The white flag of parley fluttered in the smoke-choked air, a pathetic scrap of silk that promised a peace the battlefield wasn't ready to give. From the high ramparts of the Aethelgard camp, Colonel Harken watched with his heart in his throat, his breath hitched in a desperate hope for a momentary reprieve. His men were broken, their armor shattered, and their spirits flagging under the relentless weight of the Drakon numbers.
But the Drakon Commander—a man encased in obsidian-black plate armor etched with the draconic crest of crimson gold—didn't even glance at the signal of surrender. To him, the white flag was not an invitation to talk; it was a sign of weakness that begged to be crushed. His eyes, slit-pupiled and glowing with a fermented, ancient bloodlust, were fixed on a single point in the sea of carnage: the sixteen-year-old boy standing atop a mound of ten fallen Drakon veterans.
Kaelen was a glitch in the Commander's conquest. For an hour, the obsidian-clad giant had watched from the rear as this "servant-soldier" carved through his elite 5th-stage sergeants as if they were made of dry straw. There was no fatigue in the boy's movements, no fear in his eyes—only a cold, mechanical precision that defied every law of the lower realms.
"Negotiations?" the Commander's voice boomed, amplified by a throat tempered in the 9th Stage of Skin Tempering. The sound was a physical wave that made the weaker soldiers on both sides drop their weapons and clutch their ears. "I do not negotiate with slaughter-houses. I dismantle them!"
With a roar that shook the very foundations of the wooden palisades, the Commander leaped from his skeletal war-horse. He didn't run; he flew. His body became a heavy projectile of black iron and kinetic fury, cutting a path through the air. In mid-flight, he drew a massive, two-handed Great-Axe. The blade was nearly five feet across, etched with "Refined" runes that pulsed with a jagged, earthen light, sensing the kill.
Kaelen saw the world slow down. The Primordial Chaos technique within him surged to a fever pitch, the silver vortex in his Spirit Sea spinning so fast it created a high-pitched whistle only he could hear. The atmospheric essence of the battlefield—the scent of iron, the heat of the fires, the very lingering spirits of the dead—was being pulled into him, feeding his 6th-stage foundation.
He didn't retreat. To retreat was to invite the axe to follow.
Kaelen braced his feet into the blood-soaked red mud, his 6th-stage skin tightening until it felt as dense as the palace's bedrock. He held the Pitch-Black Dagger in a reverse grip, tucked tightly against his forearm to hide its length, and raised his shattered Crude Iron Sword to meet the initial impact.
BOOM.
The collision sounded like a mountain cracking in half. The shockwave blew the surrounding soldiers—both Aethelgard and Drakon—back several paces, some falling into the trenches from the sheer air pressure. Kaelen's crude iron sword didn't just break; it disintegrated into a cloud of metallic dust. The weight of the Commander's 9th-stage power was immense, driving Kaelen's knees inches deep into the earth.
"A 6th-stage whelp?" the Commander sneered, his axe pressing down with enough force to crush a royal carriage. He leaned his full weight into the handle, his obsidian armor groaning. "You have talent, boy. I can feel the density of your skin. But talent without a realm is just a colorful way to die!"
Kaelen didn't scream. He didn't even grunt. Under the crushing pressure of the axe, he felt the last remnants of his "unstable" foundation—the result of his rapid advancement—finally lock into place. The 3rd General had sent him here to be ground into dust, but he had inadvertently provided the perfect anvil. The Commander's 9th-stage pressure was the hammer Kaelen needed to forge his 6th-stage peak into something unbreakable.
Kaelen tilted his head upward, a strand of dark hair falling across his silver-flecked eyes. A cold, hollow smile touched his lips—a look that made the Commander's slit-pupils contract with sudden, instinctive dread.
"You talk too much for a man who is about to lose his head," Kaelen whispered.
With a sudden, violent twist of his torso, Kaelen utilized the Ghost-Pulse movement. He didn't push back against the axe; he simply ceased to be where the weight was focused. He vanished. One moment he was pinned under the obsidian blade; the next, he was a silver blur sliding beneath the Commander's guard, his body low to the ground.
The Pitch-Black Dagger flickered like a serpent's tongue.
Clang!
The dagger struck the obsidian breastplate near the ribs. To Kaelen's surprise, the armor didn't shear through immediately. It was a High-Refined Essence Guard, built specifically to withstand 9th-stage strikes from rival generals. But the "Soul-Sever" property of the dagger was not a physical force—it was a conceptual one. A spiderweb of glowing white cracks appeared on the black plate, and the Commander let out a sharp, ragged gasp as a portion of his vital essence was forcefully drained into the black blade.
