Chapter 109: Encounter
Aidan and others decided to recover fully in the garden since it looked like a safe space. Wounds closed, breath returned, and the ache in Aidan’s ribs finally settled into a distant memory rather than a live complaint.
After recovering, they left the garden and arrived in a huge cavern strung with black grass and threads of orange moss, the whole space lit dim and steady by a glow that came from nowhere in particular.
Several passages branched off into darkness, and the group had barely started arguing about which one to take when footsteps announced themselves from one of them.
The group that emerged carried real weight. Four Final-stage Divine-rank powerhouses wearing the crests of major Alliance guilds.
Ordun’s eyes shook.
[Ordun: Garen, they are guild leaders of major guilds. All four are at Final-stage, and have domains. The man with blue hair, that’s Halric Vantor. Silver hair on the woman beside him, Ilyana Rourke. The dark-haired one who hasn’t said a word yet, Seris Dahl. And the big one next to her, Torvald Kane.]
One late-stage Divine-rank Hunter from the Desmeral family, silver hair and violet robes, a crest Aidan hadn’t seen in person before but recognized instantly all the same.
’Desmeral.’ Something cold settled in his chest. ’Ruvel died on that stage. His father’s avatar too, but never the man himself, not physically. And this one wasn’t there in any form at all.’
[Aidan: Ordun, that Desmeral. Who is he to Ruvel?]
[Ordun: His grandfather, Voren Desmeral.]
’So that screaming guy lost his son, and now his father. Feels bad.’
Beside him walked a broader man in Nevelrot’s coiled serpent crest, older, harder, grief worn into every line of his face like a second set of scars. Malrik Nevelrot. Father to one of the cousins who’d never made it out of the Great Zil Forest.
Next to him was another Nevelrot, his brother, Draven, who also lost his child at the same time.
Both cousins met their ends because they wanted to avenge their grandpa’s hurt feelings.
Three young Legendary-rankers trailed them. Ouja Sinclair, unhurried as ever. Two Epic-rank youths at the very back.
Jovan and Finn folded back into the summoning space a breath before the newcomers cleared the passage. Arthur poured over Aidan in a flood of crimson-gold light, Gear Morph sealing the Argon Exo-Armor shut around him. Tom stayed put on his shoulder, saying nothing.
Malrik’s eyes lit the moment he spotted Aidan. Voren’s followed a half second later, colder and far more patient.
A telepathic word passed to the four guild leaders first, quiet and quick, and then Malrik spoke aloud, cold and flat, addressing Ordun and the rest directly.
"Leave. Take the girls with you if you want, we won’t stop you." His eyes never left Aidan. "But Garen dies here. Today."
"He has a Final-stage Divine-rank master," Ordun said with a frown. "Why must you form needless enmity?"
The whole opposing group laughed.
"One Final-stage powerhouse." Malrik’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. "What exactly is he going to do to avenge a dead student, hm?"
Aidan started laughing first, loud and louder, before any of his own people could answer for him.
He cracked his neck, then his knuckles, and turned to Ordun.
"Take the girls and leave. I can find you easily later."
"But-" Veshan started.
The look Aidan gave him ended the sentence before it finished forming.
Everyone in his own group already knew the truth of it, even if none of them said it aloud. Aidan was the strongest among them by a wide margin, solo, before anyone even counted his stranger companions.
Aidan wanted them gone for two reasons. He didn’t want them tangled up in a fight this far above their weight, and he wanted the Shadow Phantom Genesis Art’s next meal without an audience. Not meal, but feast, to be precise.
"Go," Aidan said, his head turning back to the newcomers.
"Kid, that confidence is amusing." Malrik sneered. "Fresh off a Divine-rank breakthrough, and you think you can walk away from this? Or did you decide to lay your life down on purpose?" His jaw tightened. "You killed my son. Your death is final."
"And mine," Draven added, voice flat with the same grief.
"You mean those two idiots who came to avenge their grandpa’s hurt feelings?" Aidan smiled, easy and unbothered. "It’s called consequences. They came to kill me. They died. You’re about to learn the same lesson."
Beside Malrik, Voren said nothing at all, silver eyes fixed on Aidan with the patience of a man who had already buried one grandson and had no intention of rushing the next act of grief into something clumsy.
Ordun’s group was already gone, the passage behind them empty.
"We don’t bully children." Halric spread his hands with an easy, false civility. "Nevelrot fights you. Struggle as long as you can."
"And if I kill him?"
"Then we kill you," said Ilyana, watching him with sharp, appraising eyes rather than anger.
Aidan grinned. "Good to know." He rolled his shoulders. "Give me a minute, would you? Last moments of my life and all that."
[Finn: LET ME OUT! I WILL FUCK THEM ALL!]
[Jovan: Who taught you that word?]
[Finn: Arthur.]
He ignored both of them and pulled up his Inventory instead, running a fast, silent check through everything the tickets had handed him.
- Stormcaller’s Halberd. Divine-rank.
- Aegis of the Drowned King. Divine-rank armor.
- Reaper’s Whisper Dagger. Divine-rank.
- Compass of Lost Realms. Divine-rank artifact.
