Chapter 179: Fall of Duke Owen
The celestial plasma of Duke Owen’s Imperial Sovereign Severance descended with the deafening roar of a falling sky, a sound like the heavens themselves tearing along an old seam. The twin pillars of blinding blue light split the air above Vince, radiant enough to sear afterimages onto the backs of his eyes, the sheer downward pressure buckling the earth around his feet and driving the cobblestones deep into the dirt in concentric rings, dust and pulverized stone hissing upward in a corona around the point of impact.
For a fraction of a second, the lethal cross-slash came within inches of cleaving Vince’s skull. Time seemed to thin, stretch, and nearly snap. The heat scorch-marked his clothes, curling the fabric at the collar, and the edge of Owen’s aura came close enough to cut a thin line across his collarbone — a shallow kiss of pain, bright and immediate, blood beading before he even registered the sting. It was the closest anyone had come to taking his life in months, and for one suspended heartbeat, something old and wary stirred behind his eyes.
Vince’s dark eyes flickered with cold focus. Whatever flicker of fear had risen was already being crushed back down beneath something harder, colder, more deliberate.
"If I had stayed in Oakhaven," Vince muttered, his voice quiet beneath the thunder, barely audible over the dying echo of shattering light, "your attacks would have been enough to end me. But I left. And I’m not the same boy who rotted in your cell."
The words carried no anger, no theatrical menace — only the flat, settled certainty of someone who had already made peace with what he was about to do.
With a subtle shift of his weight, Vince raised Executioner’s Edge with one hand, the massive blade seeming almost weightless in his grip despite its size, as though gravity itself deferred to him in that instant.
He released it all.
Every ounce of kinetic force he had bled off from Owen’s strikes — stored in micro-vectors throughout the duel, siphoned quietly with each parry and near-miss, hoarded like breath held underwater — erupted outward in a single, catastrophic wave of inverse gravity. It was the culmination of every blow he had endured, every collision he had absorbed instead of avoided, unleashed all at once.
BOOM!
The plasma pillars shattered instantly like cheap glass, fracturing into a thousand glittering blue shards that dissolved before they even touched the ground. The accumulated vector shockwave traveled up the length of Owen’s cobalt blades, vibrating at a frequency so extreme that the air itself seemed to scream, both legendary swords exploding into ten thousand silver fragments that rained down across the plaza like a localized, glittering storm.
The kinetic blast caught Owen square in the chest, lifting his heavy frame into the air as though he weighed nothing at all, driving him backward across the plaza in a long, ugly arc. He slammed violently into the gatehouse stone wall, the impact loud enough to rattle windows two streets away, the ancient masonry fracturing into a spiderweb of deep craters around his body, dust and mortar raining down over his crumpled form.
Owen slumped to his knees amid the wreckage, his shattered armor falling away in pieces with soft, metallic clatters as he coughed up a pool of thick, dark blood onto the stone. His arms hung limply at his sides, his breath coming in ragged, shallow wheezes, each exhale trembling with the effort of simply staying conscious. The proud duke who had entered this duel with such overwhelming confidence now knelt broken in the very courtyard he had meant to claim as the site of his triumph.
Vince walked slowly through the drifting dust, unhurried, almost contemplative, the heavy tip of Executioner’s Edge dragging along the cracked stone floor behind him with a low, grinding scrape that seemed to fill the sudden silence. He stopped three paces away, looking down at the broken nobleman with an expression that held neither triumph nor mercy — only patience.
"Does the name Harlan ring any bells?" Vince asked softly, the question landing with far more weight than its quiet delivery suggested.
Owen’s blood-soaked head snapped up at once. His eyes widened in genuine, staggering shock, the color draining entirely from his already pale face, leaving him ashen beneath the grime and blood. For several seconds, his jaw worked silently, the muscles of his throat straining as he refused to let the sound escape, some last vestige of pride locking the words behind his teeth. He stared at Vince as if looking at a ghost risen from a grave he himself had dug, keeping his lips sealed out of sheer imperial pride even as his body trembled with the effort.
