Chapter 283: Converge
Chapter 283: Converge
Nyx Vespera stood between the ancient entity and the bleeding girl.
She gripped her jagged obsidian daggers tightly in her hands. She had caught his rusted blade once, halting the execution. She did not plan to let him swing again.
Nyx melted into the shadows of the abandoned processing plant. She emerged instantly in the clone’s blind spot. She drove her daggers toward the base of his neck.
SWISH.
The blades met zero resistance. They passed cleanly through the oversized wool coat. There was no blood. There was no physical contact.
Nyx stumbled forward, her momentum betraying her. She spun around, her eyes narrowing.
The clone of Malakor had not moved. He simply looked at her with dull, vacant brown eyes.
She slashed again, unleashing a flurry of rapid, lethal strikes. She aimed for the heart, the throat, and the kneecaps. Every single strike clipped right through him.
She had just learned the exact same terrifying lesson Reina had learned moments ago. The creature was not fully occupying the physical space it appeared to be standing in. It was a localized distortion. Her lethal speed was completely useless against a target she could not touch.
The clone raised his rusted hunting knife. He stepped fully into the physical plane for a fraction of a second, aiming a brutal thrust at Nyx’s ribs.
Nyx twisted violently, barely avoiding the lethal blow. The rusted steel grazed her dark uniform. She realized instantly that she had bought seconds for Reina, not safety. She could not kill him alone.
She did not have to.
KRA-BOOM.
The heavy brick wall on the eastern side of the processing plant violently exploded inward. A massive cloud of dust and shattered masonry flooded the factory floor.
Aegon Logcheville did not bother looking for a door. He took the fastest route available.
He stepped through the settling dust like a localized meteor. He was already burning. He had triggered [The Asura’s Devouring Crucible].
The deep, terrifying crimson flames radiating from his skin warped the freezing air and illuminated the dark factory in a hellish red glow.
He gripped his custom-forged Blood Fire Spear with both hands. His crimson eyes locked onto the clone, but he did not charge blindly into the fight.
He saw Reina crumpled on the concrete.
Aegon sprinted forward, completely ignoring the ancient monster holding the knife. He grabbed Reina by the heavy leather straps of her armor and hoisted her up. He moved with brutal efficiency, pulling her clear of the immediate combat zone.
He dragged her toward the shattered wall he had just created, setting her down gently against a pile of broken bricks.
"Stay down," Aegon ordered softly, his voice rough but incredibly gentle.
Reina coughed, her face pale from the agony of her broken ribs. She did not argue. She stayed on the ground, keeping her eyes locked on the monster.
A sharp, crackling sound echoed from the high rafters of the processing plant.
ZZZAP.
Lucien Vaelmont dropped from the exposed steel beams. He landed gracefully on the concrete, scanning the room rapidly. He drew his Thunder Rapier, blue lightning sparking lightly across his fingers and running down the slender steel blade.
The aristocrat read the geometry of the room instantly. He saw the untouched clone, the frustrated assassin, and the wounded Berserker.
"He is shifting," Lucien announced, his voice smooth and remarkably calm.
He stepped up beside Aegon, presenting the tip of his crackling rapier toward the quiet engineer.
"Your blades are passing through him, Nyx," Lucien noted pragmatically. "He is manipulating his spatial presence. If we swing for the center of mass, we hit empty air."
Aegon spun his blazing spear, his crimson aura flaring. "Then how do we bleed him?"
"We stop trying to hit him clean," Lucien instructed, narrowing his focus in cold calculation. "We flood the zone. We attack the space around him until he is forced to solidify to strike back. We catch him in the transition."
Six blocks away, the Captain sprinted through the narrow, freezing alleys of the eastern quarter.
His black coat billowed behind him. His featureless white mask stared straight ahead.
He had [The Omniscient Cartographer’s World Map] running flawlessly in his mind. The fine blue geometry of the city showed him every shortcut, every barricade, and the exact location of his squad.
But the map was a flow of information, not a physical buff. It did not make his boots move any faster. It did not grant him teleportation.
’The distance is too great,’ Draven calculated, his heartbeat steadying into a cold, rhythmic pulse. ’Even at maximum sprinting capacity, my arrival time is exactly one hundred and twenty seconds away. In a battle against an ancient entity, two minutes is an eternity.’
