Chapter 246: Drawbacks
The technique was perfect.
And deeply flawed.
Kael understood this even as Valen stared in disbelief. Orbital Deflection was the best defensive ability he had ever encountered—spatial warping that made physical contact impossible. But the limitations were severe.
The gravitational field had to be restricted to a sub-atomic thin membrane over his skin. Any thicker, and the devastating pulling forces would leak into the surrounding environment—crushing allies, destroying the battlefield, making the technique unusable in any scenario where collateral damage mattered.
Maintaining the baseline shield cost a steady, manageable trickle of mana. But the cost scaled exponentially with the kinetic energy of blocked attacks. A simple punch might cost nothing. A technique like Venom Avalanche had drained nearly eight percent of his reserves in a single instant.
For someone with a standard Flawless Core, the technique would be nearly unusable in sustained combat.
For Kael—with his Transcendent Core and its 480% capacity—it was merely concerning.
Worse was the sensory deprivation. The gravitational gradient was dense enough to warp space, which meant it also warped light and sound. When the shield fully activated to block an attack, Kael was momentarily blinded and deafened. Light couldn’t reach his eyes in a straight line. Sound couldn’t reach his ears. He had to rely entirely on mana-sensing or—thanks to his recent breakthrough—soul sense.
Which was why he’d activated it only once.
Valen, recovering from his shock, fired again. Poison needles. Poison waves. Poison clouds. Each attack slipped off Kael’s skin like water off glass, but the mana cost was mounting.
Summon.
The shadow wolf materialized from darkness—Rank 5, obsidian fur, crimson eyes, still bearing scars from the Draven attack. It lunged at Valen without command, instinct and training guiding its movements.
Valen’s daggers flashed, poison coating the blades. The wolf dodged the first strike and took the second on its flank—yelping as the poison burned through fur and flesh.
Kael didn’t intervene.
Right now, he was thinking. He seemed to be in submerged in a deep state of understanding and flow.
The strain of Orbital Deflection wasn’t just about mana cost. It was about processing. His mind had to maintain the gravitational calculations continuously—adjusting for attack vectors, compensating for irregularities, keeping the field stable while also fighting. It was like solving complex mathematics while running a marathon.
His thoughts drifted into unfamiliar territory.
What if the domain could handle it?
Bed of the Sunken Horizon already manipulated gravity within its boundaries. If he could integrate Orbital Deflection into the domain’s underlying structure—
The comprehension hit him like lightning.
Both fists interlocked. Fingers threading together in a precise pattern.
"The sky was never meant to be a ceiling; it is a weight waiting to collapse. Your strength is but a fragile fiction, your arrogance but dust drifting in a cosmic press. Fall from your pedestal, break upon the unyielding stone, and learn the true geometry of absolute surrender. Now, kneel before the axis of the world."
"Reality Annex: Bed of the Sunken Horizon."
The horizon curved.
The visible skyline tilted downward as if gravity had changed its mind about which direction was down. Clouds spiraled inward. The sky above the compound darkened to a heavy indigo that pressed against the eyes like physical weight.
Six times normal gravity crashed down.
Valen’s knees buckled. His poisoned daggers nearly slipped from his fingers as his body screamed under the pressure. But he was a Vorn—generations of selective breeding had produced bodies that could endure. He stabilized, teeth bared, and forced himself upright.
"Is that all you’ve got?!"
He rushed toward Kael.
The injured wolf intercepted him, jaws snapping for his throat. Valen didn’t hesitate—poison sprayed from his mouth in a concentrated blast, catching the wolf in the face. The beast shrieked and tumbled away, blinded and burning.
Valen reached Kael and fired another poison spray at point-blank range.
It passed around him.
The poison simply flowed around Kael’s body like water around a stone, unable to find a path to his skin. Inside the domain, Orbital Deflection had become passive. The underlying gravity manipulation handled the calculations automatically.
Valen’s eyes went wide with horror.
Kael’s hands glowed—gravity and lightning coiling around his fists like twin serpents.
He punched Valen in the stomach.
CRACK.
The impact was devastating—not just physical force, but gravity-amplified, lightning-charged, body-cultivation-optimized destruction. Valen’s Tier 1 armor crumpled inward. His spine bowed. Blood vomited from his mouth as he folded around Kael’s fist.
Gravity Pull yanked him back before he could collapse. Kael’s hand closed around his throat, lifting him off the ground.
"Thanks for being my test subject," Kael said with a smirk. "Clown."
Valen’s response was a wet, bloody laugh.
"You think... you won?" Poison was spreading across Kael’s hand—green and sizzling, eating through skin where it touched. "You touched a poison user, you idiot. That poison is already in your—"
Kael drew him into the air with Gravity Pull.
His mocking smile widened.
Then he jumped.
Gravity amplified the leap—ten meters straight up, Valen’s choking body trailing beneath him. At the apex, Kael released his grip and drove both fists downward.
"Gravity Punch."
Valen crossed his arms in desperation, pouring every remaining ounce of mana into his defense.
It wasn’t enough.
BOOM.
The impact sent Valen crashing into the platform like a meteor. Stone shattered. Dust exploded outward. The crater was three meters deep.
Kael landed beside the broken body. Valen wasn’t dead—barely—but he wasn’t moving either. Poison continued to eat at Kael’s hand, but Void Body Refinement was already neutralizing it, the enhanced cellular structure identifying and destroying the toxins before they could spread.
"I guess this is over."
Kael retracted the domain. The sky returned to normal. The crushing weight lifted. The wolf dissolved into shadow, returning to wherever summoned creatures rested.
He withdrew his blades and turned to leave.
"Young Master."
The voice was humble and quite respectful. Nothing like Valen’s arrogance.
Kael paused.
A young man stood at the platform’s edge—lean, composed, with a longsword strapped to his back and the calm demeanor of someone who had trained with blades. His Shadow insignia marked him as Rank 11.
Formerly Rank Ten, Kael corrected mentally. Another one displaced by his promotion.
"Lucian De Vorn," the man said, bowing slightly. "I humbly request the honor of a challenge."
Kael studied him. Rank 7 Mana Heart—same as Valen. But everything else was different. Where Valen had been aggressive and sloppy, Lucian was still and controlled. His hand rested near his sword hilt with the easy familiarity of someone who had drawn that blade ten thousand times.
A sword prodigy. Kael recognized the type. Caelan had the same energy—the single-minded dedication to the blade that separated technicians from artists.
"Alright, I accept," Kael said as he thought, Afterall, I still have a quest to complete.
He drew the Shadow Slayer blades.
Murmurs rippled through the observers. The elders exchanged glances. Two challenges back-to-back, both against Rank 7 opponents, one already dismantled—now a sword prodigy stepping forward? How would he fare?
Lucian drew his sword.
The blade was ordinary—Tier 2 at best. But the way he held it made it look like the most dangerous weapon in existence.
"I don’t care about rank," Lucian said quietly. "I only care about the sword. Show me yours."
Kael’s lips curved.
"With pleasure."