In the aftermath of the Orc Lord’s destruction, as his body lay on the ground in the town square, smoke emerged from his body.

Odessa stared at Jaenor with eyes wide with disbelief.

Her centuries of experience, her mastery of the Origin arts, and her deep understanding of the fundamental forces that shaped reality—all of it crumbled in the face of what she had just witnessed.

“You…” she began, her voice barely above a whisper, “you can use aura?”

The words hung in the air between them like an accusation.

Odessa’s deep dark eyes, normally so composed and knowing, now held a mixture of wonder and awe and something approaching existential horror.

She had just watched Jaenor wield Origin power and aura simultaneously—something that shouldn’t be possible in a million years, even if the greatest spiritual minds in history attempted it.

The very concept violated every law of origin theory she had ever learned.

Origin and aura were fundamental opposites, like matter and antimatter.

When they met, they should have annihilated each other in an explosion that would have reduced Jaenor to nothingness.

Yet here he stood, unmarked and unharmed, the impossible energies having flowed through him as naturally as water through a riverbed.

“Just how are you still alive?” She continued, her voice gaining strength as her scholarly mind began to process the implications.

“No, wait—when did you start using Aura? You’ve been with me constantly for six months. When did you develop this ability? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jaenor scratched his head sheepishly, his ethereal beauty making even this simple gesture appear graceful. His long black hair fell across his face as he tilted his head in thought, those piercing blue eyes growing distant as he tried to recall exactly what had happened.

“Honestly?” he said after a moment, his voice carrying a note of confused wonder.

“I’m not entirely sure. When I saw that orc about to kill those people, when I felt the rage building inside me… there was something else stirring. A different kind of energy, foreign but somehow familiar at the same time.”

He raised his right hand, staring at his palm as if seeing it for the first time.

“I didn’t pay attention to it at first—I was too focused on stopping the slaughter. But when I faced the Orc Lord, when I needed more power than Origin alone could provide… it just came to me. Instinctively. Like it had always been there, waiting.”

Odessa’s breath caught in her throat.

“You mean it awakened spontaneously? Under emotional stress?”

Her mind raced through the implications.

Aura wasn’t something that could simply manifest—it required years of training, meditation, and the careful cultivation of inner strength and martial discipline.

It was the domain of knights and warriors, not for Origin wielders.

“But that’s impossible. Aura requires—”

“I know what it requires,” Jaenor interrupted gently.

“You taught me the theory, remember? But theory and practice seem to be very different things where I’m concerned.”

“You don’t feel any conflict between the energies?” Odessa pressed, stepping closer to examine him with the intensity of a scholar confronting a phenomenon that challenged everything she believed.

“No discomfort? No sensation of the forces fighting each other inside you?”

Jaenor shook his head, that same bemused expression playing across his features.

“None at all. They feel… harmonious. Like two parts of the same whole, each complementing the other rather than opposing it.”

Odessa stared at him for a long moment, her deep dark eyes trying to pierce the mystery of his very existence.

Then, slowly, she let out a long sigh that seemed to carry the weight of centuries.

“You are one hell of a monster prodigy, I would say,” she murmured, a mixture of pride and unease coloring her voice.

“Just what are you, Jaenor? What bloodlines flow in your veins to make such impossible things possible?”

Jaenor’s response was a smile that held both warmth and mystery in equal measure.

“I don’t know,” he admitted with characteristic honesty.

“But I’m beginning to suspect that finding out might be more dangerous than remaining ignorant.”

The words had barely left his lips when the temperature in the square plummeted with supernatural speed.

Frost began forming on the cobblestones despite the fires that still burned in the surrounding buildings, and the very air seemed to thicken with malevolent presence.

A dark shadow fell across the square—too large and too regular to be natural cloud cover.

Both Jaenor and Odessa looked up simultaneously, their enhanced senses screaming warnings of approaching danger that dwarfed anything they had yet faced.

The skeletal dragon descended from the smoke-filled sky like a nightmare given wings, its massive bone framework creaking with the sound of grinding tombstones.

Each beat of its tattered wing membranes sent gusts of frigid air racing through the square, carrying with them the stench of old death and corruption that made mortal minds reel with instinctive terror.

Atop the creature’s spine, seated upon a throne carved from a fused ribcage and vertebrae, the Lich King surveyed the destruction below with hollow eye sockets that burned with the cold fire of centuries-old hatred.

His skeletal form was draped in robes that seemed to be cut from the fabric of night itself, while shadows writhed around him like living things eager to do their master’s bidding.

The dragon landed with ground-shaking force, its massive claws gouging deep furrows in the surface while its bone tail lashed behind it like the world’s most terrible whip.

When the creature settled, the very foundations of nearby buildings groaned under the psychic weight of its presence.

Both Jaenor and Odessa stumbled backward, their enhanced senses overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of foul power radiating from the ancient undead lord.

“So,” the Lich King spoke, his voice carrying the hollow echo of wind through empty crypts, each word seeming to leach warmth from the air around it, “this is the source of that… interesting display of power.”

His burning gaze fixed upon Jaenor with the intensity of a predator studying prey, taking in every detail of the young man’s ethereal appearance, the way energy still flickered around his form, and the impossible aura of contained power that surrounded him like a second skin.

“You are an abnormality,” the Lich King continued, his tone carrying the absolute certainty of one who had studied the fundamental forces of existence for longer than most civilizations had existed.

“A violation of the natural order that cannot be permitted to continue. The very fact that you draw breath while wielding such contradictory energies is an offense against reality itself.”

He raised one skeletal hand, and the air around him began to writhe with foul power so concentrated that it took on visible form—streams of sickly green energy that moved like serpents made of liquid corruption.

“You must be dealt with,” the Lich King declared, his voice rising to a crescendo that made the very stones of the square crack and split.

“Before your existence spreads its contamination further into the ordered cosmos.”

Jaenor frowned, unable to gauge the strength of the skeleton man before him. He watched the bone dragon with apprehensive eyes.

He had been learning new things every day, and it only made his resolve to confront the dark legions grow stronger.

The foul energy swirling around the Lich King’s form suddenly coalesced into something massive and terrible. From the shadows and the lingering traces of death that permeated the battlefield, he drew forth the raw materials for his creation—bone and sinew, corrupted flesh, and the tortured souls of the recently slain.

What emerged from this infernal fusion was a giant of truly staggering proportions.

Ten meters tall and proportionally broad, the creature stood like a monument to death itself.

Its body was a patchwork of different corpses, stitched together with threads of pure malevolence and animated by a hatred so concentrated it was almost palpable.

The giant’s face was a nightmare collage—features taken from dozens of different victims arranged in a configuration that suggested intelligence but promised only destruction. Its eyes burned with the same cold fire as its master’s, while its massive hands ended in claws that could tear through castle walls like paper.

“Deal with the woman,” the Lich commanded his creation. “She is of no consequence, but witnesses are… inconvenient.”

The giant’s response was a roar that shook the foundations of every building in the square, a sound that seemed to come from the very depths of the abyss itself.

ARRRRHHHHHH!!!!

It began moving toward Odessa with surprising speed for something so massive, each step leaving deep craters in the ground.

Odessa then said, “Can you fight him? He is not like the one you fought just now.”

Jaenor squinted his eyes and nodded. “I will try not to die.”

Odessa smirked as she leapt off the ground as the giant monster reached for her.

But even as his monstrous creation charged toward its assigned target, the Lich King himself stepped down from his dragonic mount. His feet never quite touched the ground, and shadows swirled around his form like a living cloak as he began advancing on Jaenor with the patience of something that had all eternity to achieve its goals.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep