CHAPTER 367: A WORTHY FOE

A notification rang in my mind and I checked it.

[Skill Gained!]

[Thunderflame Dominion – Level 1]

A living weapon forged from lightning, fire, and spatial force. Can be split, expanded, or spun to create wide-area destruction or precise, binding strikes.

The chain hummed in my hand like it understood the name. Still coiled like a snake, it pulsed with heat and current. Lightning arced between the links. Flames ran along the edges like restless butterflies trying to break free.

I gave it what it wanted.

With a short roar, I yanked both arms outward. The chain split cleanly in two, one in each hand. The heat doubled. The pressure doubled. Every breath around me began to taste of ash and thunder.

Then I moved.

The first chain slashed through a group of Holt masters just beginning to regroup. Their formation shattered instantly, two of them exploded on contact, another was caught in the space-bind effect and twisted mid-air before bursting apart with a flash.

The second chain whipped low, catching a dozen feet in a circle. Flames flared beneath them. Lightning lashed upward, turning the ground into a grave. Screams rang out but never finished. When I yanked the chain back, blood mist trailed in the air.

They tried to run. I didn’t let them.

I spun both chains high above my head, building speed. Fire and lightning spiraled out again. This time, the storm widened. It formed a true cyclone. Soldiers screamed and scattered, abandoning their lines, their weapons, their defenses near the castle wall.

The wall, their final fallback, was suddenly exposed.

I kicked off the air and rushed toward it, wings flaring behind me, heat and thunder roaring at my back.

Then—

BOOM!

A sudden force struck me like a mountain falling from the sky.

I didn’t even see it.

One moment I was mid-flight, the next I was crashing backward through buildings, stone walls, and streets. Pain flared in my ribs. The ground cracked beneath me as I skidded across a road, smashing through two big skyscrapers and a low wall before finally stopping beneath a half-collapsed warehouse.

I groaned. Smoke rose around me. My wings flickered, Essence leaking out of them for a moment.

"What the hell was that?"

I stood slowly, brushing dust off my shoulders. A sharp pain pressed against my ribs. I looked down, there was a clear dent just above my stomach, skin bruised black and blue beneath the clothes.

"Tch..."

I narrowed my eyes and reached out with my perception.

The moment I did, I felt them, all three of my fractured Psynapse shifted and locked onto the same direction at once.

Above the castle wall.

There.

A figure stood in the sky, arms crossed. Gold-trimmed clothes, broad shoulders, blue hair. The wind didn’t touch him. His aura was like a crushing tide pressing down over the entire battlefield.

[David Holt – Level 254]

A Grandmaster.

I hovered there quietly. My fingers tightened. My ribs throbbed with every breath.

’Can I take him head-on?’

I checked my Essence storage. Full. Absolutely full. My core was burning with it, waiting to be used.

’Then let’s see.’

I transferred it all, every drop, into Strength.

Muscles swelled instantly under my skin. My arms thickened. Bones shifted and reinforced themselves. The bruise on my side sizzled and began to heal rapidly, flesh restoring on its own under the pressure of raw power.

Wind cracked around me as my strength soared.

I blasted off the ground and flew straight toward the floating man.

We stopped just ten meters apart, hovering high above the broken battlefield. Smoke rose below. Screams echoed in the distance.

He looked at me calmly, then smiled a little.

"So there really was a kid like you hidden in the empire," David said. His voice was smooth, practiced, with the confidence of someone who had never seen defeat.

"A Master-level warrior causing this much destruction? Almost makes me wonder what your Grandmaster form will look like."

I didn’t respond right away. I let my chains slither around me, floating in spirals, hissing softly with heat and crackling current.

I raised an eyebrow.

"You’re a Grandmaster? Why are you down here with the rest of us? Shouldn’t you be up there..." —I pointed upward— "...playing your games in the sky?"

He laughed softly.

"Oh, but it’s been so long since anyone made things interesting down here. I had to come see it for myself."

I tilted my head. "Then you saw what I did."

"Yes," he said, eyes narrowing. "Which is exactly why I’m here now."