- The Widow’s Mirror. Divine-rank artifact.
- Elixir of the Tenth Hour. Divine-rank.
- Phial of Steady Nerve. Divine-rank.
- Draught of Sealed Wounds. Divine-rank.
- Essence of Quiet Focus. Divine-rank.
- Tincture of Second Wind. Divine-rank.
’A decent arsenal.’ Aidan’s grin sharpened.
"Alright." His voice came out calm, eyes focused, mind locked in.
In one hand appeared his Divine-rank scythe, and in the other, the Divine-rank Reaper’s Whisper Dagger. Over Arthur’s suit, the Aegis of the Drowned King settled into place, plates locking shut with a low, final click.
"Three Divine-rank items. Looks like you’ve got quite a haul." Ilyana raised an eyebrow, unbothered, almost entertained.
Seris said nothing at all, arms crossed, watching with the flat patience of someone who had already decided how this would end and simply wanted to see if she was right.
Beside her, Torvald cracked his knuckles once and said nothing either, content to let the others do the talking. He was feeling something amiss, something fun.
’This kid is no odinary. Smells similar to this snake in the group.’ He glanced at Ouja.
Aidan’s eyes sharpened on Malrik. "Ready to die?"
Right after he finished speaking, Aidan appeared behind him.
No stride. No wind-up. He was simply there, the space between one heartbeat and the next simply not existing anymore.
A five-layered barrier flickered into existence around Malrik on pure instinct, and in the same breath a projectile of glowing dark-green crystal manifested into a blade shape, laced with sparks, screaming straight for Aidan’s chest.
"DIE!"
Aidan’s lips curled into an easy smirk.
His aura burst outward, Spirit Art flooding his stats in one deliberate climb, and a single trail of lightning met the incoming projectile and ended it before it crossed half the distance.
In that same instant.
[Conceptual Technique: Cross of Oblivion.]
His arms blurred, dagger and scythe crossing once through the air, and the resulting cut tore straight through all five layers of Malrik’s barrier like they’d never been there at all.
Malrik’s eyes bulged. Veins burst along his temple as he threw up more defense on top of defense, and none of it mattered against the weight bearing down on him.
Confusion curdled into horror as the cross closed the last of the distance.
Even the other Final-stage Hunters watching couldn’t have crossed that gap in time to help him. Nobody moved to try. Voren least of all, his silver eyes narrowing with something closer to calculation than concern.
But the death didn’t come.
The cross vanished a hair’s width from his skin, and a bare palm covered Malrik’s face instead.
Aidan yawned, and turned his head lazily toward the watching group.
None of them had moved to save Malrik. All of them wore the same sharpened, calculating shock, thoughts flying between them faster than speech could manage.
’Was that?’
’Yeah.’
’Conceptual Technique. But how? A newly ascended Divine-rank shouldn’t be able to reach that state.’
’Impossible.’
’We’re talking about a Conceptual Technique. Power that bends the laws of a small realm itself. Nothing else in this rank comes close. It’s the ceiling of what’s achievable here, only reachable by someone deemed worthy of ascending to Overlord. There’s no way a kid this fresh got there naturally.’
’Ignore the theories. We’re facing someone who’s already achieved Soul Spirit Ascension. If we want to know how, we take him alive and search his mind for it.’
"ARGHHHH!"
A flood of glittering darkness burst from Aidan’s palm and swallowed Malrik whole, dragging him screaming into the black.
Shadow Phantom Genesis Art.
"Alright, that’s one." Aidan let go of both weapons, and neither of them fell. They hung in the air around him instead, perfectly obedient, perfectly his.
Crimson knuckle dusters formed over his hands next, spiked and cruel, sharp tendrils climbing his wrists and forearms into a kind of living gauntlet.
"Are we doing this one at a time, or all at once?" Aidan bounced lightly on his feet, electromagnetism gathering into a strange, humming field around him. "I’ve got a new technique I want to test, so I’d honestly prefer later."
[Aidan: Finn, can you do that thing? The one I told you about.]
Everyone in the cavern felt it at once, gooseflesh crawling up every arm in the chamber. Not fear yet. Just the atmosphere itself, thick and wrong, pressing down from somewhere none of them could point to.
Three small scales floated up above the group’s center, releasing fine motes of metal that gathered into a slow, rotating dome of electromagnetism.
Aidan kept bouncing, light and easy, except his feet had stopped touching the ground several seconds ago. He was floating, and none of the guild leaders had caught the exact moment it happened.
His outline blurred once, subtly, like a bad signal skipping a frame.
It wasn’t a glitch.
It was speed that had outrun their perception entirely, a phenomenon wrapped around his body by something far beyond a simple technique.
[Conceptual Technique: Metalektron Physique Phase.]
[Power Rating: 211,394.]
His first technique to ever cross the two-hundred-thousand mark.
"If you’re not coming," Aidan said, grinning wide, "I’m coming to you."
He vanished from where he stood.
And in that instant, every single person in the cavern, guild leaders included, felt the same cold, ringing certainty settle into the base of their skull.
Something here was about to die, and it wasn’t going to be him.