Chapter 119: Ascension Event
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Now unarmed, Darius lunged with hands. Kai slid behind, hooked neck with spear crook. He could finish, yet Darius’s hidden left hand yanked a vial and smashed it on the ground. A flash bomb of liquid glare. Kai’s optics seared white. Darius tore free, stabbed Kai’s side with a concealed stinger blade.
HP 200.
World tunneled. Darius staggered too, exhausted. Kai swayed. "This is a dying breath."
He inhaled, tasted iron and basilisk sap. He ate one three star core. Got +200 aura. Activated simultaneously Essence Overlord with the last of his strength. Spear tip drank, edge smoking. He charged blind memory of Darius’s aura.
Darius lifted his broken sabre with a broken wrist for the final block.
Kai thrust. Metal screech... Light flared... And the aura shattered in mid-impact.
Dust floated in lazy ribbons above the shattered hall, lit only by moon-shafts pouring through the broken roof. Shards of black enamel sabre lay everywhere, still steaming where Kai’s final thrust had seared them with Essence Overlord.
For a heartbeat nothing moved, until the crimson tip of Kai’s spear finished its trembling arc and clanged onto the flagstones. The sound rang like a lone bell announcing a new age.
Across the debris Darius knelt, impaled clean through the breastplate. Devouring darkness crawled from the wound, racing beneath his plates like spilled ink. His eyes, once bright with four-star rank arrogance, clouded over.
Kai’s balance faltered, his HP bar fluttered at 27 / 2000. But he kept his gaze locked on the traitor. "Enjoy your burial," he rasped.