Chapter 85: The Shattered Equation and the Phoenix's Ash
Blood still boiled in the memory of the five thousand disciples. The carnage between Violeta and Elara had left the arena in a deplorable state, but the Morningstar legion's array forgers were working at a breakneck pace. They filled the spatial voids with molten obsidian and cooled the stone with containment seals. There was no time for aesthetic perfection; the tournament demanded continuity.
In the VIP box, Lord Magnar Varian watched the repairers with the critical eye of a general evaluating his own army's supply lines.
"They have impeccable logistics under pressure," Magnar commented, without looking at his daughter. "The elite mutilate themselves in the arena, and the rest of the clan cleans up the remains without hesitation or trembling. It is a perfect war machine."
Saira Varian nodded, her posture firm, though the tension from the previous battles still tightened her jaw.
"There are still six of those leaders left to fight today, father. If the level of violence continues to escalate, there will be no arena left by the end of the day."
"If there is no arena left, they will fight on the rubble," declared the Chained Wolf. "That is what makes them dangerous."
On the main balcony, the deity of the clan observed. Samael Morningstar remained impassive, with little Celeste on his lap. The baby, with her silver-blue hair shining under the sun, watched the arena with her frigid blue eye and her dark violet eye. When Celeste reached her tiny hand toward the center of the coliseum and let out a coo, the air itself seemed to densify for an instant, a premature display of the tyranny she carried in her blood.
Seraphina, standing beside the throne, offered a smile that mixed pride and expectation.
"Entropy against structure, husband," said Seraphina, her elegant voice gliding over the clamor of the stands. "Cedric calculates every breath of the enemy. Eris burns the air before they can breathe it."
Lilith, with her timeless majesty and white hair streaked with reddish highlights, crossed her arms. Her dark red eyes shone with fierce approval.
"Cedric is brilliant, but Eris's fire does not obey mathematics. Today, Rank 4 will learn that some things simply cannot be measured."
On the announcement platform, the herald, his forehead beaded with sweat, raised the bone horn.
BOOOOOMMM!
The bellow of the horn instantly silenced the five thousand disciples.
"Destiny turns the wheel of annihilation!" shouted the herald, his lungs at their limit. "Third match of the quarterfinals! The steel strategist against the flame that devours the world! Sequence 4, Cedric Morningstar, against Sequence 3, Eris Morningstar!"
The north doors opened with a metallic, rhythmic sound, like gears meshing perfectly together.
Cedric Morningstar entered the coliseum. His messy silver hair contrasted with the extreme neatness of his white and gray rune-covered robes. His sharp face showed no nervousness, only absolute concentration. His steel-gray eyes scanned the newly repaired, irregular slabs, measuring distances, calculating friction and density. To him, Eris was not an uncontrollable demon; she was a chaotic variable in an equation that had to be solved.
At the south end, the doors didn't open; they were incinerated.
Eris Morningstar stepped through the thick smoke with a savage smile. Her silvery-white hair with red tips seemed to burn, and her inverted heterochromia—one crimson red eye and the other neon violet—exuded a thirst for pure blood. She carried her Earth Grade black spear resting on her shoulders, walking with an arrogance that defied the heavens themselves.
"Cedric!" shouted Eris, her voice echoing throughout the coliseum, loaded with explosive energy. "I hope you calculated how many bones I'm going to break today!"
Cedric stopped twenty meters away, politely adjusting the cuffs of his robes.
"I have calculated thirteen possible endings for this encounter, Eris," the strategist replied, his voice calm and amicable. "In eleven of them, I immobilize you before you can use your ruin. In the other two, you end up burning the entire arena down and we are both disqualified. I trust my arithmetic."
Eris let out a laugh that sounded like a roar.
"To hell with your arithmetic!"
DOOONG!
The gong rang out.
Eris didn't waste a single second. She propelled herself forward with an explosive force that cracked the jade beneath her boots. She closed the twenty-meter distance to two in the blink of an eye, wielding her black spear with both hands. The tip of the weapon erupted in absolute black flames with a vibrating white core.
She activated the [Flame of Ruin].
