Chapter 111: Ouja Sinclair’s Truth
"Now then, folks. What are you feeling right now, if I may ask?" Aidan sat down on the ground, exhaustion clearly written on his face and a smile that never left it.
Voren’s lips trembled once before the words came out. "He is exhausted right now. This is the chance to kill him."
The two fathers who wanted to avenge their children didn’t hesitate at all.
Aidan didn’t move a finger.
Finn and Anrita answered instead, blocking one attacker each.
Finn’s scales flared, and a destructive bolt of lightning dropped Draven flat, destroying all of his armor and defense, and utterly paralysing him before his charge crossed half the distance.
Anrita moved faster than the eye could properly follow and simply took the other Nevelrot’s legs out from under him with a single precise strike, no more effort spent than necessary.
Aidan laughed.
"What? You thought I was alone?"
He waved a hand toward the two groaning, twitching fathers on the ground. "Don’t let them die." He reached into his storage ring and pulled out food instead, settling in properly to eat. "I’ll need to recover a bit before devouring them with my Shadow Phantom Genesis Art."
Voren’s eyes went wide.
"S-Shadow Phantom Genesis..." His voice cracked. "Don’t tell me you have it. So it was the Shadow Phantom Genesis Art all along."
Fear flooded his eyes. He’d read about that technique. Heard about it, too, from the one source that would actually know, the vault spirit itself.
"You know it," Aidan said, chewing. "Saves me an explanation."
"You can’t." Voren’s composure finally cracked entirely. "That art corrupts everything it touches. You’ll lose control eventually, and when you do, you’ll be worse than any Terror this realm has ever produced."
"Duly noted." Aidan didn’t look up from his food.
"Please." One of the young Legendaries found his voice, kneeling now with his hands bound behind him, terror plain on his face. "We were just following orders. We didn’t even want to be here."
"Should’ve said no, then."
"I have children," Draven managed, wheezing through cracked ribs. "A daughter. She’s twelve."
Aidan’s chewing slowed, just slightly, and for a moment something old and tired passed behind his eyes.
Then it was gone.
"Consequences don’t care whose father you are," he said, quiet and final. "You should’ve thought of her before you came here."
Nobody had an answer for that.
Finn and Anrita worked through the rest with brisk, efficient thoroughness, limbs bound, every knee forced down, the two young Epic-rankers sobbing openly by the time they joined the row. Only Ouja remained standing, untouched, exactly as Aidan had specified.
Ouja hadn’t tried to fight. He’d tried to leave.
He’d spent the last several minutes testing the barrier’s edges with quiet, careful pressure, and every attempt had come back the same way. Whatever Jovan had built into that seal, it didn’t care how strong the thing pushing against it happened to be.
Aidan finished his food, set the bone down with a satisfied sigh, and stood.
"Alright." He rolled his shoulders, exhaustion visibly bleeding out of him as he called on reserves he’d been saving. "Let’s finish this properly."
He went down the row without ceremony. Draven first, then the last of the Nevelrot kin among them, then the guild leaders’ surviving young ones.
Voren came last, his ancient composure finally breaking into something raw and human as the shadow closed over his face.
"Wait," Voren managed, just once. "Wait, please, I only wanted-"
The dark swallowed the rest of the sentence along with him.
One by one, the whole kneeling row dissolved into glittering black and reformed, rising back up as tall, silent, armored shapes with featureless glass faces.
Twin embers of crimson-violet burned where eyes should have been, and they knelt again the moment they finished forming, this time by choice rather than force.
"My Lord," they said, together, voices layered and hollow.
Ouja whistled low, genuinely impressed despite everything.
"So that’s what you took from the Thousand-Vault Sovereign." He shook his head, wry. "I shouldn’t have held back in that round, not that I am jealous. I have a few like those."
"You held back to hide things from me, right?" Aidan laughed, shaking his head. "So, what’s your deal? Can you escape from here?"
Ouja glanced at Jovan, then Finn, then Anrita, calculating.
"I tried. Couldn’t pass through the barrier, even with my Conceptual Technique."
Aidan’s eyes flashed.
’Conceptual Technique.’
"So you’ve achieved Soul Spirit Ascension as well."
Something desperate flickered behind Ouja’s easy smile now, the first real crack in it all night.
"Achieving that is one thing." His voice stayed light, but something underneath it wasn’t. "Comprehending a Conceptual Technique is another entirely."
"Took me two years for this one. I only managed it a day ago, and partly thanks to you, if I’m honest, our little enmity gave me something to sharpen myself against." He tilted his head. "But you. Why the hell do you already have so many? What kind of monster are you?"
Aidan chewed slowly, nodding along, humming a small acknowledgment now and then, but didn’t answer until the bone in his hand was picked clean.
"So." He stood, tossing the bone aside and rolling his neck. "What now? I’m ready for another round." He grinned. "Two minutes, though. That’s all I’ve got left in me. Gotta kill you inside that window."
Ouja’s eyes narrowed.
"You sure you want to do this? How about we go our separate ways instead?"
"Can’t." Aidan formed a thin needle of wind and used it to pick a stray bit of meat from between his teeth, entirely unbothered. "We’ve got a score to settle. You’ll try to kill me the next chance you get, same as this one."
He glanced around at the kneeling row of new Shadow Phantoms. "And this was a good chance, too. Four Final-stage Divine-rank." He grinned wider. "You must have thought you had me."
Ouja chuckled.
"Honestly? Yeah." He spread his hands. "But you’ve got a talent that borders on cheating, summoning things like those. I’m glad I met you here."
"But I still think you should take my proposal, Aidan."
Aidan yawned, long and deliberate. "You’re becoming boring."
Ouja’s smile didn’t waver, but something behind it went quiet and serious.
"You terrify me. Genuinely. I’ve met two people like you so far, and all three of you are a problem I don’t know how to solve yet." He spread his hands. "I’d honestly love for us to work together."
"But there’s only one throne, in the end, and that makes this inevitable no matter what anyone wants." He paused. "So here’s the truth of it. I descend into small worlds through clones. Scouting for people worth watching."
Aidan’s eyes flickered.
[Tom: No wonder. No wonder I’ve been reading his thread the way I have. This is his avatar. A clone, to be precise. The real body’s got to be somewhere in an upper realm.]
"You, Aidan, are a threat." Ouja’s voice carried real weight now, none of the earlier lightness left in it. "And I promise you, I will do everything in my power to kill you."
His body began to swell, distending unnaturally, his voice shifting into something deeper and stranger.
"I’m in the Teranx Major Realm at the moment. You’re free to come find me whenever you’re ready, or go anywhere else you like." A last, unbothered smile. "Good luck, Aidan."
"Until we meet again."
He burst.
The explosion did almost nothing, a brief flare of light and pressure that dissipated before it reached anyone standing nearby, more theater than threat.
Leaving only his storage ring.
Aidan stared at the space where Ouja had stood, then let out a long, low laugh.
"Well." He shook his head, grinning despite the ache settling into every muscle he had. "That’s a tangy twist of development. Got myself an enemy waiting up in a Major Realm now." He rolled his shoulders one last time. "It’ll be fun."
He then turned to his newly joined Shadow Phantoms.
"You all, take off your storage rings. Show me what you all got. I have a cat who needs to break through to Divine-rank."
Tom snorted. "That’s right. Hurry up."