Chapter 242: Stage 3 Spear Intent?! (Kofi Donation Bonus)

Alan’s silhouette vanished. He transformed entirely into a screaming, hundred-meter beam of absolute, light-speed frost that pierced through the very dimensional fabric of the arena!

Space groaned, the granite floor splitting into a trench thirty meters wide as the spear of absolute zero bore down directly on the center of Creed’s throat!

It was a strike that could kill a mid-tier Silver Awakened instantly.

Creed didn’t draw back. He didn’t blink.

He simply raised his left hand—the hand that had remained in his pocket the entire time. With casual, almost lazy precision, Creed extended two fingers and pinched the air.

CLINK.

The screaming, hundred-meter beam of blizzard energy vanished.

The gale-force winds died instantly.

The entire arena fell into an eerie, suffocating, dead silence.

Alan Snow was suspended in mid-air, his face pale as a corpse, his eyes bulging out of their sockets in pure, unadulterated madness.

The razor-sharp, lethal tip of his silver rapier—the strike containing his life-essence, his Art, and his entire future—was clamped motionless between Creed Walden’s bare index and middle fingers.

Creed hadn’t used a weapon to parry. He had caught the strike bare-handed!

"That’s three," Creed whispered, his voice smooth as velvet and cold as the grave.

He flicked his wrist.

SNAP!

The sheer, monstrous kinetic recoil sent Alan’s rapier spinning violently out of his numb fingers, clattering uselessly against the stone twenty paces away.

Alan tumbled backward, crashing onto his knees, shaking violently, staring up at the blonde youth before him as if he were looking at an ancient, cosmic demon that had put on a human skin.

Creed didn’t look at the fallen noble. He slowly brought both hands to the shaft of the Pale Horizon.

"Get ready," Creed said.

The words were spoken softly, yet the moment they left his mouth, a sudden, apocalyptic pressure detonated from Creed’s silhouette!

CRACK-BOOOOM!

The hexagonal force-fields high above shrieked in protest, flashing violent red emergency warnings. The entire three-kilometer combat hall vibrated as if an earthquake had struck the foundation of the floating island!

Stage 3 Spear Intent!

An ethereal, blinding white corona of pure, condensed weapon authority exploded outward from the Pale Horizon, extending its cutting edge by an entire foot of pure, conceptual penetration! It wasn’t the clumsy, wild Intent of a Bronze or Silver Awakened.

It was the terrifying, heaven-piercing sharpness of a Gold-stage master—an absolute intent that carried the weight of a thousand ancient battlefield executions!

In the stands, weapons began to sing.

Daggers in the sheaths of second-years vibrated violently. Rapiers, broadswords, and halberds across the spectator tiers bent toward Creed’s position, humming in deep, involuntary subservience like courtiers bowing before a rising emperor!

"Stage 3 Intent?!" Nicholas Grey leapt to his feet, his usually composed mask completely shattering into raw, unmasked disbelief. "He pushed his weapon intent to Stage 3 in twenty-four hours?!"

Creed didn’t stop.

"Spear Domain... expand," he whispered.

WUUUUUUSH!

A five-hundred-meter silver ripple surged out from Creed’s boots, washing over the entire arena.

The atmosphere transformed instantly into a suffocating, lethal meat-grinder where every particle of air felt like the point of a spear pressed against a mortal’s throat.

Standing thirty paces away, stripped of his weapon and kneeling in the dust, Alan Snow felt the domain wash over him.

His teeth chattered so hard they nearly cracked. Tears of pure, biological terror leaked from his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move a finger. He was staring into an abyss that possessed no bottom.

From thirty paces away—an impossible, absurd distance for a melee weapon—Creed casually leveled the Pale Horizon forward.

He didn’t wind up. He didn’t shout an Art name.

He simply unleashed a casual, effortless thrust into the empty air.

There was no sound.

No blast of lightning, no roar of thunder, no crimson light. The strike was utterly, terrifyingly silent.

Yet, in the perception of every Awakened in the hall, reality along that straight line ceased to exist. A pencil-thin vector of absolute, inevitable mortality bored through the air, transposing the certainty of death directly toward the center of Alan Snow’s chest!

Alan froze. His heart stopped beating. In that split second, he didn’t just think he was going to die—he felt the cold scythe of the grave severing his soul from his flesh.

"NO!"

A roar tore through the arena as a gray blur descended from the observation tower with the speed of a falling meteor!

Instructor Varien appeared directly in the trajectory of the silent thrust, his face pale with frantic terror!

The Gold-ranked instructor dared not hold back! His three golden rank stripes flared with blinding light as he crossed both arms before his chest, deploying his signature defensive technique: Aegis of the Iron Vanguard!

A massive, six-foot-thick tower shield composed of solid, golden Force erupted before him to intercept the strike!

THUUUUMP.

The silent, invisible thrust made contact.

The six-foot-thick golden shield groaned, spiderweb fractures bursting across its entire surface in an instant!

The sheer, terrifying conceptual penetration of Stage 3 Spear Intent tore through the Gold-rank construct like a needle through silk, slamming directly into the instructor’s armored forearms!

SKID-SKID-SKID!

Instructor Varien’s boots tore deep, smoking trenches through the reinforced granite as the monstrous kinetic and conceptual force drove him backward!

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps!

The Gold-ranked combat instructor was physically repelled, his heels grinding to a halt on the third step, his breath ripped violently from his lungs as his arms went completely numb!

Silence descended upon Arena Prime. Absolute, suffocating, dead silence.

Alan Snow sat slumped on the stone behind the instructor, his eyes blank, his pants soaked through with urine, completely paralyzed by the phantom brush of death.

In the center of the ring, forty paces away, Varien slowly lowered his trembling, bruised arms. The Gold instructor looked at the hair-thin puncture mark on the center of his golden bracers, then looked up at Creed Walden.

Varien’s eyes were wide, bloodshot, and shaking with pure, unadulterated awe.

Creed casually twirled the Pale Horizon in his fingers, resting the weapon back against his shoulder with an easy, relaxed smirk.

"Well, Instructor," Creed said, his smooth voice echoing into the stunned quiet. "Was that convincing enough for my voucher?"