Chapter 83: The Final Convergence
No one had breath to spare for words. There were no battle cries, no commands—only the rhythmic, suffocating crunch of bone, the roar of colliding auras, and the desperate struggle of three wounded lights trying to put down a monster.
Ethan had deliberately kept the cub with the Bluemoon forces beyond the threshold. Among everyone remaining there, Rune was the strongest after Ethan, making him the best protection against anything that might emerge from the other side. More importantly, Rune had spent almost all of his battles fighting alongside Ethan; throwing him into a coordinated battle with Peter and Luna now would only disrupt the rhythm they had established.
From the fortress, Rune’s blue eyes remained fixed on Ethan, his small body tense as he watched the battle unfold. He could sense Ethan’s injuries, and every instinct urged him closer, yet he trusted Ethan completely.
Thorn’s breathing came in ragged, furious gasps. Blood streamed from several wounds across his body, yet instead of weakening him, the sight of it seemed to drive his rage even deeper. His eyes swept across the three warriors before settling on Luna. Her frost aura was flickering, her breathing visibly heavier than the others.
She was the weakest.
A savage grin slowly spread across Thorn’s bloodstained face.
"You first."
"GRAAAAAH!" Thorn bellowed, a guttural shriek that rattled the stone walls of the gatehouse. His bloodshot eyes locked onto Luna as she landed from a rapid backstep.
Driven by a sudden, terrifying spike in forced aura, Thorn’s body surged forward. He ignored Peter’s broadsword slicing deeply into his back, allowing the crimson blade to bite through his muscle just to close the distance. He lunged straight for Luna, his heavy, vein-bulged hands clawing forward like iron tongs aimed directly for her neck!
Luna’s breath hitched. Her frost aura was flickering, virtually exhausted. There was no space left to slide backward, and no energy left to manifest a protective shield.
Is this... my limit?
As the shadow of death descended over her, something deep within Luna’s mind snapped into absolute, pristine clarity. The fear vanished. The bone-deep exhaustion receded into absolute silence. The chaotic noise of the battlefield fell completely dead in her ears.
She closed her eyes for a microsecond, reaching into the deepest core of her spirit.
Frostmoon War Art — Fourth Form.
When her eyes snapped open, her clear irises had transformed into a terrifying, luminous absolute white. The form she had previously executed with modest skill suddenly took on an entirely different character—the deeper principles she had only sensed before unfolding before her with startling clarity.
CRACK!
Luna didn’t retreat. She stepped forward straight into the monster’s path, bringing both of her pale hands together and thrusting her palms directly into the center of Thorn’s descending chest.
Absolute Zero.
An aura of blinding, pure white mist erupted from her hands. It was not the jagged ice or frost blades of before; it was a wave of localized, catastrophic cold. The temperature around Thorn plunged into immediate, sub-zero stillness.
FREEZE!
The forced energy surging through Thorn’s body stuttered beneath the sudden invasion of absolute cold. Frost raced through his veins, crystallizing the energy coursing beneath his skin as layers of ice erupted across his chest, crawling up his neck, locking his eyes, and paralyzing his swollen muscles in a dense, solid casing of true absolute ice. His ferocious momentum died mid-air, pinning his massive frame to the cobblestones like a frozen statue!
"Now!" Luna gasped, a thick stream of blood trickling down her chin as the extreme strain of the Fourth Form completely drained her remaining life force, dropping her to one knee.
In that exact same microsecond, as Thorn stood frozen and helpless before them, Ethan felt something shatter and open within his own consciousness.
Staring at the immobilized monster, the frantic world around Ethan seemed to slow down to a crawl. The rapid beating of his heart quieted. The excruciating agony in his broken ribs faded into distant background noise.
For the first time in this life, his mental world opened.
In his previous life, it had happened only a handful of times—each one hard-won, each one arriving only at the absolute edge of survival, never once by choice. Now, standing in the wreckage of a battle he had no business still being upright in, he felt that same threshold crack open beneath him.
He saw the Mountain Cleaving Strike—not as a technique he had already mastered, but as the surface expression of something far deeper. Every angle of the blade, every shift of his weight, every change in his aura suddenly connected. Movements he had repeated thousands of times in his previous life, variations he had developed through instinct and experience, all began to converge toward the same underlying truth.
He wasn’t learning the technique.
He was finally seeing what had always existed beneath it.
Beneath it, other fragments stirred—the Northern Heaven War Art, principles he had only partially grasped before, their depth suddenly unfolding further in the same clarifying light. His comprehension deepened with each passing second, layer after layer opening before him, though the whole of it still lay just beyond his reach.
