"Kael, get them out of here now. I'm about to go all out."
My voice was flat, devoid of the tremor that should have accompanied facing a Malignant Dreadlord. Kael stared at me, then at Kageno, whose eyes were already burning with a predatory, dark hunger. The air between us and the demon was warping from the sheer heat of the dreadlord's killing intent.
Kael didn't argue. He knew that at this level of combat, he who was now at the level of a Tier-4 was nothing more than a liability. With a sharp nod, he slung the semi-conscious Ria over one shoulder and supported the battered Sinata with the other. Stomping his foot, he commanded the iron deposits in the earth to surge upward, forming a metallic platform beneath them. With a violent hiss of escaping pressure, he used a localized earth-leap to propel them into the sky, retreating toward the distant ridge where the shockwaves of our impending clash wouldn't pulverize their bones.
"Alright, Oliver Veyron," Kageno said, his black combat jacket fluttering in the stagnant wind. He cracked his neck, a dark, jagged smile spreading across his face. "Nothing left in the way to stop me from fighting seriously now."
"Yeah," I replied, my fingers twitching as I slowly began to cycle the Nebula heart unconsciously.
"Let's dismantle this thing."
The Dreadlord didn't wait for an invitation. With a sound like grinding tectonic plates, he flexed his fingers. From the tips of his gauntlets, obsidian claws slid out like a cat's, each one humming with a cursed, purple radiance. He vanished.
CRACK!
The ground where he stood exploded as he launched a volley of claw strikes in rapid succession. Kageno and I became blurs of motion, our movements reduced to streaks of after-images as we navigated the web of lethal slashes. Each miss from the dreadlord produced compressed shockwaves that didn't just cut the ground, but they left burning, cauterized scars in the rock, as if the air itself was being set on fire by the speed of the strikes.
Kageno was a phantom. He launched himself from the rear, his black short-sword whistling through the air to find the gap in the demon's neck plates.
Clang! The Dreadlord parried without looking, his movements possessing a terrifying, mechanical efficiency. I intervened immediately, sliding into the demon's blind spot to deliver a flurry of strikes.
The environment was no longer a valley but was a symphony of destruction. The air was a chaotic mess of colliding metal, shattering shockwaves, and the rhythmic boom of our bodies breaking the sound barrier. We were a two-man storm, circling the monolithic demon, searching for a single crack in his perfection.
"Indespicable humans!" the Dreadlord bellowed.
He didn't swing his sword. Instead, he released a terrifying roar which was a literal manifestation of demonic pressure. The sound hit us like a physical wall, an atmospheric explosion of purple demonic pressure that knocked us backward. I skidded across the dirt, my heels digging deep furrows into the earth.
"Damn this monster," Kageno spat, wiping a trail of dark blood from his lip.
'God Sage?' I called out internally. 'Analyze. This thing shouldn't be so invincible. It has to have a core.'
[Affirmative. Subject possesses a condensed demonic core located beneath the sternum. The core provides rapid regeneration and kinetic strength. Shattering the core results in immediate entity collapse. However, it is protected by high density Hell-Armor and layers of reinforced muscle.]
'Alright. That makes the things clear,' I muttered.
Through the months of previous battles, Kageno and I had developed a silent language which was a tactical synchronicity that didn't require words. We locked eyes for a split second. We were going to bait him.
We surged forward again, but this time, we intentionally slowed. We began tanking hits, letting the dreadlord's heavy strikes graze our shoulders and ribs. Then, as if losing our nerve, we turned and began sprinting away from his immediate range, acting as though we were fleeing in terror.
"You can't escape me, mortals!" the demon roared, his pride goading him into the chase.
We lunged in separate directions, splitting his focus. The dreadlord hesitated for a microsecond. He had already analyzed Kageno as the primary threat who was the dirty fighter that relies on sneaky attacks, and relentless shadows. He viewed me as the slower, less significant pawn. He made his choice. He turned his back on me and pursued Kageno thinking he could always come back for me anytime he likes.
Kageno was moving at a staggering speed, his body leaning forward, leaping from rock to rock. His black jacket left trails of shadow-light in his wake. Yet, the Dreadlord was a predator of a higher Tier.
[VELOCITY ANALYSIS:]
[KAGENO`NENJI: 531 M/S]
[DREADLORD: 678 M/S]
"Tsk. Stop chasing me, you fool!" Kageno taunted, his voice carrying over the wind as he zig-zagged through the debris, dribbling the demon like a world-class athlete. "Don't you care if the other guy is going to sneak up on you?"
