Chapter 119
India’s team stood opposed to Silvie and Nekhtem, their combined presence pressing outward like a suffocating tide. The weight of it was enough to crush anyone within the scope of their cultivation realms.
Nekhtem, though he felt as though a mountain pressed down upon him, stood calm and steady, his expression revealing nothing.
Silvie, however, was the opposite—her eyes gleamed far too brightly, excitement radiating from her as if the pressure only fueled her.
“Little one,” Siddhartha began, his hands joined reverently in front of him, voice calm but heavy, “you seem to have a great deal of combat experience for your age, and your talent is marvelous indeed. But I would be remiss if I did not warn you now—your chances of winning this match are effectively zero.”
“Hm?” Silvie tilted her head, her smile stretching wider. She leaned toward Nekhtem, eyes bright with mischief.
“You don’t really seem so little, but do you think it’s okay for him to talk to you like that, big guy? I mean, I don’t think you’re so helpless that your chances of winning would be zero.”
Nekhtem gave her a flat. “…I think he meant you, Sanu.”
Even Siddhartha blinked at that.
“Crown Prince,” Mahoraga finally spoke, his deep voice cutting through the air, “you’d best not underestimate her.”
Siddhartha inclined his head. “Noted.”
“You should really listen to him,” Silvie added, as she burped.
Siddhartha’s expression didn’t waver. “I do appreciate the warning, but I am quite aware of my abilities. And just so you know, the Divine General standing beside me is a legend himself. His feats are feared across kingdoms. Do not let the fact that he is only Soldier Class cloud your judgment.”
Silvie’s whip—a weapon Kei Y had crafted for her—suddenly shimmered into her hand. Her smile widened into something sharp.
“You’re seem mistaken about something,” she said sweetly. “Amongst everyone here, the only one with the right to remain calm is me. You may have your legends, but mine have yet to ever been documented. Please do enjoy your pleasant surprise”
A sudden pressure surged from her body, an aura so intense that Siddhartha’s brow lifted slightly in response.
“Since you clearly know about us,” Siddhartha asked, calm but probing, “then you must know well enough about the Divine General’s abilities?”
At those words, Mahoraga felt something stir in his chest—unease. He didn’t understand why, but the source was clear: the girl standing before him.
Most who met him, who felt the weight of his presence, would crumble inside before deciding whether to submit, flee, or die at his hand. Yet this small, slender-armed girl looked at him with unshaken excitement. No fear. No hesitation. Only delight.
It unsettled him.
Silvie’s mask now hung tied loosely to the side of her head like an ornament. Her big, unblinking eyes met his directly, and Mahoraga felt his instincts bristle with danger.
“Cycle of life and rebirth, hm?” Silvie asked curiously, tilting her head.
“You seem well-versed in your opponent,” Siddhartha said, his gaze sliding to her. “Are you sure you wish to continue?”
“Crown Prince,” Mahoraga cut in quietly, his tone uncharacteristically cautious, “please… be quiet.”
“I wonder how adaptable you really are,” Silvie mused aloud, spheres of water forming around her. “I’ve got a few things I want to test—and you’re perfect.”
Siddhartha exhaled, accepting her challenge. But before he could reply further—
THONG.
A loud, resonant impact rang out. Siddhartha’s gaze dropped to see Silvie crouched beneath him, her palm pressed firmly against his abdomen.
“You really are as sturdy as they say,” she said with fascination, tilting her head as she noticed he didn't even bulge. “And you’re so thin, too…”
Siddhartha brushed it off, his voice calm. “You’ll have to try harder than that. And while you’re at it, stop hiding behind that facade of water. If you want to challenge me, show me your full stren—”
BANG!
A thunderous crack exploded through the arena. Mahoraga and Nekhtem instinctively shielded their ears, while Silvie stood unmoved, her other arm now covered in a flowing sheen of water. She had struck Siddhartha again, the impact ringing like a gong, sending him skidding back several steps across the arena floor.
The Crown Prince glanced down at the faint mark she’d left, his face calm, his interest piqued rather than angered.
“You’re even more interesting than I thought,” he murmured.
