Chapter 582: Taking a step back.
Moon’s eyes moved from one wilting elite to another. Every single one of them was being drained past death, their life pools flowing through the bones and into whatever pool the master was feeding inside the bubble.
Every fragment of the operation Moon had been tracking connected to the master’s stockpile. Every drained life. Every dying elite. All of it, moving in one direction.
Feeding one thing.
’So that’s why they always had a bone on them.’
This was everyone had been missing this entire time. He had been trying to understand what the bones were.
Why every elite carried one. Why the material was indestructible.
He had approached the question from every angle he could think of, and none of the angles had produced an answer that fit all the data.
The answer had been much simpler than he had assumed.
The bones were leashes.
Every elite the dark organization had ever fielded had been walking around with a leash attached to their soul, unaware.
The organization had been cultivating its fighters and growing them like crops. Letting them think they were rising through ranks while their life pools were being quietly harvested year after year.
Then, on the day the master needed the stockpile activated, the entire crop was reaped in a single motion.
Moon cursed under his breath.
"Fuck."
For the first time in a long time, Moon found himself facing a hopeless situation.
Whatever decision he made in the next few seconds was going to define his future. There was no room for calculation errors. No room for hesitation. No room for the incremental risk-taking that had gotten him this far.
His eyes moved across the wilting bodies of the elites, then across the arena to the two Ascender corpses at the far ends of the battle.
Baaron. Ian.
Just as he had expected, in complete horror, the bones were rising above their corpses too.
The fragments floated upward through the ruined clothing that still clung to Ian’s collapsed frame and Baaron’s smoking chest.
They beamed with the same malevolent dark red aura. The two dead Ascenders’ remaining energy, the residual pools that hadn’t yet dissipated at their death, began to wither out of their corpses and stream toward the bubble in visible currents of concentrated red light.
Turns out, at the dark organisation, even Ascenders wore the leashes.
Even Baaron. Even Ian. Two Ascenders who had believed they were the top of the organization’s field hierarchy. Two Ascenders who had thought they answered directly to the master. They had been being drained the entire time, exactly like the elites they commanded.
Moon’s mind raced.
’If the Ascenders had bones, and Ace has been running this operation, then Ace is either the master himself or he’s the master’s most trusted, despite only being a Surpasser. He is someone with authority to activate this phenomenon.’
Moon wasn’t sure which of the two was the reality.
But he knew what was about to happen when the bubble opened.
Hell would be unleashed.
Moon looked at Emma.
Her face had gone completely pale. She was still holding her daggers, but her hands had gone slack. She had understood exactly what Moon had understood, and neither of them had any good options left.
Moon’s gaze moved to Alaric. The Light Sword Saint was still sending his own attacks against the bubble. His face was contorting, his teeth were locked and his body was straining against the mana output he was pouring into the strikes.
"This is hopeless...don’t bother attacking the bubble. You will not be able to burst through the bubble with the enormous energy drain supporting it."
Moon then asked the question, he had been keeping at the back of his mind for a while, "Is there no other Ascender around? Where is your father?"
Someone like Alaric didn’t exist in a vacuum. Such genius, power and talent had roots. His genius had come from somewhere.
Given how powerful Alaric and Selene have become, it’s hard to imagine that either of their parents was ordinary. If both siblings stand among the strongest of their generation, then their father, their mother—or perhaps both—must be formidable figures in their own right.
Exceptional children rarely emerged from an unremarkable lineage.
His backer should have been here by now.
An operation of this scale—launched by a dark organization with two Ascenders already on the field—should have drawn every senior figure in New Avalon into the fight. Moon understood why the other Ascenders hadn’t arrived. They were likely spread across the city, defending the other zones under attack.
But Alaric was here.
That alone should have been enough.
By now, one of his parents should have already arrived, just as Tom had come for Kael.
Alaric gritted his teeth and did not respond. But, his silence was its own answer.
Moon’s face darkened.
He didn’t have time to unpack that. Whatever family dynamics existed between Alaric and his parent, they weren’t Moon’s problem right now. His problem was surviving the next five minutes.
He turned toward the eastern exit.
"Well." His voice was flat. "You’d better run too. Because when he gets out, you and I are going to be his first two targets."
Alaric remained silent.
But he knew Moon was right.
If Ace was ascending to a higher tier through whatever demonic pathway he had built inside the bubble, then he was going to emerge stronger than ever. And when he emerged, Alaric would be the highest-priority target because he always had been. Moon would be the second because Moon had been the one to expose the operation and had been marked as the master’s priority from the start.
Neither of them could win an exchange against what was about to come out.
"You are right." Alaric’s voice came quieter than Moon had ever heard it.
For the first time since he had been born, for the first time since he had stepped foot into this world, the Light Sword Saint was being forced to back down and run away from an opponent.