, dragging with it countless smaller strikes like a storm of razors.

The blood-forged arms at his back reacted instantly, intertwining into a single hardened shield. It met the onslaught head-on as it shattered.

The moment the blows landed, Wang Yu knew something had changed. The strength behind these strikes had multiplied tenfold.

The shield disintegrated, sliced into dust before it could resist. Then came the pain. It scythed through his back, the rain of blades splitting skin and muscle as if it were nothing more than paper.

Flesh flew. Steel met bone. The blades cut through everything until they met the one substance that would not yield: his bones.

"Hard-headed" wasn't just a metaphor where Wang Yu was concerned. His bones were literally harder than steel, an alloyed fusion of substances so rare that few materials on the continent could compare.

The cuts easily tore through his flesh, but were forced to a halt against the titanium lattice of his skeleton. Vertebrae, ribs, skull—each held firm. The sound of clashing metal echoed through the rain.

And though his flesh split and his organs ruptured, to Wang Yu, these were trifles, inconveniences that he could simply ignore. Life surged from the bloodpool within him. Crimson essence repaired bone and sinew in seconds as he took another step forward. Within the void, Avia confirmed the coordinates she had locked onto.

He was close enough. Avia's signal flashed through the mindscape, and the world folded. Wang Yu vanished in a spatial ripple. When he reappeared, it was behind Ethan Harris.

He clenched his fingers, muscles thrumming with mythic force, as he swung. The air itself screamed. Ethan's pupils contracted. He shifted his sword, ever so slightly, and the rain moved with it.

Countless micro-slashes formed along the path of Wang Yu's punch, intercepting the air around his arm. The sheer finesse behind them was incomprehensible. Hundreds of infinitesimal forces gently diverted the momentum of his strike, curving the trajectory just enough to throw it wide.

Wang Yu's fist missed by inches. The nearer he drew to Ethan, the heavier the rain became. And the heavier the rain, the stronger the swordmaster's control. Within ten meters, every droplet carried his will.

Within that radius, Ethan's blade could appear anywhere the rain touched. His precision was monstrous and absolute. Each casual slash fragmented into a thousand invisible branches, each perfectly placed, each erasing an incoming strike before it could land.

Wang Yu twisted his torso, following the redirection, and hurled himself side-first like a living battering ram, simple, brutal, and unstoppable.

And yet Ethan merely turned, meeting the charge with a single, effortless swing. One sword, but a web of interference. Wang Yu's momentum struck supple silk and was drained to nothing.

Ethan's blade turned. Its edge found Wang Yu's neck. It was pure technique against raw strength—and Wang Yu's strength was found wanting.

For the briefest instant, Wang Yu thought he saw disappointment in the other man's eyes. Was that pity? Restraint? Whatever it was, he didn't care.

The sword fell. Even formless and edgeless, it carried enough killing intent to cleave mountains. He felt his reinforced neck split under the pressure alone. But the strike didn't land cleanly. The blade twisted mid-swing.

Ethan's longsword warped as the Chariot's power gripping it like a vice, crumpling the blade into a deformed iron sphere.

The air shuddered. Wang Yu invoked the Commander's Throne. Everything slowed.

All motion, all sound, all rain was dragged down into a viscous stillness. Yet within that suspended world, Wang Yu moved freely.

Lightning coiled along his arm. Avia's voice echoed in his mind as magic surged, turning his forearm into a bracer of thunder. If pure strength would be deflected, then he would strike with magic instead—the seventh-tier lightning spell Thunderclap.

He pressed his crackling palm toward Ethan's chest. At this range, lightning's natural affinity for flesh would tear even a legend apart.

"Not bad," came Ethan's calm reply, tinged with regret. "But this is as far as you'll go."

Even slowed to half its usual speed, Ethan's sword was potent indeed.

A sword wasn't just a chunk of metal, but also the will behind it. Even a broken blade could cut. Pain blossomed along Wang Yu's neck. His vision flared white.

The slash had cleaved through even his impossibly hard bones. It had sliced through space itself.

A formless sword, severing the world. This was the pinnacle of swordsmanship, the level of mastery that the Sword Saint, Ethan Harris, had reached.