Silvie smiled, her whip uncoiling and recoiling like a living serpent. “I won’t be able to play with your little friend while you’re still standing, will I? Be nice and hurry up and fall, tree boy. You’re delaying my fun.”
Her words were light and teasing, but Mahoraga felt a shiver crawl down his spine. Something about the cadence, the raw joy in her tone, unsettled him in a way few foes ever had.
Siddhartha noticed the twitch in his General’s stance. “Don’t be scared now,” he said evenly, his hands pressed together. “You chose to stand here.”
Mahoraga’s jaw tightened. Wanting to cut this short, he began to summon his weapon, the famed wheel of adaptation. But the instant the glimmer of steel shimmered in his hands, Silvie’s whip lashed out, binding his wrists. The cord twisted like a snake, locking his movements before the weapon could fully manifest. At the same time, her free hand lashed forward, palm crashing against Siddhartha’s chest in another thunderous strike.
Nekhtem seized the opportunity. The ground beneath him rumbled as gravel surged upward, condensing into cannonball-like spheres. They hovered, spinning with earthen pressure, primed to fire at the immobilized Mahoraga.
“Be careful with him,” Silvie called over her shoulder, voice sing-song but edged with warning. “He adapts to what you throw at him. Don’t waste your shots unless you’ve got enough variations to cycle through.”
Even as she spoke, Silvie moved like a storm. Her whip lashed out, wrapping tight around Mahoraga’s wrists. The cord twisted and coiled, locking his movements and preventing him from fully summoning his weapon. He strained, but each attempt to maneuver was met with a sharp tug that ruined his balance.
At the same time, Silvie’s free hand lashed out toward Siddhartha. Her palm strikes rang like thunderclaps, each one echoing across the arena. She alternated between controlling Mahoraga with her whip and hammering blows into Siddhartha with that deceptively delicate hand.
Against most opponents, the assault would have been overwhelming.
But Siddhartha was not most opponents.
He absorbed her strikes with an unshakable calm, never flinching, never overextending. When her palm drove forward, his own met it—redirecting, dispersing, turning her momentum into nothing. When her water covered arm shot toward his chest, he angled his body a fraction, letting the blow glance off harmlessly. His defense wasn’t flashy, but precise, efficient—like an immovable tree bending just enough to let the storm pass.
“Truly talented,” Siddhartha said softly as their palms met again, his serene voice cutting through the chaos. “Most tremble when faced with the Divine General. Yet you…” his eyes shifted briefly to Mahoraga, still bound by her whip, “…you make it look as though he’s your toy.”
Mahoraga grit his teeth, humiliation burning. His legend—his feared name—was being trampled by a child.
Siddhartha, sensing his General falter, exhaled slowly. His hands shifted. He didn’t strike fast; he didn’t need to. His movements were deliberate, each one radiating inevitability. He raised his palm and pressed forward toward Silvie.
To most, it looked like a lazy stretch, a gentle push. But to Silvie—her eyes widened—the hand appeared in front of her, faster than thought. The pressure descended instantly, a weight that threatened to crush her lungs from the inside out.
Yet she didn’t blink. She only smiled.
Her whip was still coiled tight around Mahoraga, and she yanked. Using the taut cord as a tether, she redirected Siddhartha’s palm with the tension, intercepting it mid-strike. The result was cataclysmic—his palm met resistance, and the backlash shook the entire arena. Dust cascaded from the ceiling, cracks splintered across the floor.
Silvie, however, didn’t budge an inch. Her water covered arm anchored her, her stance unshaken.
The same couldn’t be said for Mahoraga. The vibrations traveled down the whip still wrapped around him, the resonance amplifying into his body. His footing buckled, his balance shattered.
Nekhtem didn’t hesitate. With a sharp gesture, the gravel orbs launched, firing like bullets. Dozens of them tore through the air, slamming into Mahoraga. Each strike cracked against his body, battering. The Divine General staggered under a coordinated assault.
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Annoyed, Mahoraga’s presence shifted as his body adapted. His forearms thickened, bones hardening, tendons winding like steel cables. With a grunt, he flexed—tearing against Silvie’s whip with raw force.
