CHAPTER 196: VOIDSTRIKE

His hand connected.

The instant it did, a violent burst of death energy erupted from his palm, engulfing me in a storm of black smoke and corrosive light.

The pressure slammed into my chest, ripping through the air with a deep, guttural roar that shook the ground beneath our feet.

Jael’s grin widened as he felt the surge of his own power flooding outward, consuming everything in its path. He laughed—a raw, triumphant sound that echoed across the mountainside.

"This is what you get for going against me!" he shouted, his voice rising with exhilaration.

He really thought he’d won.

"Really?" I said from within the smoke, my tone calm, almost disappointed.

The grin froze on his face. His eyes darted to the dark haze, disbelief flashing across them. Then my voice came again, clearer this time, cutting through the dying echoes of his laughter.

"It’s rather lackluster, don’t you think?"

The cloud of death energy began to disperse, the wind peeling it away to reveal me standing exactly where I’d been—unharmed, my armor faintly glowing with residual heat and mana distortion from [Fractured Existence]. The air still rippled faintly around me, like the surface of a disturbed pond, proof that his attack had never fully connected in the first place.

Jael’s eyes widened, shock turning quickly to confusion. He stumbled back a step, then another, as the realization sank in.

He yanked his hand away, retreating several meters in an instinctive blur, his boots grinding into the dirt as he tried to put space between us.

His gaze swept over me frantically, taking in every detail—the steady rise and fall of my chest, the faint smirk curling on my lips, and the complete absence of injury.

His expression twisted into something ugly.

"You don’t observe much, do you?" I said quietly, tilting my head just slightly, the faint shimmer of void light still flickering along the edge of my blade.

"You can only harm me if I want you to."

Jael’s head snapped up, confusion flickering across his face. "What?"

He barely got the word out before I vanished.

To him, it must have looked like I appeared behind him—but the truth was, by the time he sensed my presence there, I was already gone again.

He turned instinctively, reacting to the echo of my movement, and that was exactly what I wanted.

The real me was behind him—closer than breath.

My blade pulsed in my grip, the void energy within it thrumming with eagerness, begging to be released. I obliged.

With a sharp exhale, I drove the weapon forward.

The blade pierced through the layers of his armor and sank deep into his gut, the sound wet and heavy. A burst of black and violet light erupted from the point of impact, a violent surge of void energy ripping through his body and blasting out his back in a column that split the sky.

Jael gasped, his body jerking from the sheer force. A spray of blood followed—thick, dark, and steaming.

He trembled, choking on his breath, eyes wide in disbelief.

"Y–you... what are you?"

I didn’t bother to answer.

Instead, I tightened my flaming fist and drove it upward into his jaw.

The punch landed with a bone-crunching impact, a shockwave tearing outward as fire burst from my knuckles. The explosion was instantaneous—like a jet engine igniting point-blank.

BWTOOM!

Jael’s head snapped back, his body rocketing upward the instant my fist connected, twisting midair like a broken marionette before crashing into the dirt with earth-shaking force.

He tumbled violently across the battlefield, each impact sending up bursts of dust and shattered stone, until he finally slammed into the mountain’s base with an explosive crack that rattled the surrounding cliffs.

I stood still for a moment, the echo of the impact reverberating through my arm.

My fist sizzled, trails of smoke curling from my knuckles as the residual heat shimmered against the air.

The faint hum of [Hellbrand] still pulsed beneath my skin, wild and eager for more, but I exhaled slowly and forced it to subside—dialing the power back before it consumed me, too.

A thin wisp of steam rose from my hand as I lowered it. My gaze fixed on the crater where Jael had landed. He wasn’t moving.

I tilted my head slightly. "Maybe now you’ll finally be willing to talk."

The words left my mouth quietly, half to myself. I began walking toward him, each step crunching over debris and scorched rock.

The closer I got, the clearer the scene became—Jael’s form sprawled amid shattered stone, armor cracked, smoke still drifting off his shoulders.

But then, he moved.

Slowly at first.

He planted one hand on the ground, his fingers digging into the dirt, and forced himself upright with a low, guttural growl. Wisps of black energy—his death aura—seeped from his wounds, threading across his body like veins of darkness. They slithered over torn flesh and cracked armor, pulsing faintly as if stitching him back together.

Healing... or simply holding him together, I couldn’t tell.

Either way, it was working.

He groaned as he found his feet, each movement a ragged fight against whatever the black stuff had done to him, and when he raised his head toward me the look in his eyes was all jagged edges—rage, blame, something that wanted to shred everything in its path.

"You... you ruined everything," he spat, each word like a stone.

"Your actions led you here. Don’t blame an innocent goblin," I said with a shrug, but he didn’t want reason.

"Shut up!" he roared, the sound ripping the air, and the mountain answered.

New tendrils erupted from his wounds as if the ground itself obeyed him, black ink unfurling across stone and root and grass with terrifying speed.

It raced outward in thick, glossy rivers, swallowing up moss and leaf and the fragile green of life, turning everything it touched into brittle ash and a smell like old iron.

The dark line crawled up the slope behind him, then fanned outward like spilled oil, greedy and fast, devouring texture, color, the little chirps of mountain insects, the stubborn lichens clinging to rock—anything with life blinked out where it passed.

"I don’t care what it takes. I’ll consume it all to end your life," he screamed, and then the black ink rose around him like a crown and surged outward, swallowing territory in heartbeat increments.

That sight...