Chapter 301: Taking the Control (Part 2)
All at once, attention snapped to Adyr.
He had struck at Kharom—scion of a top race—and as one of the realm’s top geniuses himself, the shock of it outstripped even Thalira Luna’s audacious move a moment before. Curiosity and alarm bent every gaze towards him.
A duel between a once-hidden rising star and a seasoned prodigy renowned for ruthless, ironclad defense was bound to become the day’s main event.
Even Thalira halted mid-assault on the Gorathim to look.
Her relaxed, beautiful brows drew together, a fine crease of displeasure cutting her poise. She had not anticipated losing the arena’s focus, and quiet anger settled into her eyes.
Good. Looks like I’ve pulled the attention to me, Adyr observed, satisfied as he felt the center of gravity on the field tilt.
He had two reasons for a flashy opening on Kharom.
First, he needed to siphon the crowd’s attention away from Thalira, who was overpowering Brakhtar with her insane speed.
Her innate talent grew stronger in direct proportion to the eyes on her; deny her the gaze, and you shave off the excess power from her.
Equalizing her power with Brakhtar would stretch their fight. For Adyr, the longer that clash dragged on, the better: two top races holding each other down and bleeding time and numbers suited his interests perfectly.
Second, he had to ease the pressure bearing down on the Aqualeth. Hitting the Umbraen leader directly forced their line to recoil and reorient.
Kharom’s intent was obvious: after crushing the Aqualeth, he would come for Adyr with full force and settle the score for good.
If Adyr let that timetable stand, he would soon be facing not only Kharom but the man’s 60+-Practitioner detachment. That was a pass he had no intention of receiving.
So he chose the cleanest counter: strike before being struck. Seize tempo. With a single decisive blow, wrench the battlefield’s axis into his hands.
The result was immediate.
With the Umbraen now also drawn into their own crisis and too busy to police the edges, the "lesser" races moved like water finding seams—quick, strategic bursts toward the opponents they had already marked, opportunistic engagements flashing to life across the marble until the arena became a true battlefield.
"His control of the situation is as good as his control of his swords," Lucen observed from atop Collossith, his face carrying a rare note of approval.
"Looks like he’s not only planning to enter the top 200," Liora Virell added, arms folded across her chest as her small frame sat composed while her eyes tracked every detail, "but also planning to decide who else gets in."
In all the Outer Region, perhaps only Liora could read Adyr’s intentions at a glance; she understood the man more than anyone.
And yet—even with that insight—she felt herself standing in his shadow whenever the matter was Adyr. Each time he revealed a new facet, the shadow grew wider, dimming the edges of her perspective, and he became, to her, ever more mysterious and unpredictable.
Meanwhile, Mirela didn’t even comment, watching the scene like her favorite series, her colorful eyes focused on the figure floating on top of the arena as if he were commanding everyone beneath his boots.
"YOU DAMN RAT!"
The roar—raw, ragged, unmistakably furious—splintered thought and swung every gaze to its source.
At the very lip of the marble platform, Kharom hauled himself upright. One step more, and he would have gone over.
Dust filmed his dark leathers, smearing their shine; fury burned through the mess of it, steadying his stance as he lifted his head.
A single sword cut ran from left shoulder to right hip, clean and merciless.
Black blood welled in slow beads and hissed where it hit the stone, as if it could eat through marble. Even so, the wound was already knitting—muscle drawing tight beneath the skin, healing fast.
His body would mend, but his pride would not.
The memory of being blasted through the air—skipping across the floor like a tossed pebble—flickered in his eyes, bright as shame and twice as hot.
"Hey, hey, why the insults?" Adyr’s chuckle slid across the distance, light and needling. "You can’t be that angry over a small wound."
"I was kind enough to grant you a little more time to live," Kharom snarled, face twisting as his voice shook with fury, "but it seems you are impatient to die." His pupil-less black eyes caught the light and held it, hard and bright.
What enraged him was not only the unseen strike or the cut it left. It was the replay in his head—the helpless arc, the tumble, the stuttering bounce along white stone. Pain would pass; the humiliation would not.
As Kharom’s open wound sealed, his body began to change.
Ripples shivered over his sickly white skin—subtle at first, then rolling—until his whole frame seemed to bubble, as if brought to a boil.
In the next breath, he collapsed into a liquid state: flesh turned to a black, caustic slurry that smoked wherever it kissed the marble, etching pits with a sharp hiss.
Then the mass surged forward, lancing toward Adyr like a thrown tide.
Oh, he’s using that movement skill. Adyr recognized it at once; he had seen Kharom use the same technique when escaping from Liora.
From what he’d seen and what he knew, this was a combination of two Spark Skills: one Spark converted the body into corrosive fluid; the other granted cohesion and steering in that liquid state, then knit him back together on command later.
Watching him flow, vector, and reform, the crowd also couldn’t help but praise his mastery of Spark control and body.
It was similar to Adyr’s own two-Spark sword slash, but with a crucial difference.
Adyr’s combo worked by triggering both Skills in true simultaneity, fusing them into a single strike. Kharom, by contrast, layered his—first the conversion, and only after it fully took hold did he add control, riding the sequence to full effect.
"It looks like that’ll hurt if it touches me."
Watching the corrosive dark liquid tear toward him, Adyr sprang into motion at once.
He slid his blade back into stance; Sonic Burst gathered at the tip first, then spilled down the edge until the whole sword thrummed inside a tight, ringing halo.
At the same time, he triggered Burst Hop, packing kinetic force into muscle and tendon—shoulder, triceps, forearm, wrist—each link tightening as energy stacked.
Air shivered around the blade. Grit skittered across the marble at his feet.
In a few heartbeats, the charge peaked. Adyr let it all go in a single cut, releasing the compressed power as a sword slash that screamed through the air and hurled to the onrushing corrosive mass.
BOOM!
The crescent-shaped shockwave slammed into the corrosive dark liquid, scooping it up like a broom and hurling it back across the arena.
It smashed into the marble with a thunderclap, bursting into hissing spatters and carving another long, sword-cut scar through the hard white stone as vapor curled up in pale ribbons.
The impact forced Kharom out of his liquid state; before his body could disperse, he snapped back into flesh to defend—only to be blasted backward again, skipping across the floor a second time.