But instead of snapping apart, the whip’s pressure changed. Still wrapped around his wrists, it no longer felt solid. The resistance softened, rippling like water slipping through his grip. No matter how much strength he poured into it, the bindings refused to break.
Mahoraga’s eyes narrowed. His instincts screamed that he should have been free—but the whip flowed differently every time he pulled, like its very state was changing.
“Softness rather than hardness?” Siddhartha remarked as he calmly brushed aside Silvie’s knee strike with a palm, redirecting the blow with the same serenity as before. “That’s surprising. Few would think to abandon rigidity for pliancy. To hold such fine control… your talent is remarkable.”
Silvie giggled at the praise, her wide grin far too childlike for the battlefield. Siddhartha felt something stir uneasily in his chest. Every opponent before had eventually broken against his calm. She, however, only grew more excited.
But Siddhartha would have been surprised to know his analysis of Mahoraga’s predicament was not accurate—not in the slightest. He interpreted Silvie’s tactic as shifting the whip from a solid state to something fluid, almost liquid-like. But the truth was different. The whip had never changed. What shifted was Mahoraga’s perception of it. His body adapted correctly—yet his mind could not adapt to the way his senses were being deceived.
It had to be said: Silvie’s preferred weapon was never the whip she now wielded, nor any blade or spear. Her true weapon was a simple scarf—her Spark. To anyone else, nothing more than fabric. But in her hands, it became whatever she wanted it to be: a chain, a garrote, a shield, a second limb. She had long since mastered the art of treating the soft as though it were steel, and the hard as though it were water. The whip Kei Y crafted for her was merely another extension of this philosophy.
Right now, she fought with a whip Kei Y had crafted for her, yet she treated it with the same mastery she once did with her scarf. To Mahoraga, that mastery was suffocating. His mind told him the weapon was shifting states, but the truth was simpler—Silvie manipulated it so skillfully that reality itself seemed to blur.
And with Nekhtem’s presence pressing in, disrupting his focus, the Divine General’s usual adaptations only faltered further. Mahoraga’s legendary composure was slipping, undone by a child whose eyes sparkled with delight as though this were all just a game.
Silvie, they would soon come to learn, was a near-perfect counter to the Divine General—and that was before she even brought her force into play.
She hadn’t been exaggerating when she told Kei Y she had mastered every martial art known on Earth. Years of relentless study and battle-hardened practice had driven her far beyond the realm of conventional mastery. For her, the structured systems of martial arts had become a solved puzzle. The katas, the forms, the orthodox transitions—she had dissected them all until there was nothing left to surprise her.
But instead of stagnating, she grew bored with their rigidity. And in her boredom, she transcended.
Silvie moved on to something no manual could teach: fluid synthesis. In fact, that was a title gifted to her by the system itself. She no longer thought in terms of “styles.” Kung Fu, Muay Thai, Krav Maga, Judo—these weren’t categories to her, but tools in a single endless flow. She could shift between them in the space of a heartbeat, her transitions so seamless that her movements became paradoxical.
To an opponent, her attacks felt impossible to track. One moment they’d brace against the graceful arc of a Kung Fu roundhouse—only to be met by the vicious, bone-crushing bluntness of a Krav Maga stomp hidden in the same motion. A Judo sweep would flow into a Wing Chun chain punch mid-rotation. A Taekwondo kick would morph into a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu leg trap before the victim even understood what had happened.
And yet, it wasn’t just her technical versatility that made her terrifying. It was the way she weaponized perception itself.
Silvie had refined her combat instincts so far that what she showed was rarely what she struck with. She projected feints not through trickery, but through an almost supernatural control over rhythm, timing, and intent. Watching her was like seeing two fighters at once—the illusion of one style, and the reality of another layered beneath it. Even seasoned veterans found their reactions lagging behind, responding to the wrong attack as the real one struck home.
That was the true reason Mahoraga struggled. His adaptations were perfect in theory, his body evolving against her attacks as it should. But what he faced wasn’t the physical state of her weapon—it was her manipulation of perception. His instincts told him one thing, but her reality was always another. And with Nekhtem pressing his own force into the fight, disrupting his equilibrium further, Mahoraga’s renowned composure wavered.
