⚡ 「Stormpiercer: Tyrant's Howl」 ⚡
Aldric moved.
—BOOOOOM!
Lucavion's instincts scread.
He barely raised his estoc before—
CLAAAAANG!
Aldric's spear slamd into him, a brutal arc of force.
The impact rattled his bones.
Lucavion gritted his teeth—too strong.
Before he could adjust—
—SWOOOSH!
Aldric was already on him again.
A second strike.
Lucavion parried—
But Aldric's wind-infused spear twisted unnaturally, redirecting the montum mid-swing—
—THWACK!
The blunt end of the spear smashed into Lucavion's ribs.
Pain exploded through his body.
His breath hitched, his vision blurred.
He stumbled.
Aldric did not let up.
He pressed forward, his spear an unstoppable force, his aura roaring like a vengeful storm.
This was not technique anymore.
This was raw, overwhelming power.
Lucavion tried to counter—
But he couldn't keep up.
—CLAAAANG!
Aldric's spear rained down like an unrelenting hurricane.
Lucavion dodged. Blocked. Parried.
Yet every ti he adjusted—Aldric was faster.
Aldric crushed his defenses, his sheer power widening the gap between them.
Then—
—BOOOOOM!
A final strike.
Lucavion tried to move—
—Too slow.
Aldric's spear slamd straight into his stomach.
CRACK!
Lucavion's body lurched backward, blood spurting from his mouth.
He crashed into the rooftop, his vision flickering.
His body wouldn't move.
Aldric exhaled.
He rolled his shoulder, the storm around him settling as he gazed down at Lucavion.
"Stay down," he said, voice smooth, laced with cold satisfaction.
"This is the difference between us."
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
****
I gritted my teeth, struggling to keep my vision from blurring into nothingness. My body felt distant, sluggish—every nerve screaming in protest, every muscle refusing to obey.
Damn it…
I had thought—no, I had believed—I could handle this. That my skill, my instincts, my sheer determination would be enough to bridge the gap between and him. That even if Aldric was a 6-star warrior, I could outmaneuver him. Outthink him.
And yet—
"This is the difference between us."
His voice was calm. Detached. As if my struggle had been expected. As if my efforts, my blade, my existence—had never mattered to begin with.
A shadow lood over . Slow, deliberate footsteps echoed in the silence, each one carrying the weight of inevitability.
My grip tightened around my estoc, fingers trembling from the effort. Move. I willed my body to respond. Stand up.
Nothing.
I was too weak. Too slow. Too—
[Lucavion!]
Vitaliaras' voice rang in my mind, cutting through the suffocating fog threatening to consu . Sharp. Urgent.
My breath hitched.
And suddenly—
I was there again.
The battlefield.
Fifteen years old. A spear in my hands. The weight of armor that still felt foreign on my shoulders. The deafening blare of the war horn.
Garret. Mateo. Felix. Elias. Clara.
I saw them all.
I saw them die.
—SWOOSH!
Garret's chest was pierced clean through before he even had ti to react.
Mateo's throat was slit open in a blur of green light.
Felix.
Elias.
Clara.
One by one, they were torn from existence. Their deaths weren't grand. Weren't dramatic. They were efficient. rciless.
I had stood there.
Frozen.
My body, refusing to move.
My mind, screaming at to do sothing.
Clara had been the last. Her hands had glowed with mana, her stance unsteady but determined.
"Stay back!" she had shouted, her voice shaking but fierce.
I rembered the knight tilting his head. That condescending smirk. The effortless way his spear had torn through her magic.
And then—
—STAB!
I saw her fall again. The way her fingers twitched, as if reaching for sothing—soone. Her breath, shallow. Her lips parting in silent disbelief.
Her eyes—dim, but searching.
For .
For the person who should have saved her.
I had done nothing.
And Aldric's words now—they weren't new.
I had heard them before.
"You're still alive. Interesting."
The past.
The present.
They blurred together, tangled in the haze of my breaking consciousness.
The knight from back then. The knight standing before now.
It didn't matter which battlefield this was.
The outco was always the sa.
I lost.
I failed.
I was weak.
But—
Was that really the end of it?
My breaths were shallow, my fingers numb. But sowhere deep, in the pit of my soul, sothing burned.
A spark.
No.
My vision blurred, the edges of the world folding in on themselves. The weight of my body was distant, yet the cold bite of reality pressed against my skin like an iron brand. Aldric's figure was a dark blur, his approach slow, deliberate—certain.
