Chapter 204: Death by a Thousand Cuts

The Warmaster swung from fifty feet away.

He didn’t need to close the distance. At Rank 3, 9-Star, his energy output was so dense that he could project his power through the air itself. The black greatsword carved a crescent of dark energy that tore through the space between them like an invisible bulldozer.

The energy blade tore through the mud, splitting the ground open in a trench two feet deep and ten feet wide. The air screamed as it was displaced.

Holden stepped forward and planted himself between the incoming attack and the fortress wall behind him. His team was up there. Emric. Renna. Lyra. Two hundred fortress soldiers.

He raised his sword.

The Solar-Forged blade met the dark energy crescent head-on. Golden fire collided with black energy, and the two powers ground against each other like tectonic plates, each trying to force the other back.

SCREEEECH!

The ground beneath Holden’s boots cracked. His heels dug into the mud as the sheer force of the 9-Star strike pushed against his 6-Star defense. His arms shook from the difference. Three full stars of cultivation pressed against him, and his body was making one thing very clear: the gap was real. The Warmaster’s energy was heavier, denser, and more condensed.

Holden held.

The energy crescent eventually dissipated. The dark power broke apart into wisps of black mist that dissolved in the rain, and the trench in the mud stopped growing. The pressure lifted.

Holden stood in the mud with his boots buried in two deep furrows. His sword was still raised, and the Solar-Forged blade continued to burn.

The Warmaster lowered his sword. He studied the furrows, then looked at Holden. A thin, cold smile touched his lips.

"You held," he said. "Impressive. Most 6-Star cultivators would have been cut in half by that strike."

He adjusted his grip on the black greatsword, his expression remaining calm.

"But you still moved two steps. That is the difference between us, boy. You can hold my strikes, but you cannot match them. In a contest of raw power, you lose. Every time."

Holden looked at the furrows in the mud, at the evidence of the gap between them. The Warmaster was right. In raw power, the difference was huge. Every swing would push him back, and every block would cost him ground he couldn’t afford to lose.

He looked up at the Warmaster.

Then he smiled back.

"Who said anything about raw power?"

He turned toward the fortress wall. Emric stood with his shield raised. Renna had her bow drawn, while Lyra’s spear hummed with cold energy.

"Stay back," Holden said. "All of you. This one is mine."

"Holden, he’s 9-Star," Emric said. "The probability of a 6-Star winning a solo engagement against a 9-Star is approximately..."

"Emric."

"Yes?"

"Trust me."

Emric studied him. He knew that smile. It was the same expression Holden wore whenever he had already run the numbers and found an answer no one else could see.

"Understood," Emric said.

He lowered his shield and stepped back from the wall, signaling the other soldiers to do the same.

Holden turned back to the Warmaster.

Then he triggered Ultimate Gale-Step.

The world stopped.

Rain froze in midair. Mud particles hung suspended around him. Even the Warmaster’s dark eyes, caught in the middle of a blink, remained half-closed.

Inside the frozen world, Holden’s 10,000x processor activated at full capacity. It didn’t try to match the Warmaster’s power. That was a losing equation. Instead, it mapped the Warmaster’s body.

The processor built a complete, 3d predictive framework of the Warmaster’s combat mechanics. It studied how he initiated a swing, which muscles fired first, how his weight shifted before a strike, and the tiny changes in his expression that preceded each movement.

Holden walked around the frozen Warmaster, studying him from the front, the side, and behind.

The Warmaster was powerful, but he was also traditional. His swordsmanship followed classic Imperial military style, with large, sweeping swings designed to maximize the area of destruction.

Gale-Step ended, and the world resumed.

The Warmaster moved. His sword came up, and he swung in a horizontal arc from left to right. The black blade dragged a crescent of dark energy behind it, stretching thirty feet on either side.

Holden was already gone.

He had moved before the Warmaster’s swing began. His processor had predicted the strike 1.3 seconds before the Warmaster’s muscles initiated it. By the time the blade moved, Holden was already three feet beyond the arc’s edge.

The dark energy tore through the space he had occupied. Mud exploded, and a trench thirty feet long and four feet deep carved into the valley floor.

BOOM!

The Warmaster’s eyes tracked the trench before shifting toward Holden, who stood untouched beside it.

"Hm," the Warmaster said.

He swung again, this time bringing the greatsword down in an overhead strike that split the air with a boom of displaced atmosphere.

Holden was already moving. He had predicted the attack 0.9 seconds before initiation. The Warmaster’s right shoulder had dropped two degrees, his wrist had rotated clockwise, and his weight had shifted to his front foot.

Holden stepped to the right. The vertical crescent struck the ground where he had been standing and split the earth open in a crater three feet wide.

BOOM!

"Hm," the Warmaster said again.

This time, he sounded less impressed and more annoyed.

He swung a third time, sending a diagonal arc from his upper left to his lower right. The black blade screamed through the air with full power behind it.

