CHAPTER 434: 434: THREE KNIVES FOR A CROWN

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A few moments ago, Kai.... When the battle continued.

Alka’s shadow stitched a thin, steady line across the flats as Kai ran beneath her, sand exploding in muted bursts from each footfall. Ahead, three points moved inside a gray haze: Mardek’s grin turned to a bar, Skall’s wide-shouldered patience, Oru’s drift that never quite settled into a place. They had pulled back from the broken wedge and gathered their best like teeth cupped in a fist. They expected a chase; they got a hunt.

Kai didn’t speak. He let the Wrath Crown rise and turn, black and weightless over his head, and felt the air thicken as it remembered what fear was supposed to do. Then he called the other thing.

"Apex Plus."

Plates didn’t just unfold; they layered. Muscles packed under skin like braided rope. His spine lengthened a hand; shoulders broadened as if the desert had added him to its map. Claws thickened. The world didn’t slow, but his edges sharpened until the smallest twitch in an enemy’s wrist looked like a sentence waiting for a verb.

Oru reacted first because Oru always did. He flowed sideways and became the idea of a man in a heat haze, six steps to the left and four behind his own shadow. Iron-dust nets sang off the hands of his teams, a dull glitter, arcs engineered to settle like blankets right when you had to take a breath.

Kai cut through the first throw without looking, spearing a dark line that swatted the net’s belly so it sagged short and slapped dead sand. Two other nets hit the Wrath Crown’s pressure and drooped, knots swelling with their own salt. The third found wind —Oru’s, not Skyweaver’s— and curved back smartly at Kai’s knees, exactly wrong for anyone who believed in straight answers.

He jumped. Not far. Not pretty. Predators don’t vault when a step will do. The net hissed under him and dragged across a scrape Silvershadow would have appreciated. It stuck, ruined.

Skall came straight with a spade like a man who has solved too many problems to remember what it feels like to fail. He swung for Kai’s knee — the smart target on something that big. Kai’s shin met iron with a hard, ugly shock. Adaptive Armor flexed and drank the worst of it. Pain Resistance took the rest and set it aside like a bill to be paid later.

[Ding! Level Up: 51. Stat increases distributed. Aura +100. Soul power+100.]

(Note: the experience came from the drones, killing enemies.)

It slid into his skull and vanished as if the desert itself had clapped once.

Mardek didn’t wait for the numbers. He cut in low, dagger reversed, blade like a silver wink hunting for the tender seam under the last rib. Kai pivoted and caught the wrist. The bones he found there were good — dense, trained, dangerous. He squeezed until he felt tendons grind and then shoved the hand past his own hip so the strike missed and the man’s confidence went with it.

"Smile now," Mardek said through teeth, and didn’t.

Kai answered with silence and weight.

Oru’s second veil folded in, turning the world to bad glass. Tiny iron grit stung the eyes, salted the tongue, made breath taste like a bloody coin. Skall’s mat team slammed a rolled floor down behind Kai’s heel and yanked, hoping to steal a stance without blood. The Wrath Crown pressed; men flinched; the desert held its breath.

Kai stepped forward as if a hand had opened in the sand where he wanted one. Ant’s Instinct drew a rough line through haze and grit — weak heel there, lazy elbow there, a tendon loaded too tight at Skall’s right shoulder. The spear butt slammed that shoulder once, right on the rope-knot of muscle, and the spade rang out of Skall’s hand. Skall didn’t curse. He braced to clinch and win it ugly, the way he liked.

Kai didn’t give him the clinch. He drove the crown’s pressure down, not as a roar but as weight; the air around Skall thickened. Skall’s knee wobbled. Kai’s head snapped forward, a brutal, short weapon, and broke Skall’s nose; blood went hot and bright.

[Ding! Level Up: 52. Aura +100.Soul Power+100.]

Oru slid in at rib height using someone else’s shadow. His blade was a whisper at the base of Kai’s spine. Reflex Mode brushed Kai’s nerves long enough to turn. Claws met steel and ran it up Oru’s forearm to the meat. Oru twisted and made the wound small by spending skin. He vanished into brightness like spilled water.

"Alka," Kai said, barely above breath.

