Chapter 233: One Slash

The door opened from the inside.

It flew inward and slammed against the wall with a heavy crash. The hinges screamed and the steel frame shook. Whoever was behind the door clearly wanted to make an entrance.

Warlord Drask stepped through.

He looked exactly like Maeve’s dossier had described, and somehow worse. The man stood around six feet tall, but his posture made him seem larger. His chest was pushed forward, his shoulders were straight, and his chin was raised like someone who had spent decades looking down on everyone around him. He was completely bald, his scalp covered in scars that crossed over one another where his skull had been opened and repaired.

His eyes were not human. Two glowing red lenses sat deep inside metal housings bolted directly to his skull.

The rest of his body was a patchwork of flesh and machinery. The left side of his torso remained human, while the right side had been replaced with metal. A robotic arm was fixed to his shoulder, its joints exposed where metal met flesh. The hand at the end was not a normal hand either. It was a collection of grippers, blades, and small tools that could change shape depending on what he needed.

Two compact cannons were mounted over his shoulders, secured by a harness wrapped around his chest and back. Purple energy pulsed inside them, the same corrupted glow coming from the Abyssal Cannon behind Holden. They were Rank 4 weapons, small enough to carry but powerful enough to tear through most Rank 3 defenses.

Drask’s energy was Rank 4, 3-Star.

The gap between him and Holden was significant. But Holden was heavily armed with Rank 4 equipment, and Drask had just walked into the wreckage of a machine that Holden had destroyed with a single counterattack.

Drask’s eyes scanned across the room.

His gaze stopped on the single red eye lens lying among the wreckage.

His jaw tightened.

Then his voice exploded through the engine car.

"MY JUGGERNAUT!"

The scream was raw and furious. His eye housings spun faster, while the cannons on his shoulders began to hum. The metal fingers of his robotic hand shifted, forming a long blade.

"MY JUGGERNAUT! YOU DESTROYED MY JUGGERNAUT!"

He took another step forward, shaking with anger.

"Do you even know what you destroyed?" Drask shouted. "That was my masterpiece! Three years of work! Fifteen tons of perfected machinery, and you just..."

The words died in his throat.

His eyes settled on Holden.

The Eclipse-Sun Sword in his right hand.

The Kinetic-Nova Bracer on his left arm.

Drask’s expression changed.

The fury was still there, but something colder had entered his gaze.

"You’re not a student," he said.

Holden kept his sword lowered.

"I’m Vespera’s disciple."

The name hit Drask harder than the destruction of the Juggernaut.

His eyes widened, and the housings around them clicked rapidly.

"Vespera," he muttered. "You’re one of hers."

"The academy didn’t send me," Holden said. "Vespera’s journal did."

"The journal?"

Drask stared at him for a moment, then slowly looked back at the ruined Juggernaut.

"Of course she kept one," he said bitterly. "That woman recorded everything. Every suspicion, every observation, every name."

"Every name," Holden replied. "Including yours."

Drask’s eyes returned to him.

This time, he wasn’t looking at Holden like an angry man.

He was studying him.

The artificer’s eyes scanned the Eclipse-Sun Sword, the Kinetic-Nova Bracer, the armor, and finally Holden himself. His expression became more serious as he understood what he was facing.

A Rank 3, 8-Star fighter carrying multiple Rank 4 artifacts.

Drask looked at the Juggernaut again.

Then at Holden.

His calculations were simple.

He couldn’t win.

Not by overpowering him. Not with the shoulder cannons. Even the Juggernaut, his strongest Rank 3 creation, had failed.

Drask’s eyes shifted toward the control panel behind him.

A faint smile appeared on his face.

Instead of attacking Holden, he suddenly moved.

The three feet between him and the control panel disappeared in an instant. His mechanical hand changed shape as he reached the console, forming a narrow key that fit into a hidden lock.

CLUNK.

Something deep inside the train responded.

The control panel turned red.

Every screen flashed at once. Warning lights filled the engine car, bathing Drask in crimson.

Then he laughed.

