CHAPTER 50: THE PRICE OF SURVIVAL

Tatehan stood, gripping the sword in his hands very tightly, gazing at Kael like he was his sworn enemy. His eyes, even behind the mask, radiated pure annoyance.

Kael gazed back just as intensely, holding his chakrams in a white-knuckled grip.

"I wouldn’t advise you fight me, kid. Even with that magic-like armor and my sword you’re holding, I can still inflict damage."

For a second there, Tatehan couldn’t believe he was doing this. Ready to fight the man who had saved his life. It sounded impossible, but here they were. Reality had a twisted sense of humor.

"I should be telling you that, old man," Tatehan replied, unfazed.

Kael grinned at being called ’old man.’

Tatehan jumped down from the mauler’s corpse, landing in a crouch, one hand on the ground for balance.

"I never wanted to fight you," he said to Kael. "I mean, right now I still can’t believe I’m actually doing this, but—"

Kael spat on the ground furiously. The glob of saliva hit the dust with contempt. Tatehan’s words died in his throat as he looked at where the man had spat.

Kael cocked his head to the side, cracking his neck.

"Cut the chase. This is a death fight. I’m warning you, you still have time to flee."

Tatehan processed the words carefully. He was certain the man wasn’t bluffing. Kael was capable of ruthless things. When he’d saved Tatehan from the mauler, his phantom leaps had been executed with terrifying precision and speed.

Phantom Leap.

That word spun in his mind like poison. He’d almost forgotten the man’s ability was phantom leap.

No wonder he was this confident. While the chakrams were deadly weapons, the phantom leap was deadlier. But what Kael didn’t seem to know was that Tatehan had multiple abilities. The man might be looking down on him because his main ability was Partial Regeneration, but when they finally fought, Kael wouldn’t see the plot twist coming.

Tatehan decided there was no need for further conversation. It was time to act.

He charged forward quickly, aiming his sword at the side of Kael’s neck. But the latter simply vanished and reappeared at Tatehan’s back, aiming his chakrams for the side of his head.

However, Tatehan had been expecting exactly that. When the hit came, he dove forward and rolled to the side, springing back to his feet.

Kael missed. He stood for a moment, gazing at Tatehan who returned the stare. They both held that gaze for several seconds before...

Whoosh!

Kael was gone from where he stood. Now he was at Tatehan’s back again, aiming his chakram for what looked like a weak point in the armor’s plating.

But not seeing Kael in front of him had already triggered Tatehan into a sprint. He ran like a maniac, looking sideways to see if Kael was using the phantom leap to chase him. He saw nothing. When he tried to look forward, he met two chakrams striking his helmet dead-on.

[70 percent absorbed]

[30 percent absorbed]

Then he felt a kick to his midsection, so impactful it sent him skidding violently across the floor.

His body crashed into one of the amphitheater walls with a sickening thud.

Gritting his teeth, he muttered: "Shit."

Obviously, fighting Kael was much harder than he’d originally thought. He hadn’t even landed a single blow. At this rate, he wasn’t sure he would.

"You thought you could actually face me, kid!" Kael shouted as he phantom leaped closer to Tatehan, grabbed him by the legs, and phantom leaped forward in a blur of motion.

Tatehan knew he was in serious trouble. The kinetic absorption was now off and Tatehan was without any real protection. His gravity manipulation was there, but it would take enormous pain to build up enough power to actually use it effectively.

Now he was just exposed, ready to be crushed by this Kael of a Martian human. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t fight back against someone else. He could if he was fighting someone with powers like super strength or enhanced speed. Not someone with phantom leap.

He couldn’t throw a punch at Kael and have it land, couldn’t kick him, couldn’t aim his sword at him, because the moment he did, Kael would be leaping away before the attack even reached him.

He remembered when they’d trained back at the cave. Kael hadn’t used his phantom leap powers then. They’d simply fought like normal enhanced humans, testing each other’s reflexes and technique. When this fight first started, Tatehan had foolishly thought it would be similar.

He’d been so, so wrong.

"You’re predictable, boy!" Kael shouted at him as he phantom leaped around the amphitheater, slamming Tatehan against the walls repeatedly.

It went on for what felt like an eternity but was probably two minutes straight. The more Tatehan tried to resist, to break free, to do anything, the more exhausted he became.

Slam!

Slam!

Slam!

Slam!

Each impact drove the air from his lungs. Each collision rattled his bones.

Slam!

Slam!

Slam!

Slam!

The world became a blur of pain and stone and Kael’s grim, determined face.

Then he heard it:

[The armor will deactivate in three seconds due to repeated critical impacts]

Tatehan didn’t know what to do. As the three seconds slowly counted down, he could already feel the pain intensifying. Without the armor’s protection, the impacts would shatter bones, rupture organs.

Three.

Two.

One.

The armor dissolved.

"Stop!" Tatehan finally yelled as his unprotected body slammed into the walls again and again. "Stop! Please!"

He couldn’t take this anymore. Pride didn’t matter. The mission didn’t matter. Only survival mattered now.

"I’ll give you the core! I’ll let you take the core!"

Immediately Kael heard the words, he stopped. He tossed Tatehan with tremendous force one final time, sending him crashing back-first into the wall before he crumpled to the ground.

"I thought you called me old man," Kael said, standing over him. "Now the kid cannot defeat the old man? You surrender so easily?"

Tatehan gritted his teeth as he spat blood onto the dust. His eyes remained on the ground. Somehow he still held the sword Kael had given him earlier. But he wasn’t thinking about using it against Kael directly. Instead, he was thinking about how to get out of this. How to actually defeat this man without fighting him head-on.

Because clearly, a direct fight was suicide.

Kael stood for a while, staring down at Tatehan with something that might have been disappointment.

"I will not kill you, kid. Just go your way. Let me take the core, and we can both walk away from this."

Tatehan was surprised at the words. It seemed Kael was slowly coming back to his senses, becoming the friend Tatehan had known before.

But Tatehan didn’t give a fuck about friends or some random person he’d met barely a week ago.

All he wanted was to repair the spaceship. Complete his mission. Survive.

Straining his mind to its absolute limit, focusing through the pain and exhaustion, he reached out with his gravity manipulation. Two massive boulders behind Kael, debris from the mauler fight—began to shift. He willed them forward.

There were actually four large boulders within range, but in his current battered state, he could barely control two.

The boulders flew at Kael, who spun around when he heard the grinding sound of stone moving. His eyes widened in surprise. He managed to dodge using his phantom leap at the last second, disappearing in a shimmer.

But Tatehan had already accomplished what he needed. He’d wanted Kael to take his eyes off him for just one moment.

And he had.

Pushing his enhanced speed to its absolute limit, ignoring the screaming pain in his ribs and back, Tatehan charged. After three explosive steps, he leapt into the air, using his gravity manipulation to reduce his weight and amplify his momentum. It felt less like a jump and more like a launch, a missile aimed at one target.

Kael had just landed near the boulders, his back still turned.

Tatehan raised his sword high in the air as he descended, the blade gleaming.

Kael began to turn his head, sensing something wrong—

Tatehan drove his sword deep into the side of Kael’s chest, just below the shoulder, angling down toward the heart.

[Critical Hit]

The blade sank in with a wet, terrible sound.