CHAPTER 128

  STONE STORMS AND WINGS OF FREEDOM

  The ground split in two, smoking where Theodred had landed. For a moment, the coliseum fell silent, the crowd holding its breath like vultures waiting for the final twitch.

  Dijkstra stood above the pit, his massive sword braced on one shoulder. Dust clung to him like a second skin, his aura humming in the stone. He looked down with the calm of a man deciding where best to bury the body.

  “Still breathing?” he asked.

  Sirius Strike

  The voice came not from the newly created slit where Theodred was supposed to be but from above and till the time it took for Dijkstra and Artefact to show their battle in magnifying view.

  Hans had landed the most devastating attack on Dijkstra’s shoulders.

  Or so he thought before Dijkstra’s DeepSteps resurfaced him in some other place.

  But it was not without damage; the characteristic that made Sirius Strike dangerous was the hyper-concentrated aura at the tip of the sword and massive speed. No matter how fast someone was, if it touched them, then it meant it hit.

  And the same case was for Dijkstra; he barely avoided it, but an inch-deep wound was in his shoulders, profusely bleeding.

  Dijkstra cursed, putting some pressure on his wound. “So, that elven bitch taught you her skill.” He realised fester was preventing any coagulation and natural healing. He looked where the so-called hope of Clandor was, but he was nowhere to be found.

  “Where are you looking at?” a voice again from above came, and Dijkstra, who had seen the streak of light approaching him with Sirius Strike, as the audience, looked upwards.

  They witnessed something out of this world. Two wings of light, flapping like the skybird behind Theodred as he looked down on them.

  Hans took a long breath, his sword already brimming with aura. “This—she didn’t teach— now get ready.” With the light wings, he matched the warlord’s DeepSteps, clashing with him in fury.

  Meanwhile, in Clandor’s private room, “What is that he is using?” Bernard asked the question everyone in that room was curious about. They had never seen anyone with wings; of course, there were anomalies who could fly and weird artefacts that can help them levitate, but what they saw was an extension. It was flapping like a real thing.

  But Reina also had no answer; she had taught him Lightcloak—“Oh! So that is—he is quite clever.”

  “What?” Eleanor asked to elaborate.

  “Since he couldn’t bind the spirit, causing his limited aura. Lightcloak gives him super-fast manoeuvrability but at a huge cost—since he could transform his aura into an extension, like a sword— he did the same with Lightcloak— transformed it into wings.”

  “But how is he controlling it—it’s not like using limbs you were born with?” Allynna, looking sharply at his movements, asked.

  “Who knows. Maybe he was a bird in his past life.” Commented Reina, observing that Theodred also turned her passive skills into active one, stretching his reserves even further. But that came with a cost and she wondered, if her disciple had known or not.

  Their talk suddenly came to a halt as something huge changed in the arena. Theodred’s wings folded inside him after the stalemate continued. He was heaving while Dijkstra remained curious without any breath.

  The only advantage Hans had was the single wound he gave to Dijkstra that refused to heal. Hans too landed.

  “Ran out of fuel.” Looking at him panting, Dijkstra mocked, “Good. It means I can show them how slowly a man dies when the ground itself hates him.”

  Dijkstra’s eyes narrowed. He swept his blade in a circle, and the arena vanished into a storm.

  Sand howled into existence, biting at skin, scouring armour, filling lungs. Sandstorm — another wide area skill of the Sad Death that many times people saw before getting offed by the warlord.

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  Thick as iron, curtains wrapped the coliseum. Nobles shielded their faces; peasants covered their mouths with rags. Within moments, the protection kicked in, but the view was not clear, not only to the audience but for Theodred too.

  He was inside Armis, trying to figure out how to avoid this negative effect brought by Sandstorm. Every passing second, it was giving him micro damage, bypassing his rotating sphere here and there. Not significant but accumulating it could turn disastrous.

  Skill: Wings of Freedom

  His wings unfurled and he launched himself up above the sky, high enough to get out of the storm.

  But since the sand was essentially a part of the ground, it allowed Dijkstra to use DeepStep— within a flash when Hans was about to leave the Sandstorm, he appeared, and grabbed his food, throwing Hans inside.

  Hans was fast but within the sandstorm, where vision and movement were obstructed, Dijkstra had a significant advantage; he could appear anywhere he wanted. As if he was flying too, within the sandstorm.