His aura flared around him, a violent storm of condensed mana, twisting and crackling with raw, unrestrained power. His [Aura Body]—a technique that forged the physical form into sothing beyond human, beyond mortal. A body sculpted by mana, refined through mastery, creating sothing faster, stronger, superior.
A technique that separated the weak from the strong.
A technique that separated him from .
—Yet, was that truly the case?
For a split second, everything around changed.
The battlefield. The wounds. The crushing weight of my own mortality.
It all faded.
Instead, I stood within a mory.
"Brat," Master's voice was as sharp as the blade he had once put in my hands. I rembered the way his golden eyes flickered as he regarded , arms crossed, his presence as heavy as a mountain. "You're training for the sake of beating soone, aren't you?"
I had said nothing. I didn't need to.
He scoffed, shaking his head before rising to his feet, his expression stern and unyielding. "With the way you are now, you won't be able to defeat him."
A truth that cut deeper than any blade.
I had spent years honing my sword for one reason. One singular purpose.
Revenge.
To kill Aldric. To cut off his head with my own hands.
But was that all?
The mory shattered, and I was back in my broken body, my knees half-bent, my breathing unsteady.
Aldric was almost upon now. His spear glinted under the dim light, his expression unreadable beneath his helm.
I wasn't afraid.
No—I was awake.
What was it I truly lived for?
Not just revenge.
Not just survival.
The impossible.
To stand at the precipice of death, to dance along the line between life and oblivion—and cross it.
To step into the realm where no one believed I could tread.
To achieve the impossible.
The answer had always been there.
And now, at the very edge of death—
I reached for it.
My gaze locked onto Aldric, but I wasn't watching him.
I was watching his Aura Body.
The way it shifted. The way it ford around his fra, layering over his muscles, strengthening every fiber of his being.
'Imitate it.'
And then—
I reached inward.
Deep into the core of my being.
Past the wounds. Past the exhaustion. Past the remnants of a body that had nearly given up.
—And I commanded it to move.
A flicker of light—cold, vast, eternal.
My first core ignited.
[Devourer of Stars.]
A shroud of deep starlight flickered to life around —thin at first, then growing, spreading, weaving itself into sothing more. The void-like energy of my mana didn't crash outward like Aldric's storm.
It was silent.
Subtle.
Not a raging hurricane—
But an all-consuming abyss.
A thin, barely perceptible layer of starlight ford over my skin. Unlike Aldric's [Aura Body], which reinforced his physical form through sheer force, mine did sothing different.
It devoured.
'Not enough.'
The thought slamd through like a vice, my breathing sharp and uneven.
The thin veil of starlight around my body flickered, unstable, struggling to hold. It wasn't enough.
Because it couldn't be enough.
This was why [Aura Body] belonged only to those who had reached the 6-star rank. Because their mana was stable. Because their cores had matured, refined themselves enough to handle the strain.
I was forcing sothing into existence that wasn't ant to be.
I could feel it—like trying to build a bridge out of smoke, like forcing reality to bend in a way it didn't want to.
The structure was there, but the foundation—the power—was insufficient.
And yet—
I had sothing else.
The second core inside , the one that had never truly settled, never truly harmonized—
[Fla of Equinox.]
Life and death. Opposites, contradictions, forces that weren't ant to exist in tandem—yet within , they did.
A raw, untad power that burned at my very soul.
Aldric's spear was nearly upon .
No ti. No hesitation.
Draw it.
I reached inward—again.
And I tore the power from the [Fla of Equinox].
The reaction was instant.
White-hot agony detonated through my veins.
A sensation beyond pain—like my very cells were splitting apart, like my body was being crushed, lted, remade all at once.
The life energy burned—searing through my mana circuits like wildfire, forcing my body to endure.
The death energy devoured—stabilizing, consuming the excess, anchoring the chaotic force before it could destroy .
I felt it all.
Every nerve screaming. Every bone trembling, as if rejecting what I was forcing it to accept.
The two opposing forces did not belong together.
And yet—
I made them belong.
The shroud of starlight around darkened—its edges flickering with the eerie, molten glow of the [Fla of Equinox].
Life and death—lded into form.
Not a true [Aura Body].
Not a technique refined through years of mastery.
This was sothing else.
Sothing raw.
Sothing unnatural.
The [Devourer of Stars] wrapped around my body, no longer just an extension of my mana—
But an extension of my very existence.
Aldric's spear struck—
Yet, now I could see it slowed.
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