Chapter 214: The Splitter

Behind her, a towering, muscular figure stepped out of the shadows.

The air itself seemed to reject his presence. He stood nearly seven feet tall, his upper body bare except for thick leather straps crossing his chest, his skin a map of old wars.

His aura was not just pressure, it was weight, a terrifying, suffocating, crushing pressure that made the marble under his feet groan. He was practically at the doorstep of the Transcendent Rank.

Each step he took cracked the ground. The fine, ancient stone of the academy garden plaza, stone that had held for a thousand years, split beneath his boots in spiderweb patterns. Dust rose.

He was one of King Vane’s personal weapons. A strong but lower tier among his collection, a discarded prototype that was still too valuable to throw away. But still a strong asset. A weapon kept on a leash until needed.

"That’s one of The Void Empire King’s personal enforcers," Rhea whispered, her face turning pale as she recognized the aura. Her hand went instinctively to the hilt of her frost dagger, but her fingers were numb.

Her voice was shaking. She had seen his file in the academy library, in the restricted section for fourth years only. A red stamped file. "He is a monster in human skin! They call him The Splitter. He tore a Blessed in half with his bare hands last year!"

The giant warrior grunted, cracking his massive knuckles. The sound was like stones breaking inside a mountain, echoing off the dome that covered the courtyard.

He looked at Lynx, looked him up and down, the relaxed posture, the hands in pockets, the almost bored expression, and then let out a chilling laugh that echoed in the dome. His teeth were filed to points.

"A brat who relies on parlor tricks," he spat, his voice like gravel grinding. "The Void King thought you were worth my time. Let’s see how funny you think you are when I tear your limbs off and mount your head on the Void gate. The princess wants your tongue as a trophy."

Lynx did not answer immediately. He turned to Eleanor and her squad, a calm, almost lazy smile on his face. He was still relaxed, hands in pockets, his heterochromatic eyes catching the light of the runes. He looked like a noble boy out for an evening walk.

"Watch this," he said softly, his voice only for them. "I want to see how long they last. Stay behind me. Don’t move unless I tell you. I’ll handle the giant,"

The peak Blessed warrior bellowed, surging forward with enough force to shatter the stone pavement beneath his feet.

The pavement did not just crack, it exploded into dust and sharp shrapnel. He moved so fast the air screamed, a sonic boom of pure muscle.

Before he could even take three steps, his body shimmered violently, the runes on his back flaring bright violet. The air around him distorted like hot air over a desert.

And then another identical copy of him materialized beside him, stepping out of his own shadow as solid as the original.

A dual body spatial projection technique. Two peak Blessed combatants with synchronized stats, synchronized thoughts, synchronized cruelty, charging at once.

The technique was a really old and forgotten technique that required splitting your soul in half. It was almost not practiced in most empires because half the people who tried it went insane and clawed their own eyes out.

That this brute could do it and remain standing was proof of how much pain King Vane had forced him through.

Lynx paused. "Girls, intercept the clone!" Eleanor shouted, her lightning and ice exploding into a brilliant defensive wall. Her training took over.

She slammed her hands together and created a wall that was half crackling white lightning, half deep blue, unmelting ice. The two elements fused, hissing.

Layla, Iris, Rhea, and Nadia moved instantly to form a protective barrier, years of squad training making them one body.

Layla’s Ignis Shield flared red, bright like a small sun being born in her palms, covering her whole body in overlapping plates of living flame. Sweat beaded on her forehead instantly.

Iris zipped through the air with Nightwind Step, her twin daggers leaving sharp wind trails that cut the air itself, her body a blur.

Rhea unleashed a wave of frost, her hands spread wide, freezing the very moisture in the air in front of them into solid, jagged ice spikes that jutted forward like a frozen forest.

And Nadia slammed her fists into the ground with a guttural cry to raise an earthen barricade, a thick wall of rock ten feet high, ten feet thick, ripped straight from the deep earth, laced with her earth affinity.

BOOM!

The collision was catastrophic. The sound was deafening inside the dome, a thunderclap that made the ears of the Void guards ring.

Even though Eleanor and her squad were elite fourth year students, prodigies who had topped every combat exam since first year, fighting two peak Blessed opponents who possessed nearly Transcendent tier output was an entirely different level of nightmare. The power gap was like a child trying to stop a charging bull with paper.

The double shockwave slammed into their defenses. The force was absolute.

Layla’s fiery shield, which had once blocked a direct hit from a third year professor, fractured under the sheer weight of the giant’s fist. Cracks of black spread across the red fire like broken glass.

She was sent sliding backward ten meters, her boots carving trenches in the stone, a sharp gasp tearing from her throat as blood trickled from her lip.

Her shield shattered like glass, embers raining around her.

Iris’s wind blades, sharp enough to cut steel, were batted aside like twigs, her attack doing nothing but creating harmless sparks against his runed skin.

And Nadia’s earthen wall shattered into thousands of flying shards, rocks flying everywhere like shrapnel, dust blinding everyone.

CRACK!

The second peak Blessed clone did not stop. He used the dust as cover and struck Rhea and Nadia directly with a double hammer fist, both fists coming down like war hammers.

The brutal kinetic force sent both of them tumbling across the stone plaza, their bodies ragdolling, crashing into a thick stone pillar that held up the garden trellis and sliding to the ground, groaning in pain as their ribs cracked audibly.

They hit the pillar so hard the pillar itself broke in half, collapsing on top of them in a shower of stone dust.

Nadia coughed and blood came from her mouth, bright red against her dark skin. Rhea couldn’t breathe, clutching her side.

"Rhea! Nadia!" Eleanor shrieked, her royal composure finally cracking as she rushed to shield them. Her voice broke with fear, tears instantly in her eyes. She ran to them, her lightning wall flickering.