She folded once and knifed through Oru’s veil, wings beating one heavy gust that sent iron dust sideways into the men who had thrown it. Their coughs cost them a step at the exact moment Skall tried to bull in again. The spade man ate his own team’s stumble and didn’t blink; he was that kind. It didn’t save him from what came next.

Kai went lower than Skall could think a thing that big could go. He stamped Skall’s lead foot into the mat, pinning it, then used the spear like a lever in Skall’s armpit. Bone creaked. Skall’s arm opened like a stubborn door.

Kai ducked under and up —short, savage uppercut— fist plating tearing into the hollow under Skall’s jaw. Teeth shattered. The spade-man’s eyes flashed with pain and a grudging respect Kai did not accept or return.

[Ding! Level Up: 53. Aura +100. Soul Power+100.]

Mardek came from the other side, smiling again because this was the only place smiles belonged. He slid his blade along Kai’s forearm plate to make sparks and show he meant art. Kai let him, then slammed a knee into Mardek’s hip with enough force to change a man’s gait forever. Mardek’s breath left in a grunt he couldn’t hide. He spun and stabbed for the throat to win the rhythm back immediately. Apex Plus twisted; the blade kissed collar, glanced, and bit nothing.

[Ding! Level Up: 54. Aura +100. Soul Power +100.]

Oru reappeared with a net in one hand and a knife in the other, both meant to move on different beats. He tossed the net high to make eyes follow and cut low for the ankle he wanted to own. Kai ignored the net and drove the spear butt straight into Oru’s sternum. Something deep made a wet sound. Oru folded around nothing and melted away, teeth bared in a rare, involuntary snarl.

Skall drove his head into Kai’s ribs with a wrestler’s honesty. Something in Kai’s side twinged. Pain Resistance soaked; Worker’s Resilience shoved stamina forward and quietly added fatigue to the invoice due later.

"Down," Mardek hissed, and all three of them hit at once: Skall in, Oru under, Mardek around.

Kai took the worst of it on plates and used the gift it gave: three men close enough to smell.

He roared — not the huge one that had bent the camp, but a focused, narrow bellow that made the air between four bodies ugly to breathe. Wrath shoved. For one heartbeat, Oru’s drift hiccuped. For one heartbeat, Skall’s knee remembered it had been twisted before. For one heartbeat, Mardek’s blade kissed bone instead of blood.

It was enough.

Kai went for Skall first because Skall was the hinge. He hammered the already-bad knee sideways with an elbow and then stepped across it, heel grinding ligaments into something the body wouldn’t forgive. Skall grunted and refused to fall. Kai respected the stubbornness by not dragging it out. He speared Skall’s belly low, tip punching through layered muscle and the thick plate seam, and then drove up at an angle a spade couldn’t answer.

Skall’s breath left with a harsh "Hh—" and didn’t come back right. Kai wrenched the spear free and let gravity help take the man to a knee.

[Ding! Level Up: 55. Aura +100. Soul Power+100.]

Oru’s shadow snapped back into being where Kai’s flank should have forgotten him. Kai didn’t forget. Predator’s Instinct tugged his eyes to a ripple where heat didn’t bend like heat should. He threw the spear —not the point, the shaft— sideways like a staff and felt it meet ribs. Oru made no sound at all this time, which told Kai the hit mattered.

Mardek’s dagger stabbed for the eye. Kai twisted, took it in the cheek plate instead, sparks scattering. He grabbed Mardek’s collarbone with one hand, the dagger wrist with the other, and squeezed them together like the two jaws of a trap.

"Ghh—" Mardek tried. Kai head-butted him. Bone rang. Teeth bit tongue. Blood.

[Ding! Level Up: 56. Aura +100. Soul Power +100.]

The system chimed again, almost cheerful in contrast to the work.

[Ding! Battlefield feed: allied drones have culled enemy ranks.

Experience streaming: +1,400 ... +2,900 ... +4,600 ...]

Kai shoved the sound aside without looking.

Skall stood again. Of course he did. He had his spade back somehow and used it like a short axe, taking Kai’s thigh plate on the edge and not caring when the rebounding shock numbed his fingers.