Chapter 91: A monster doesn’t care about honour
The dusty road leading out of Oakhaven was quiet, framed by withered trees and low, sun-bleached hills.
Walking lazily along the dirt path, both hands buried in his leather trousers, was Vesper.
Unlike Balthazar, who relied on overwhelming brute force, or Rin, who let arrogance cloud his judgment, Vesper was a pragmatist. Pride was a luxury for men who wanted to end up six feet under. He had been present at the Academy—he had seen the terrifying, cold efficiency with which Vince had dismantled Moira. And now, hearing that both Balthazar and Rin had fallen to the same magicless youth, Vesper knew better than to attempt a solo assassination.
A monster doesn’t care about honor,
Vesper thought, a faint smirk touching his lips as he halted in the middle of the road.
And neither do I.
He slowly rolled up his left leather sleeve, revealing a dark, intricately detailed tattoo of a bat wrapped around his forearm. The ink seemed to pulse with a faint, crimson luminescence beneath his pale skin.
"To hunt an anomaly," Vesper whispered to the quiet wilderness, "I’m going to need a little help... from old friends."
He pressed two fingers against the bat tattoo. A soft, high-pitched hum vibrated through the air, and before his shadow could even stretch across the dirt, Vesper’s body dissolved into a swarm of shadowy mist, vanishing completely into the breeze.
---
Meanwhile, back at the Royal Tower, the heavy iron doors of the central council chamber creaked open as the Emperor dismissed the Five Dukes.
The air outside the hall was still thick with the lingering weight of the Emperor’s grand declaration, but as the rulers stepped into the sprawling granite corridor, the immediate tension between them reignited.
Duke Valerius fell into step beside Duke Owen, a silk handkerchief held loosely in his fingers as he offered a patronizing, razor-thin smile.
"Do try not to disappoint His Majesty, Owen," Valerius whispered purringly, his tone laced with venomous amusement. "It would be such a pity if your territory were stripped from your bloodline over a magicless boy."
Owen didn’t offer a verbal reply.
With blinding, instantaneous speed, Owen’s massive, fist whistled through the air, aimed directly for Valerius’s jaw. The sheer wind pressure from the strike blew back Valerius’s silken robes.
Valerius’s eyes widened slightly, his body blurring into a watery, blue shimmer as he slipped backward, dodging the blow by a hair’s breadth.
BOOM!
Owen’s fist smashed directly into the reinforced marble wall behind Valerius, sending spiderweb cracks rippling ten feet up the stone pillar and filling the corridor with flying debris.
Owen pulled his gloved hand from the crater, not even glancing at the cracked stone. He turned his terrifying, dark gaze onto Valerius, who had solidified a few feet away, his composure noticeably shaken.
"Stay out of my way, Valerius," Owen growled softly, stepping past him without another word.
As Owen marched out toward the plaza and mounted his black armored stallion, his eyes burned with an icy, lethal focus.
Pray you don’t get caught by someone else, Vince,
Owen thought, digging his spurs into his horse’s flanks as his vanguard rode out behind him.
Because before I hand you over to the Emperor... I’ll make you wish you had never existed.
---
Hundreds of miles to the east,
Vince, Lyrielle, and Vetra were near the outer perimeter of the vitrified plain, where the smooth black glass met the rugged, red-rock terrain of the eastern borderlands.
Suddenly, the mirror-like ground beneath their boots began to vibrate violently.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The smooth obsidian floor burst open in dozens of places. Rising from the shattered glass were monstrous, towering constructs—Glass Carapaces. Standing nearly twelve feet tall, their bodies were formed from fused, razor-sharp crimson crystal and jagged volcanic stone, with glowing orange cores burning deep within their chests.
Vetra stopped in her tracks, her lips curling into a wicked, toothy grin as her knuckles popped. She turned her head toward Vince, her dark eyes flashing with an unspoken question, seeking permission.
Vince offered a single, calm nod.
Vetra let out a feral laugh and lunged forward like a unleashed cannonball. Her form blurred with violet dragon mana as she slammed her fist straight through the chest of the nearest crystal beast, shattering its core and sending a shower of red shards raining down across the plain.
As Vetra tore through the front ranks like a whirlwind of devastation, the ground beneath Vince buckled.
A massive, four-armed Glass Carapace erupted from the obsidian right beside him. Bringing its two upper fists together into a massive, spiked mallet, the beast swung down with crushing force aimed straight for Vince’s head.
Vince didn’t flinch. He didn’t even step back.
Without a flicker of hesitation, Vince calmly raised his left palm upward to meet the descending ton of solid crystal.
TAP.
The moment the monster’s spiked fist made contact with Vince’s bare skin, Vince activated Micro-Kinetic Harmony. Rather than absorbing the kinetic impact, he instantly analyzed the structural frequency of the beast’s crystalline body and redirected a counter-vibrational wave directly back through its limb.
BZZZZZZT—THUMP!
A high-frequency hum echoed through the air for a fraction of a second. The massive crystal monster froze in mid-air—and then, from its fists down to its base, its entire twelve-foot body disintegrated into fine, powdery glass dust, collapsing harmlessly around Vince’s boots.
Beside him, Lyrielle stood watching, entirely unfazed by the sudden ambush. She had witnessed Vince’s absolute control over kinetic force too many times to doubt him.
Suddenly, a jagged, crystalline hand erupted from the glass floor directly beneath Lyrielle’s feet, reaching out to drag her under!
Without a millisecond of lag time, Lyrielle’s hand ignited with intense, emerald-green flames. She thrust her palm downward.
FOOOOOOM!
A column of pure, compressed heat incinerated the creature’s arm and bored straight into the ground beneath, melting the monster’s core into liquid slag before it could even screech.
A few yards ahead, Vetra stood amidst a graveyard of melted and pulverized crystal, wiping a speck of dust off her shoulder with a satisfied sigh. The entire horde of ambushers had been completely cleared in under two minutes.
Lyrielle lowered her hand, the green flames dying down as she shielded her eyes to look at the darkening sky over the horizon. The deep crimson glare of the glass desert was slowly fading into a dark purple twilight.
"We’re officially across the glass plain," Lyrielle said, turning back to Vince and Vetra with a gentle smile. "We should find a secure place to set up camp before it gets completely dark."
Vince wiped a fleck of glass dust from his coat, looking back one last time toward the setting sun.
"Agreed," Vince said calmly, stepping off the glass onto the solid earth ahead. "Tomorrow, we push deeper."