Chapter 82: Ren versus Ken
Ken crashed into the ground hard. He skidded across the ground, leaving a deep trench before flipping and stabbing his sword into the ground to stop. He tasted blood, eyes burning with rage, bolts of silver lightning already striking the ground around him as he charged on in rage.
Ren came in fast, his speed causing the trees to bend. He pulled back his arm, eyes locked on Ken, and punched.
The air twisted around his arm, almost as if it wanted to rip space apart.
WHOOSH
BAM
Ken raised his sword at the last moment and blocked the punch. The sound was like an explosion had happened in the forest. A shockwave spread out so far and fast that it uprooted some trees and caused every small plant in the area to flatten.
Ken gritted his teeth as he tried his best to hold his own in that moment. His hands trembled as he held up the block.
"I’ll be the first in my generation to cut down a dragon for sure," Ken declared, then pushed back. He landed on the ground and recollected himself, shifting into a new stance.
’His strength is undeniable. I know that I poured almost everything into that punch just now, and he managed to block it.’
"You really think you can kill me? Haha, you crack me up. Sadly, that’s not happening," Ren said while stretching a bit. He moved as if the fight had nothing to do with him.
As soon as he finished his stretch, he looked up, his eyes changing into his full dragon eyes, his muscles tensing.
"Here I come."
His foot pressed into the ground, and a thunderous boom ripped out as he crossed the distance in an instant. He planted his right foot into the ground, spun, and came down with a diagonal axe kick with his left leg.
Ken reacted. He pulled back.
The kick slammed into the ground, cracking it.
Ken saw his opportunity. He dashed forward, a large slash coming in from the side.
Ren smirked. He flapped his wings while grabbing onto Ken’s head and flipping over him, evading the blade and landing behind Ken.
Ken reset his stance the moment Ren landed behind him, spinning fast, lightning already climbing his blade as he swung.
Ren stepped inside the arc.
The blade missed by a margin that made Ken’s eyes widen, and Ren’s open palm connected with his chest. Not a punch, just a push, but the force behind it launched Ken sideways through two trees before he hit the ground, rolling.
He was up before he stopped moving.
The lightning around him crackled and jumped, grounding itself into the earth in branching lines that charred the soil black wherever they touched. He came back in fast, feinting left before committing right, and the slash that came off the feint was clean and fast enough that it actually made Ren move his head.
Ren tilted back, let the blade pass under his chin, and flicked his wrist into a Rending Claw at the end of the dodge that caught Ken’s sword arm and knocked the blade wide.
Ken recovered the weapon before it left his grip and countered with a lightning-enhanced kick that connected with Ren’s side and actually shifted him.
Ren looked at his side.
Looked at Ken.
"Okay," he said. "That one landed."
He sounded more interested than concerned, which visibly irritated Ken more than any counterattack could have.
Ken came again, pressing the advantage of having landed something, chaining strikes in a sequence that moved fast and covered multiple angles, each one carrying a burst of lightning on contact that built cumulative pressure even when the strikes themselves were blocked. Ren moved through it, blocking what he chose to block and stepping away from what he didn’t, never fully committing to either, always somewhere slightly adjacent to where Ken’s attack was expecting him to be.
Trees came down around them. The forest floor between them was becoming unrecognizable, churned and scorched, every exchange leaving its mark on the ground.
Ken gritted his teeth mid-exchange and pulled back, landing twenty meters away, breathing hard.
He looked at Ren standing across the ruined ground between them, barely breathing any heavier than when they started, that same casual steadiness in his posture.
This will not go my way, Ken understood. Not like this.
He stomped his foot.
The lightning that responded was not the controlled, directed kind he had been using throughout the fight. It erupted from the ground around him in a column that rose above the treeline, thick and violent, raw electricity that had not been shaped into anything yet because it didn’t need to be. It climbed his armor in sheets, ran across his sword in a continuous living current, and when it settled into him, the quality of his presence in the forest changed entirely.
He moved.
The speed at which he crossed the ground to Ren was not the speed of a trained knight. It was the speed of the lightning itself, a streak that left an afterimage and a scorched line on the earth behind it, and the strike that came with it hit Ren’s guard with a force that drove him back three full steps and sent its shockwave outward in every direction simultaneously.
Trees bent. Several didn’t come back upright.
Ren’s eyes sharpened.
Ken was already gone from the point of impact, repositioning before the dust of the first collision had cleared, and came in from a completely different angle with a diagonal slash that forced Ren to move rather than block. Ren moved, and Ken was already adjusting, the lightning-enhanced speed closing any gap Ren tried to create before it fully opened.
They blurred.
The forest around them stopped being a backdrop and became a casualty, each exchange taking something from it, trunks splitting.
Ken landed a clean combination, three strikes that connected in sequence, each one carrying the full lightning enhancement, and Ren took all three and answered by grabbing Ken’s sword arm on the third strike, using the momentum of the impact to swing him into a full rotation that built speed with each revolution.
He released.
Ken hit the ground at an angle that carved a crater into the forest floor, the impact throwing soil, stone, and roots in every direction, the sound of it rolling through the trees like something geological had shifted.
Ren was already coming down.
He dropped from above with both feet aimed at the center of the crater, wings folded for speed, and the second impact hit like something dropped from the sky, driving deeper into the existing crater and expanding it outward in a ring, the shockwave from the landing flattening everything within twenty meters that hadn’t already been flattened.