Chapter 80: The Widow's Kiss and the She-Wolf's Shroud
The blood of the King of the Vanguard and the molten rock crater in the center of the arena still emitted heat waves, but the relentless machinery of the Final Rank Tournament did not stop for the exhaustion of the stone. The healers had managed to stabilize Nylas, removing Rank 16 with severe burns, while Kael had retreated on his own two feet, leaving a trail of absolute dominance in the minds of everyone present.
In the VIP box, Lord Varian remained standing. His hands rested on the ice railing, but the tension in his shoulders was evident.
"Rank 1 has demonstrated the level of a sovereign," murmured the Emperor of Star Ice, his gaze fixed on the empty space where Kael had been. "But what unsettles me most is not the fire, Saira. It is the silence that follows the fire."
Saira Varian nodded slowly, her usual arrogance frozen in the pit of her stomach.
"The Sequences that rely on stealth have been the most disturbing. That moonlight assassin almost died from a spatial cut... and the soundless boy destroyed the speedster. What else can they hide in the shadows?"
Lord Varian mentally reviewed the faces and names he had memorized during the selection.
"We know the vast majority of them. The alchemist of life, the weather girl, the ice colossus. But..." The Emperor narrowed his eyes. "There is one of them I didn't see in the preliminary rounds. The one who made it to the end. Sequence 6."
On the main balcony, Samael Morningstar rocked little Celeste. The baby's silver-blue hair shone softly in the evening light. Her left eye, of absolute frigid blue, and her right eye, of predatory dark violet, watched the arena with an attention unusual for an infant, as if the blue-violet mist surrounding her were in tune with the laws of combat. Samael didn't look toward the guest box. His attention was on the doors.
"Elara paired with Tamsin," commented Seraphina, standing next to her husband. Her majestic presence was the anchor of the family. "Liquid and gaseous poison against the frost mist. If Tamsin manages to touch her even once, the paralysis will be immediate."
Lilith, with her timeless elegance, shook her head slightly. Her dark red eyes shone with cold anticipation.
"Tamsin trusts her poison to melt flesh. But Elara... Elara has no flesh when she fights. She only has hunger."
The herald, his chest still heaving from the previous titanic clash, raised the bone horn.
BOOOOOMMM!
"Ninth match!" bellowed the herald. "Silent corrosion against the cold of invisible death! Sequence 13, Tamsin Morningstar, against the First Disciple, Sequence 6, Elara Morningstar!"
The south doors opened slowly. The air grew heavy, and a cloying smell, like flowers rotting in stagnant water, flooded the southern end of the arena.
Tamsin Morningstar walked toward the center.
She was short in stature, but her beauty was hypnotic. Her acid-green hair fell in bright waves over her shoulders, contrasting with her large apple-green eyes. At first glance, she looked delicate, but the smile adorning her lips was that of a predator playing with its food. She was poisonous, sarcastic, and lethal. She wore light clothing in shades of purple and dark green. She wielded no large weapons in her hands; her long, polished nails gave off a suspicious gleam.
"How wonderful," purred Tamsin, her sweet voice echoing in the arena. "I always wanted to know what the inside of the First Disciple looks like. I promise I'll make your lungs melt slowly, Elara. You'll make a very pretty puddle."
From the north door, there was no verbal response. There was no bravado or heavy footsteps.
Elara Morningstar slid her body into the light.
Her black hair, with liquid silver tips that floated as if submerged in water, framed a face of pale, almost translucent skin. Her bright silver-gray eyes were fixed on Tamsin.
In daily life, Elara was playful, the devoted shadow of her master, and Violeta's terror. But here, on the battlefield, her mind had made that disturbing "click." The affectionate girl had disappeared, replaced by the sadistic, silent, and ruthless assassin. Her hands rested on the hilts of her twin Low Earth Grade daggers, the Mist Fangs.
She didn't smile. She didn't blink. She simply advanced, and with each step, the temperature of the arena plummeted, turning the residual sweat from previous matches into fine frost.
In the VIP box, Lord Varian tensed.
"There she is. The unknown one. And she is the Patriarch's head disciple."
DOOONG!
The gong resonated, and death filled the air.
Tamsin was the first to act. She knew the First Disciple was not an opponent to be taken lightly. She nimbly leaped backward, opening both hands and exhaling forcefully.
