Chapter 55: Determination Doesn’t Always Yield Success

The Saintess’s face remained neutral as she swung her blade fluidly, each strike aimed to end Aden’s life.

Aden leaned backwards with clenched teeth. The shards on his arm collided with the edge of the blade, sending shockwaves through his frame and chipping away at the shards.

The Void energy in his body had slowly regenerated, but it was barely enough for any tangible attack, so all Aden was left with was his large Resonance pool.

Aden roared and leaned forward for an offensive attack, but the golden blade didn’t just cut, it purified.

As Aden leaned his weight into the clash, the shrapnel in his forearm began to hiss and dissolve into grey ash. The Saintess’s frequency was like a tidal wave of solid, unyielding stone, rushing against his chaotic, flickering static.

Aden’s teeth bared in a snarl, his silver-ringed pupils expanding.

’If I can’t eat it… I’ll become it.’

Throughout all these battles, Aden had unknowingly reached a new level of mastery of Adaptive Resonance he didn’t know existed. Wether it was thanks to the Unstable Marrow, he wasn’t sure, nor was he particularly keen on learning it’s intricacies, especially not in these dire times.

[Adaptive Resonance: Harmonic Mimicry—Initiating…]

He stopped trying to push back. Instead, he softened his stance, letting his internal vibration slow down, trying to match the heavy, suffocating thrum of her divinity, letting his instinct dodge most attacks aimed for his life.

He reached out with his mind, his consciousness trailing along the length of her blade like a starving vine, searching for a single imperfection in her frequency.

His fingers, still human and trembling, brushed the flat of the golden steel as he stylishly dodged.

For a heartbeat, he felt it. The Sun within her. It was a massive, rotating core of golden light, spinning at a speed that made his brain ache. He tried to latch onto the rhythm, to sync his own mangled heartbeat to that divine rotation.

[Syncing… 12%… 24%…]

Aden’s silver veins began to flicker with a faint, pale gold light. The pain in his chest eased for a split second as he began to melt into her frequency.

The Saintess’s visor tilted to reveal a look of utter disgust.

“Blasphemy,” she whispered.

She didn’t pull the sword away. Instead, she twisted the hilt, and the Sun within her flared.

[ERROR: FREQUENCY OVERLOAD]

The golden light Aden had been trying to mimic turned into a million microscopic needles. He hadn’t synced with her, he had just opened the door for her divinity to pour directly into his nervous system.

His vision went white.

The silver shards in his arm shattered outward, tearing through his own skin like shrapnel as they were rejected by her purity. Aden was thrown back, not by her strength, but by the sheer weight of her existence.

He hit the ground hard, skidding through the glass-dust for twenty feet.

“Argh!”

He clutched his right arm. It was a shredded mess of blackened flesh and weeping silver fluid. The Unstable Marrow in that limb had gone silent, neutralized by her flare.

Miles away, in the dark, Zero let out a choked scream and collapsed, his own arm turning a bruised, necrotic purple as the backwash of the failed sync hit the network.

The Saintess stepped forward, her golden boots crunching on the sand. Her blade was pristine, glowing with a light that felt like a death sentence.

“You are a hollow thing, Anomaly,” she said, raising the sword for a vertical execution. “A shadow trying to pretend it is the light, but shadows only disappear.”

Aden looked up, his face covered in blood and dust. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, the silver veins there extinguished.

The Saintess didn’t hesitate. She brought the blade down in a silent, golden arc meant to sever Aden’s connection to the world. Not just his head from his shoulders, but his very existence.

Aden’s blurred vision caught the flash of gold. His body was a leaden weight, the Marrow-poisoning locking his joints as the rejected energy turned into cold sludge in his veins. He couldn’t move to make a final dodge.

Then, a blur of tattered fabric and frantic warmth lunged across his field of vision.

“No!”

Lorelei didn’t have a blade or protective treasure.

She only had the desperate, irrational speed of someone who had nothing left to lose.

She threw herself over Aden’s mangled torso, her small frame a pathetic shield against the divinity of the Saintess.

The golden blade stopped, not because it hit stone, but because it bit into the soft, unrefined meat of a human shoulder.

A sickening, wet thud followed by the crack of a collarbone.

“Lorelei…” Aden’s voice was a ghost of a sound, his lungs hitching as her blood, hot, metallic, and undeniably human splattered across his cold, silver-veined cheek.

The Saintess didn’t pull back. She looked down at the girl pinned under her blade, her neutral expression finally showing a flicker of cold annoyance.

“Step aside, little lamb,” the Saintess commanded, the weight of her sword pressing deeper, the golden light beginning to cauterize the wound it was creating. “You are staining a holy execution with your filth.”

Lorelei didn’t step aside. With raw and shaking hands, she reached up and gripped the glowing blade.

The Holy heat bubbled the skin of her palms instantly, the smell of burning flesh filling the air, but she didn’t let go. Her neck bent backwards enough to look Aden right in the eyes, her pupils blown wide with agony and a terrifying, obsessive devotion.

“Run…” she wheezed, a string of crimson dripping from her lip onto Aden’s chest. “Master… please…”

In that moment, Aden felt a rush of pure hatred burn into his very being.

He felt her nerves screaming. He felt the light of the Saintess’s blade trying to erase her soul. And most importantly, he felt the one thing the Entity said he would lose: the warmth of her blood against his skin.

[Adaptive Resonance: Berserk Synchronization—Initiating…]

The silver veins in Aden’s neck bulged, turning a dark, bruised violet. He didn’t use the Vassals to channel the pain away this time, instead he did the opposite.

He pulled every ounce of their fear and pain into himself, using Lorelei’s agony as a catalyst.

“Get… your hands… off her,” Aden growled.

His left hand, the one still flickering with silver sparks, shot out. He didn’t aim for the blade this time, instead, he grabbed the Saintess’s golden ankle.

The little amount of Void he had left was infused into her ankle, and its consuming nature was unshackled.

The golden armor at her ankle began to rot. The gold turned to rusted iron, then to grey ash in a matter of seconds as Aden poured his Void energy directly into her system.

“What…?” The Saintess’s voice finally lost its melodic calm. She didn’t waste a second before sending down her blade to cut off the source of the infection.

A pained scream left Aden’s lips. His useless arm somehow found a way to wrap themselves around Lorelei’s bleeding frame, letting her warmth remind him of the stakes.

The Saintess watched the two of them for a moment before raising her blade. “How filfthy”

Aden’s eyes turned to the left and found nothing where his arm was supposed to be. His left arm was still stuck to the Saintess’ leg, but it held no power.

’Fuck Fuck Fuck! This again? I sacrificed everything but my stupid cheats can’t even see me through this?’

Aden’s vision slowed as the blade descended towards him. The golden aura wrapped around it with renewed glory and promised a complete erasure of his existence.

’…There’s nothing more I can do?’ Aden lamented.

’Determination, grit and pain doesn’t always guarantee results, foolish one.’

’But my power can.’

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