Chapter 126: Enduring Will (1/2)
THRRRRR!
The next wave broke.
’Let’s do this.’
Aidan met it head-on, and the moment Netheraxin’s crackling light wrapped both fists, something in the weapon answered back for the first time in longer than he could remember.
[Hey! Hey! HEY!] The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once, bright and hungry and unmistakably delighted. [More! Give me more!]
Aidan nearly missed his own swing.
"You’re a lot louder than I remember," he said, burying a fist through a charging revenant’s chest without breaking stride.
[Rank E now!] Netheraxin crowed, gleeful. [I can talk BIGGER!]
Spiral Fan Blade caught the next three throats in a single spinning arc before he’d even finished processing that, and its voice arrived a half-second later, just as loud and twice as excitable.
[CUT! SHRED! You’re doing GREAT, Aidan! GOOD BOY!]
"I’m not the one who needs praising," Aidan muttered, grinning despite himself, "but sure. Thanks."
Duskrend Scythe unfolded next, and this time the bickering he’d always felt as a vague tension in the haft actually had words attached to it, two low, arguing murmurs threading together underneath the blade’s silence.
[Cold first,] one insisted.
[Weight first,] the other shot back.
"Cooperate," Aidan said, mostly to himself, and Shadowfrost climbed the blade anyway, both currents folding into the technique together whether they liked sharing a house or not.
Thunder Blitz Lord came alive last, and its voice landed differently than the others, deep and resonant, more command than chatter.
[STRIKE TRUE.] Lightning arced across six revenants at once, tracking every scrap of rusted metal they carried. [MINE.]
Blazing Point Rifle’s answer was quieter, almost clipped, a marksman’s economy of words.
[One shot.] A round punched clean through an armored horror’s skull. [One kill.]
Aidan let out a low whistle, cutting down two more lesser undead without looking. "Alright. Didn’t expect a whole cast of characters to show up at once, but I’m not complaining."
...
The lesser undead thinned faster than expected, and the reason announced itself with a wave of heat that peeled the frost off Duskrend Scythe’s edge before Aidan had even drawn it.
[Cindermaw Executioner of Noctelith. Final Stage Divine-rank.]
It stood two heads taller than the Knight-Captain had, an axe of black iron and living cinder resting across one shoulder, and its first swing came without any warning at all, closing thirty meters in a single stride Aidan hadn’t accounted for.
The axe caught him across the ribs before he finished his own dodge.
Pain bloomed white and immediate, real in a way the lesser waves hadn’t come close to touching, and Aidan skidded twenty feet through cracked grave-slabs before he managed to plant a boot and stop.
"Okay." He spat blood, grinning through it anyway. "That one actually hurt."
[Rude!] Netheraxin snarled, no longer gleeful.
He came back in low, Blazing Point Rifle and Thunder Blitz Lord cycling together, fire and lightning braided into a single scouring line that should have staggered anything Divine-rank on contact.
The Cindermaw Executioner walked through it, cinder-flesh cauterizing whatever damage got past its guard, and answered with a second swing Aidan barely caught on the scythe’s haft.
[Weight first,] the scythe snapped, sharper than before, and Gravity dragged the axe’s arc down half a second before it would have taken Aidan’s head off.
"Noted. Thank you." He rolled with the deflection, let Shadowfrost climb the haft, and drove the blade into the gap the axe’s swing had left open.
Cold answered pain with pain, and the Executioner staggered for the first time since it had appeared.
[Conceptual Technique comprehended: Ashwake Requiem.]
Frost and fire aspects it shouldn’t have been able to touch met somewhere in the wound and simply cancelled each other into nothing, leaving a hollow, unhealing gap that no amount of cinder-flesh could close.
The Cindermaw Executioner came apart a few seconds later, and the flood of Essence that answered nearly staggered Aidan on his feet.
[Noctelith Essence: 1,600 accumulated.]
He pressed a hand to his ribs, feeling bone still knitting itself back together under the skin, and let out a short, disbelieving laugh. "Good. That’s what I wanted."
...
He didn’t get long to enjoy the win.
Three presences rose together from the ashes of a collapsed cathedral spire, linked by something that felt less like coincidence and more like a single mind wearing three bodies.
[The Widow Choir of Noctelith. Final Stage Divine-rank. Three-bound.]
They didn’t attack individually. Grief-magic wove between all three at once, a net of silent, patient sorrow that expanded outward faster than Aidan could retreat from it, and the first threads caught his forearm before he registered the trap had already closed.
Cold immediately followed, not Frost this time, something worse, a numbness that crawled toward his chest with the specific, patient hunger of something meant to end a person slowly.
[Active effect triggered. Essence shaped: Cinderbrand, single-use.]
He didn’t wait to think it through. Cinder-fire burned the grief straight out of his own arm, agony trading for agony, and he used the half-second of clarity it bought to actually look at what he was fighting.
