Chapter 108: Forged in the Volcano
The Warlord charged.
The phantom beast’s hooves slammed against the volcanic rock, leaving molten footprints everywhere it walked. The ground shook with each stride. Lava splashed up from the lake below as its weight sent cracks racing through the stone ledge.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The Warlord lowered its white-hot spear. The tip aimed directly at Holden’s chest, trailing a line of fire like a comet’s tail.
Holden moved.
Gale-Step activated. His body became a blur of wind, sliding sideways across the narrow ledge just as the spear thrust crashed into the rock where he had been standing.
Crack!
The volcanic stone shattered. Chunks of black rock flew in every direction, trailing embers. The spear had punched clean through solid stone like it was wet clay.
Holden was already countering.
He swung his Star-Forged Sword in a horizontal arc, activating Hellfire Cleave. Crimson fire erupted along the edge.
Clang!
The blade hit the Warlord’s armored thigh. The fire flared, but the phantom armor held. A shower of orange sparks rained down, but the blackened metal didn’t break.
The Warlord twisted its massive body and swung the spear sideways.
Holden ducked. The spearhead missed his head by inches. He rolled under the swing and came up inside the beast’s guard, driving his blade toward the Warlord’s exposed knee.
Swoosh!
The crimson slash carved a line across the joint armor. This time, the metal glowed red and warped slightly, but it still didn’t break.
Eight-Star. The difference in raw power was real.
The phantom beast stood up on its back legs, swinging its fiery hooves right where Holden was standing just a second before. Holden threw himself backward down to a lower shelf of rock, and loose small rocks rolled away from under his boots.
The Warlord turned the beast and charged again.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Holden’s 10,000x multiplier was running at maximum capacity. The world had slowed to a crawl. He could see the individual flames licking off the beast’s armor. He could count the cracks in the Warlord’s spear. He could track the precise trajectory of every attack before it arrived.
But seeing an attack and stopping it were two different things.
He needed more power. More control over a skill he had only mastered in theory.
He swung again.
Clang!
Another deflection. The Warlord’s armor rang like a bell.
Again.
Swoosh!
A glancing blow that left a red-hot gouge in the phantom metal but failed to penetrate.
Again.
Boom!
The beast’s shoulder caught Holden in a sidestep, sending him skidding across the rock. His Iron-Body absorbed the impact, but the force still rattled his bones.
His 10,000x multiplier wasn’t just processing the fight. It was learning from it.
Every clash, deflection and near-miss fed data into his muscle memory at impossible speed. The Hellfire Cleave was a Master-tier skill on paper, but paper wasn’t combat. Real combat revealed nuances that no amount of system-granted knowledge could fully prepare him for.
The angle of the wrist during a downward strike.
The exact moment to compress the flames for maximum armor penetration.
The way to shift his stance so the recoil didn’t throw off his follow-up.
[Ding!]
[Hellfire Cleave: Combat Mastery Deepening]
[Skill Affinity +5%]
[Flame Compression Efficiency +8%]
[Armor Penetration +12%]
The notifications flashed in rapid succession as Holden fought. Each one represented a micro-improvement that would have taken a normal fighter weeks of practice to discover.
The Warlord charged again.
Holden activated Gale-Step and ran directly at the charging beast. At the last possible moment, he leaped.
The phantom charger thundered beneath him, its flaming hooves passing just below his feet. Holden soared over the beast’s back, higher than the Warlord’s helmet.
He flipped in midair, pointed his blade downward, and activated every drop of refined Hellfire Cleave knowledge he had just absorbed.
The blade didn’t just glow.
It blazed.
A column of compressed crimson fire condensed around the Star-Forged Sword, so dense it looked like solid light. The heat warped the air for meters in every direction.
Holden brought the blade down.
WHOOSH!
A massive wave of fire crashed onto the Warlord’s shoulders. The compressed flames hit the armor and didn’t just heat it. They consumed it.
The phantom beast shrieked. Its own armor began to crack and dissolve under the residual heat.
The Warlord raised its spear one final time.
Holden was already falling. He adjusted his angle mid-descent and drove the blazing blade straight through the Warlord’s chest.
The fire exploded outward.
The Warlord froze. Its featureless helmet tilted downward, looking at the blade buried in its core. Cracks of crimson light spread across its body like broken glass.
Then it shattered.
A thousand fragments of light scattered into the volcanic air, dissolving before they hit the lava. The beast collapsed, its form unraveling into wisps of gray smoke.
[Ding!]
[Phantom Warlord (Rank 2, 8-Star) Eliminated!]
[Phantom Armored Charger (Rank 2, 6-Star) Eliminated!]
[Elite Dungeon Boss Cleared!]
[Base Reward: 10,000 KP]
[Boss Kill Bonus: +5,000 KP]
[Difficulty Overcome Bonus: +5,000 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[Total: +40,000 KP!]
[Current Balance: 98,790 KP]
[Hellfire Cleave: Combat Mastery Complete]
[Skill Status: Perfected Master]
The volcanic crater flickered. The ledge beneath Holden’s feet turned transparent.
The portal was pulling him back.
He dismissed his sword and let the blue light take him.
Holden stepped out of the portal and into his quiet bedroom. Sweat soaked his clothes. His muscles ached with that deep, satisfying burn of a real workout. The scorch mark on the floor faded and disappeared.
He showered, changed into clean clothes, and went to bed.
Morning came fast.
Holden walked into the villa’s main room to find Emric and Renna already waiting. Emric sat at the table with his head in his hands, scrolling through data on his tablet. Renna stood by the window, bouncing on her heels.
They both looked terrible. Dark circles under their eyes. Tense shoulders. The kind of body language that said neither of them had slept well.
"Good morning," Holden said.
"Is it, though?" Emric looked up. "I spent four hours analyzing Blood-Iron Academy’s match history. Their average fight duration is ninety seconds. Their average opponent recovery time is four months. Two of their previous opponents retired from cultivation permanently."
"That’s horrible," Renna said quietly. She wasn’t bouncing anymore.
Holden walked to the fruit bowl on the counter. He picked up an apple, turned it over once, and tossed it to Emric.
Emric caught it instinctively, blinking in confusion.
"Blood-Iron," Holden said, grabbing an apple for himself. "Sounds like a cheap daily vitamin. You know the ones. ’Take one a day for strong bones.’ Very healthy. Very boring."
Emric stared at the apple. "Did you just make a vitamin joke about the team that’s famous for permanently disabling people?"
"I did."
Renna’s mouth twitched. "That’s terrible."
"It was a little bit funny," she admitted.
"The point is," Holden said, taking a bite, "they’re just people. Big, slow, armored people who hit hard but think slower. We’ve faced worse."
"We haven’t faced worse," Emric said honestly.
"We faced an Abyssal Spider Queen in a hive full of thousands of bugs. We faced a rigged twelve-on-four match yesterday and I blew them all away with one swing." Holden looked at both of them. "Chin up. We’ve got this."
Lyra appeared in the doorway, dressed and ready, her expression calm and composed. "The transport leaves in twenty minutes."
"Perfect timing." Holden finished his apple, tossed the core in the trash, and headed for the door. "Let’s go introduce ourselves to the vitamin squad."