She launched a direct frontal thrust at Cedric's heart, a brute-force attack meant to rot and disintegrate any defense the strategist attempted to raise.
Cedric didn't panic. His left eye twitched slightly, measuring the attack's vector. He raised his right hand and traced a circle in the air with lightning speed, consuming half of his "Ink Expenditure" permitted by the Origin Realm.
[Instant Deflection Array].
The circular rune glowed in the air in front of him. It wasn't a shield to block; it was a trajectory alteration. When Eris's fiery thrust touched the array, the black spear was abruptly deflected to the left, the inertia pulling Eris's body in that direction, leaving her flank completely exposed.
"Check," murmured Cedric.
Rank 4 slipped into the gap in Eris's guard, activating the [Kinetic Formation Seal]. He struck with his knuckles directly against the warrior's right ribs.
Bam!
A square flash of runic light shone. The first strike of the [Chained Formation Combo]. An invisible mark adhered to Eris's torso.
But Cedric made a miscalculation. He had underestimated the nature of the Flame of Ruin.
As Cedric prepared to deliver the second blow, the Instant Deflection Array still floating to his left began to hiss. The black fire that had grazed the rune hadn't gone out. It was "eating" the array. Pure entropy devoured Cedric's structured Qi, rotting the rune in milliseconds and using that energy to create a small black backdraft that burned the left shoulder of Cedric's tunic.
The strategist muffled a cry and leaped backward, breaking his own combo. The fabric on his shoulder wasn't just burned; it had turned gray and brittle like paper, the flesh beginning to rot from the [Ash Touch].
Eris hit the brakes on her skid and spun around, laughing sadistically.
"Your little drawings can't deflect the end of the world, Cedric! The fire swallows them!"
In the VIP box, Lord Magnar leaned forward.
"The fire doesn't burn... it decomposes," observed the Chained Wolf, fascinated. "It ignores the structure of Qi. Rank 4 cannot use magical defenses against her. He will have to fight purely on physics if he doesn't want to be disintegrated."
Cedric, his shoulder throbbing with the dull ache of necrosis, recalculated in real-time.
The fire feeds on my formations. If I summon the Hexagonal Cage, it will devour it and grow stronger. I must incapacitate her nervous system directly without using prolonged external arrays.
Cedric abandoned his area runes. He extended his right hand and traced the linear rune for "Sharpness".
[Void Runic Edge].
A blade of runic energy stuck to the edge of his forearm, sharp as a mid-grade sword. This rune was internal, fed by his own blood, making it more resistant to external corruption.
Eris charged again. The black spear became a blur of deadly arcs. Eris wasn't just brute force; she was a lover of war. Her spearmanship was fierce and overwhelming.
Cedric entered close range, dodging by millimeters. Eris's spear sliced the air inches from his face. Cedric used his Runic Edge to strike the black wooden shaft of the spear, deflecting the attacks without touching the blade of ruinous fire.
Clang! Clack! Swoosh!
It was a suicidal dance. Cedric dodged a low sweep by jumping, and in mid-air, delivered a heel strike to Eris's shoulder.
Bam! Second strike. The second invisible mark was engraved into the flesh of Rank 3.
Eris grunted. She knew what Cedric was attempting. If he landed the third strike, the restriction micro-formation would paralyze her.
"I won't let you!" roared Eris.
Knowing that Cedric would aim the third strike at her forehead or chest, Eris let go of the spear with one hand and wrapped her own left fist in the white-cored black flame.
Cedric propelled himself forward, readying his palm for the third critical impact.
But Eris didn't try to dodge. Her animalistic, sadistic instinct took control.
Instead of retreating, Eris pushed her right shoulder forward, offering her own body as bait.
Cedric's palm struck squarely on Eris's collarbone.
Bam! Third strike connected.
The electric blue light triangle of the [Micro-Formation of Restriction] detonated.
Eris froze dead in her tracks, her muscles locked by the nervous shock.
But before Cedric could back away, the inertia of Eris's charge and the prior activation of her technique came into play. She had calculated that the paralysis would take a fraction of a second to take hold.