It wasn’t a happy laugh.

It was loud, sharp, and completely unrestrained.

"Ha... ha ha ha!"

Drask threw his head back.

"You think you’ve won?" he shouted. "You destroyed my Juggernaut, boarded my train, and now you think you’ve beaten me?"

He turned toward Holden, one hand still holding the key in place.

"I just activated the self-destruct."

Holden’s expression remained calm.

"Thirty seconds," Drask continued. "The engine core will blow. The train will derail, the payload will lit up, and everything within several miles will be destroyed."

His smile widened.

"There are forty-seven thousand civilians along this route."

Drask’s eyes burned brighter.

"So go ahead. Kill me. Save yourself if you can. Either way, we’re all going down together."

Holden’s 10,000x processor activated.

The world around him became still.

The red warning lights stopped in place. Drask’s expression froze.

The self-destruct was active.

The control panel had sent the signal toward the engine’s Rank 4 core. The main conduit ran through the wall behind the machinery, protected from normal interference.

But protected did not mean impossible to cut.

Holden’s eyes moved across the room.

The shoulder cannons were connected to Drask’s harness.

The harness was attached to his body.

His robotic arm was connected to the same side.

And the self-destruct conduit ran through the wall behind him.

One movement could reach all four points.

The timing had to be perfect.

The cannon barrels first.

Then the arm.

Then the signal conduit.

The power line had to remain untouched.

His processor checked the path again.

The Eclipse-Sun Sword was intact.

The blade would hold.

Holden moved and time resumed.

The Eclipse-Sun Sword ignited.

Black and crimson fire rushed along the blade, combining its solar flame with the shadow-poison energy taken from Vandiba’s core.

FWOOOOSH!

Holden swung.

There was no wasted movement.

The blade swept through the first shoulder cannon.

SHHK!

The Rank 4 weapon split apart, its corrupted energy spilling into the air before the Eclipse-Sun fire burned it away.

The second cannon followed.

SHHK!

Its barrel split down the middle, and the weapon went dead.

Drask barely had time to react.

The blade continued.

SHHK!

The mechanical arm was severed at the shoulder.

The metal bolts holding it in place snapped, and the prosthetic arm dropped to the floor with a heavy clatter. The mechanical hand was still holding the self-destruct key when it landed.

Drask stared at his empty shoulder.

The sword was already moving again.

SHHK!

The blade cut into the wall conduit behind him.

Holden controlled the strike carefully.

The signal wires were severed.

The power line remained untouched.

The red warning lights flickered.

Then went dark.

[SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ABORTED]

The entire sequence had taken less than a second.

Drask stood frozen.

His shoulder cannons were gone.

His mechanical arm lay on the floor.

The self-destruct was dead.

For several seconds, he simply stared at Holden.

His mechanical eyes clicked as they searched for an answer.

There wasn’t one.

The self-destruct had been his final weapon. The one thing he believed Holden couldn’t stop.

And Holden had cut through it before Drask could even react.

Drask’s knees slowly gave out.

He dropped to the floor, one remaining hand catching his weight against the metal grating.

"You can’t..." he whispered.

His voice had lost all of its earlier madness.

"The conduit was Rank 4 reinforced. You can’t just cut through something like that."

Holden looked at the Eclipse-Sun Sword.

"It’s a Rank 4 sword."

Drask’s eyes followed the blade.

The black and crimson fire still crawled along its edge.

"That weapon..." His voice weakened. "That’s not standard."

"No."

"Academy issue?"

"Not even close."

Drask stared at the sword for another moment.

"Custom forge."

"Something like that."

Drask let out a weak laugh.

"I spent three years building that Juggernaut," he said. "You destroyed it with one punch."

His eyes moved toward the engine around them.

"I spent ten years building the Behemoth. You boarded it from the sky."

Then he looked down at the severed mechanical arm.

"And I built that self-destruct as my final answer."

He slowly looked back at Holden.

"You cut through all of it with one slash."

Holden said nothing.

