Chapter 598: The End of the Battle
Before the eyes of millions of people across the kingdom of UTA, Samuel was floating in the air on one leg, his face deathly pale, as if he had lost all color.
His right arm was gone.
The camera drones caught the empty sleeve of his slate-grey haori swaying vigorously in the wind.
Where his sword arm should have been, there was nothing. The severed limb had been cut clean during the second exchange. His remaining left hand gripped the sword at his side, holding the blade upright.
Millions of viewers became silent. This was the first time they had seen one of their strongest powerhouses take this much damage.
A middle-aged man in one of the emergency shelters shook his head slowly in pity, "Taking a swordsman’s sword arm. That’s worse than death."
The people around him turned to look at him. They could tell he was a normal person without any class, he was a Null just like them. He had lived his entire life as one. In a world where awakening determined social standing, life potential, and the basic respect one received from strangers, he had been quietly written off before he had ever taken his first breath.
But he had always been fascinated by the way of the sword.
He had dedicated his entire life to the craft, despite knowing from a young age that he was limited by his mortal body.
He had studied forms, memorized traditions. He had trained his body through sheer stubborn will, refining technique that would never see a Sanctuary. He had climbed his own personal ladder through pure dedication, until his proficiency had reached a level that even the elites of Awakeners noticed.
He had opened his own sword dojo eventually. Small at first, then larger. He had taught lower-tier Awakeners the fundamentals of blade work. His students had gone on to careers he could never have had, and many of them had credited his teaching for the edges that had kept them alive in their first real fights.
He had earned his respect the hard way.
Which meant he understood, better than most of the shelter’s residents, exactly what the camera was showing them.
"His entire style was built around it. Samuel Sky’s swordsmanship is right-hand dominant. His draw stance, footwork, weight distribution. Every technique in his repertoire assumes his right hand is on the pommel. His left has always been the guide hand. Now it has to be the driving hand."
The people around him listened.
"He can still fight and adapt. He’s an Ascender. But his combat power had dropped by a significant margin."
The chatter didn’t return.
In the middle of the crater, Ace’s chest was heaving. Despite his injuries, he smiled anyway, "You look better without an arm or a leg. You should keep that style from now on, Samuel. It suits you."
Samuel’s eyes narrowed.
"You look better when you’re a corpse that doesn’t move."
Despite the pressure of his injuries, despite standing on one leg with his sword arm gone and his blade held in the wrong hand, Samuel’s rage hadn’t diminished by a single degree. If anything, it grew.
He crossed the crater in a burst of speed the news latest cameras couldn’t fully capture.
His sword came around in his left hand at an angle that most swordsmen could never have produced from a weak-side grip.
The strike was deadly.
Ace’s remaining dagger caught the blade on the edge and turned it aside by a fraction. The redirection wasn’t clean. The tip of Samuel’s sword scored a long line down Ace’s chest before the dagger fully deflected it. Fresh blood welled up along the cut.
Samuel didn’t slow.
He drove forward with a second strike. Then a third. His ability to fly had greatly compensated for his missing leg in real time. His attacks came from angles that Ace’s dagger struggled to intercept.
Some of the strikes got through.
Cuts began to spread across Ace’s body, his ribs, upper arm, hips and other places. Ace parried what he could and absorbed the rest. His remaining aura pulsed with each impact, hardening his skin against the worst of the damage, but blood continued to run from every wound.
Ace’s dagger came up.
His remaining aura surged into a single defensive burst. Dark crimson energy exploded outward from his body in a slash that forced Samuel back a couple dozens of meters. The impact broke Samuel’s momentum. His pivot leg skidded across the rubble. His sword dropped to a lower guard as he stabilized his balance.
Ace leapt backward at the same instant.
He landed twenty meters away, his breathing ragged.
At that moment, Klein moved.
The Ascender had been on the back foot against Tom, Farid, and Sierra for the past few minutes. He wasn’t going to hold much longer.
His body dropped into a puddle of water beside him.
He vanished.
He emerged from a similar puddle of water beside Ace a fraction of a second later. His feet landed cleanly on the rubble. His staff was still in his hand. His expression was as composed as it had been throughout the entire battle.
Ace smiled at Samuel one last time.
"Thanks for the fight, Samuel. But I have other things to attend to. Let’s finish this next time."
Samuel understood the context immediately.
So did the three Ascenders behind him.
All four of them launched their fastest available strikes at once. Samuel’s sword came around in a burst of red-gold flame. Tom, Sierra, and Farid’s attacks followed through the air in a synchronized volley.
Every attack converged on Ace and Klein’s position, crossing the distance quickly.
But they were too late.
Klein’s staff tapped a fresh puddle of water beside him. He and Ace both dissolved downward into the water’s surface, vanishing entirely from their eyes.
The attacks arrived a heartbeat after their disappearance. Golden fire, blue flame, red-gold slash, and elemental arrows all struck the same shallow puddle at the same instant.