A state of true battle enlightenment.
Ethan’s aura did not flare outward violently; instead, it condensed inward, flowing through his body and into the Eternal Sovereign Blade. Through their existing connection, the blade seemed to sense the intent within him, responding to his movements as naturally as his own limbs.
Beside him, Peter felt the sudden shift in the air. Gritting his teeth through the pain, Peter ignited every final drop of his crimson aura, coating his heavy broadsword in a burning, executioner’s glow.
All three warriors converged in absolute unison.
Peter’s heavy broadsword swept from the left in a roaring arc of crimson aura, his cracked ribs screaming with every inch of the motion.
Luna’s frost aura gathered into a final, needle-thin beam of pure white cold from the right, her knees trembling beneath the last of her strength.
Ethan’s steel lunged straight through the center, carrying his newly awakened intent, his vision narrowing to nothing but the blade and the throat it was aimed at.
Three lethal attacks converged from three directions, each carrying everything their battered bodies had left. For one brief instant, the three strikes aligned with absolute precision, converging on Thorn’s frozen throat.
Thorn’s bloodshot eyes shifted beneath the layer of ice, widening as he saw the three attacks converging on him. For the first time since taking the crimson pill, something resembling fear flickered across his face.
He tried to move.
Nothing happened.
His muscles strained against the frost, his crimson aura surged desperately through his body, but the ice refused to yield. Somewhere beneath the numbness, he could feel his own heartbeat hammering against the frozen casing, each pulse a countdown he had no way to stop. He had never once considered that his life might end like this—frozen, helpless, watching death close in without even the strength to raise his hand against it.
The three attacks were already upon him.
He was going to die.
Far beyond the mountain pass, perched high above the drifting morning clouds, the crimson-eyed woman looked down upon the battlefield.
She had watched Thorn’s forced surge in power with utter boredom. A pawn burning through its own life force was hardly worth her attention. Yet her crimson gaze remained fixed upon the young man wielding the dark blade.
She watched Ethan step into that fleeting, nameless clarity, a razor-thin stillness settled along his dark blade as he synchronized his strike perfectly with the attacks of Peter and Luna.
A faint curiosity flickered in her cold eyes.
Then she felt it—the barest thread of intent woven into his final strike, small and imperfect, but unmistakably real.
The curiosity sharpened into something closer to interest.
Fascinating... she thought silently.
Thorn had never interested her. He was merely a useful piece, and useful pieces were not discarded until their purpose had been fulfilled. He still had his use—for now.
Her gaze lingered on Ethan a moment longer.
Should I take him with me?
She raised one slender, pale finger, and lightly pressed it against the empty air before her.
There was no explosion. There was no bright flash of light.
Suddenly, an invisible, crushing weight descended from the sky, smothering the entire mountain pass in an instant. It felt as though the sky itself had become solid and descended upon the earth.
Across the entire battlefield, everything stopped.
The howling wind died completely. The drifting smoke locked in place mid-air.
Down in the pass, the Bluemoon soldiers, the disarmed mercenaries, Commander Valen, and Teresa were instantly paralyzed, their bodies locked in position like insects trapped in amber. In that single frozen instant, every person caught within the pressure felt it—not fear of injury, not fear of the enemy, but the absolute, bone-deep certainty that death itself was standing over the pass, and that nothing they did would matter to it at all. Even Count Thorn, encased within Luna’s ice, ceased struggling as the pressure descended over him, the frozen battlefield itself seeming to buckle beneath the invisible weight.
Peter’s broadsword froze mid-air, three inches from Thorn’s icy neck. His eyes bulged in absolute terror, unable to turn his head, unable to draw a breath, trapped under a force that dwarfed any Knight Lord.
Luna’s frost beam hovered two inches away, its white light instantly snuffed out like a candle flame pinched between cold fingers.
And at the center, Ethan’s strike was forced to a dead halt, his blade resting less than a single inch from the Count’s throat.
Inside Ethan’s mind, the sudden, terrifying descent of this unknown presence acted like a physical executioner’s axe—severing his half-formed understanding in an instant. The opening in his mental world slammed shut before he could grasp anything more. The vast, half-glimpsed truth vanished beyond his reach, leaving behind a cold, agonizing emptiness that lingered even after the world around him had fallen completely silent.
The mountain pass fell into a suffocating, absolute stillness.
Two blades and a beam of frost hung motionless at the monster’s throat.