Chapter 170: Lightsaber?

Kael let himself sit with the pride for a minute.

Not the loud, chest-thumping kind, just that quiet satisfaction that settled into his bones when a plan actually worked. The set bonuses were real. The helmet fit. The city outside was a mess of fire and undead, and somehow he’d carved out a small pocket of order in it with nothing but stubbornness, a hammer, and a brain that refused to shut up.

More importantly, his Internal energy felt full again, no sluggish drag in his limbs, no hollow dip behind his eyes. The blue bar sat fat and reassuring in his vision. For once, he wasn’t running on fumes.

Which meant he could finally do the thing he’d been avoiding: test.

His left arm felt pretty ’empty’, since heft anchor and fire were all on the right side.

He flexed both hands and felt the imbalance like a missing tooth. The right gauntlet was his whole toolkit, Anchor, Heft, Fire, the engine. The left was basically a fancy fist guard and a chain connection. It worked in a pinch, sure, but it bothered him. Tools that weren’t organized got you killed, and Kael hated being disorganized.

Since he wanted to try out Darkness first, he removed every other rune but Anchor.

The metal sockets clicked softly as he popped things free. He kept the chain slack and out of the way, then set the spare runes on the dusty table like they were live ammunition.

Anchor stayed.

If anything here could keep Darkness from doing something stupid, it was the one rune that existed to dampen volatility. The Tower’s own leash.

Since the legendary rune was a great limiter of ’chaos’ it would mean that Darkness by itself won’t go haywire if it had any form of absurd ability.

That was the hope, anyway. The kind of hope that came with a mental backup plan: if this goes wrong, duck, run, Presence, pray. He didn’t say it out loud because saying things out loud in the Tower was how you tempted fate.

Once he placed Darkness on the palm of his hand, along with Anchor at the top of the rune gauntlet, a notification appeared in front of him.

He felt it before he even read it, an almost… alignment, like gears settling into teeth.

[High Rune synergy. 99% {Anchor + Darkness}]

He took a breath and released his internal energy.

The draw was immediate; two tenths of his internal energy were immediately sucked out of him for that single use.

The bar didn’t just drop; it bit downward like something had taken a chunk out of it. Kael’s stomach tightened. Two tenths for one activation meant this wasn’t a toy. This was the kind of rune you used when you were either desperate or stupid. He’d been both lately, but he didn’t want to make a habit of it.

But the effect was horrifying to say the least.

It wasn’t an ability that dealt damage, no. It was an ability that was far worse.

The air in front of his palm didn’t “flare” or “ignite.” It collapsed. A circular, no, more like an orb that couldn’t decide whether it was a sphere or a hole, manifested with no sound at all, and the room’s light died around it like someone had snuffed a candle with wet fingers.

Not dark as in no light.

Dark as in there was nothing to reflect light anymore.

He couldn’t even call it a shadow. Shadows still belonged to the world. This thing looked like the world had been erased and someone had left a clean, perfect absence in its place.

It was merely a second of use before it suddenly shut off.

And for a moment, the wall was gone.

As if it were absorbed completely.

Then a second later, the wall returned to where it was.

Not a single seam left. Not a single damage to the structure, it simply went somewhere else and returned. It wasn’t ’cut’, it wasn’t teleported. It simply ceased to exist.

Kael stared at the wall as it had personally insulted him.

The human part of his brain wanted to laugh, because what else do you do when reality blinks?, but the survival part kept silent, cataloging how quickly that could become catastrophic if aimed wrong. If that had been a living thing instead of a wall… he didn’t even want to imagine what “returned” meant. Returned whole? Returned missing something? Returned wrong?

“This is what it means with manifestation of nothing. It makes a thing into nothing. Destabilizes reality and turns matter into non-matter… but it’s temporary… it is basically imposing darkness, the emptiness of darkness into existence…” Kael took a deep breath; he didn’t want to know what would happen if by some chance he used that on a living creature.

The words came out like he was trying to convince himself he’d understood it. He had, mostly, but understanding didn’t make it less unsettling. His hand still tingled faintly, not heat, not cold, just that eerie sensation you got when you touched something that shouldn’t exist.

Would they die, be split in half? Or would it simply do nothing to them?

He didn’t have the luxury to test on a person. And even if he did, he wasn’t sure he wanted to discover the answer firsthand.

Still, it was just too costly to use.

He glanced at his internal energy bar again, annoyed at how much the single activation had eaten. Two tenths meant five uses would drain him dry, and that was assuming the Tower didn’t ramp the cost the moment he got confident.

“What if I use Excise?” he thought, as he placed Excise before the rune.

He didn’t fully trust the idea, but it was logical. Excise cut away unnecessary output. If Darkness was devouring the world with a sledgehammer, maybe Excise could turn it into a knife.

[Rune Synergy dropped marginally 89% synergy]

[Anchor+ Excise+ Darkness]

The effect was immediate as he released the ability.

This time, there was no orb.

The gauntlets let loose a far thinner, shorter, and steadier effect.

It looked like a long sword of darkness coming out of Kael’s palm.

A blade made of absence, straight, narrow, and unnervingly defined. It didn’t glow. It didn’t shimmer. It simply was, like a clean line where reality stopped agreeing with itself.

Unlike before, where it lasted a mere second.

This effect seemed to drain Kael’s energy passively.

The bar dipped in small, steady increments instead of a sudden bite, the kind of drain you could manage if you didn’t get greedy. Kael could feel the pull as a faint fatigue in his shoulder and chest, like he was holding a heavy tool at arm’s length.

Unlike the immediate taxation of two tenths of his internal energy, [Excise] limited the effect and the cost.

It was 1% internal energy every two seconds.

’Not bad,’ Kael thought as he moved his palm toward a nearby wall.

He took a step closer, careful not to overcommit. The blade hummed in no audible way, but the air felt… tense around it, like the room didn’t like that it existed.

The beam ’cut’ through the wall.

Leaving ’Nothingness’ in its wake that immediately recovered while the blade was moving.

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