CHAPTER 369: INTENSE FORCE AND POWER

The sky above crackled faintly, pressure mounting in the space between us. He took one slow breath, then his aura surged, raw, dense, and layered with invisible forces. The air bent subtly around him.

A faint shimmer danced across his limbs, like gravity and magnetism wrapped around each punch and step.

Then he vanished.

No sound.

No flare.

Just pure, unfiltered speed.

But this time, I was ready.

I didn’t try to dodge. Instead, my short vortexes spun into existence near my shoulders and ribs, quick funnels of Energy absorption. As David’s fist flew toward me, I focused on the subtle layers between it: the tension in the space, the warping of energy, the compression of force just milliseconds before release.

I let him hit me.

BOOM!

His knuckles slammed into my side. Pain exploded across my ribs, but I didn’t fly back. I dug in. The vortexes siphoned part of the kinetic energy and fed it into my core, where my generator pulsed violently. More Essence. More fuel.

I retaliated with a rising elbow aimed at his chin, lightning arcing along my arm.

He ducked low, then swept his leg upward to pulse a blast of repulsion under my feet.

The air beneath me ruptured. I was flung upward like a ragdoll into the sky but only for a moment.

I flipped midair, twisted back, and rocketed toward him.

He met me halfway.

The next few seconds blurred into raw movement.

A fist caught my jaw.

I slammed my shoulder into his chest.

A knee hit my side.

I drove my heel toward his neck, only for him to vanish behind me then hammer his palm into my back with a gravitational twist. I spiraled downward from the air, but slowed myself by dispersing a burst of Essence mid-fall. My feet caught air, balancing again.

All the while, I was observing with my Domain.

The runes etched into space around me flickered, feeding me feedback on every law David touched.

Repulsion. Attraction. Gravitational grip. Kinetic surge.

He wasn’t just using force, he was weaving it.

David stopped hovering a few meters above me, lips twitching in amusement. "I know you’re absorbing what I’m doing," he said. "I can feel it. You’re draining bits of my force with those little tricks."

I didn’t reply. The storm in my generator core was building. My muscles tightened, Essence bleeding into every limb.

David’s amusement faded.

"Then let’s see if you can take this."

He raised both hands to the sky.

The clouds overhead split.

A column of wind twisted down from above, but it wasn’t natural, it was forged from layered forces. Magnetic tension wrapped around gravitational pressure. Invisible walls of compressed air formed into a descending, tightening spiral.

The winds didn’t howl, they screamed.

"[Primal Fury]," he declared.

The spiral above him contracted sharply, then detonated downward.

I barely had time to move.

I rushed upward to meet it head-on, eyes glowing with Essence, vortexes spinning like drills around me, absorbing what they could of the descending power.

And then—

CRACK-KRAKOOM!!

The force struck.

Weight beyond mountains slammed into me. My body was driven down like a comet, the air catching fire around me. The energy flooded my skin, muscles, bones. Pain rippled through every cell.

But so did power.

Because even now, especially now, the vortexes were still working. Few cracked and burst apart but I created more.

The moment I smashed through the outer wall of the skyscraper, it erupted in a blast of stone and steel. Shards of glass and twisted metal spiraled around me as I burst through one floor after another. I finally crashed out the other side, trailing smoke, before halting midair, barely.

My body was shaking. My right arm hung heavier than it should have, shoulder partly dislocated. Blood seeped from a gash along my ribs. I could feel bruised organs shifting inside me, deep, pulsing pain with every breath.

But my core...

My core was still glowing.

Still alive.

I took one rough breath and smiled.

Then I pushed some of the stored Essence into Constitution.

A warm surge flooded my body. The pain dulled. Torn muscle fibers pulled together slightly. The bleeding slowed, though not fully. The damage was still there but manageable now.

I looked up through the smoke and floating debris.

David hovered high above, his arms slowly lowering after that colossal strike. His face was hard. Focused. But there was a flicker behind his eyes, disbelief.

He had expected that to end things.

Or at the very least... he thought it would cripple me.

And honestly, he wasn’t far off.

My ribs felt like they’d been cracked open by a mountain. My right arm barely moved. The left side of my face stung from a deep cut. I could taste blood in my mouth, thick and coppery.

Yeah, I was hurt. No denying it.

But I wasn’t someone you could silence with a few hard hits.

I’d gotten what I needed. I’d seen enough. Felt enough. Every move he made, every shift in the air, every hidden pressure in his palms, it was all burned into my mind now.

I called up my status window, blinking away the pain.

Laws:

- Minor Law of Absolute – 40%

- Level 3 – Minor Law of Space

- Level 2 – Minor Law of Fire, Ice, Lightning, Light, Wind

- Level 1 – Minor Law of Vitality, Conversion, Absorption, Shadow, Attraction, Repulsion

I took a breath, slow, steady and muttered under it, "Node 3... activate."

A sharp glow pulsed at the base of my spine. A deep rune flared to life.

Then came the power.

Raw, flooding strength surged through every part of me, my bones, my muscles, my blood. The air around me cracked as the pressure burst outward. Wind swirled violently.

The broken building behind me groaned and shuddered, chunks of wall breaking off from the sheer force pouring out of my body.

David’s eyes widened not much, just a flicker but enough to show he hadn’t expected this much power to rise again so quickly.

I didn’t wait.

My domain responded instantly. The space ahead of me peeled open like water, parting cleanly to let me pass.

My body burst forward like a thunderclap, one breath, one flash and I was there.

Right in front of him.

My knee slammed straight into his chest, and at the exact moment of contact, I activated [Seismic Burst]. A focused repulsion wave, powered by my strength and laced with what I’d learned from him, exploded outward.

It wasn’t just impact, it was controlled rejection. A violent, law-infused rejection of everything in front of me.

One second, David was staring at me with surprise then he was gone.

BOOM!

The air shattered with a thunderous crack.

His body flew like a cannonball, leaving a twisting ripple in the wind behind him. A streak of bent light and cracked sky followed his path.

He smashed into the castle wall below—a thick, reinforced structure that stood untouched for years.

Not anymore.

The moment he hit, the stone caved inward with a deafening roar. Dust and debris exploded outward as a crater formed, deep and wide, swallowing him into its center.

The ground trembled beneath it.

I hovered above, chest rising and falling and steam rose from my body.