Chapter 183: Existential threat
The silence after Marcus’s dismissive words did not last.
Down in the scorched expanse of the throne room, Queen Moriele and King Golrath stood twenty paces apart, neither having ever fought alongside the other in their centuries of life. Their factions had traded border skirmishes and uneasy treaties, but in this suffocating hall, their shared survival demanded raw, uncoordinated violence.
"Primordial Tempest: World-Breaker!" Golrath roared, his massive frame swelling as red kinetic veins bulged across his chest and arms. He lunged forward, his battle-axe turning into a blinding, atmospheric drill of concentrated kinetic destruction aimed straight at Marcus’s chest.
Simultaneously, Moriele raised her silver staff with both hands, her eyes glowing like twin white suns. "Eclipse Star-Cascade!"
A volley of dense, white-hot meteors of celestial mana rained down from the high vaulted ceiling, converging on Marcus’s position with precise, terrifying velocity.
Marcus didn’t move until the very last microsecond. With a casual, minimalist sweep of his dark arming sword, he redirected Golrath’s drill of kinetic force into the floor while brushing aside the celestial meteors with a single backhand wave of his colorless imperial aura. The resulting explosion turned the surrounding marble statues to fine dust, but Marcus emerged from the smoke without a single tear in his robes.
Golrath skidded back, his heavy chest heaving, his claws dripping with fresh blood from the recoil. He cast a sharp, sideways glance at the High Queen. "Not bad for a frail elf," he growled, a rare flicker of respect in his fierce amber eyes.
Moriele adjusted her grip on her staff, her breathing coming in tight, shallow pulls, her silver robes scorched. "And you swing that axe with commendable brute force, Beast-King. But individual prowess isn’t going to pierce that man."
"Aye," Golrath spat a mouthful of crimson blood onto the stone floor, his eyes locking back on Marcus. "Got any real trick up your sleeve, Queen?"
Moriele’s lips thinned into a razor-thin line of cold resolve. "Only one. Match my rhythm if your blood can handle it."
"Try to keep up with me!" Golrath bellowed.
Without another word, the two Sovereigns synchronized their cores. Golrath ignited the absolute apex of his ancestral Beast-Force, wrapping his battle-axe in a vortex of dense, primal gravity. Moriele poured every drop of her remaining celestial mana into the head of her staff, weaving a high-tier forbidden array that merged her starlight directly into Golrath’s storm.
Forbidden Union: Astral Calamity!
A roaring, two-headed dragon of crimson lightning and incandescent silver star-fire erupted across the throne room, tearing up the stone floor and consuming the very air as it barreled toward the throne.
The massive collision engulfed Marcus completely.
BOOM!
A blinding shockwave of heat and pressure blew out the remaining windows of the palace, rattling the entire capital foundation. For a fleeting second, the combined aura pushed Marcus back three full paces across the dais, leaving a dark, smoking scorch mark across the left shoulder of his imperial tunic.
Golrath let out a breathless, savage grin. "Did we—"
Before the thought could finish, the smoke split wide open.
Marcus moved with speed that defied human perception. He didn’t glide; he simply ceased to exist in one frame and appeared directly between the two Sovereigns in the next.
THACK! THACK!
A dual strike of absolute, crushing speed occurred simultaneously. Marcus’s dark blade struck Golrath across the chest with the flat of the steel, shattering his ribs and extinguishing his primordial aura like a candle flame. In the exact same instant, Marcus’s palm slammed into Moriele’s solar plexus, unleashing an internal spatial shockwave that broke her casting core.
Both Sovereigns were hurled across the room, crashing violently into the base of the shattered marble stairs.
Golrath collapsed onto his side, coughing up pools of dark blood, his battle-axe slipping from his trembling fingers. Beside him, Moriele lay collapsed on the ruined stone, her breath coming in agonizing gasps, her silver staff cracked down the middle.
Marcus walked toward them at a slow, leisurely pace, his dark arming sword dragging lightly along the stone floor with a faint, chilling scrape.
"Fools," Marcus said softly, looking down at their broken forms with cold, absolute disdain. "You speak of freedom and alliance, yet your visions are as narrow as the dirt you crawl upon. You bled your people for decades only to die on my floor, gasping for breath like beasts in a trap. Your reign ends here—unremembered and pathetic."
High on the shattered balcony, watching Moriele and Golrath choke on their own blood, Lyrielle’s self-control snapped.
"Mother!" she cried out, her knuckles whitening around her staff as her eyes flared with desperate, tear-filled rage. Beside her, Livia’s six tails flared out in a wild, protective fan, her amber eyes burning with murderous intent for her husband.
Both women prepared to leap from the balcony to throw themselves between Marcus and the fallen Sovereigns.
Marcus didn’t even turn his head. He simply released a tiny, passive fraction of his underlying aura—a brief, suffocating leak of absolute killing intent.
The effect was instantaneous and horrific.
The air around the balcony turned to ice. Lyrielle froze mid-step, her body locking up as a paralyzing, primal terror flooded her veins, stealing the breath straight from her lungs. Livia gasped, her silver tails drooping as her knees buckled under the sheer, suffocating weight of the Emperor’s intent. The sheer disparity in power crushed their will to fight in a single second, leaving them trembling in the shadows, paralyzed by absolute dread.
In that exact moment, a sharp, piercing sound chimed directly inside Vince’s mind.
> **[CRITICAL WARNING: HIGH-PRIORITY EXISTENTIAL THREAT DETECTED]**
> **[Target: Emperor Marcus IV]**
> **[Combat Output Exceeds Standard Realm Thresholds]**
Vince didn’t look at the notification. His dark purple eyes were fixed entirely on the Emperor below.
Marcus reached the fallen Sovereigns. Without a hint of hesitation or emotion, he raised his dark arming sword high above his head, pointing the tip directly down at Moriele’s neck to end the High Queen’s life.
As the blade began its fast, decisive arc downward—
Vince vanished.
There was no sound of movement, no displacement of dust. The shadow on the balcony simply emptied.
*KANG!*
A deafening, metallic violence shattered the silence of the throne room.
A massive wave of purple kinetic energy and compressed gravity erupted outward from the base of the dais, blowing back the dust and sending a spiderweb of deep cracks cascading fifty yards across the stone floor.
Marcus’s descending sword was stopped dead in mid-air, held back inches from Moriele’s throat by the heavy, razor-sharp edge of *Executioner’s Edge*.
The shockwave blew Vince’s dark hair back from his forehead. Beneath his dark bangs, his eyes burned with an intense, unyielding purple aura, locking onto the Emperor’s gaze from less than two feet away.
Marcus held the blade against the crushing kinetic pressure, his golden eyes widening ever so slightly as he looked at the young intruder who had intercepted his swing with absolute precision.
A slow, unreadable expression crossed the Emperor’s face.
"Hmmm..." Marcus hummed softly.