Chapter 1093: The Death of Valeria
The explosion didn’t sound like a bomb. It sounded like a gasp.
A blinding, white shockwave of pure mana and pulverized steel expanded outward from the point of impact. It wasn’t hot; it was cold—the chill of a soul abruptly vacating its vessel.
I was thrown backward. The force of the detonation snapped the bones in my forearms, flinging through the air like a ragdoll. I tumbled end-over-end, the sky spinning wildly around —grey clouds, black dreadnoughts, purple miasma.
I slamd into the invisible barrier of the atmosphere, skidding to a halt miles away.
My hands were empty.
No. Not empty.
I looked down. My fingers were still curled tight, locked in a rigor mortis grip around a hilt wrapped in burnt leather. But above the crossguard, there was nothing. No steel. No edge. Just a jagged, molten stump of tal that glowed with a dying orange heat.
“Valeria…” I choked out, the na tasting like ash in my mouth.
The air in front of shimred.
The dust of the sword—millions of particles of super-compressed mithril and spirit—didn’t disperse in the wind. They lingered. They swirled, drawn together by the last vestiges of the loyalty that had bound the blade to my soul.
Slowly, silently, they coalesced into a form.
It wasn’t a sword.
Floating in the void before was a woman. She was tall, encased in the spectral armor of a knight from an era long forgotten. Her helt was removed, revealing a face scarred by ancient battles, frad by hair that flowed like liquid rcury.
She was translucent, made of fading light and mory, but her eyes were sharp. They were the sa steel-grey as the blade had been.
It was the first ti I had ever seen her true form.
I reached out, my trembling hand passing through the space where her shoulder should be. “I broke you.”
Valeria smiled. It wasn’t a sad smile. It was the proud, fierce grin of a vanguard who had held the line.
“You used ,” she corrected, her voice echoing not in the air, but in the center of my chest. “A weapon’s tragedy is not to break, Arthur. It is to rust.”
She looked down at her own fading hands, then back at .
“I was a corpse before you found ,” she whispered. “An echo trapped in cold iron, waiting for a wielder who understood the weight of a life. You gave a second chance to fight. You gave a dead woman a purpose.”
Her form began to drift apart, the particles losing their cohesion. The wind of the upper atmosphere was reclaiming her.
“Do not hesitate,” she commanded softly. “The Sovereign does not mourn the sword. He is the sword.”
She raised a spectral hand in a final salute.
“Goodbye, Master.”
The wind gusted.
She shattered. The silhouette dissolved into sparkling dust, scattering into the endless grey sky, leaving alone with a broken hilt and a hole in my soul where a friend used to be.
I stared at the empty space, my heart hollow.
Then, a shadow fell over .
“Are you done saying goodbye to the cutlery?”
I froze.
Tenebria was floating ten ters away.
She looked monstrous. The slash had worked—partially. A jagged, bleeding wound ran from her ear down to her collarbone. It was deep enough to expose the white sheen of the Dragon Bone beneath. Black blood oozed from it, sizzling against her skin.
She wasn’t healing it. The Gift of Gluttony was trying to close the wound, but the remnant of The Grey I had left in the cut was rejecting the regeneration. I had scarred her.
But I hadn’t killed her.
And now, I had nothing left to fight her with.
Tenebria touched the wound on her neck. She looked at the blood on her fingers, then looked at . Her eyes were Red (Wrath).
“You hurt ,” she said. Her voice was low, vibrating with a terrifying mixture of pain and adrenaline. “You actually hurt .”
She clenched her fist. The air around her cracked.
“But you broke your toy doing it.”
She moved.
There was no martial art this ti. No theft of technique. Just brutal, overwhelming retaliation.
She appeared in front of .
I tried to raise my arms to block, crossing the broken hilt in a desperate guard.
Tenebria punched through my guard.
Her fist slamd into my chest.
CRACK-CRUNCH.
My ribs didn’t just break; they disintegrated. The force of the blow caved in my chest cavity, driving bone shards into my lungs.
I didn’t fly backward. She grabbed my wrist with her other hand, holding in place so she could hit again.
“You think you can cut the Overlord?” she scread, driving a knee into my stomach.
WHAM.
I vomited blood. My vision blackened.
“You think a human, a mage, a tourist in my reality can kill ?”
She released my wrist and grabbed my face. Her fingers, reinforced by the Chitin armor, dug into my skull. She lifted up like a doll.
I hung there, feet dangling over the miles of empty air, staring into eyes that held the weight of seven hells.
“You fought well,” Tenebria said, her voice dropping to a cold whisper. “For a creature made of glass.”
She pulled her arm back. The Miasma in the atmosphere swirled around her fist, condensing into a point of absolute density.
She didn’t aim for my head. She aid for my core.
“Go down.”
She punched .
It wasn’t a hit. It was a launch.
I felt my spine shatter.
The world blurred into a tunnel of wind and pain. I was blasted downward, breaking the sound barrier instantly. I tore through the clouds, leaving a hole in the storm.
The ocean below rushed up to et .
I hit the water with the force of a teor.
The impact vaporized millions of gallons of seawater instantly. A tsunami of steam and spray rose up, masking the crash. I didn’t stop at the surface. I plunged through the depths, the pressure crushing what was left of my body, until I slamd into the seabed.
Mud and rock exploded.
I lay there in the darkness of the ocean floor, buried in a crater of silt.
My body was ruined. My arms were twisted at impossible angles. My chest was a crater. My Mana channels were ruptured, leaking blue light into the black water.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
I could only feel.
I felt the cold water pressing down. I felt the fading warmth of the broken hilt still clutched in my hand.
And I felt her.
High above, miles away in the sky, Tenebria was descending. She wasn’t rushing. She was sinking slowly, savoring the victory.
I had thrown everything at her. I had used the strongest sword in the world. I had used the Tenth Circle. I had used the Miasma.
And I had lost.
‘Valeria…’ I thought, my mind drifting toward the darkness. ‘I’m sorry.’
The water around began to boil.
Not from heat. From presence.
Tenebria landed on the surface of the ocean. She didn’t sink. She stood on the waves, her aura parting the water, creating a tunnel of air all the way down to the seabed where I lay.
She looked down at from the surface, a god peering into a grave.
“Is that it?” her voice bood down the tunnel, amplified by the water walls. “Is that the extent of the Sovereign?”
I tried to move my finger. It twitched.
I wasn’t dead.
Akasha’s blood… the Blood of the Overlord… it was still in my system. It was fighting to keep alive. It was eating the damage, stitching my heart back together with threads of chaotic Miasma.
But without a weapon, without a focus, I was just a broken man in a hole.
Tenebria sighed. I saw her turn away, dismissing .
“Boring.”
She began to walk toward the coastline, toward the human cities she intended to conquer.
I lay in the mud, staring at the broken hilt in my hand.
Use .
The thought wasn’t Valeria’s. It was mine. But it felt… older.
I looked at the hilt. Then I looked at my hand. The flesh was fused to the tal.
I didn’t need a sword to channel the Grey. I didn’t need steel to define the boundary.
Akasha had said it. To defeat Everything, you must use Nothing.
I let go of the hilt.
It drifted away into the silt.
My hand was empty.
And in that emptiness, for the first ti, I felt the true weight of the Sovereignty.
Reviews
All reviews (0)