The air between us crackled.

I clenched both chains tighter.

"Then let’s not waste time."

His smile vanished.

And just like that, the real battle began.

Wind howled as we clashed in the sky.

David raised one palm, and the space between us warped. I felt it coming a moment before it struck, a repulsion field, raw and blunt like a wall smashing forward. My body shot back again, but this time, I didn’t resist.

I activated [Sovereign Reversal], and multiple violet vortices spun to life around me, absorbing the incoming force and converting it directly into Essence at my core.

I twisted mid-air and skidded across the sky like a skipping stone, absorbing the impact with my body rather than countering it. My ribs groaned, but the flesh held firm. Muscles reinforced by Essence took the blow, and in the next second, I rocketed forward again.

David’s brows lifted slightly, impressed.

"That was impressive."

I grinned. "Thanks."

The chains around me dissolved in twin flashes of fire and lightning. I didn’t need them for this.

I poured Essence into my arms and my legs. Every muscle fiber sharpened, every nerve aligned. My eyes gleamed violet as I snapped into motion. I launched a punch at his face.

It landed.

For a moment, just a brief one, his head jolted slightly to the side. My fist felt like it had struck a mountain wrapped in silk. But he didn’t fall.

Instead, David’s hand flicked up.

Boom!

I was flung down like a meteor. Another repulsion burst.

I slammed into the side of a building, cracking it down the middle, then burst back out again with a roar. My skin steamed from the Essence pressure, but I wasn’t injured, just buried for a second.

And I could not control myself from grinning widely.

This time, I activated my Absolute Domain.

The world around me shifted. Lines and flows of Essence became visible, faintly threaded in violet. But more importantly, I sensed something deeper, the minor laws David was using. Not just one, but layers. Threads of gravitational force, curving lines of attraction, pulses of electromagnetic control spiraling through the air like coiled snakes.

I blinked once and saw them all.

He extended a finger.

Zzt!

The space around my chest compressed and pulled me forward, and at the same time, a sudden upward pulse of gravitational lift spun me into the sky. I tumbled in mid-air.

Then his knee smashed into my stomach.

Again, the vortexes formed absorbing the attack.

I grunted but didn’t fall. My body bent slightly, absorbing the force, and I twisted to bring an elbow into his ribs.

But he was gone.

Repulsion again. This time horizontal.

David appeared above me and snapped his fingers.

Instantly, a crushing force slammed down, nearly driving me to my knees.

I gritted my teeth and released a burst of Essence, shattering the pressure around me.

I charged straight at him.

This time again, he tried to push me with a gravity well, but I pushed back with pure Essence-fueled strength, my domain flaring brighter.

My foot smashed through the pressure and closed the distance. A flurry of blows followed, left hook, right jab, knee strike, headbutt. David dodged and deflected, but a few of them slipped through.

One elbow grazed his cheek.

Another strike cracked against his shoulder.

David’s smile faded slightly.

Essence surged again, my veins glowing faintly as I reinforced my shoulders and spine. His next blow sent me flying, but I didn’t slow down. I rebounded off the air like a launched bullet.

We clashed again.

Boom—Boom—Boom!

Air exploded with each exchange. My fists collided with invisible shields. His palms pulsed with force fields and shifted gravity like it was a toy. My domain watched it all, soaking in the structure, the patterns, the construction of each law usage.

And I kept fighting.

He pulled me with attraction, I broke it with Essence bursts to my feet.

He tried to compress me with gravitational collapse, I flexed and let my body flow around it like water.

He disrupted my center of balance using magnetic vectors, I simply moved faster than the interference could settle.

We tore through the sky above the battlefield. Below us, soldiers stared in awe, some too stunned to run, others retreating as rubble and debris rained down from our impacts.

David finally clicked his tongue.

"You’re sturdy," he muttered, shaking his hands slightly. "Even under law compression. You let yourself get knocked around just to see what I was doing. Clever."

"I’m not clever," I said. "I just know how to learn while fighting."

"You do. But brute strength has its limits, even when backed by Essence." He raised both hands. "Let’s test those limits."