Chapter 211: Breaking Point

Ryzek’s boots scraped against cracked stone as another heavy impact drove him backward.

He killed the Colossus in front of him with a short, brutal strike through the damaged neck plating, then immediately had to turn and catch the next attack on a reinforced forearm. The force numbed his arm from wrist to shoulder. He redirected it, stepped inside the beast’s reach, and drove an energy-coated knee into the joint gap under its arm. Bone cracked. The creature staggered. He finished it before it could recover.

Two more took its place before the body hit the ground.

The flood had not slowed.

Silver-armored forms pressed in from every direction, their bloodshot eyes the only clear points in the pitch black. Ryzek’s breathing had grown rough. Blood ran freely down his side and along one leg. His left arm answered with a clear delay now, the cumulative damage finally slowing his responses. The crystalline ridges under his skin still held, but they no longer absorbed impacts as cleanly as before.

He compressed what energy he had left into an even tighter cycle and kept moving.

A Colossus came in high. He ducked the sweep and answered with a rising burst that cracked its jaw plating. Another slammed into him from the right before he could fully reset. The collision lifted him off his feet and threw him across the broken ground. He hit hard, rolled, and forced himself upright in time to block the follow-up strike. The block held, but the shock traveled straight through his damaged ribs and forced a sharp breath from his lungs.

Too many.

The thought settled without panic. It was simply the reality of the space around him. For every beast he dropped, more filled the gap. Their coordination had improved as the fight dragged on. They no longer overextended as freely. They struck in overlapping sequences designed to deny him clean recovery windows. The darkness made each adjustment harder.

Ryzek killed another with a precise thrust through a joint he had already damaged in a previous exchange. The effort left his vision briefly unstable. He blinked the sensation away and reset his stance. Amber energy still coated his arms, but the glow had grown thinner. Continuous output at this level was draining him faster than any single fight he had taken before.

A larger Colossus broke through the front line.

It hit harder than the others. The first exchange drove Ryzek back five full steps. The second nearly broke his guard completely. He avoided a clean third impact by dropping low and driving both hands into the beast’s lead knee. Plating split. The leg buckled. Before he could capitalize, two smaller Colossi closed from the flanks and forced him to disengage.

He was being worn down by inches.

Blood loss. Slowing reactions. Thinning energy. The test did not need a single decisive blow to end him. It only needed to maintain this pressure long enough for his body to fail under the weight of it.

Ryzek exhaled once through his teeth and pulled everything he had left into a dense sheath around both arms. The glow strengthened for a moment, sharp and controlled. He stopped giving ground.

The next Colossus that came in met a full-power strike that shattered the plating over its chest and dropped it in a single exchange. He moved through the opening, killed the one behind it with a close-range burst to the neck, and took a heavy scrape across the back as a third clipped him on the way past. Pain flared white-hot along his spine. He stayed on his feet.

More eyes opened in the dark ahead.

The line of silver bodies had no visible end. They kept coming, step by step, strike by strike, filling every space he cleared. Ryzek’s damaged arm hung slightly lower than it should. His breathing was harsh. The amber light along his arms flickered under the strain of forced compression.

He set his stance again, eyes narrowed against the black, and prepared to meet the next wave.

The flood showed no sign of ending.

Power Scale / Cultivation Realms (Quick Reminder)

Foundation Realm (Layers 1–9): Body forging, no external Qi.

Circuit Awakening Realm (Early–Peak): First Qi loop, internal bursts.

Core Condensation Realm (Early–Peak): External Qi release, short flight.

Stellar Circuit Realm (1–9 Stars): True flight, Qi armor, energy projection.

Nebula Dominion Realm and higher: Domain control, galaxy-level power, etc

Power Scale Reminder

Lian Yu: Stellar Circuit Star 1.

Elara Voss: Core Condensation Peak

Keep it as reminders