Holden slipped beneath the attack. The crescent passed over his head. He came up inside the Warmaster’s guard, within the range where the greatsword’s energy could not fully extend.

His sword moved in a short, compressed burst of Hellfire Cleave. The fire struck the Warmaster’s chest plate with a glancing hit, leaving a four-inch scorch mark across the armor.

Tssss.

The Warmaster looked down at the mark, then back at Holden, who had already moved out of range.

"You’re fast," the Warmaster said. "Fast doesn’t win wars."

"Maybe not," Holden replied. "But it’s really annoying."

The Warmaster’s eyes narrowed.

Then he attacked.

The next thirty seconds became a blur of black energy and burning gold.

The Warmaster swung with everything he had. Horizontal, vertical, and diagonal strikes followed one another in rapid succession. Wide arcs became narrow thrusts, then spinning sweeps, each attack carrying the full force of Rank 3, 9-Star power. Every strike came from a different angle, following a different trajectory and targeting a different point of weakness.

Every strike missed.

Holden moved between the attacks like water flowing around stones. His 10,000x processor read the Warmaster’s body in real time, cataloging every micro-movement and predicting the resulting attack before the Warmaster’s muscles had finished firing.

The horizontal swing came first. Holden lowered himself beneath it, and his blade brushed across the Warmaster’s hip, leaving a narrow scorch mark.

Shhhk.

The overhead strike followed. Holden stepped aside, and his sword touched the Warmaster’s shoulder.

Shhhk.

The diagonal attack came next. Holden cleared the crescent and passed behind him, his blade leaving another burning mark across the Warmaster’s back.

Shhhk.

Each touch was light. A short burst of Hellfire scorched the armor but failed to penetrate it. Holden wasn’t trying to overpower the Warmaster’s defenses. He was testing them, learning how the armor reacted, and leaving damage wherever an opening appeared.

After thirty seconds, the Warmaster’s armor carried fourteen scorch marks.

Together, they told a story.

The Warmaster was missing.

Holden was not.

"STAND STILL!" the Warmaster roared.

His cold composure had cracked, replaced by fury. His aura flared, doubling the pressure across the valley.

He lunged with a straight thrust, the black blade extending like a spear toward Holden’s chest.

Holden’s processor caught the movement 0.4 seconds early. The thrust was too fast for a longer prediction window, but 0.4 seconds was enough.

He twisted aside. The blade passed between his arm and ribs, close enough to tear through the outer layer of his Phantom-Weave Armor. Dark energy scraped across the surface, leaving a thin groove.

Screech.

Holden’s sword moved again. Another burst of Hellfire struck the Warmaster’s sword arm at the elbow joint. The fire scorched the armor and heated the metal beneath it.

Tssss.

The Warmaster pulled his arm back and tightened his grip on his sword.

"You think your speed matters?" he asked through gritted teeth. "You think these little burns mean anything? You cannot hurt me. You are an insect biting at armor. Eventually, you will get tired. Eventually, your speed will falter. And when it does, I will be here. Waiting."

Holden circled him. Fifteen scorch marks now. The armor was still holding, and the shallow Hellfire bursts had not penetrated. But they were weakening the surface.

"You’re right," Holden said. "Eventually, I’ll get tired. Eventually, my speed will falter."

He smiled, wearing the same sarcastic expression as before.

"But not today."

The Warmaster’s eyes went cold.

He had tried to hit Holden with individual strikes and failed. Speed was the problem. Holden was too fast to catch with a blade.

So the Warmaster stopped trying to catch him.

He planted his feet and raised the black greatsword above his head with both hands. His 9-Star aura erupted around him, forming a dense sphere of dark power.

The energy expanded outward from his body in every direction at once. A dome of concentrated Rank 3, 9-Star energy spread across the valley, growing from ten feet to twenty, then thirty, then fifty. The ground beneath it dissolved. Mud vaporized, and the air itself seemed to collapse under the pressure.

It was an area-of-effect attack. Unavoidable. Undodgeable. A full-body detonation of Rank 3, 9-Star energy designed to destroy everything within its radius.

The dome expanded toward the fortress wall, toward Emric, Renna, Lyra, and the two hundred soldiers who had no way to survive a 9-Star shockwave.

Holden’s processor calculated the trajectory. The dome would reach the wall in 2.1 seconds. The wall would not survive. The soldiers behind it would not survive.

He couldn’t dodge this without leaving his team in the kill zone.

The dome kept expanding, fifty feet of dark, crushing annihilation moving toward the fortress at the speed of a detonation.

Holden stopped retreating.

He planted his feet and tightened his grip on the Solar-Forged Sword.

His System remained unchanged.

[Current KP: 1,016,290]

[Multiplier: 10,000x]

[KP Booster: 2x Active]

[Cultivation Rank: Rank 3, 6-Star]

He looked at the wall of dark energy rushing toward him. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the fortress and his team.

"Emric!" he shouted. "NOW!"