Chapter 297: Ikar’s Fear

The air inside the sunken necropolis felt heavy as the competing auras filled the courtyard.

The four bio-mechanical juggernauts didn’t roar or hesitate. They moved together, their heavy suits hissing as they advanced. Cracks in their armor leaked streams of glowing blue and crimson Qi.

Two of the brutes charged at the same time, their footsteps cracking the ancient limestone beneath them.

"Intercepting left!" Zero called out.

He dropped from the edge of the sandstone terrace, his cloak trailing behind him. He landed between the two advancing vanguards, his boots sliding slightly across the sand.

The purple gemstone in his sword’s guard flared with violet light. He drew his longsword in one smooth motion, silver-white Qi immediately surrounding the blade.

The first juggernaut swung a massive fist covered in jagged bone straight at Zero’s head.

Zero didn’t retreat.

He shifted his foot and raised his blade, catching the attack with the flat of the sword.

CLANG-SHIIIING!

The impact sent sand flying across the courtyard, but Zero redirected the brute’s punch to the side. He turned with the movement and swung his sword across the juggernaut’s armored shoulder.

The silver blade cut through the joint.

Dark blood and glowing fluid spilled onto the ancient stones, but the vanguard didn’t react. It immediately raised its remaining arm to attack again.

"They feel no pain!" Selena warned from the upper terrace.

She raised her sidearm and fired three shots into the exposed area of its neck. The bullets damaged the creature’s nerves and gave Zero the opening he needed.

He drove his silver-coated blade straight through its chest.

Across the courtyard, the other two juggernauts charged up the stone steps toward Selena and Julie.

"Oh, absolutely not!" Julie screamed from behind a ruined pillar, frantically moving her camera while pressing herself against the sandstone. "Look at the shoulders on those things! They look like weaponized refrigerators! Selena, tell me you have a bazooka in that bag!"

"Shut up and stay behind the stone!" Selena barked.

She ejected the empty magazine and loaded a fresh one.

"Vixen, take the steps!" Nicholas ordered, his eyes still fixed on B.

"On it!"

Vixen blurred across the courtyard, disappearing and reappearing through short spatial jumps. Her white cape snapped behind her as she appeared above the charging brutes.

Spatial Fold.

She swept both hands across the air.

The space beneath the two juggernauts folded inward. The stone steps suddenly disappeared beneath their feet, and both monsters dropped twenty feet into an old drainage trench beneath the ruins.

Before they could climb out, Vixen snapped her fingers.

A massive slab of collapsed sandstone appeared above the trench and dropped.

CRUNCH.

The stone sealed the pit, trapping the two vanguards beneath the ancient rubble.

"Two down!" Vixen shouted as she landed on the broken railing. She was breathing heavily after using so much of her spatial power. "The ground is yours, Nicholas!"

Nicholas took his first step forward.

The seven-foot broadsword made from black Void energy rested in his right hand as he walked toward the center of the courtyard, where the glowing vault containing the Azure Storm Stone stood beneath the shattered obelisk.

B was standing at the entrance.

His body was deteriorating, but the madness in his eyes had completely taken over.

The emerald shard in his chest no longer pulsed steadily. Jagged green energy constantly jumped from it, burning the flesh around his collarbone. At the same time, streams of bright azure Qi poured from the cracked seal beneath his feet and flowed into his hands.

The two energies were fighting inside B’s body, tearing small openings in his skin as glowing Qi leaked from them.

"Look at you... walking like an emperor," B snarled, his voice mixed with the rumble of thunder. "You think you’re the master? You think because you hold that stolen black power, you’re untouchable?!"

B raised both arms toward the stormy sky.

BOOM!

The cyclone above the Qattara Depression suddenly tightened.

A massive column of wind and lightning came down from the sky and struck B directly in the chest.

The blast shattered the remaining sandstone pillars nearby. A powerful shockwave swept across the courtyard, flattening the sand and nearly throwing Julie and Selena from the upper terrace.

B’s body expanded slightly as more unstable energy filled him.

His right arm, which Nicholas had dislocated earlier, suddenly snapped back into place. Blue lightning ran through the joint and forced the damaged bones back together.

"I don’t need a system!" B roared, his eyes glowing bright cyan. "I have the entire sky in my veins!"

Spatial Fold.

B disappeared.

A moment later, he appeared only an inch from Nicholas’s right side, his fist surrounded by a violent spiral of wind and compressed gravity.

The attack was powerful enough to tear through heavy armor.

Nicholas didn’t blink.

He didn’t even turn his head.