"Foolish human!" the Dreadlord hissed, closing the gap with terrifying ease. "I have studied your tactics. You are the hidden blade. The other is merely a blunt instrument. I will crush the you first!"
Kageno feinted to the right, attempting to leap over a fallen pillar, but the Dreadlord flickered. He appeared directly in Kageno's path, his massive hand reaching out like a vice. He grabbed Kageno by the throat and slammed him into the ground with the force of a falling meteor.
BOOM!
The crater was five meters deep. Kageno groaned, the impact shattering his ribs and forcing a spray of crimson blood from his lungs. The Dreadlord didn't let go. He began raining down relentless, heavy-fisted punches into Kageno's chest and face, intending to grind the assassin into the dirt.
But amidst the punishment, Kageno's bloody hands reached up. He caught the Dreadlord's massive wrists mid-strike. His grip was like iron.
"Got you..." Kageno whispered, his teeth stained red. "Shadow Stitching!"
Dark, ink-like mana bled from Kageno's fingertips, crawling up the Dreadlord's arms like living leeches. The demon's body suddenly locked. His muscles froze, his fingers paralyzed in mid-air. He stood there, a statue of obsidian and fury.
"Dirty human!" the demon snarled, his eyes wide with realization. "You took those hits... deliberately."
"Is there anything as fairness in a real fight?" Kageno scoffed, his voice cold as he pushed himself up, still holding the stitching. "Payback time. Oliver, now!"
I appeared from the rear, but I didn't come with a roar. I came with silence.
As I approached the paralyzed Dreadlord, the chaos of the battlefield, the dust, the wind, the sound of Kageno's heavy breathing all faded into the background of my consciousness. I slowed my breathing until my heart beat only sounded once every ten seconds.
For me, there was only one thing left.
Resonance.
I stepped forward. Varakhan's molten eyes narrowed slightly, sensing the subtle shift in my presence.
I raised my hand, fingers curling slightly as if feeling something invisible in the air.
To everyone else, nothing seemed to happen. But I was listening to the vibration of matter itself as if trying to pull the strings in the mid-air.
Every object… every grain of dust… every fragment of stone had a natural frequency. A silent rhythm hidden deep inside its molecular structure.
And using the theory of the Zero-point energy I derived from the Zero-point martial arts, I had learned how to touch it.
A faint ripple spread from my palm.
The ground beneath my feet trembled so lightly that it almost felt like an imagination.
Then I moved. My body vanished in a blur of motion, closing the distance in an instant. Before Varakhan could fully react, my palm strucked the demon's chest with a quiet, almost gentle impact. There were no explosion, not even a visible shockwave. Just a single word whispered under my breath.
"Resonate."
For a split second, nothing happened.Then the air screamed. A violent tremor rippled through Varakhan's massive body as the molecular frequency of his armor was forcibly altered. The obsidian plates covering his chest began vibrating violently, cracks spreading like spiderwebs across the demonic armor.
The ground beneath us fractured from the resonance leaking outward.
BOOM!
The kinetic backlash was immense. The Dreadlord was blasted backward, his massive body skidding three hundred meters across the valley floor, leaving a trail of shattered armor fragments and scorched earth.
Kageno watched, his eyes wide. He had never seen someone dismantle matter with a touch.
The dust settled slowly. Silence returned to the valley. But then, a sound that made my blood run cold echoed from the crater. A deep, rumbling chuckle. The Dreadlord suddenly rose. The heavy plates of his chest armor had been completely stripped away, revealing a burning, pulsating red core embedded in his chest. It looked like a miniature sun made of pure malice. Dark, viscous flesh was already knitting itself back together around the wound with terrifying speed. He rolled his shoulders, the sound of his joints popping like gunfire.
"Interesting..." he said, his voice now carrying a refined, dangerous amusement.
Molten lines of mana began to crawl across his damaged skin, regenerating the Hell-Armor in real-time. My heart sank. The resonance had worked but the demon's Infernal regeneration had saved the core at the very last microsecond.
The Dreadlord lifted his sword, the blade now wreathed in black flames. He locked his eyes onto mine, and for the first time, he wasn't looking at an ant. He gave me the gaze of someone who was worth ahnnilating.
"I have underestimated you, human. You nearly broke the vessel." A terrifying, jagged grin spread across his face. "But next time... I won't allow you to touch me."
Behind me, Kageno wiped the blood from his eyes and raised his twin blades, a sharp, manic smile returning to his face.
"Well," he muttered, his dark mana flaring to life. "Now this fight is actually getting interesting."