Chapter 127: Enduring Will (2/2)
Duskrend Scythe unfolded into his grip, both currents already arguing, and this time the argument had real urgency behind it.
[Cold first,] one voice insisted.
[Weight first,] the other snapped, sharper than it had ever sounded.
"Both," Aidan said, and forced them together through sheer will rather than technique this time.
[Conceptual Technique comprehended: Gravewell Verdict.]
The Hollow King staggered under the combined weight, crown flickering, and answered with both fists crashing down where Aidan had stood a half-second earlier. The shockwave alone cracked three grave-slabs into a smoking pit and threw him twenty feet backward through the debris.
He hit the ground rolling, ribs screaming, and felt something in his chest strain against a leash he’d held for a billion years.
’Not yet.’ He forced his breathing level, the ocean beneath his ribs pressing hard against the walls he kept it behind. ’Save it.’
Netheraxin and Spiral Fan Blade both answered his next thought before he finished forming it, dusters and blade cycling in a blur that opened four separate wounds across the Hollow King’s frame before it managed a second swing.
[MORE!] [CUT DEEPER!] Both voices tangled together, competing for volume.
The Hollow King’s crown flared, and hatred made physical erupted outward in a wave that Aidan barely got a Cinderplate Ward up in time to survive.
[Active effect triggered. Essence shaped: Cinderplate Ward, single-use.]
It held exactly long enough. Aidan spun through the opening it bought him, all five weapons cycling in a single unbroken sequence, Essence pouring into every strike as fast as the King’s own hatred fed it back out.
Netheraxin cracked its ribs. Spiral Fan Blade opened both flanks. Duskrend Scythe froze the wound shut before it could bleed hatred back into the air, and Thunder Blitz Lord finished by burning what remained of its nervous system to ash from the inside.
The Hollow King fell in pieces, crown guttering out one flicker at a time, and the flood of Essence that answered its death staggered Aidan hard enough that he had to plant both hands on his knees to stay upright.
[Noctelith Essence: 6,200 accumulated.]
[GOOD BOY!] Spiral Fan Blade screamed, delighted beyond all reason.
Aidan laughed, blood and cinder dust sliding off his split knuckles. "Yeah. Good boy indeed."
...
The notification hit before he’d even caught his breath.
[Power Bond: sustained Will-output threshold reached. Bond growth condition satisfied.]
*****
[Power Bond — Growth Update]
[Netheraxin Blood Hunter Knuckle Dusters | Rank D → Rank C. Power 45,860 → 59,620.]
[Spiral Fan Blade | Rank D → Rank C. Power 33,050 → 42,960.]
[Thunder Blitz Lord | Rank D → Rank C. Power 51,950 → 67,540.]
[Blazing Point Rifle | Rank D → Rank C. Power 64,600 → 83,980.]
[Duskrend Scythe | Rank D → Rank C. Power 111,400 → 144,820.]
[Total Power: 398,920.]
*****
Aidan stared at the number, then at his own bloodied hands, and let out a slow, tired breath. "That one, I earned."
[Cold and weight both agree,] the scythe murmured, unified again. [That this was satisfying.]
...
[Necropolis Progress: 100%.]
The last of the necropolis’s true dead fell an hour later, one final cluster of Final Stage Divine stragglers refusing to go down without matching everything he threw at them, and when the last tower finally crumbled into silence, nothing rose to answer it.
Aidan stood alone in a city of true dead, breathing hard, every muscle burning with a fatigue that felt entirely earned, and let himself grin at the empty streets stretching in every direction.
"Cleared." His voice came out rough. "Every last one of you."
The necropolis didn’t dissolve.
Instead, the ground at the center of the ruined city split open, and something far heavier than anything he’d faced yet rose out of the dark beneath it.
[Noctelith’s Remnant. Overlord-rank, 1st Step.]
*****
[Attack = 4✧][Speed = 3✧][Defense = 6✧][Health = 5✧][Control = 4✧]
*****
The pressure alone dropped Aidan to one knee before he’d even seen it fully emerge, the same crushing, absolute weight he remembered from the Sovereign in the graveyard, except this time there was no Cameron beside him to catch what he couldn’t survive alone.
A shape built entirely from compressed hatred and old, patient bone rose out of the pit, humanoid only in the loosest sense, wearing a crown identical to the Hollow King’s except vastly, terribly larger.
[Ownership,] the Death Rider’s voice rolled through the ruined necropolis, distant and final, [is not proven against what I buried. It is proven against what I once was. Of course, I have adjusted this according to your rank.]