"Curse you!" the Commander roared, spinning his great-axe in a whirlwind of lethal steel.
The weapon moved with a speed that defied the laws of physics for a man of his size. Kaelen danced on the razor's edge of the storm. Every time the axe whistled past, the sheer wind from the blade cut shallow nicks into Kaelen's 6th-stage skin. But the Primordial Chaos was relentless. As fast as the skin was cut, the silver essence knitted it back together. Kaelen was regenerating in real-time, fueled by the very combat that was meant to kill him.
The fight moved across the blood-slicked field in a chaotic orbit. The soldiers on both sides had stopped fighting, standing in a dazed circle, mesmerized by the spectacle. It was a 6th-stage novice holding a 9th-stage monster at bay through pure, technical perfection.
The Commander grew desperate. His pride, built over decades of border conquest, was being eroded with every missed swing and every tiny, soul-draining cut Kaelen landed. He realized that if he didn't end this now, he would be bled dry by a boy who hadn't even reached the late stages of Skin Tempering.
He began to burn his blood essence, his aura turning from a muddy brown to a dark, bruised purple. The air grew heavy with the smell of ozone.
"Dragon-Tide Strike!" he roared, lifting his axe high.
The runes on the blade glowed with a terrifying, violet intensity. He swung it in a massive, vertical arc. This wasn't just a physical blow; it sent a wave of purple essence tearing through the ground, a fissure of raw destruction twenty feet wide heading straight for Kaelen.
Kaelen realized he couldn't dodge this. The "Dragon-Tide" covered too much ground, and the energy was locking onto his life-signature. He closed his eyes for a microsecond, reaching deep into the Inheritance Sphere still tucked against his chest inside his tunic. He didn't try to activate the sphere—he wasn't strong enough—but he used its presence as a lens to focus his own Primordial Chaos.
Silver vs. Purple.
Kaelen thrust the Pitch-Black Dagger forward, not at the axe, but at the "eye" of the approaching essence wave.
The two powers clashed in a blinding, silent flash of white light. Kaelen felt his 6th-stage skin groaning, his bones vibrating with the frequency of the collision. The pressure was trying to liquify his internal organs. But the Chaos technique was like a black hole; it didn't just resist the Commander's energy—it began to consume it.
Kaelen felt a rush of foreign, violent essence flooding into his meridians. Normally, this would cause a cultivator's body to explode into a red mist. But the Chaos technique filtered the poison, refined it into pure silver light, and slammed it into Kaelen's 7th-stage barrier.
Crack.
A sound like thunder echoed within Kaelen's soul. He didn't achieve the breakthrough yet, but the door was now standing wide open.
The Commander stumbled, his greatest technique swallowed by a boy three stages below him. For the first time, the bloodlust in his eyes was replaced by a cold, prickling fear. He looked at Kaelen, who was standing in the center of the smoking crater, his silver aura now tinged with the stolen purple of the Dragon-Tide.
"What... what are you?" the Commander wheezed, his armor cracked and leaking dark essence like black blood.
Kaelen didn't answer. He lunged.
This move was different. There was no "decent performance" here. This was the raw, unadulterated intent of the Weapon Smith Guide applied to a human body. Kaelen saw the "seams" in the Commander's obsidian armor—the points where the essence flow was weakest and where the Soul-Sever cracks had already formed.
He struck three times in the span of a single heartbeat.
The Throat: The dagger pierced the heavy iron gorget, severing the Commander's ability to channel breath-essence. The giant's roar turned into a wet gurgle.
The Heart: The blade bit deep into the center of the draconic crest. The Soul-Sever effect didn't just kill; it created a vacuum, draining the Commander's entire 9th-stage Spirit Sea into the black steel.
The Wrist: With a final, casual flick, Kaelen sheared through the gauntlet holding the great-axe. The massive weapon fell into the mud with a heavy, final thud.
The Commander fell to his knees, his slit-pupils fading into a dull, lifeless grey. He looked up at Kaelen, his mouth working but no sound coming out. He had come to conquer a border camp; he had found his end at the hands of a demon in the shape of a child.
Kaelen stood over him, the Pitch-Black Dagger dripping with dark, high-stage blood. Around them, the Drakon army began to waver. Their invincible leader, a man who had never lost a duel, had been dismantled in front of their eyes.
Kaelen didn't feel exhaustion. He felt a terrifying, crystalline clarity. The Primordial Chaos roared in his veins, demanding more. He looked at the three thousand Drakon soldiers, then back at the stunned Aethelgard ramparts.
He had taken his five lives. He had earned his place. But as he looked at the fleeing enemy, Kaelen knew this was just the beginning. The 3rd General had wanted him dead; instead, he had given Kaelen an army to harvest.