But the giant’s heavy boot swept outward, casual, almost lazy, kicking Eleanor in the side and sending her crashing into a marble fountain in the center of the plaza.

The fountain shattered under her weight, water spilling everywhere, soaking her sapphire dress, mixing with blood.

Blood stained the pristine stone. The four senior students lay battered, injured, and gasping for air against the ruins of the garden plaza.

Layla was on her knees, holding her stomach, her flame sputtering. Iris was on the ground, trying to stand but falling again, her daggers scattered. Rhea and Nadia could not move without white hot pain shooting through their chests.

Kimberly burst into frantic, manic laughter from the steps above, clapping her hands like she was watching a theater play. Her beautiful face was twisted with cruel delight.

"YES! CRUSH THEM! KILL THE BITCHES WHO STOOD BESIDE HIM! BREAK THEIR LEGS! I WANT TO HEAR THEM SCREAM! DO IT! DO IT NOW!"

The Void professors smiled greedily from behind their barrier, watching the carnage unfold, taking notes like researchers. One professor nodded and said in a cold academic voice, "The King will be pleased. Kill Azarion last. Let him watch his women die. Break him mentally first."

Lynx stopped smiling.

The lazy, teasing playboy expression vanished from his handsome face in less than a microsecond, as if wiped away by an invisible hand. His face became completely blank. Empty.

His heterochromatic blue and silver eyes turned completely dead, darker, and ancient, the eyes of a primordial entity witnessing insects desecrating his domain, insects that had forgotten what fear was.

The air around him turned cold, so cold that the spilled fountain water began to freeze at the edges.

He snapped.

He unleashed his Earth Affinity. Not a trickle, but the full depth.

BOOM!

With a single casual stomp of his boot, Lynx raised an absolute, impenetrable dome of dense geo stone fifty meters high, completely sealing off the courtyard from the rest of the capital.

The dome rose from the ground in one second, not growing but erupting, black rock layered with obsidian veins that drank light. It was thick, black rock, twenty meters thick.

No sound, no light, and no escape could leave this space. It was a prison. A tomb. The capital outside vanished.

Then, Lynx unleashed his supreme bloodlust and terrifying aura.

He wrapped his aura in an absolute, microscopic cocoon, with surgical precision that no Transcendent could replicate, ensuring that not a single ounce of pressure touched Eleanor, Layla, Iris, Rhea, or Nadia.

He protected them perfectly. The girls felt a warm shield around them, like being wrapped in warm sunlight despite the cold.

But for everyone else in the courtyard... the peak Blessed warriors, the Void guards, the professors, and Kimberly... the sky fell. The weight of his aura hit them like a planet had been dropped on their shoulders.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

Every single Void guard, thirty elite soldiers in black armor, dropped to their knees instantly, their armor denting, their chests compressed as if crushed by a million tons of gravity.

They screamed and fell flat on their faces, blood coming from their noses, eyes, and ears, their bones creaking.

The two peak Blessed warriors froze mid motion, their eyes bulging out of their sockets as cold, paralyzing terror seized their very souls, a terror that had nothing to do with strength and everything to do with the realization that they had mistaken a god for a boy. They felt like ants in front of a dragon that had finally opened its eyes.

With his Nightmare Touch. Dark, writhing shadows, made of pure memory and fear, erupted from the stone floor, invading the minds of the Void professors and guards.

The shadows entered their eyes and mouths, cold tendrils sliding into their brains. They began screaming in absolute horror, clawing at their own faces as their deepest, most agonizing psychological fears materialized right before their eyes.

One professor saw himself burning alive in a library with no exit. One saw his family dead at his feet, staring at him with accusation.

"No! No! Get it away from me! MONSTER! PLEASE! IT’S NOT REAL!" a Void professor shrieked, weeping uncontrollably as he clawed at the empty air, his nails bleeding, tearing his own cheeks.

Then... Indestructible demon chains forged from his pure Soul affinity, chains that hummed with the screams of souls, burst from the ground with a metallic shriek, wrapping tightly around the two peak Blessed warriors.

The chains glowed red and black and burned with soul fire that gave no smoke. The chains didn’t just burn their flesh, they bypassed physical armor, bypassed runes, bypassed skin entirely, burning their spiritual cores straight to ash, burning the very concept of them.

The warriors howled, a sound no human should be able to make, as their souls burned and flaked away.

With his Sovereign Blood Surge. Lynx raised two fingers lazily, almost bored. His face showed no emotion at all.

BOOM! BOOM!

The hearts of the two peakBlessed warriors exploded simultaneously from within their chests, not from pressure, but because Lynx had commanded the blood inside them to detonate.

Blood sprayed across the courtyard in a red mist as their lifeless bodies collapsed face first into the dust, twitching once. They were dead before they hit the ground. Their chest cavities were empty, smoking holes.

In less than five seconds, the entire Void ambush force had been completely, effortlessly annihilated.

Thirty elite guards were dead or unconscious, lying in puddles of their own blood. Two near Transcendent warriors were dead, their souls erased.

Only Kimberly Vane and the three cowering Void professors remained, kneeling on the bloody stone, trembling violently in pools of their own sweat and tears, urine spreading beneath them. They were sobbing, broken.

Eleanor, Nadia, Layla, Iris, and Rhea lifted their heads, their bodies aching from their injuries, their vision blurred. They stared at Lynx’s tall, imposing back.

The handsome, charming boy they had been laughing with just moments ago was gone. In his place stood an ancient, terrifying god of death.

His coat fluttering despite no wind, radiating a cold, supreme majesty that made their souls shiver in awe and primal fear and something else, something dangerously close to worship. They had never felt anything like this. Their hearts hammered so hard it hurt.