In his previous life, he had faced plenty of men who believed overwhelming power could make up for poor technique.

They always died the same way.

Gravity Distortion.

Nicholas released a burst of gravity from his left foot, firmly anchoring himself to the ground beneath the sand.

At the same time, he shifted his upper body only a few inches.

B’s attack passed harmlessly beside him, barely catching the edge of his coat.

Nicholas countered immediately.

He didn’t swing the massive broadsword.

The weapon had only been a distraction.

Nicholas dissolved it into black mist with a thought, freeing his right hand.

His fingers formed a rigid spear-hand and struck B directly in the throat.

THWACK.

B’s breath caught in his throat.

His cyan aura flickered as his breathing was interrupted.

Nicholas stepped inside B’s guard and hooked his foot behind the clone’s ankle.

With his left hand, he caught B’s descending elbow and twisted it outward. His right elbow then slammed into B’s collarbone.

CRACK-SNAP.

The bone broke.

"Raw power is just noise without precision," Nicholas whispered beside B’s ear.

B’s eyes widened in shock.

But the clone’s survival instinct took over.

He gathered every bit of the unstable energy inside his body and released it in one desperate attack.

"DIE WITH ME!" B screamed through his damaged throat.

Green earth energy and blue lightning erupted from the shard in his chest, expanding into a huge sphere around them.

Nicholas didn’t retreat.

Plague Touch.

Black Void energy covered both of his forearms, forming thick, solid gauntlets.

He drove both hands directly into the center of the explosion, pressing them against B’s cracked sternum.

Gravity Inversion.

Nicholas didn’t push the energy away.

Instead, he forced it inward.

The expanding sphere began collapsing between his hands, shrinking smaller and smaller until the green and blue energy was compressed into a tiny point.

It had nowhere to escape.

The energy exploded back through B’s own body.

BOOM!

Every major Qi pathway in B’s torso ruptured at once.

The clone convulsed as the cyan storm around him shattered and dissolved into harmless sparks that drifted away into the desert wind.

Nicholas pulled his right fist back.

Black plague energy condensed around his knuckles into a sharp point.

He drove the punch into the emerald shard embedded in B’s chest.

CRACK.

The ancient crystal didn’t break.

Instead, the connection between it and B’s heart was violently severed.

The green light inside the shard disappeared.

B’s eyes rolled back as his body went limp.

He collapsed onto the cracked limestone, completely motionless.

Above them, the cyclone over the Qattara Depression began to break apart. The clouds scattered across the night sky, leaving the desert beneath them quiet.

The courtyard fell silent.

On the upper terrace, Julie slowly lowered her camera, her mouth hanging open.

"He... he just dismantled an S-rank storm god with his bare hands. In four moves. Four."

Selena released a long breath and holstered her weapon as she walked down the stone steps with the containment case.

Zero followed, his sword already cleaned and sheathed, while Vixen leaned against a pillar and rubbed her temples, exhausted from using so much spatial power.

Nicholas stood over B, his breathing steady despite the fight.

He knelt beside the fallen clone and reached toward the emerald shard, now lying loose inside B’s damaged chest.

Before Nicholas could pick it up, the ground beneath the courtyard gave a deep, grinding groan.

Everyone froze.

It wasn’t another attack.

Something beneath the ruins was moving.

Under the shattered vault, an ancient mechanism began turning. The grinding sound echoed through the entire necropolis and shook the ground beneath their feet.

Selena stopped halfway down the stairs.

"What is that? The vault was cracked, wasn’t it?"

Zero’s hand immediately returned to his sword.

His eyes widened as he looked toward the vault.

"Look at the runes. They aren’t opening."

In the center of the underground chamber, the massive circular stone door didn’t slide aside to reveal the Azure Storm Stone.

Instead, the ancient door began sinking straight down.

A huge, dark shaft opened beneath it, disappearing thousands of feet into the earth.

Then something erupted from the darkness.

A brilliant golden pulse shot upward from the abyss, filling the chamber with light.

It wasn’t green like Earth.

It wasn’t red like Fire.

And it wasn’t blue like Storm.

It was pure white.

A low mechanical voice echoed through the limestone, vibrating through the chamber and even through their bodies.

"BEACON TWO OF SEVEN DESTABILIZED. GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE PROTOCOL INITIATED. HARVEST COMMENCEMENT CLOCK ADVANCED TO SEVENTY-TWO HOURS."

High above the desert, the clear night sky suddenly tore open.

Five glowing, needle-like objects broke through the upper atmosphere, their burning trails streaking across the sky like falling stars.

They descended toward five different continents across the globe.