Three linked bodies. One shared will. Killing one wouldn’t matter if the other two simply absorbed whatever died.
’Fine.’ Aidan’s grin turned sharp. ’Then I kill all three at once.’
Thunder Blitz Lord answered that thought before he finished forming it, lightning arcing between all three widows simultaneously, tracking the shared thread of grief-magic itself rather than any single body.
[MINE,] the weapon snarled, current biting through linked will instead of flesh.
The net shuddered. Aidan drove Netheraxin and Spiral Fan Blade through the opening it bought, one fist and one blade finding two separate throats in the same heartbeat, and the third widow’s scream cut off mid-note as the shared will collapsed with nothing left to anchor it.
[Conceptual Technique comprehended: Severed Chorus.]
Essence flooded in from all three deaths at once, thick and immediate, and for a moment the tally behind his thoughts climbed too fast to properly track.
[Noctelith Essence: 3,900 accumulated.]
Aidan planted both hands on his knees, breathing hard, blood still dripping steady from the arm the grief-magic had touched.
"Okay." He straightened up slowly. "That one wasn’t fun."
[Agreed,] the scythe murmured, both voices unified for once in genuine relief.
...
[Necropolis Progress: 45%.]
The notification arrived a moment later, cutting cleanly through the ringing exhaustion in his skull.
[Power Bond: sustained Will-output threshold reached. Bond growth condition satisfied.]
*****
[Power Bond — Growth Update]
[Netheraxin Blood Hunter Knuckle Dusters | Attributes boosted by 30% — Power 32,760 → 45,860. Rank E → Rank D.]
[Spiral Fan Blade | Attributes boosted by 30% — Power 23,610 → 33,050. Rank E → Rank D.]
[Thunder Blitz Lord | Attributes boosted by 30% — Power 37,110 → 51,950. Rank E → Rank D.]
[Blazing Point Rifle | Attributes boosted by 30% — Power 46,140 → 64,600. Rank E → Rank D.]
[Duskrend Scythe | Attributes boosted by 30% — Power 79,570 → 111,400. Rank E → Rank D.]
[Total Power: 306,860.]
*****
[6th Power Bond slot unlocked.]
Aidan blinked at both lines twice, blood and cinder ash still sliding down his ribs.
"Well." A tired grin spread across his face. "Guess a near-death experience is what it takes."
[TOLD you!] Netheraxin crowed, delighted all over again.
He didn’t get more than a few seconds to appreciate any of it. The necropolis had more waiting, and it clearly hadn’t finished testing him yet.
The next named threat came fast and low, a blur of dark, precise motion that nearly opened his throat before he registered the attack had started.
[Doomcrest Warlord of Noctelith. Final Stage Divine-rank.]
Aidan caught the strike an inch from his skin, bare-handed, Netheraxin’s new weight biting into the Warlord’s grip hard enough to actually hold this time.
"That’s new," he said, genuinely startled by his own strength.
The Warlord didn’t slow down to appreciate the compliment. It came again immediately, faster than the Cindermaw, faster than anything he’d faced yet in this necropolis, and Aidan found himself giving ground for the first time since Rank D settled into him.
Blazing Point Rifle and Spiral Fan Blade answered together, fire and wind braiding into something neither had managed alone, and the technique caught the Warlord mid-stride hard enough to finally slow it down.
[Conceptual Technique comprehended: Cindergale Verdict.]
[One shot,] the rifle said, quieter than usual. [Not enough.]
It wasn’t. The Warlord shook off the burns and kept coming, and Aidan met the next exchange with everything he had left in reserve, Duskrend Scythe’s Shadowfrost finally finding purchase through an opening the fire had bought.
The Warlord went down in pieces a few brutal seconds later, and Aidan let himself drop to one knee afterward, chest heaving.
"Rank D helps." He wiped blood from his split lip. "Doesn’t make it easy."
[GOOD BOY,] Spiral Fan Blade offered, softer than its usual scream, almost gentle.
...
The deeper towers stopped hiding what they’d been saving.
Pressure rolled off the necropolis’s center in a slow, deliberate wave, heavy enough that even the ground itself seemed to brace for what was approaching.
[The Hollow King. First Herald of Noctelith. Final Stage Divine-rank.]
It came through the crumbling gate of the tallest spire on foot, armor grown from black bone fused seamlessly to its own frame, a crown of cracked green fire hovering above a skull that had never worn skin.
"There you are." Aidan forced himself back upright, grinning through exhaustion that hadn’t fully faded from the last two fights. "Was hoping something would actually make me work for it."
The Hollow King didn’t answer with words. The ground answered instead, cracking outward in concentric rings as buried hatred surged up through the stone itself, and the first ring caught Aidan before he finished bracing for it.
He went down hard, grave-slabs cracking under his own weight, and came up spitting blood.
’That actually hurt.’ Something old and eager settled behind his eyes anyway. ’Good.’