Aidan forced himself back to his feet, legs shaking, every wound from the last three fights screaming in protest. "Of course the last thing is a piece of you."
The Remnant didn’t wait for banter.
It crossed the distance between them in a single step that shouldn’t have been physically possible, and only Duskrend Scythe’s desperate, half-formed Shadowfrost kept the first strike from taking his head off outright.
The impact still threw him fifty meters through three collapsed towers.
He hit the ground and didn’t get up right away.
’Can’t out-damage that.’ Blood filled his mouth. ’Not like this.’
The ocean beneath his ribs pressed harder against its walls than it had in years, sensing exactly how close he was to needing it, and for the first time in this entire trial, Aidan let the leash slip.
Just a fraction.
Gold-crimson light bled up from somewhere beneath his skin, and the billion years of cumulation behind it answered with something that felt less like power and more like relief at finally being allowed to breathe.
[Relentless Force generating. Source: suppressed anger reserve.]
He came up off the ground already moving, and this time it was the Remnant that staggered when their next exchange landed.
’Good. Still barely a dent in you.’ He didn’t check the percentage. He didn’t need to. ’One billion years takes a while to spend.’
He didn’t try to out-fight it after that. He fed on it.
Every strike that landed, however small, generated Essence, and Aidan stopped spending it on wards or blades entirely, funneling every scrap of it straight into the passive current the sphere had taught him, drawing the Remnant’s own compressed hatred into himself one desperate exchange at a time.
[Noctelith Essence: 12,000 accumulated.]
The Remnant seemed to notice what he was doing somewhere around the fourth exchange, crown flaring in something that might have been alarm, and doubled its assault in response, strikes coming faster than his battered body could fully track anymore.
Aidan took three of them clean, ribs cracking, vision swimming, and kept feeding Essence into the drain anyway.
[Noctelith Essence: 26,000 accumulated.]
[Noctelith Essence: 41,000 accumulated.]
Netheraxin’s voice arrived thin and scared for the first time since it had learned to speak.
[Aidan.] It cut itself off, uncertain how to finish that.
"Still here," he managed, and meant it as reassurance for both of them.
The Remnant’s crown guttered for the first time, hatred bleeding out of it faster than it could regenerate, and Aidan drove Gravewell Verdict directly into the gap with the last of his strength, cold and crushing weight anchored to every thread of Essence he’d already claimed.
The technique didn’t kill the Remnant. It devoured it, piece by piece, the same way Aidan had devoured everything else in this necropolis, until there was nothing left wearing that crown at all.
[Noctelith Essence: 89,000 accumulated.]
The pressure vanished all at once, and Aidan dropped to both knees in the sudden, absolute silence, chest heaving, blood dripping steady onto ancient stone.
"Yeah." He managed a broken, exhausted grin anyway. "Ownership. Got it."
...
The Death Rider’s eyes burned brighter than they ever had.
[The third trial is passed. You did not merely survive what I buried here. You claimed it, and then you claimed what stood above it. Will against will, until nothing remained but you.]
"Wasn’t exactly a fair fight," Aidan rasped, wiping blood from his jaw. "Any of it."
[And still you stand.] The armored figure rose from the throne for the first time, and the black bone cup Aidan had touched at the very start drifted forward through the dark to hover between them. [The inheritance is yours by right of ownership. Take it.]
The cup’s pale flame surged, folding inward on itself, and the burning bone reshaped into something smaller, denser, a compact chalice-like artifact humming with the same green fire that had lit the throne’s eyes since the moment he arrived.
[Noctelith’s Testament acquired.]
[A Divine artifact containing centuries of accumulated knowledge, techniques, and records, enriched further by a fragment of Overlord-rank essence claimed within this trial. Contents unexamined.]
Aidan closed his hand around it, and something vast and patient settled into his grip, quiet for now, waiting to be opened properly later.
[Go, Player Aidan.] The throne’s fire dimmed at last, satisfied. [Carry what I could not.]
...
The graveyard rushed back all at once, cold air and dying green light and eight rows of empty pedestals stretching behind him.
His hand was still fused to the burning cup, except the cup wasn’t burning anymore. It sat cool and quiet in his palm, pale green light pulsing slow and steady like something finally at rest.
"Aidan?" Beatrix’s voice cracked with disbelief.
He looked up at a graveyard full of stunned, exhausted faces, took in his own torn, bloodied clothes, and grinned like a man who’d just survived the hardest fight of his life.
"Hey." He held up the cup, voice still rough. "I’m going on a vacation after this."