Chapter 52— The Imperial Vanguard ( Part 2).
Chapter 52— The Imperial Vanguard ( Part 2).
Kaelen descended through the dust-filled air of the Grand Ballroom like an executioner dropping from the heavens.
His boots touched the shattered marble floor with a soft, weightless click that somehow echoed above the roaring ambient pressure of Draven’s crimson mana. The moment Kaelen’s feet made contact with the ground, a ripple of pitch-black violet energy spread outward across the floor, instantly neutralizing the scorching heat radiating from the Vaelorian commander’s war halberd.
The surrounding nobles, huddled behind fallen pillars and overturned royal thrones, held their breath in collective terror. On one side stood Commander Draven—a ten-foot titan clad in dragon-runed obsidian plate, carrying the terrifying backing of the vast Vaelorian Empire.
On the other stood a young man in a dark coat, holding a single sheath and blade that seemed to drink the very light from the room.
"Absurd," Draven rumbled, his voice laced with heavy, metallic contempt. "A local insect thinks a spatial sword technique can bridge the gap between regional trash and an Imperial Vanguard? I have slaughtered spatial grandmasters on the front lines of the Continental War, boy. You are nothing!"
Draven’s boots exploded against the marble.
BOOM!
The floor beneath the armored giant shattered into fine dust as Draven vanished from normal vision. Despite his massive size and heavy plate armor, his speed surpassed the sound barrier instantly.
He reappeared directly above Kaelen, his massive double-headed halberd descending like a falling meteor, coated in a devastating layer of compressed, dragon-shaped crimson fire.
---
[IMPERIAL SKILL ACTIVATED]
Skill: Dragon’s Descent (Tier SS)
Destructive Force: 520,000 Units
---
"DIE, INSECT!" Draven roared.
Kaelen didn’t step back. He didn’t raise a shield. He didn’t even shift his footing.
With an expression of complete, terrifying serenity, Kaelen simply raised his Void Blade horizontally with a single hand.
CLANG!
The impact was deafening. A blinding shockwave of heat, displaced air, and shattered spatial pressure erupted outward, instantly turning the remaining mahogany banquet tables near the center into ash and blowing the massive velvet tapestries off the palace walls.
Yet, when the blinding crimson flash faded, the entire ballroom froze in absolute, disbelief-driven horror.
Kaelen had stopped the continental-level strike. The massive, heat-radiating halberd blade was locked rigidly in place, held off by Kaelen’s single black steel blade. Kaelen’s arm hadn’t even bent.
The floor beneath his boots wasn’t even cracked—because every single ounce of kinetic force and explosive thermal energy had been swallowed instantly by the black spatial vortex swirling around his blade.
---
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Damage Absorbed: Via Sovereign Void Matrix
Converting Hostile Kinetic Energy Into Spatial Mana...
---
Draven’s glowing red visor widened behind his helmet. "What...?! My physical impact was completely nullified?!"
"Your technique is heavy, Vanguard," Kaelen murmured softly, his icy violet eyes glowing with a cold, predatory light just inches from Draven’s visor. "But heavy things fall fast... and break easily."
Kaelen flicked his wrist.
SWISH!
A concentrated arc of dark violet spatial energy burst from the tip of the Void Blade. Draven reacted with the veteran instincts of a continental soldier, leaning his massive body back just in time—but the crescent of spatial force bypassed his heavy dragon-runed armor entirely, slicing cleanly through his right pauldron as if the enchanted obsidian metal were nothing more than soft butter.
CLANK!
A massive chunk of heavy imperial plate armor crashed to the floor, exposing glowing, bleeding flesh beneath.
"ARGH!" Draven grunted, stumbling back three full paces, his visor pulsing with frantic crimson warnings.
CLANG!
---
[SYSTEM WARNING]
Armor Integrity: Compromised
Armor Bypass Confirmed: True Spatial Severance
---
"He... he injured the Vanguard?!" Marquis Vance shrieked from the floor, his face pale as a corpse as he dragged his broken body backward toward the shattered dais. "That armor was forged in the dragon-fires of Vaelor! It’s impenetrable to outer realm weapons!"
High on the balcony, Ren snorted while furiously operating his glowing blue holograms. "Impenetrable? That junk armor is just thick metal with basic rune enchantments! My boss cuts through the literal fabric of space. You can’t armor yourself against a hole in reality, you idiot!"
Draven growled, a low, guttural sound of pure rage escaping his chest. The golden dragon runes across his entire armor set began to burn with a dangerous, blinding golden-red light.
His physical size seemed to swell as his combat aura surged past its natural limits, igniting the surrounding air into a vortex of fiery death.
