Chapter 70: Level Beyond Human

What is happening to me?

"I’m I’m a sword?!"

The transformation hit Alexis like a wave she couldn’t brace for, every sense scrambled and rerouted into something that made no immediate sense.

She scrambled through the combat log on sheer instinct, and the answer surfaced a moment later a skill activation notice, clean and clinical against the chaos of everything else she was feeling.

Warden’s Mandate.

The instant Kael’s hand closed around her hilt, she felt it the grip, steady and sure, wrapping fully around what used to be her own body.

Something in her chest clenched tight at the contact, an unfamiliar current running through her that she had no ready name for.

Before she could even begin to process it, power surged through the connection between them vast, overwhelming, flooding outward from her into him in a current that left her reeling, a startled sound slipping loose before she could stop it.

On the other end of that same current, Kael felt the opposite half of the exchange raw, blistering heat pouring into him from the blade in his grip, his own stats climbing in real time as the energy settled into him.

In pure numbers, the choice hadn’t been obvious. Thunder Roc or Wraithlord both would have handed him a stronger attribute transfer through this exact skill Legendary bloodlines carried more raw weight than anything Alexis’s sheet could currently offer.

But neither of them was a sword.

And a sword was the one weapon Kael had spent a lifetime mastering before Beastlord had ever entered the picture the exact discipline that had once earned him the title of the server’s strongest melee talent, full stop.

Holding her now, blade humming faintly with contained heat, something long dormant stirred back to life in his chest. Pride.

Certainty. The particular, singular feeling of a weapon fitting a hand it was always meant for.

He poured a fresh pulse of energy down through the connection, and the blade shuddered in response Alexis, bound inside it, clenching her teeth against a sensation with no good comparison anywhere in her experience.

Kael raised his free hand first, triggering Bloodbind and tethering himself to Void Leviathan, then strode forward without hesitation, closing the distance to the Hollowgale Tyrant in a handful of clean, economical steps.

Fiery Combo.

Flame wrapped the blade’s edge as it cut through the air in three rapid, overlapping strikes, carving three deep gashes across the Tyrant’s armored lower body.

-337

-351

-332

A single skill, over a thousand points of damage. A clear, immediate demonstration of exactly how far his output had climbed, fused now with eighty percent of everything Alexis brought to the table.

The strike enraged the Tyrant instantly. A scorpion pincer whistled toward him, fast enough to end most fights outright.

Kael wasn’t there when it landed.

He moved like something half a step ahead of its own momentum, footwork too clean to track cleanly, already circling wide behind the Tyrant’s flank before the pincer finished its arc.

His blade came down hard across its exposed back, and by the time the Tyrant spun to retaliate, he’d already relocated again vanishing from one blind angle only to reappear in the next.

That’s Phantom Stride?!

Still bound to the blade, Alexis’s awareness hadn’t dimmed with the transformation, and recognition hit her almost as hard as the fusion itself had.

Phantom Stride was simple in concept reading an opponent’s next motion and repositioning ahead of it, staying perpetually inside their blind spot, denying any clean lock-on.

She’d used a version of that exact footwork herself, tonight, in the earlier stretch of this same fight.

Her own execution had carried real flaws, though moments of hesitation, half-steps that cost her tempo.

What Kael was doing wasn’t a rough approximation of the technique. It was the technique, perfected past anything she’d ever managed, every motion carrying total, unshakeable conviction.

Stride and timing locked together so precisely that the Tyrant simply couldn’t locate him long enough to land a single meaningful hit.

I used to watch every match he ever played. I thought I knew exactly how good he was.

He was holding back the entire time, wasn’t he.

The realization landed hard, unsettling something she’d taken for granted since she was young enough to hang his poster on her wall.

What exactly am I looking at right now?

Another pulse of searing energy answered her thought before she could chase it further, Kael channeling a fresh surge of power straight down the bond between them.

Flame erupted along the blade’s edge, and Alexis felt her own essence shudder in response to the demand.

He swept the blade through a wide arc, and crimson fire bloomed outward from the strike, curling and coalescing mid-swing into something unmistakably shaped like a bird of flame, wings spread wide as it engulfed the Tyrant whole.

Fire Phoenix Slash.

Between the Primordial Bloodline’s doubled growth, gear that already sat well above anything a normal player could field, and now an eighty percent transfer of Alexis’s own considerable attributes layered on top of all of it.

Kael’s numbers in this exact moment sat close enough to the berserking Tyrant’s to make the fight an honest contest rather than a mismatch.

He called the rest of his companions back without a second thought, clearing the field entirely.

I’ve got this alone. No reason to split credit for a fight this close to finished, and no reason to risk another companion eating damage that belonged to him now.

What followed over the next several minutes was less a fight and more a demonstration Kael folding Phantom Stride into something new, a flowing, circling pattern that curved and doubled back on itself like a serpent finding its rhythm.

Serpent’s Coil. Footwork and blade work fused into one continuous, unbroken motion, every strike landing clean, every parry arriving exactly on time, no wasted movement anywhere in the sequence.

Outmatched on raw attributes going in, the Hollowgale Tyrant found itself completely unable to close that gap through anything resembling skill. It never managed a single clean hit for the rest of the exchange.

Footage of this, posted anywhere public, would have functioned as a flawless masterclass in melee swordplay the kind of clip serious players studied frame by frame for years.

Alexis, master swordswoman in her own right, found herself utterly swept up in it despite everything else happening to her tonight.

The shock of the transformation faded into the background, replaced by something closer to reverence, every motion Kael made imprinting itself on her awareness like she was absorbing the technique directly through the bond holding them together.

Time lost its shape entirely somewhere in the middle of that stretch.

Then, with a final, decisive roar, Kael drove the crimson blade she’d become straight through the center of the Hollowgale Tyrant’s chest.

For one suspended heartbeat, nothing moved.

Flame licked along the exposed length of the blade, the Tyrant’s own roar catching somewhere in its throat as the strike found exactly what it had been aimed at from the very first step of the exchange, minutes ago, before the Tyrant had ever realized the fight was already decided.