Chapter 192: Explosive Battle

Draelusa’s smile never wavered, but something in his eyes sharpened: reassessment, recalculation.

“Bold words. Let’s see if you can back them up.”

He moved.

Not running or leaping, simply ceasing to exist in one location and manifesting in another, directly in front of Jaenor with one hand extended in a strike that carried centuries of accumulated killing power.

Jaenor met it.

His own hand came up, and when their palms connected, the shockwave flattened grass for a hundred feet in all directions.

BOOM!!

The sound was like thunder concentrated into a single instant, painful even for those with enhanced hearing.

They held that position for a heartbeat, locked together, power against power.

Then they both disengaged, leaping apart to create distance.

The battle had begun.

Draelusa attacked with methodical precision, his movements minimal and devastatingly effective.

Darkness erupted from his hands, not shadow but actual void, absence of light given substance. It formed into weapons that shifted shape constantly, adapting to whatever defense Jaenor manifested. Blades, spears, and hammers, each strike coming from unexpected angles with force that would have pulverized stone.

Jaenor countered with Origin Aura, his unified energy flowing to meet each attack.

Where Draelusa’s void touched his power, reality screamed. The two forces were fundamentally opposed: creation and destruction, being and negation, and their collision created effects that defied normal nature.

The ground beneath them began to warp, space folding in on itself in ways that hurt to perceive. Time stuttered locally, creating pockets where movement accelerated or slowed randomly.

Jaenor’s six wings provided both defense and offense.

They moved independently, each one capable of manifesting barriers that blocked Draelusa’s strikes or launching attacks of pure energy that forced the Sin to dodge or counter.

“Impressive,” Draelusa admitted, his voice still carrying that cultured calm despite the intensity of combat.

“You’ve grown stronger since the last time I saw you. Refined your control. But you’re still just beginning to understand what you’ve become.”

He gestured, and the void around him expanded exponentially. It swallowed light, sound, everything, creating a sphere of absolute nothingness thirty feet across with Draelusa at its center.

Jaenor found himself pulled toward it, gravity itself bending to drag him into that annihilation.

He planted his feet, his merged power flaring in resistance. His wings spread wider, creating anchors in reality that kept him from being drawn in.

But the pull was tremendous, requiring constant effort to maintain position.

“That’s the difference between us,” Draelusa said, his voice emanating from the void despite there being nothing to carry sound.

“I’ve mastered my power over millennia. You’ve had yours for weeks. Talent matters, yes. But experience trumps raw capability.”

The void pulsed, and suddenly hundreds of projectiles launched from it, each one a concentrated dart of negation that would erase whatever it touched.

Jaenor’s response was instinctive. His wings folded around him, creating a sphere of layered shields. The projectiles struck from all directions simultaneously, and each impact sent shockwaves through his defenses.

Most were stopped.

But some got through, glancing hits that tore through his clothing and scored his skin. Not deep wounds, but enough to draw blood and prove that Draelusa’s attacks could reach him.

Pain sharpened Jaenor’s focus. He’d been fighting defensively, reacting rather than dictating the battle’s flow.

That needed to change.

Morgana took everyone to stand beside the divine beast, its left wing guarding them from the explosive battle between the two.

Jaenor wings unfurled explosively, and from each one erupted a beam of concentrated origin aura. Six beams, each containing enough power to vaporize buildings, all converging on Draelusa’s position from different angles.

The void sphere contracted, condensing around the Sin as protection. The beams struck it and were absorbed—eaten by nothingness, their energy simply ceasing to exist.

But that moment of defense gave Jaenor what he needed.

He closed the distance in a burst of speed that left afterimages, his body moving faster than normal perception could track. His hand formed a blade of origin aura, not his old aura-formed weapon, but something new.

A cutting edge that existed in multiple spaces simultaneously, capable of severing things beyond just physical matter.

The blade struck Draelusa’s void defense, and for the first time, the Sin’s expression showed genuine surprise.

The void cracked.

Not shattered, not dispersed, but cracked, like glass struck by a hammer. Fissures spread across the sphere’s surface, and through those cracks, Jaenor’s blade penetrated.

It scored across Draelusa’s chest, cutting through the illusion of his human form to reveal something beneath, flesh that was wrong, that existed in ways that defied normal biology.

Draelusa hissed in pain, actual pain, not just surprise, and the void sphere exploded outward in all directions.

Jaenor was caught in the blast, thrown backward twenty feet before his wings arrested his motion. His clothing was shredded, his exposed skin showing burns from contact with raw void energy.

But he’d drawn blood.

Proven he could hurt a Sin.

“You actually wounded me,” Draelusa said, and now his voice carried genuine shock.

“No one has managed that in… decades? Centuries? I lose track.”

The cultured facade was cracking, revealing something more primal beneath. His human form flickered, and for a moment, Jaenor saw his true shape, something massive and terrible, with too many limbs and features that shouldn’t exist together.

Then the illusion reasserted, but the mask was thinner now.

“I underestimated you,” Draelusa admitted.

“Thought you were still developing, still learning to harness what you’d become. But you’re further along than I realized.”

He raised both hands, and the power he manifested now was exponentially greater than before. The void didn’t just appear; it erupted from him like a volcanic explosion, expanding in all directions with devastating speed.

Jaenor had perhaps a second to react.

His wings wrapped around himself, and the beast’s wings covered his companions. He channeled everything he had into his shields, layering defense upon defense as the void rushed toward them.

When it hit, the world went silent.

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