He was too far away to issue commands. He could not use his spatial authority to reverse a kinetic strike. He had to rely on the foundation he had spent months building.
He had to trust them to survive the next two minutes alone.
Inside the processing plant, the squad did not wait for their leader.
Aegon roared, launching himself forward. He did not aim his blazing spear at the clone’s chest. He slammed the heavy shaft into the concrete floor, unleashing a wide, sweeping wave of blistering Blood Fire.
The flames engulfed the space where the clone stood. The entity was forced to phase out, avoiding the intense heat.
The moment the clone reappeared two feet to the left, Nyx was already there.
She melted seamlessly from the shadow of a rusted gear. She slashed her obsidian daggers in a wide, horizontal arc. The blades were meant to corral him, not kill him.
The clone stepped back, his physical form solidifying just enough to raise his rusted knife to parry.
CLANG.
The instant the metal connected, Lucien struck. The duelist darted forward like a blur of blue lightning. He thrust the Thunder Rapier directly into the opening Nyx had created.
The electrified steel grazed the clone’s shoulder. A faint hiss of burning fabric filled the air.
They fell into a flawless, punishing rhythm. Aegon provided the heavy, explosive area denial. Nyx controlled the blind spots and forced the enemy into the open. Lucien delivered the precise, punishing strikes.
They did not need Draven to tell them where to stand. They had become a cohesive, devastating unit that could function perfectly in the dark.
Reina watched the coordinated assault from the rubble.
Her ribs burned with agonizing pain. Every breath felt like inhaling broken glass. She was bleeding heavily from the deep cut on her thigh.
She looked at her heavy double-sided battle axe resting on the stones. She gripped the leather handle.
She planted the heavy shaft against the ground. Slowly, stubbornly, she forced herself to stand.
Her knees trembled violently. A thin layer of white frost crawled across the bricks as her core struggled to regulate her temperature. She could not swing the axe. She could not sprint into the fray. She was functionally useless as a combatant.
But she was upright.
Aegon caught sight of her standing from the corner of his eye. A fierce, proud grin spread across his face, pushing back the exhaustion. Lucien smirked, adjusting his grip on his rapier.
She was bleeding, but she was not broken. Her refusal to stay down fed the morale of the entire squad, giving them the emotional anchor they needed to keep fighting.
The clone of Malakor stepped backward, creating a brief pocket of distance.
He looked at the scorch mark on his coat. He looked at the three warriors pressing him, and the wounded girl refusing to yield.
His dull brown eyes remained vacant, but a chilling shift occurred within his ancient, hollow consciousness.
’This is no longer a simple execution,’ the entity processed silently. ’The children have adapted to the spatial distortion. Their overlapping elemental outputs are limiting my evasion parameters. The spearman provides localized mass. The assassin denies the shadows. The duelist exploits the transitions.’
He had treated this encounter as a game of bait. He had waited patiently for them to arrive to break them one by one.
He realized he had fundamentally miscalculated their synergy.
The clone adjusted his grip on the rusted hunting knife. The ambient temperature around him plummeted, carrying the heavy, suffocating weight of the Wildlands.
He stopped treating the squad as prey. He began treating them as a genuine, unified threat. He prepared to unleash the true, devastating physical strength of his vessel.
Before the clone could launch his counterattack, the heavy iron doors at the front of the processing plant groaned.
SCREECH.
The rusted metal was physically torn open by a massive, unseen force.
Draven stepped through the doorway. His black uniform and white mask appeared stark against the swirling dust. He was breathing heavily, having pushed his stamina to the extreme limit, but his posture was flawless.
He did not arrive in time to save them from a massacre. He did not need to.
He looked at Aegon, Lucien, and Nyx holding the center of the room. He looked at Reina standing tall by the wall. They had stabilized the fight completely on their own. They had held the line.
Draven stepped forward, drawing a sleek, dark blade from his spatial ring. He joined the formation, acting as the fifth and final piece of the board.
The playing field was officially level.
The clone of Malakor looked at the masked boy. The entity did not retreat, but the rusted knife in his hand lowered a fraction of an inch.
"The architect of the wooden cage arrives," the clone whispered, his voice echoing with cold, undeniable contempt. "You are just in time to watch them die."