Drask’s remaining hand pressed against the floor as he lowered his head.

"I built weapons for thirty years," he muttered. "And a teenager walked onto my train and dismantled everything I built in one afternoon."

The robotic eye on the remaining side of his face dimmed.

"I thought I was prepared for everything."

Holden stepped closer.

Drask didn’t resist.

He didn’t reach for another weapon. He didn’t try to run. Whatever fight had been left in him was gone.

He looked up at Holden.

"Vespera’s disciple," he said quietly. "She really did find someone worth teaching."

Holden raised the Eclipse-Sun Sword.

"Nobody is dying today because of your tantrum. Your ride is over."

The blade came down.

SHHK!

[Warlord Drask (Rank 4, 3-Star) Defeated!]

[Rank 4 Warlord Eliminated!]

[+20,000 KP! 2x Booster Active! KP Doubled!]

[+40,000 KP!]

Holden stood inside the conductor’s cabin as the Behemoth’s engine continued to roar around him. The control panel still displayed the aborted self-destruct message, while Drask’s body slowly dissolved into ash across the floor.

Holden reached into his Inventory and pulled out Vespera’s journal.

He opened it to the third page.

3. Warlord Drask. Rank 4, 3-Star. Artificer specialist. Location: The Behemoth, mobile.

He drew a line through the name.

Three down.

Four remaining.

Holden closed the journal.

Behind him, the sound of cracking ice echoed through the engine car. Lyra had begun freezing the Abyssal Cannon, frost spreading across its corrupted barrel as she worked to destroy the firing mechanism.

Holden turned toward the control panel.

The train was still moving at three hundred miles per hour, its heading unchanged. The Abyssal border was still ahead.

He reached for the communications panel and switched to the Vanguard Academy frequency.

"Maeve."

"I’m here." Her response came immediately. "I saw the whole thing. The self-destruct is down. The cannon’s energy signature is dropping too. Lyra is disabling it?"

"Yes. She should have it neutralized soon."

"What about the train?"

"Still running. I need somewhere safe to take it."

"I’m sending coordinates now. Vanguard checkpoint Seven Alpha is forty miles ahead. It’s a military rail junction with a controlled deceleration zone. I’ve already contacted them, and they’re clearing the tracks."

"How long?"

"Twelve minutes at your current speed."

"Got it."

Holden switched to the team frequency.

"Emric, Renna, Twins. Mission complete. Drask is dead. Lyra is disabling the cannon. The train is being routed to a Vanguard checkpoint. Twelve minutes to a controlled stop."

Emric answered first.

"Understood. Rear cars are secure. Twelve mercenaries taken down."

Renna’s voice came through next.

"Can we keep the train?"

"No."

"Come on!"

"It’s a quarter-mile-long weapons factory, Renna."

"Exactly! That’s why we should keep it."

"Renna."

"Fine. But I’m taking the cups from the dining car. They’re really nice."

Holden shook his head.

"Take the cups."

"YES!"

He switched off the comm before she could say anything else.

The conductor’s chair was waiting behind him, so Holden sat down.

The Behemoth continued racing through the dark industrial corridor at three hundred miles per hour. Around him, the controls hummed, the engine rumbled, and the massive train carried a weapons factory that had almost become a weapon itself.

Twelve minutes until the checkpoint.

Holden leaned back in the chair. The blinking red warning on the control panel was starting to annoy him.

He closed his eyes for a moment.

Three names crossed off.

Four remained.

The Eclipse-Sun Sword had proven itself. The Kinetic-Nova Bracer had proven itself. His Rank 3, 8-Star body had held against everything thrown at it, and his team had completed the mission without losing anyone.

The war wasn’t over.

The Syndicate was still out there. The Abyss was still spreading. And Vespera was still dead.

But today, they had stopped a weapon capable of destroying a city. They had taken down another Rank 4 target and captured a mobile weapons factory without sacrificing the civilians along the route.

Holden opened his eyes and looked at the speedometer.

300 miles per hour.

The Behemoth kept moving.

So did the hunt.