In that millisecond, Eris's left hand, wrapped in the Flame of Ruin, clamped down like a claw onto Cedric's right forearm.
Cedric's eyes widened, logical terror flooding his mind.
He activated his kinetic force to tear his arm from her grip, but the black fire had already touched his skin.
[Ash Touch].
The pain was indescribable. Cedric felt the flesh, tendons, and bones of his right forearm lose their molecular cohesion. The entire arm turned gray, the skin cracking and crumbling like old stucco. His Qi was violently sucked away, feeding Eris's [Devouring Ruin], who used the stolen energy to break Cedric's runic paralysis in just one second instead of three.
Free from the paralysis and brimming with Cedric's corrupted energy, Eris kicked the strategist in the abdomen.
Cedric went flying, rolling across the jade for ten meters, clutching his useless, withered right arm. His "Ink Expenditure" was at its limit, and the pain of necrosis blocked his arithmetic concentration.
The five thousand disciples howled, thirsting for total destruction.
"Your plans always burn, Cedric!" shouted Eris, spinning her spear, the black fire radiating absolute hunger.
Eris wasn't going to give him time to think. She injected her impure fire Qi into the ground and prepared for the final blow. She crouched down, accumulating explosive force in her legs, and then shot into the open sky, rising fifteen meters above the arena.
The black spear in her hands gathered all the extreme heat and decomposing force possible. The air warped, forming the immense silhouette of a phoenix made of black and white fire.
[Descent of the Igneous Phoenix] combined with the Flame of Ruin.
Eris plummeted directly toward the kneeling Cedric's position, a meteor of annihilation designed to melt his body and rot his soul in a single area-of-effect impact.
In the VIP box, Saira Varian took a step back.
"The impact force and the corruption of the ruin! She's going to vaporize half the arena!" she exclaimed.
Lord Magnar narrowed his eyes, his analytical mind evaluating. "The strategist has a dead arm. He can't trace complex arrays. It's over."
But down in the arena, Cedric, coughing blood and pale-faced from the necrosis, looked up at the black comet falling toward him.
His right arm was ruined, true. But a strategist always has a Plan C.
Cedric didn't try to flee; the area of effect was too large.
With his healthy left hand, Cedric ripped a necklace from his neck. The necklace had ten solid metal beads, previously engraved with compression runes in the forge over months. It was his emergency reserve, his way of bypassing the "Ink Expenditure" in the Origin Realm.
He crushed the ten beads in his left fist and slammed them into the jade floor with brutal force.
"You can't burn what you can't catch, Eris!"
The runes from the ten beads detonated simultaneously on the stone.
They didn't create a runic shield. Instead, they activated an immense [Inverse Kinetic Friction Array] directly on the jade slabs in a fifteen-meter radius.
When Eris's immense Igneous Phoenix impacted the ground with nuclear force, Cedric's array didn't try to stop the fire. The array took all the immense force of the physical clash and violently repelled it sideways and upwards.
The jade floor exploded. Massive fragments of stone, propelled by Cedric's kinetic array and Eris's explosive force, shot upward like volcanic shrapnel, forming a spherical wall of debris around the strategist.
The black ruin fire consumed the stone, devouring the debris and turning it into fine ash, but the time it took to consume that solid mass gave Cedric the necessary millisecond.
Using the repulsive force of his own array on his boots, Cedric slid twenty meters backward, escaping the disintegration radius by mere inches.
The explosion engulfed the center of the coliseum. A cloud of gray ash and black fire rose like a toxic mushroom.
Eris landed at the epicenter of the crater. Her breathing was heavy. Her ultimate technique had consumed a monstrous amount of Qi, and the Wielder's Corrosion was beginning to take its toll.
Eris's hands and forearms showed large gray spots of ash; her own forbidden flame was trying to consume her due to the abuse of power.
Through the smoke, Eris saw Cedric.
Rank 4 was leaning against the containment wall. His right arm hung useless and withered. His clothes were scorched. But he was alive, and his steel-gray eyes were still calculating.
Eris let out a hoarse laugh, coughing up ash.
"You survived that! You're a damn steel cockroach, Cedric!"