[Mist of Withered Souls].
A dense cloud of dark emerald green vapor, almost oily, erupted from her pores and mouth. The poison crawled heavily along the ground before rising, filling the air with volatile micro-toxins. Inside the mist, neon violet flashes blinked like dying fireflies.
The air itself seemed to "thicken," and the sunlight broke down into sickly colors. A constant bubbling sound and a hiss filled the coliseum. Anything that touched that cloud would slowly begin to melt, and mere inhalation would cause massive Qi failure.
"Come play in my garden, puppy!" laughed Tamsin, hiding inside her immense toxic cloud, fifteen meters in radius.
Elara didn't hesitate. She didn't stop at the edge of the poison. She ran straight toward the green cloud of death, but before entering, she crossed the daggers in front of her face and exhaled.
[Shroud of Vitreous Fragments].
Wind did not come from her lungs and pores, but an exceptionally dense and frigid pearly-white mist. Upon contacting the residual heat of the arena and Tamsin's poison, the moisture suspended billions of frost micro-crystals in the air.
When Elara's white mist collided with Tamsin's green mist, a terrifying physical reaction occurred.
The frost micro-crystals didn't nullify the poison chemically, but thermally. They froze the volatile micro-toxins in the air. The violet fireflies of the poison fell to the ground like toxic hail. Elara had created an environmental interference shield that allowed her to advance through the miasma.
Elara entered the cloud, and the sepulchral silence of her shroud muted the sounds of the acidic bubbling. Visibility was reduced to less than a meter. A sea of pearly white and dark green mixed in the center of the coliseum.
From the stands, no one could see anything. Only the clash of the two atmospheric anomalies.
Inside the fog, Tamsin frowned. Her atmospheric poison was being crystallized and falling to the ground instead of floating.
Damn ice girl. If the air doesn't work, I'll have to touch her directly.
Tamsin raised her right hand. Her fingers turned an almost black, dark purple, with throbbing neon green veins. A thick, oily smoke began to drip from her fingertips.
She had prepared the [Widow's Kiss].
A single graze, a single superficial cut, and the ultra-condensed neurotoxin would paralyze Elara completely.
Through the mixed mist, Tamsin saw Elara's silhouette three meters away, slowly approaching. Her black hair with silver tips was unmistakable.
Tamsin smiled maliciously, propelled herself forward, and launched a lethal swipe with her poisoned fingers toward the girl's face.
"Sweet dreams!"
Her purple fingers struck Elara's cheek directly.
But Tamsin's smile froze.
There was no cry of pain. The red hourglass-shaped mark did not appear.
The Elara that Tamsin had just struck did not bleed. Her eyes were a pale blue without pupils. Upon contact with the toxic fingers, the "girl" exploded.
It was a [Frigid Mist Clone].
The duplicate, composed of cold air and a frost core, unraveled in an explosion of white vapor and ice splinters. Tamsin tried to pull her hand back, but the frigid suction force of the explosion froze the moisture around her right arm, wrapping it in a solid block of ice that adhered to the sleeve of her tunic, making it heavy and useless in a millisecond.
"Damn it!" hissed Tamsin, backing away and using her toxic Qi to try to melt the ice on her arm.
But the attack had revealed her position.
From Tamsin's blind spot, the air itself seemed to peel away.
Elara had not been far. She had been using the [White Shroud Camouflage]. By manipulating the refraction of light through the frost, she had become a translucent silhouette, a frosted glass ghost clinging to the mist.
Elara appeared half a meter behind Tamsin. Her silver-gray eyes reflected no emotion, only the cold geometry of assassination.
She didn't try to stab Tamsin in the back. The green widow still had poison on her left hand and could counterattack out of pure reflex.
Instead, Elara aimed the tip of the Mist Fang at Tamsin's lower back and activated her thermal piercing attack.
[White Breath Thrust].
Elara didn't thrust the steel dagger. She fired a beam of liquid frost, a trail of very fine bluish vapor that cut through the short distance between them.
The beam hit Tamsin's back, right over her kidneys.
The impact didn't push Tamsin. It didn't break the skin.
The high-pressure gas penetrated through the pores and respiratory tracts. The fog entered the poisoner's body and expanded its lethal temperature inside.