"I will admit, boy... you are no ordinary outer province worm," Draven hissed, gripping his halberd with both hands as molten rock dripped from the blade.
"I shall use my full imperial authority to erase your soul from this world!"
---
[SYSTEM WARNING]
Hostile Entity: Entering Overdrive Mode
Combat Power Rising: 650,000 Units...
Recommendation: Evade Immediate Area
---
Kaelen ignored the system warning completely. Instead, he slowly lowered his Void Blade, letting the tip rest lightly against the shattered marble floor.
"Ren," Kaelen said quietly.
"Yeah, boss?"
"How much time do we have before the Vaelorian Empire detects that this Vanguard’s life sign has been terminated?"
Ren scanned his spatial telemetry array for half a second. "Once his core stops beating, the Vanguard matrix takes roughly three minutes to signal the main fleet across the Sea of Ash!"
"Three minutes," Kaelen repeated smoothly. "That is far more time than I need."
Draven’s eyes burned with insane fury. "Arrogant bastard! IMPERIAL ART: NINE DRAGONS CLEAVING THE HEAVENS!"
Draven vanished into nine crimson illusions, each lunging at Kaelen from a different angle, their war halberds unleashing nine massive columns of dragon fire that sealed off every possible path of escape. The sheer thermal heat began to melt the stone pillars surrounding the central floor.
Lyra gasped from the balcony, her hands gripping the railing. "Kaelen!"
Kaelen didn’t dodge. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, feeling the precise vibrations of space ripple through the ballroom floor.
Step.
Kaelen took a single step forward.
---
[SOVEREIGN DOMAIN ACTIVATED]
Skill: Realm of Zero Distance
Effect: Spatial compression—immediate relocation to any point within the domain radius.
---
In less than a microsecond, reality bent. The nine flaming dragons and their blazing halberds struck empty air, exploding against one another in a massive fireball that scorched the ceiling.
Draven’s real body materialized behind where Kaelen had been standing, his halberd swinging wide into nothingness.
"Where did he—?!"
"Behind you, Vanguard."
Draven’s heart nearly stopped.
He spun around with frantic speed, swinging his halberd in a horizontal arc to decapitate the intruder—but Kaelen was already standing directly inside his guard, his face mere inches from Draven’s metallic chest plate.
Kaelen’s violet eyes burned with the absolute, terrifying authority of a spatial sovereign."You spoke of harvesting this realm," Kaelen whispered, his voice like ice sliding over steel.
"Tell your ancestors in the underworld... that the outer provinces are no longer open for harvest."
FLASH!
Kaelen’s Void Blade flashed in a circle of pure, pitch-black light.
It was not a flashy explosion. It was a silent, absolute execution.
The spatial blade sliced cleanly through Draven’s throat, through his enchanted gorget, through his spine, and through the spatial coordinates of his very soul.
Time seemed to freeze in the Grand Ballroom.
Draven’s massive war halberd slipped from his gauntlets, shattering into pieces as it hit the marble floor. The blazing red light in his visor flickered once, twice... and extinguished completely.
THUD. THUD.
The massive, ten-foot armored body of Commander Draven fell forward, crashing onto the stone floor like a fallen monument. A second later, his severed helmet rolled across the broken marble, coming to a stop directly at the trembling knees of Marquis Vance.
CLING!
---
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Target Eliminated: Commander Draven (Level 175)
Massive EXP Gained!
Acquired: Vaelorian Commander Core (Tier SS)
Acquired: Spatial Coordinate Map — Sea of Ash / Vaelorian Empire
Hostile Vanguard: Neutralized
---
The ballroom fell into a silence so absolute that the falling dust sounded like thunder.
The high nobles, Duke Brandon, King Alden, and the surviving royal guards stared at the fallen armored titan in utter, speech-paralyzing shock. An Imperial Vanguard—an entity capable of destroying entire kingdoms on the outer continent—had been executed in less than three minutes by a single man.
Kaelen flicked his Void Blade once, dispersing the thin line of dark energy along the steel, before smoothly sliding the sword back into its sheath with a crisp CLICK.
He turned his cold, violet gaze toward the kneeling, hysterical form of Marquis Vance.
"No... no... this is impossible..." Vance babbled, tears and blood leaking from his eyes as he scrambled backward until his back hit the royal throne. "You... what are you?! You aren’t human! You’re a monster."
Kaelen walked slowly toward Vance, his boots echoing in the quiet hall. "A monster? No, Vance. I am simply the one who decides who lives and who dies in this story."
Kaelen raised his hand, gesturing to Lyra and Tsubaki on the balcony.
"Secure the King," Kaelen commanded smoothly. "And clean up this trash. We have an empire to prepare for."