  He punched, slashed, and did every kind of torture he could. He was in an advantageous situation and he knew it too, so the craziness in him kicked in and he began to enjoy harassing him.

  Theodred staggered, arms up against the cutting grit. Thin lines of blood welled on his face and arms. His wings of light flickered, unstable.

  A heavy voice rumbled through the storm. “Can your firefly glow through this, boy? Or will you flicker out where no one can see you?”

  Theodred spat blood into the sand. He whispered to himself, Hold the ground. Watch the patterns. Trust your instincts.

  He stopped guarding against the sand particles. Whatever damage they could give, Dijkstra gave far more. So he had to set priorities straight.

  His eyes sharpened—

  Skill: Lumen Gaze.

  Every grain of sand slowed, every echo sharpened, every movement traced. Through the storm, he saw it: Dijkstra’s real body cutting toward him, sand masking his steps.

  He leapt skyward, wings straining, and his sword spun alive—

  Skill: Maximacre,

  A blazing wheel of light. It screamed through the sand, carving a swathe, scattering illusions. Sparks tore the veil. For an instant, the storm thinned, and the crowd glimpsed their duel again.

  Theodred descended in a stab meant for Dijkstra’s chest—but hit the ground itself and that also tilted beneath him. Quake. The arena floor turned on its side like a shipwreck. He lost balance, wings folding as he crashed into a stone pillar that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  He looked up, dazed. The arena was wrong—staircases where there had been nothing. Walls, cubes of stone jutting from nowhere, cliffs shifting sideways as if gravity had grown drunk. He understood, within the veil of Sandstorm, Dijkstra was setting off his Domain skill: Terrain Rewriting.

  The crowd gasped as the entire battlefield turned inside out, like the gods themselves had folded reality. Nobles clutched their charms. Priests muttered prayers. The audience screamed in excitement.

  Even fighting with Zephyr, Dijkstra didn’t release his domain skill. Sandstorm was enough to get the prodigy of blood monks.

  But Theodred, a young knight of grade sixty-two, had pushed him.

  Unknown terrain coming from nowhere, reshaping everything made Theodred stagger through the impossible geometry, every step draining aura as he forced wings and shield to keep pace.

  Skill: Armis

  He summoned his rotating shield, currently his most aura-eating skill with Wings of Freedom. He looked like a ball that had grown wings.

  But those skills together had disturbed the balance he had maintained with Regenratio. He was losing aura much faster than he was regenerating.

  His Armis cracked again and again under tumbling slabs, his sword biting desperately to carve a path.

  “You run like a rat in a maze, always in control of your captor,” Dijkstra’s voice boomed, echoing from everywhere at once. “But running isn’t fighting.”

  A seismic shock tore through the shifting ground. Upheaval. Stone spikes erupted, forcing Theodred to vault, weave, burn through his dwindling aura. His reserves bled out with every movement. He was flatlined several times by many stone slabs pummelling, crushing, and clapping him.

  He was bleeding from almost everywhere. His arm was flickering as his wings of freedom were already torn.

  It was quite easy to guess what Dijkstra was aiming for. To make him run out of aura and then kill him as easily as taking candy from a kid.

  For a young upstart, the arsenal of skills the young elf carried made him quite a danger in the future. Learning Sirius’s strike just by watching, optimising a skill so it could take less aura, and devastating skills of the Clandor royal family.

  He was turning quite dangerous, and the unsealing wound that would have begun to heal even if Reina herself had attacked was showing no sign of budging.

  “I can’t take chances now.” Dijkstra focussed. And then—the ground convulsed in rhythm with Dijkstra’s steps. —Living Faultline—. The colossus strode, and the world convulsed beneath him. With each footfall, the floor split, tilted, buckled. Theodred couldn’t stand within twenty paces without stumbling.

  He dropped to one knee, coughing blood, his vision flickering with black. His sword trembled, light guttering.

  Dijkstra emerged from the storm like a god sculpted from earth, each step birthing quakes. The crowd roared, drunk with awe and terror.

  “Do you see it now?” Dijkstra said, his voice low, intimate despite the chaos. “The gap between us isn’t skill, boy. It’s the world itself. And the world will not choose you. You are born in the era of which Parv serves.”

  Theodred lifted his head. His lips were red with blood, his eyes fever-bright.

  Dijkstra raised his blade, stone trembling in answer. And the storm swallowed both the knights whole.