Chapter 83: The First Wave (7)
Malrik didn’t answer the question. He didn’t have enough breath left for one.
Instead, he drove the broken half of his spear into the scorched ground and used it to push himself upright, blood still running from the wound in his side heavily enough to tilt the world in front of his eyes.
"Who I am doesn’t matter." His voice came out rougher than he wanted, but steady. "What matters is that I’m the one who’s going to kill you."
The Fallen tilted its head, something closer to pity in the motion now. "Big words from someone about to die."
Malrik smiled anyway. Thin.
Then he screamed it. "Lokris. Now."
The word detonated in the air like a flare.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the Fallen’s molten eyes narrowed, its instincts already screaming that something was about to end it.
Then something struck it from behind.
It swung its axe back in a split second, raising it behind its head just in time to catch the blow.
The impact rang out like a hammer striking an anvil, the force of it sending a shockwave across the ground and cracking the earth beneath them.
It staggered forward from the sheer force, feet plowing two long grooves into the dirt before it caught itself.
Then it turned its head to see who’d hit it — and froze at what it found. The thing standing behind it, the thing that had just attacked, was... itself.
Same broad skull, same twin horns. Same thick gray hide covering every inch of it. Even the axes matched, down to the low, ready crouch it held them in.
For a second, the Fallen felt like it was staring into a mirror. Except its reflection was smiling.
A cruel, cold smile, one that made the whole scene feel wrong in a way that went past strange.
"What in hell..." The Fallen’s voice cracked. Real confusion leaked through the rage for the first time all fight. "What the hell kind of trick is this?"
From the very start of this fight, Malrik had known that doubling his Attributes wouldn’t be enough to win. So he’d given Lokris a second job running parallel to the battle — watch the Fallen.
The longer Lokris observed it, the more complete the record became. And the more complete the record, the closer Lokris’s copy would end up matching the original.
Malrik hadn’t processed any of that information himself. He couldn’t have — every scrap of focus he had left was aimed at exactly one thing: staying alive long enough for Lokris to finish the job.
The analysis should have included the Law by now, but Malrik’s soul was still too weak to comprehend a Law at this stage. So he had handed the entire task over to Lokris.
And Lokris had executed it perfectly.
That was why Malrik had never expected Soul Rend to kill the Fallen. He already knew the attack wasn’t powerful enough to finish it.
He only needed to distract it for one crucial second, while the pain tearing through its soul consumed its attention and Lokris slipped silently into position behind it.
That order had gone out to Lokris the exact instant the attack launched.
Lokris said nothing. His grin widened as his emerald eyes flared with a fierce green light. Then he moved.
The next instant, the two collided. Their axes met with enough force to send sparks flying and violent pressure waves through the air.
Anyone fighting within fifty meters instinctively backed away as the shockwaves reached them.
Two identical bodies of living steel tore into each other, neither giving an inch as axe crashed against axe, each exchange bathing the scorched battlefield in sparks and searing heat.
The original Fallen surged forward with a wide horizontal swing, both axes crossing into a lethal steel scissor. Lokris got his own axes up at the last second, catching both blades at once, the force jarring his joints back.
His feet slid across the ground, carving two deep lines before he held.
The Fallen gave him no room to breathe. It spun with a speed its bulk shouldn’t have allowed, aiming low at Lokris’s knee, trying to cut his balance out from under him.
Lokris jumped clear, then came down immediately with a vertical counter, his axe dropping with the full weight of his body toward the Fallen’s shoulder.
Metal met in an explosion of sparks. The shoulder held — but this time it left a real gash behind. The first genuine mark on that steel body since the fight had started.
The Fallen roared and came in with both axes in a relentless chain, giving Lokris no room to attack — only to keep blocking.
Lokris gave ground step by step under the pressure, and every parry left his arms shaking harder than the last.
Malrik watched from where he stood, leaning on the broken half of his spear, the pain in his ribs and side getting worse with every second.
But he wasn’t only watching with his eyes.
Through the faint thread linking him to Lokris — the invisible line that bound every one of his souls back to his own — he could feel all of it.
He felt the strain building in Lokris’s shoulders with every block, the pain radiating where the Fallen’s axe had grazed his side minutes earlier. The effort it took just to keep pace with this thing was enormous.
Lokris had reached Fallen-rank less than a week ago and was still stuck at its first tier, while his opponent looked like it had spent years sharpening its strength inside that same rank.
Still weaker than it.
An axe caught Lokris in the side, sending him skidding dozens of meters across the ground. He dug his feet in and came to a stop, his body barely shifting from the impact before he straightened again.
The Fallen didn’t ease off.
Every hit landing on Lokris now came faster than the one before, and Lokris — for all his stolen strength, for all his flawless mimicry — was falling behind the rhythm.
"Already lost your nerve?" the Fallen mocked, swinging its axe down in a brutal arc. Lokris barely caught it with both weapons crossed, the impact driving his knees toward the ground. "A copy’s still a copy. Doesn’t matter how well it wears my face."
Lokris said nothing. He never did. But the strain showed — in how tight his stance kept getting, in how every block landed half a second slower than the last.
He’s losing.
Malrik felt it. He was still on his knees, hand clamped over the wound in his side, and somehow he still felt every one of Lokris’s stumbling steps like they were his own.
No. Not yet. Not after everything.
He needed more.
There was one thing left. One thing he hadn’t dared use since this fight began.
He needed the scythe’s skill.
It was the only way to push Lokris’s strength higher.
He didn’t know if the boost would be enough to actually win this. But it was the best shot he had left.
He was already reaching to pull the scythe out of storage when he stopped himself at the last second.
Not here.
The battlefield was too open — soldiers fighting in every direction. He couldn’t risk a single pair of eyes landing on the black scythe while it was in his hands.
If anyone saw that blade, they’d know exactly who the Black Reaper was.
He couldn’t afford that. Not today. Not like this.
He needed a distraction. Anything big enough to hide what he was about to do, even for a few seconds.
Damn it. If only I’d copied one of Lilith’s illusion abilities. It would’ve been perfect for this.
His eyes swept the scorched ground behind the wall until they landed on three Morveth trying to climb it, their claws digging into the cracked stone as they pulled themselves higher.
No one seemed to be paying them any attention. Almost every eye was fixed on the two giants tearing into each other.
Malrik’s cracked lips curved into a faint, joyless smile.
"...Perfect."