Chapter 490. Two Halves of a Single, Devastating Engine of War

Chapter 490: 490. Two Halves of a Single, Devastating Engine of War

What followed was not merely a fight; it was a symphony of violence, the brutal culmination of every bleeding hour they had spent together in that sealed training yard behind the barracks.

Every awkward overcommitted spin, every bruised rib from a missed parry, and every patient correction whispered through gritted teeth finally converged into something neither could have achieved alone.

They weren’t two warriors fighting side by side; they were two halves of a single, devastating engine of war.

William read the rhythm of the battlefield with the cold, detached precision of a predator, his mind operating half a second ahead of reality. He didn’t hoard his power; he became Kaela’s conductor.

The moment he saw Alden’s shoulder twitch, the tell of an impending Umbral thrust, William didn’t swing his own blade. Instead, he channeled a low, tight burst of pressurized wind beneath Kaela’s boots.

WHOOSH.

The gust acted like a pneumatic piston, doubling the length and speed of her leap. Kaela became a blur of motion, crossing the courtyard faster than Alden’s corrupted reflexes could process.

CRACK SHATTER!

Tempest Fang slammed into the dark energy shielding Alden’s chest. The impact wasn’t just physical; the magical feedback sounded like breaking glass as the shadowy barrier spiderwebbed into a thousand fragments, mirroring the ruined stone beneath them.

Alden staggered, his breath catching in a wet wheeze, but there was no respite. William was already there, pivoting on his heel with terrifying fluidity.

Aetherion swept in a vicious low arc, the silver blade singing through the air. Alden was trapped in a nightmare of geometry, William forcing him to choose between a blade at his shins and a fist at his throat.

Desperate, Alden wrenched a mass of necrotic energy sideways to intercept William’s steel, but the cost was immediate. The opening he created was a death sentence.

Kaela descended like a meteor, her fist glowing with azure lightning.

THUD CRUNCH.

Her strike landed cleaner than the first, driving directly into Alden’s solar plexus. The sound of air being forcibly expelled from his lungs was drowned out by the wet slap of his body hitting the ground.

For several grueling minutes, the courtyard became a blur of silver, blue, and poisonous violet. William’s wind magic acted as a constant, invisible hand, repositioning Kaela, spinning her midair, and propelling her into the exact angles needed to exploit Alden’s momentary lapses.

They traded the lead with a wordless, instinctual coordination that made them look less like two fighters and more like a single weapon with two deadly edges.

Alden, his regal composure shattered and replaced by something feral, tried to retreat toward the open center of the courtyard, seeking space to unleash a wide range of magical detonations. But William anticipated the retreat before Alden’s weight had even shifted.

FWOOMP.

A hard lateral gust caught Kaela’s shoulder mid-stride, spinning her bodily into the gap Alden had inadvertently opened. Tempest Fang connected with his unguarded flank with the force of a battering ram.

The blow was so violent it visibly lifted Alden off his feet before he crashed back down several paces away, blood spraying from his mouth as he hit the stone.

"You said you’d enjoy crushing us both together," William called out.

His voice was unnervingly steady, cutting through the cacophony of clashing magic. He didn’t even seem winded, despite the blood seeping through his torn tunic.

Aetherion swept forward again, a silver barrier preventing Alden from scrambling upright. "I’m not seeing much crushing happening."

"Mostly just you, on the ground, repeatedly."

Alden pushed himself up, his fingers clawing at the cracked marble. His violet eyes were bloodshot, his face twisted in a mask of humiliated rage.

"I am still a Prince of Delmore!" he snarled, the dark energy around him flaring in a desperate, unstable burst of wounded pride. "And you... you are nothing but a man who teaches children how to hold a sword properly!"

"And yet here you are," William said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, mocking purr.

He stepped into a killing strike that forced Alden to throw both arms up in a clumsy, panicked block. "On your back, in front of the woman you tried to claim as property, getting beaten half senseless by the man you dismissed as a guard dog."

William deliberately stepped aside, letting Kaela’s follow-up punch sail past his shoulder. Her fist connected solidly with Alden’s jaw with a sickening CLACK of bone on bone.

Alden’s head snapped sideways, blood spraying across the stone in a crimson arc.

"Keep going," William added, a dark glint in his eyes. "This is genuinely the most entertaining part of my week."

Kaela, despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins and the terrifying stakes of the duel, found herself huffing out something that was dangerously close to a laugh between her devastating strikes.

"You’re enjoying this far too much, Instructor Wade."

William’s lips curled into a grim, satisfied smile as he prepared to close the distance again. "I’ve earned it, Kaela."

"Let me have this one."

The rhythm they had established wasn’t just effective; it was suffocating. They fell back into their deadly dance immediately, each movement calculated to strip Alden of his options until the courtyard felt like a shrinking cage.

Kaela became the hammer, driving Alden backward with a relentless, piston-like series of strikes. Each time her Tempest Fang rings connected, it sounded like a sledgehammer hitting wet meat: THWACK, CRUNCH, SPLAT, sending droplets of crimson spattering across the white marble.

William was the anvil. He circled the perimeter like a wolf, his movements precise and economical.

Every time Alden tried to pivot to escape Kaela’s onslaught, William was already there, Aetherion’s silver edge gleaming as it cut off the escape route. He wasn’t just fighting; he was herding a wounded animal.

’I need to give her an opening,’ William thought, his lungs burning as he tracked Alden’s erratic breathing. ’One solid opening where he can’t counter.’

Alden’s confidence wasn’t just cracking; it was disintegrating. His breathing had turned into a wet, desperate wheeze, and his eyes darted between the two of them with increasing panic.

The medallion against his chest pulsed with a sickly, arrhythmic light, as if the artifact itself were agitated by his loss of control.

Every time Alden tried to summon the raw Umbral power to blast them away, a desperate shockwave meant to buy him precious seconds of breathing room, William was ready.

With a flick of his wrist, William would summon a concentrated gust of pressurized air that acted like an invisible wall, neutralizing the outward pressure and driving Alden straight back into the path of Kaela’s next assault.

"Get... away... from me!" Alden gasped, his voice a distorted wreck of its former self.

He stumbled backward, his boot catching on a chunk of debris, sending him sprawling on one knee.

Kaela didn’t give him a heartbeat to recover. She lunged, her fist glowing with azure fury.

"You don’t get to choose when this ends, Alden!"

CRACK.

Her strike landed against his ribs, the sound of breaking bone echoing sharply against the palace walls. Alden let out a strangled scream, blood spraying from his lips as he rolled away, clutching his side.

But the retreat was an illusion. William’s wind was already closing the distance, pushing him back toward Kaela’s waiting fists.

The net was tightening. The space between them was vanishing.

Alden was trapped between the crushing force of Kaela’s unrelenting fury and the surgical precision of William’s blade.

The psychological pressure finally snapped something inside the corrupted prince. The last vestiges of his royal composure—the mask he had worn his entire life—shattered completely.

His dual voice rose to a crescendo of pure, unadulterated terror and rage.

"STOP MOVING!" Alden screamed, the sound tearing from his throat like something breaking. "JUST STOP MOVING!"

In a moment of pure, panicked desperation, he stopped trying to fight them and started trying to destroy everything around him.

He threw his hands outward in a wild, indiscriminate gesture, unleashing a catastrophic burst of dark energy in every direction at once.

It wasn’t a controlled attack; it was a tantrum of magical violence, a black sun exploding outward in a sphere of necrotic force designed to shred anything that dared to approach.