Cedric spat blood, his face drenched in cold sweat.
"I told you I calculated thirteen scenarios, Eris. This is the fourteenth. And I don't like improvisation."
Eris tightened her grip on her spear and began walking toward him, ready to tear him apart in close combat. Her hands trembled slightly from spiritual fatigue, but her bloodlust was inexhaustible.
Cedric raised his only healthy hand, the left.
"But there is one calculation that never fails, Eris. And that is that you never watch your step when you smell blood."
Eris stopped dead in her tracks.
She looked down.
Beneath the thick layer of gray ash covering the jade, a faint electric blue glow pulsed.
Throughout the entire fight, while Cedric was retreating, dodging, and tracing runes in the air, his Qi had been subtly seeping into the cracks of the jade, drawing a vast network of the [Hexagonal Confinement Array] step by step, using the arena itself as his parchment. The Phoenix's explosion had destroyed the center, but Eris had walked directly into the intact edge of the trap.
"Checkmate!" roared Cedric, clenching his left fist.
The trap sprang. Six immense plates of glowing runic steel emerged from the ground with a deafening sound. They didn't seek to trap Eris's fire; they sought to immobilize her physical mass.
The heavy plates closed around Eris's legs and waist with the force of a hydraulic press, pinning her to the ground and crushing the shaft of her spear against her own body.
Eris tried to summon the Flame of Ruin to rot the steel, but the extreme fatigue of her core, coupled with the corrosion on her own hands, made her falter. The black flames sputtered, but failed to achieve the critical mass needed to devour the high-density runic metal before the kinetic seals nullified her lower meridians.
She was trapped, immobilized from the waist down.
Cedric, dragging his leg and cradling his dead arm, walked slowly until he was two meters away from the enraged beast of ruin. His left hand formed an explosive seal mere inches from Eris's face.
Eris struggled, her muscles creaking against the runic barrier, her single functional eye shooting daggers of pure hatred at the strategist.
"If you detonate that, I'll bite your face off and rot your skull!" she roared, spitting blood-stained saliva.
Cedric smiled amicably, the mask of the architect slipping back into place despite the agonizing pain.
"I know. That's why I'm not going to detonate it. I ran out of ink, Eris. I'm just waiting for you to recognize the geometry of your defeat."
Eris pulled against the invisible chains of the array for three more seconds. When she realized her Stage 4 Qi was too low to melt the steel before Cedric blew her head off with a pure physical strike, she dropped her shoulders, panting.
"You're... boring," Eris grunted, her rage giving way to exhaustion. "I yield. You damn cheap calculator."
Cedric let the air escape his lungs and dispelled the array, the steel plates vanishing into runic dust. The instant he did, his own legs gave out and he fell to his knees, the shock from the necrosis in his right arm finally claiming his consciousness.
In the VIP box, Lord Magnar Varian let out the breath he didn't know he was holding.
"That girl was a demon incarnate. The level of entropy of her black fire... if that had touched my army, it would have rotted shields, armor, and flesh alike. But the strategist..." Magnar looked at Cedric's kneeling body. "The strategist sacrificed an arm, destroyed his own arena, and wove a trap step by step while fleeing for his life."
Saira nodded, her voice filled with a profound new respect. "Sequence 4 defeated Sequence 3, father. Structure dominated chaos."
On the main balcony, Samael Morningstar nodded slowly. His legion was demonstrating exactly what he desired.
Seraphina, beside him, looked at her husband.
"Cedric has proven to be the indisputable brain of our vanguard. His position is consolidated."
The herald, after making sure both combatants were still breathing (although Cedric was on the verge of fainting), raised the bone horn.
BOOOOOMMM!
"The strategist breaks the chaos!" bellowed the herald. "Sequence 4, Cedric Morningstar, bends the ruin and advances to the semifinals of the Final Rank Tournament!"
While the healers rushed into the arena to surgically amputate the dead tissues of Cedric's arm and treat the corrosive burns on Eris's body, the stands didn't stop cheering. The Golden Generation was rewriting the hierarchy with blood and fire, and the next match threatened to take the brutality to even more unimaginable levels.