Chapter 118: Fatal Strike
The villa was silent.
It was well past midnight. The Capital’s distant noise had faded to a dull hum beyond the Competitor Village walls.
Maeve was asleep in her room, while Emric and Renna had crashed hours ago after celebrating until their bodies gave out. Lyra was in the room next to Holden’s, leaving her door slightly open, a habit she’d developed since the dome incident.
Holden lay on his bed. He wasn’t asleep but his eyes were closed.
His mind was racing, replaying everything from the meeting with the Lyra’s parents.
His 10,000x multiplier ran quietly in the background, processing ambient sounds, monitoring air currents and tracking the heartbeat of the guard stationed outside the villa.
But tonight, it saw nothing.
No warning. No anomaly.
The artifact the assassin carried was called a Void Walker’s Mantle. A legendary tool from the Age of Shadows, woven from threads of null-space.
It didn’t hide the wearer but erased them from spiritual detection entirely. To any sensor, ward or system running on spiritual recognition, the assassin simply did not exist.
The window opened without a sound.
A figure slipped through the gap like black smoke. The Mantle wrapped around the assassin’s body like living shadow, swallowing every trace of existence.
Holden’s eyes snapped open.
Not because the System warned him. It hadn’t.
It was pure, slum instinct. The back of his neck started prickling, and he could feel the air pressure in the room shift slightly.
Something was wrong.
He rolled.
SHIIING!
A blade cut through the air where his neck had been a heartbeat ago. It sliced through his pillow and kept going, severing the headboard cleanly.
Holden hit the floor and scrambled upright.
The assassin was already on him.
A fist slammed into his ribs with the force of a wrecking ball, packing power far beyond a Rank 2 fighter. The impact launched Holden off his feet and sent him crashing into the far wall. Plaster cracked. His vision blurred.
Blue pixels gathered in his palm as he summoned The Solar-Forged Sword from his inventory.
Holden swung blindly.
The assassin moved sideways, letting the blade pass within an inch of their hood. Then a knee drove into Holden’s stomach. He doubled over, gasping. A palm strike caught his chin and snapped his head backward.
His 10,000x multiplier was screaming now, processing the assassin’s movements at impossible speed. He could see every muscle twitch, every shift of weight but that didn’t matter.
Seeing a punch coming and being fast enough to stop it were two different things. The assassin moved at Peak Rank 3, 9-Star. Each strike carried the weight of a master who had spent decades perfecting the art of killing.
Holden managed to block a knife thrust with his sword, but the shock of the impact numbed his whole arm. He threw a kick at the assassin’s knee, but the figure just flowed around his leg and slammed an elbow straight into his head.
Everything went blinding white as stars exploded in his eyes.
He stumbled backward, bleeding from his lip, nose, and a nasty cut over his brow. In his hands, the Solar-Forged Sword felt like it weighed a ton.
The assassin pulled back for a second. Two eyes studied him from the shadows of the Mantle, calculating his next move.
Then the assassin moved again, coming in lower this time. A quick fake to the right made Holden instinctively step left, landing him right where the real hit was waiting.
A dark blade appeared in the assassin’s hand. It was short and curved, made of dark metal.
It was a cursed knife, designed not just to wound, but to corrupt.
Holden tried to twist away but he wasn’t fast enough.
SHLCK.
The dagger went deep into his chest.
The pain was unlike anything he’d ever felt. It started ice-cold, flared into a searing burn, and then turned into a sickening, unnatural ache as the cursed knife sliced through his muscle, pierced his left lung, and scraped against his heart
Holden’s mouth opened and no sound came out.
His fingers went slack. The Solar-Forged Sword dissolved into blue pixels that scattered and faded. His knees buckled.
The assassin twisted the dagger and pulled it free.
Holden collapsed.
Blood poured from the wound in his chest, pooling beneath him. His breath came in wet, gurgling rasps. His vision blurred and swam.
The assassin looked down at him, confirming the kill.
Then the assassin turned, stepped back toward the window, and dissolved into the shadows, vanishing just as quietly as it had appeared.
Holden’s vision began to tunnel.
The last thing he saw was the moonlight through the window.
Then it went dark.
[WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!]
[CRITICAL ERROR. LETHAL DAMAGE DETECTED.]
[Left lung punctured. Cardiac tissue damaged by cursed weapon.]
[Host vital signs declining rapidly.]
[INITIATING EMERGENCY RECONSTRUCTION PROTOCOL.]
[Cost: 50,000 KP]
[Applying cellular stabilization...]
[Applying curse neutralization...]
[Applying cardiac reconstruction...]
[CRITICAL WARNING: Additional KP required for full organic regeneration.]
[Secondary Protocol Activated: Crystal Hibernation Mode.]
[Cost: 30,000 KP]
[Encasing host in reconstruction shell. Estimated recovery: 48 hours.]
[Total Cost: 80,000 KP]
[Current Balance: 124,290 KP]
A hard, glowing blue light erupted from Holden’s chest. It spread rapidly, coating his body in a shell of crystalline energy that locked his limbs, sealed his wounds, and forced his heart to keep beating through pure System power. The crystal gleamed like frozen starlight, turning his body into a luminous statue on the blood-soaked floor.
The door exploded inward.
Lyra had felt it happen. A freezing wave of dread hit her chest, jerking her out of bed and making her run straight down the hallway.
She kicked the door off its hinges.
"Holden—"
She stopped.
The room was destroyed. The wall was cracked. The bed was split in half. There was blood spilled everywhere. And in the middle of it all, a glowing blue crystal shaped like a person.
Emric and Renna appeared behind her, drawn by the noise. Maeve came last, her face pale.
"No," Lyra whispered.
She crossed the room in three steps and fell to her knees beside the crystal. Her hands pressed against the smooth surface.
"Holden?" Her voice cracked. "Holden, can you hear me?"
Nothing. No response or movement behind the crystal shell.
Lyra pressed her shaking hands against the blue surface, breathing hard.
Then she snapped.
She pressed her forehead against the crystal and sobbed, her tears streaking down the glowing blue surface.
Maeve stood in the doorway, frozen. Her mouth moved but no words were failing her. Her brother was inside that crystal. And she couldn’t reach him.
Renna had her hand over her mouth, tears streaming silently down her cheeks.
Emric just stood there, his glasses catching the blue glow, his analytical mind completely broken, unable to process what he was seeing.
The blue crystal hummed on, counting down the hours.