Chapter 132: Warlord’s Ash
The Warlord pulled its pillar free from the mud.
It turned all four of its red eyes on Holden and opened its mouth, revealing rows of black teeth that stretched all the way down its glowing red throat.
"RRROOOAAARRR!"
The roar hit Holden like a physical wall. It shook his cloak, flattened the mud around his boots, and made the rain seem to flow sideways for a second. Behind the Warlord, every single beast in the horde dropped flat to the ground, terrified and completely submissive.
Holden didn’t flinch.
But behind him, he heard Lyra’s sharp intake of breath. He glanced back over his shoulder.
She was on her knees, one arm wrapped around Emric’s broken body, the other raised in a defensive stance. Her face was pale, her energy nearly spent. Her eyes met his and they were wide with fear.
Not fear for herself but for him.
Holden offered a reassuring smile, silently telling her that he had everything under control.
Then he turned back to the Warlord.
Alright, he thought. Time to put on a show.
The Warlord swung.
The spiked pillar came horizontally, aimed to cut him in half at the waist. A direct hit would smash through his Iron-Body skin and kill him instantly.
Holden didn’t block it.
He jumped backward, letting the pillar whistle past his chest by an inch. His boots splashed in the mud and he stumbled slightly, faking an awkward recovery like someone who had barely escaped.
The Warlord didn’t give him time to recover. It reversed the swing and brought the pillar down from above like a hammer.
Holden threw himself to the side. The pillar slammed into the mud where he had been standing, blasting a fountain of mud everywhere. Holden hit the ground rolling, came up on one knee, and gasped loudly.
Up on the wall, soldiers were watching. He could feel their eyes. He needed them to see a lucky academy kid with a crazy sword, not a Rank 2 powerhouse demolition machine.
The Warlord lunged forward, swinging the pillar in a rapid series of strikes that that blew huge holes into the ground every time it missed.
Holden dodged. Every single time at the last possible second, always making it look like a desperate escape.
Gale-Step carried him in quick, short bursts. He slipped under horizontal swings, let the shockwaves throw off his balance, and made his boots slide in the mud. He grunted and winced and made every dodge look like pure desperation.
But his eyes were calm.
Behind the act, Holden’s 10,000x processor was mapping every movement. The Warlord’s swing patterns. The milliseconds of recovery between strikes. The tiny gap in its armor at the right armpit where the plates didn’t quite connect.
It had a pattern. And Holden was reading it like a book.
The Warlord pulled back for another massive overhead strike.
Holden didn’t dodge this time.
He held his ground, raised the Solar-Forged Sword, and poured everything into it.
He kept his physical strength completely hidden and suppressed. But the sword. He let the sword rip with everything he had.
Every drop of his 7-Star power flooded into the crimson blade. The black metal drank it in and erupted with light so intense that it turned the red storm cloud white.
The soldiers on the wall threw their hands over their eyes.
"What the"
"I can’t see!"
"It’s too bright!"
The Warlord couldn’t raise a hand to block the flash, so it just roared like a demon and slammed the pillar down anyway.
Holden looked up at the monster and swung.
Hellfire Cleave.
A massive, compressed wave of crimson fire erupted from the sword’s edge in a perfect horizontal arc
The fire hit the Warlord at the waist.
FWOOSH.
The monster’s roar cut off mid-sound. The blade passed through its armor, through its body, through its spine, and out the other side without slowing down. The two halves of the Warlord didn’t even separate immediately. They just stood there, a thin red line glowing across its midsection.
Then it fell apart.
The top half slid sideways. The bottom half stayed standing for a second longer before toppling forward into the mud with a crash that shook the ground.
[Ding!]
[Abyssal Warlord (Rank 3, 2-Star) Defeated!]
[+12,500 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[+25,000 KP!]
Something glowed in the mud where the Warlord’s upper body had fallen.
A Platinum chest. Radiating energy that made the System hum with recognition.
Holden’s hand twitched. He reached down, touched the chest, and willed it into his inventory. The platinum box vanished before the first drops of rain returned.
The soldiers on the wall were blinking rapidly, rubbing their eyes, trying to clear the massive white spots that the sword’s flash had burned into their vision.
By the time they could see again, the picture was simple.
The Warlord was dead. Cut clean in half, still smoking in the mud.
Holden stood over the fallen monster, breathing hard with his sword lowered and his cloak burned at the edges. He looked completely wrecked and exhausted, like a guy who had just burned his very last drop of energy on one desperate attack.
He let his knees buckle.
Not all the way to the ground. Just enough to drop to one knee while he planted his free hand in the mud to steady himself. His head hung low, and his shoulders shook with heavy, dramatic breaths.
Perfect.
A silence fell over the outpost. Two hundred veteran soldiers stared down at the scene from the wall. They looked at the Rank 3 Warlord, a monster that should have wiped out the entire garrison. Then they looked at the sixteen-year-old kid kneeling in the mud next to it.
Captain Venus was the first to speak.
"What... the hell... just happened?"
Nobody answered.
Holden lifted his head slowly, like the movement cost him everything. He looked up at the wall and managed a weak, shaky grin.
"Anyone got a bandage?"