Everyone stood still.
A silence, deep and suffocating, blanketed the battlefield like a heavy fog.
Even the remnants of the earlier battle—embers drifting through the air, dust swirling over craters, and faint vibrations from the retreating Dreadworms—seed to hush in reverence for what was about to happen.
The floating swords behind Elius began to glow faintly, vibrating with that low, tallic hum.
Their tips trembled in the air, as if alive, as if waiting. And the mont Elius took a single step forward—
Soilandor’s eyes widened.
Though his face was wrapped in layers of cracked linen and dried, flesh-like sand, sothing unmistakably human flashed in his expression.
Surprise.
"What?" the ancient mummy rasped, his voice just slightly tighter than before. "You’re actually—?"
Before he could finish, Clint stood up with a painful groan and shouted, "Elius! Don’t fall for his tricks! That thing’s playing you!"
His eyes were bloodshot, his voice hoarse, but the desperation was raw and real.
"He’s baiting you, man! We’ve been hamring him with everything—and nothing worked! That bastard doesn’t get hurt like us. He feeds off this!"
Balkan raised his head, a single tremor running down his arm as he braced his body against the crumbling ground.
"Elius... brother, please," Balkan said, calm but strained. "Don’t let his honeyed words reach your heart. His kind—these ancient elental soldiers—they twist what we say. They twist what you feel. Even if he flatters us, even if he praises us for using Earth energy... we are nothing to them but pawns, tools, insects scurrying on borrowed dirt."
Monkaar, still kneeling, raised his chin slowly. The lines on his face pulsed faintly with his last remaining vibrations.
"He’s not a friend. He’s not a rival. He’s a construct, Elius. A relic. Built for a war that never ended. If he talks of camaraderie, it’s only to prepare your neck for the noose. Don’t trust it. Please..."
The three of them—exhausted, battered, but filled with a fierce loyalty—spoke with unwavering respect. They didn’t bark orders at Elius. They didn’t demand obedience. They spoke with faith in his leadership, with a sincerity that could only be born through hardship shared and battles survived.
But Soilandor... simply sneered.
His voice curled with disdain as he chuckled dryly, arms still folded across his chest.
"Hear them, Elius. Hear their trembling words. Hear how they hide their fear behind noble phrases. ’Don’t trust him.’ ’Don’t fall for his tricks.’"
He spat a laugh, dry and rasping like a sandstorm whispering through a broken grave.
"Children. Babbling nonsense."
He turned to the three of them, eyes glowing faintly beneath the veil of his age-old wrappings.
"You speak of trust and betrayal... but you barely understand the soil you walk on. You fear , yet you dare to advise the one whose heart flares like a furnace."
He turned back to Elius and shrugged with almost theatrical flair.
"Let them bark and whimper if they must. You, at least, understand."
Elius said nothing at first. His face remained hard. His brows remained furrowed. The anger had not left him, nor the bitterness in his mouth, but his gaze never left Soilandor.
"This is my decision," Elius finally said, his voice like iron scraping stone.
Soilandor smiled slowly. "Well said."
He opened his arms slightly, palms open.
"Then we are agreed."
He looked back to Balkan and Monkaar with a lazy smirk.
"Co now, don’t scowl like that. We shall be comrades soday. You, and I, and he—our bond will be etched in the roots of the earth. We will drink from the sa dust, fight in the sa storms. You’ll see."
His words were mockingly warm, like poison honey coating shattered glass.
Then Soilandor faced Elius again, extended his arms wide, and lowered his stance slightly.
"Here I am."
He raised one foot, and then the other, deliberately grounding himself like an anchor driven deep into the soil. He readied his posture and tilted his head up, as though preparing for a divine blow.
"Do it. Throw down like you did Lava Scissor. Let’s see what burns in that heart of yours."
But Elius... didn’t move.
Not imdiately.
Instead, he slowly lowered his swords. The glow of the blades remained, but the hum softened.
He raised his chin and stared into Soilandor’s face. Sothing cold, sothing ancient, stirred in his words.
"You’re arrogant," Elius said.
