Chapter 172: Overheating
The world was disintegrating around him, fragment by fragment.
A sharp buzzing sound, like a steel drill, drove into his temples with methodical cruelty. The ghostly echoes of the sonic explosion didn’t just resonate in his bones they carved themselves there, transforming every fiber of his being into a violin string stretched to its breaking point. His vision liquefied, colors drowning in waves of metallic gray and sticky shadow. The contours of the world lost their definition, morphing into a bloody watercolor where reality and nightmare merged.
His consciousness, suspended by a silk thread ready to snap, oscillated dangerously above the abyss of unconsciousness. Each heartbeat was a challenge thrown at death, each breath an act of rebellion against imminent collapse.
But that thread... he grasped it.
Not with delicacy. Not with grace.
With the ferocity of a trapped animal, with the brutality of a man who refuses to die.
A deep, primitive roar rose from the depths of his chest as he reopened his eyes. His pupils, dilated by pain and adrenaline, reflected an incandescent orange glow that of a cornered but far from defeated predator.
Mana responded to his call with unprecedented violence. The blue energy circulating in his veins transformed into a tumultuous torrent, carrying with it a pain so pure it was almost pleasurable. In a tearing of flesh and spirit, his mana wings burst from his back, deploying with the desperate urgency of a man who knows his life hangs in the balance at this precise moment.
The bluish energy composing them pulsed erratically violent, aggressive, unstable. Electric arcs crackled along their translucent membranes, projecting bursts of harsh light that tore through the air like claws of light. His muscles, paralyzed by the previous shockwave, protested vehemently as he forced them to obey. Every movement was torture, every gesture a challenge thrown at his own body.
He slightly straightened his torso, clenched his teeth until the enamel ground, and gathered what remained of his will.
Then, in a sharp beat that resonated like thunder, he struck the air.
The fall slowed but not enough. Never enough.