The Divine General felt not like an immovable wall—but like prey being toyed with by a predator who grinned at every strike.
Sensing the trouble his Divine General was having against the little girl, Siddhartha finally leaned forward. His calm presence shifted, his hand extending toward Silvie to relieve Mahoraga of his binding.
But Silvie didn’t flinch. The spheres of water orbiting her body suddenly burst, and in an instant the arena was swallowed in a thick veil of steam. Vision collapsed on all sides, the battlefield vanishing behind a curtain of heat and haze.
Nekhtem moved instinctively, commanding the earth beneath his feet to rise and attack. Gravel surged upward, condensing into constructs sharp enough to tear through flesh. Yet the steam cloud fractured his focus—his senses scrambled, his sight lost.
And then the sounds began.
“Hop.”
“Hop.”
“Hop.”
The noise echoed strangely in the fog, shifting from one side to another, never staying still long enough to be pinned down. The combatants turned, searching, but there was no silhouette to strike, no aura to grasp.
Suddenly, Nekhtem felt the ground seize him. The very earth he controlled betrayed him, clamping like a vice around his ankles. His body sank, pulled downward as if swallowed whole. When he burst free again, it was into open space—face to face with Siddhartha instead of Mahoraga.
Both men blinked, momentarily disoriented. Siddhartha raised his brow, sensing the swap but unfazed. Nekhtem didn’t hesitate; gravel shot forward like piercing bullets, targeting the Crown Prince on reflex.
Elsewhere in the haze, Mahoraga realized the whip around his arms had vanished. Relief should have followed—but it didn’t. A strange unease gnawed at him. His instincts flared, his body screaming danger even without the bindings.
And then—
A mask appeared inches from his face.
“OOOGA BOOOGA!” Silvie screamed gleefully.
The Divine General, legendary for his unshakable composure, recoiled with a startled shout that echoed through the steam. The noise was high, shrill—so much so that Siddhartha, parrying Nekhtem’s barrage, glanced over in confusion.
“Was… was that Mahoraga?” His usually steady voice faltered. “And why did he sound so… feminine?”
The answer never came.
Silvie, doubled over laughing, straightened and licked her lips. “Hehehe, finally. I can face you properly now.”
Mahoraga coughed, struggling to gather his dignity. “Why are you so fixated on me, little girl?”
“Because you adapt, don’t you?” Silvie’s tone sing-songed, but something in the cadence slithered into his bones. His chest tightened. He didn’t want to answer that question.
When he refused, she only leaned closer, eyes sparkling with childish joy. “If you adapt… that means you can take it.”
Mahoraga’s throat went dry. “…Take what?”
“This beating.” Silvie’s smile stretched wide, whip hissing as it uncoiled behind her. “My martial arts are too advanced. Most people crumble before I even get warmed up. But you—” she giggled, tilting her head—“you change, you adapt, you survive, over and over. Which means…”
Her foot tapped lightly, like a child about to start a game.
“…I can take my time and have fun with you.”
As Mahoraga struggled in the arena, another battle—unseen by most—threatened to shatter Kei Y’s composure.
Up in the stands, Kei Y absentmindedly played with Olly while watching the match. His expression was neutral, even intrigued, until the entire arena seemed to chill over. The temperature dropped several degrees in an instant, a frost that had nothing to do with the weather.
Confusion spread through the crowd. Many rubbed their arms or looked skyward, wondering if a storm had crept in. But the true powerhouses in attendance knew better. Their eyes snapped toward Kei Y.
His gaze had changed.
The boy’s eyes were glazed over with frost, shards of murderous intent spilling out like a frozen gale. His bloodlust was so suffocating that even his [He Who Denies Fate] title intervened on its own, shielding his allies from the brunt of it. Were it not for the title’s protection, those closest to him would have collapsed beneath the suffocating aura.
But Kei Y didn’t care.
Hovering before his vision was a message that hollowed him out, stripping reason from his thoughts.
[Your contracted creature, Hachi, has suffered grievous injuries and is at risk of being killed.]