Soilandor blinked, slightly confused by the pause.
"Are the soldiers of that damned God all as naturally arrogant as you?"
Soilandor shrugged, dismissively. "Who knows? We are made in his vision."
Elius’s lip curled.
"Your God... dares to claim the earth? Claims dominion over the ground beneath us?"
He stepped forward.
One step.
Another.
His voice rose—not a shout, but a presence, like the slow grinding of tectonic plates beneath the ocean.
"You claim that the Earth belongs to him... that the dirt, the stone, the bones beneath our feet all answer to your so-called Pantheon?"
He laughed.
It was a harsh sound.
"No."
Elius’s eyes glowed faintly. The air behind him twisted with invisible heat, the swords subtly resonating with his rising fury.
"Let tell you sothing. The Earth I stand on... the ground beneath my feet..."
He raised a hand and clenched it tightly, his fingers curling as if grabbing the soil itself.
"This Earth is not yours."
The wind howled.
"This Earth is mine."
His voice echoed across the battlefield.
"You speak of the Pantheon like it’s sothing eternal. But this land—New York—this city of iron and blood, of sacrifice and stubborn hope, it is tied to . It’s not just stone. It’s not just dirt. It’s the heartbeat of people who rise after every collapse, who build towers out of rubble and forge miracles in fire."
He stepped forward again.
"When I fall, this land catches . When I rise, it rises with . And if you think that you can stand atop it without consequence..."
His voice dropped to a quiet whisper, thick with warning.
"You’re a fool."
He opened both hands now, his aura flaring as wind curled around him, drawn by so deeper force.
"You said that I couldn’t hurt you. That even if I slam you into the Earth, it wouldn’t matter."
Elius’s grin returned—cold, wicked, unyielding.
"But I don’t need to hurt you."
He pointed downward.
"The Earth will."
Then he raised his gaze.
"And this Earth—my Earth—doesn’t betray ."
A long silence followed. Even the wind seed to hold its breath.
Soilandor’s eye-sockets twitched.
Then he muttered, clearly annoyed, "Don’t say so many fucking words."
He stretched his arms out and barked—
"We shall see once you’ve done it, boy!"
He slamd one foot into the dirt.
"Hurry!"
And the battlefield shook once more.
However, deep within Elius’ mind, behind the sharp glint of his cold gaze and the poised stillness of his stance, his thoughts raced like a violent current beneath calm waters.
The system would work.
It had to.
The last ti, against Lava Scissor, the results were undeniable.
The mont he slamd that monstrous elental into the Earth, sothing responded.
The ground itself had risen to assist him, responding with a violent surge of anti-elental force that even Lava Scissor, in all his molten arrogance, hadn’t anticipated. But Elius knew—it wasn’t the Earth reacting.
It was the System.
The cultivation system. That strange, unknowable force that only he could see. That obeyed rules unlike any superhero power or Esper mutation in this world.
If he failed now... if it turned out that the System couldn’t recreate that mont, or if Soilandor was sohow resistant to it—he would die. And his companions... no, his party—Clint, Balkan, and Monkaar—would be torn apart.
But there was another danger. A long-term one.
If it worked...
If it worked, and Soilandor went down like Lava Scissor did—then every elental being he fought in the future would be warned.
They’d fear his slam.
They’d avoid close combat.
They’d strike from afar, from the skies, from the shadows.
And his only proven trump card would be reduced to a known tactic. Predictable. Easy to counter.
He couldn’t allow that.
He needed to make them think it was the ground, not him.
That the reason Lava Scissor was defeated had nothing to do with the slam and everything to do with the blessed soil of New York.
He had to trick them into believing that it was the location—the sanctity of this battlefield—that lent him power.
If they believed that, then one day, when they dragged him into a different terrain, into their ho or stronghold, they would think he was harmless.
And he’d destroy them when their guard was down.
So Elius let the tension grow. He let Soilandor prepare for a slam, visibly bracing himself like he was about to be hamred down like the last elental.
Then—
"Are you ready?" Elius asked, his voice snapping like a whip. "Since you’re so ready to die... so be it!"
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