Vince nudged the point of his blade against the stone near Owen’s knee, the scrape of metal on stone quiet but unmistakable — not quite a threat, but a reminder that patience had limits. "Answer me, Owen."
Owen let out a wet, bitter laugh that dissolved almost immediately into a fit of ragged coughing, spitting another mouthful of crimson onto the cobblestones. Seeing that his mana core was ruined, its once-steady glow now flickering and dim beneath his ribs, and that his life was fading with every passing second, the Duke’s stubborn pride finally snapped like an overtaut string.
"Harlan..." Owen whispered, his voice raspy and thin, barely more than breath given shape. "It’s... it’s the surname of the First Emperor. The magicless leader who brought the realms together... Yates Harlan."
Owen lifted his trembling head, straining against the weight of his own body, his eyes hollow and distant, as though he were staring not at Vince but through him, into some older memory. "His full name... was erased from the archives. The public was never told. But after those of Harlan’s era died out... the name became a secret passed down among the high noble houses... a warning of the threat that once ruled us."
Vince stood quietly for a moment, letting the words settle into the cool morning air, watching them land and take root somewhere behind his own composed expression. Something shifted there, subtle and unreadable. A slow, razor-sharp smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, equal parts satisfaction and something darker beneath it.
"First Emperor, huh?" Vince murmured, turning his back on the broken Duke and taking a step away, as though the dying man behind him were already a settled matter, already history. "About time I claim what’s mine, then."
Owen stared at Vince’s retreating back, his mind racing against the encroaching dark that crept in from the edges of his vision. The realization hit him like a physical blow, harder somehow than anything that had come before it.
"Thought... thought you didn’t have a last name..." Owen choked out, his chest heaving with the effort of forming each word. "Tsk..."
Vince paused in his stride, looking back over his shoulder with an expression caught somewhere between amusement and cold certainty. "So did I. But it seems my destiny caught up with me."
Owen’s breathing hitched, a small, broken sound. "Who... who are you...?"
"I am Vince Harlan," Vince said, his voice ringing with absolute, undeniable authority, the words carrying a weight that seemed to press down on the ruined plaza itself. "Son of Yates Harlan, and rightful ruler of the human faction."
Before Owen’s eyes could even register the words, before the shock could fully settle into whatever expression his face might have made, Vince executed a fluid backhand flick with Executioner’s Edge, unhurried, almost casual.
The air itself turned into a razor-thin kinetic crescent, moving so fast that Owen didn’t even have time to blink before his vision tilted and went dark. His head slipped silently from his shoulders, tumbling onto the cobblestones with a soft, final sound before his body collapsed forward into the dust.
> [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
> [Target Eliminated: Duke Owen]
> [Quest Complete: Retribution at Oakhaven]
> [Reward Unlocked: High-Tier Spatial Map of the Imperial Capital]
High above the clouds, hidden within her storm camouflage, Duchess Rosalind watched Owen’s body drop, the distance rendering the scene small and silent, almost peaceful. Though the swirling wind barriers prevented her from hearing their final exchange, she had already anticipated the outcome long before the first blade was drawn. Satisfied with what she had witnessed, she turned seamlessly in the sky and flew toward the horizon, her expression unreadable, signaling her hidden vanguard troops on standby to prepare for the capital siege.
Down in the ruined plaza, Vince lowered his blade, allowing Executioner’s Edge to dissolve back into dark kinetic motes that scattered like dying embers on the morning breeze.
Lyrielle and Livia stepped up beside him, their footsteps light against the broken stone. Livia’s six silver-tipped tails swished with subtle delight as she looked over the battle-torn gate, taking in the destruction with something close to admiration.
"A clean execution, young master," Livia purred smoothly, her tone warm with genuine approval. "Your strength is quite astonishing."
Vince glanced at the horizon where the sun was finally breaking over the treetops, bathing the road to the Imperial Capital in bright, golden light that stood in stark contrast to the wreckage at his feet.
"We don’t have much time," Vince said, pulling up his system inventory, his gaze already fixed on what lay ahead.