Tamsin's eyes widened. A mute scream was trapped in her throat. She felt an excruciating pain, as if thousands of tiny knives were tearing her organs from the inside. The moisture in her lungs crystallized instantly. Her knees gave out and she fell face-first to the floor, her body encased in a crust of opaque, rough frost that emitted a thick vapor, as if she had been submerged in liquid nitrogen.
Elara stopped beside her, the fog swirling obediently around her. She looked down at the immobilized Tamsin, whose lips were blue and whose skin was losing color at an alarming rate due to internal freezing.
Tamsin, trembling violently, could barely move her eyes. Her poison was useless if her blood wasn't flowing. In her apple-green gaze, mockery had been replaced by the absolute terror of feeling her own body turning into dead ice.
With a slow, sadistic movement, Elara rested her boot on Tamsin's shoulder, pressing her face against the freezing jade. The First Disciple did not utter a single word. The murderous click in her mind didn't require dialogue; it required her opponent to stop breathing.
The silence within the fog shroud was hair-raising.
In the VIP box, Lord Varian had stood up again, his eyes fixed on the mist that was beginning to dissipate due to Tamsin's fall.
"The poison girl... is she dead?" asked Saira, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.
The Emperor of Star Ice shook his head, his face somber.
"Not yet. The internal freezing has paralyzed her, but her own corrosive Qi is fighting to keep her organs beating. But the other one... Rank 6."
Lord Varian pointed toward the arena as the mist cleared.
The image revealed itself to the ten thousand spectators. Elara, the First Disciple, held the seductive Tamsin pinned beneath her boot, the twin daggers shining with a lethal bluish cold, ready to decapitate her.
"She's a sadistic ghost," murmured Lord Varian, his voice tinged with a dark respect. "She used her own mist not only to blind but to freeze the toxins in the air. And that thermal invisibility... it emits no murderous intent. It only executes. She is the perfect assassin."
In the arena, Tamsin, using her last ounces of strength before her lungs collapsed from the ice, weakly tapped the ground with her left hand, stained with frost.
It was the signal of surrender.
Elara looked at her for a second longer, her gray eyes evaluating whether she should accept the surrender or simply rip the widow's head off to satisfy her own sadism.
But from the main balcony, the tyranny of Samael Morningstar descended upon the arena, an invisible but undeniable pressure that touched Elara's mind. It was a silent command: Enough.
Elara grimaced slightly in disgust. The murderous click in her mind loosened. She removed her boot from Tamsin's shoulder and, with a fluid twist of her wrists, sheathed the Mist Fangs at her belt. She exhaled a puff of white breath and turned around, leaving the poisoner shivering on the ground.
The crowd erupted into howls. The First Disciple's demonstration of supremacy had been silent, but overwhelmingly lethal.
The herald, his teeth chattering from the residual cold emanating from the center of the arena, raised the horn.
BOOOOOMMM!
"The winner of the ninth match!" announced the herald. "Sequence 6, the First Disciple Elara Morningstar, freezes the poison and advances in the Final Rank Tournament!"
The healers, wrapped in thermal robes, ran toward Tamsin to inject her with heat elixirs to counteract the spiritual hypothermia that was devouring her organs.
Elara walked toward the north tunnels. Her movements were slightly rigid, the aftermath of having lowered the temperature of her own lungs to maintain the frost shroud, but her face once again showed a small, playful smile, as if she had just won a simple game of hide-and-seek.
She looked up at the main balcony and gave her master a cheerful wave.
Samael nodded imperceptibly. The shadow he had raised was sharp.
In the VIP box, Lord Varian collapsed into his ice chair. The arrogance of the Star Ice Empire seemed like a distant memory amidst the tactical massacre of Skull Rock.
"Saira," said the Emperor, his voice heavy as lead.
"Yes, father?"
"That girl, the one who just won... she uses cold to freeze from the inside, and becomes invisible by nullifying thermal refraction. In our empire, such a technique is only taught to the royal executioners of the Great Saint."
Lord Varian closed his eyes. "The Patriarch of this clan has a Magma Sovereign as a shield, and a Frost Ghost as a dagger. And there are still matches left. May the gods protect us if they ever decide to march east."
The sun set completely, giving way to twilight. But in Skull Rock, the night would bring no rest. It would bring the collision of the legion's last monsters, and the climax of a tournament that was rewriting the definition of terror on the continent.