His mind went still. So still it was terrifying. He had no way to reach Hachi, no way to interfere. All he could do was stare at the words, his frosted eyes burning them into his soul. If Hachi’s life ended while he was in this dungeon, then when Kei Y emerged—vengeance would be absolute.
Back in the Expanse
Hachi crouched low, blood matting his fur, breath ragged. Aether projections of his tail, fangs, and claws shimmered faintly around him, their outlines trembling from the damage he’d endured. Despite his wounds, his instincts were sharp, every muscle ready to pounce.
But his mind was chaos.
Why would that lazy blonde lady send me after this scent? Why would she betray me like this? She’s supposed to be someone Master’s girlfriend trusted.
His opponent stood across from him, chest heaving, sweat dripping in rivers down his brow. Another silver ring shattered on his arm, fragments scattering like particles into the air.
“Heh…” Jin Saito wiped his forehead, still smiling despite the strain. “To think a Lycan could push me this far. You’re not even an Apex Boss—and yet you’re the strongest creature I’ve come across.” His eyes gleamed with fascination. “Perfect timing too. I’ve been hunting wolf-type creatures to evolve my [Wolf Slayer] title. And you…” he lifted his guard again, “…you’re exquisite prey.”
Yet hesitation lingered in him. Jin was a man who thrived on clarity, on absolutes—and the Lycan before him… didn’t fit. It fought differently. It defended more than it attacked. Its strikes felt protective, not bloodthirsty. And there was something else: a hesitation in its gaze, as though it wanted to nod at him, wanted to communicate something he couldn’t understand.
“…Are you… looking for me?” Jin asked cautiously.
He remembered their encounter: the wolf hadn’t attacked immediately. It had run toward him as though tracking something, following a trail. And now, even wounded, its eyes weren’t filled with hatred—but confusion.
Before Hachi could react, the world changed.
The ground trembled. A sudden frost spilled into the air. Hachi’s fur bristled, every nerve screaming.
His defensive stance shifted—not toward Jin, but toward the new presences fast approaching.
They arrived in numbers.
From the treeline emerged a pack of evolved Fangwolves, their howls cutting through the icy air. And at their head… a monster.
A Fang Lord. Its presence was crushing, its body exuding a frosted nightmare. Its breath curled like smoke, its eyes hard and unyielding. It looked directly at Hachi—not Jin—and in that gaze, there was no warmth. No recognition.
Just judgment.
Hachi’s body shook, not from the cold, but from memory. He felt small. A pup standing before a father he feared to disappoint. Because the creature before him wasn’t just any Fang Lord.
It was the Frost Fang Lord.
His father.
And around him—Hachi’s siblings. The ones deemed worthy enough to remain at his father’s side. Unlike Hachi, who had been cast aside.
Jin watched the proud Lycan wolf tremble, whimper, its frame on the verge of collapse. And something in his chest twisted.
This wasn’t just another beast.
“…This Lycan…” Jin murmured, eyes narrowing. His remaining silver rings clinked faintly on his arm. “It feels… important to me somehow. And if I don’t defend it now, I’ll regret it. I may not even understand how I die—but I will, if I abandon it.”
He stepped forward, planting himself between Hachi and the Fang Lord. His voice rang clear, loud, unwavering.
“This Lycan Wolf is under my protection now. So why don’t you do me a favor—leave. Otherwise, let it witness how pathetic you truly are.”
The Frost Fang Lord finally tore its gaze from Hachi, locking onto Jin. A guttural snarl ripped from its throat, and jagged ice spikes erupted from the ground like a storm of lances.
Jin’s silver rings spun violently around his arms, their glow piercing the frozen mist. His smile sharpened, his body vibrating with restrained anticipation.
“Well then,” he said calmly. “That’s your choice.” His rings split into streaks of light, forming pathways across the battlefield. “I only hope you don’t regret it.”
The air trembled as he raised his guard, the rings spinning faster. “If anything…” his eyes narrowed, “…using you to evolve my title will make it all the stronger.”
He laughed, low and fierce. “So I should be thanking you for showing up.”