Chapter 74: Resolve

“Emotional State, Third Form, Decaying Hands.”

The words had barely left Scar when Kendrick’s hands tore through the fabric of reality and appeared behind him.

The hands grabbed the portal, and the force behind what followed was insane, the kind that didn’t ask permission. The portal shattered immediately.

There was some unusualness about Scar’s Emotional State but it hardly mattered at that moment.

For a moment, Adisa was completely baffled. He watched Scar pull himself to his feet, and then watched something that shouldn’t have been possible become possible.

The damage he had inflicted, all of it, was beginning to close. Slowly, deliberately, as though it had never happened.

Scar had braced himself for one of two things: fear or defiance. Adisa had every reason for the latter. Both Emotional and Protector states were awakened, a tier-5 ranked Moon Killer.

Scar had come out of that vacant space with his Emotional State and nothing else. Tier-6. The numbers still favored Adisa, and Scar had expected him to say so.

But that wasn’t what Adisa’s eyes held. What sat there instead was recognition, as though something had finally clicked into place.

Scar was the wielder of Flames of the Unknown. They were both Outlaws. Maybe that had always meant something, and Adisa had only just understood what.

But none of that changed anything. Adisa could recognize him, could carry whatever weight that recognition brought, but it didn’t matter.

He was superior in every way that counted, and Scar was still going to kill him.

“My strength’s restored… I can do this.”

Scar stretched his hand, and Black Sun pulled itself into his grip. The decaying hands engulfed it in flames of decay immediately.

Adisa moved the moment he saw it coming, sending another strike straight at Scar. Kendrick’s hands tore through and grabbed it before it reached Scar, shattering it completely.

Scar let out an annoyed sneer.

The sky was going to be a complication. Fighting mid-air while keeping the decaying hands in play wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t summon both with Emotional State. But Adisa was up there, and leaving him there wasn’t an option. Scar had to go up.

“Emotional State, Second Form, Decaying Wings.”

The moment the words came out, the decaying hands disappeared, and wings nearly as tall as Scar himself emerged.

They were nothing like Adisa’s, which had pushed out from his body as though they were always meant to be there.

Scar’s wings didn’t touch him. They were conjured from dark flames and floated behind him, keeping their distance, as though something about his skin gave them pause.

They had barely appeared when Scar moved, launching toward Adisa with a speed and control that didn’t belong to someone doing this for the first time.

It felt inherited, instinctive, as though this had always been his.

The speed was too much. Adisa couldn’t reach him in time, and then Scar was there, inches away, the attack already in motion.

Adisa got his hands up fast enough to block it, which was something. But the force drove through the block anyway and sent him sailing higher into the air.

Scar wasn’t stopping. Adisa was struggling, trying to push through to some kind of healing, but the decay was working against him, shutting that ability.

Scar saw it and moved. This was the window.

But closing the distance wasn’t simple anymore. Portals began tearing open everywhere, Adisa not even bothering to look as they launched themselves at Scar from every direction.

Scar dodged what his speed could handle and used his wings to absorb what it couldn’t, but getting any closer was proving difficult.

The whole thing had turned into Hercules and the tortoise. Scar was pushing, advancing, and somehow never actually getting any closer. Adisa kept moving and kept the distance alive, and the portals made sure of the rest.

They circled the skies for what felt like forever, Adisa’s attacks tearing through the buildings below. In no time, the residential area looked like abandoned terrain.

But the circling was wearing on him in a way he hadn’t anticipated. His body was new to all of this, and it was starting to register.

A slight unease was growing steadily, reminding him that none of this came without a cost.

“Tsk… can’t let this go on. I have to do something.”

His mind moved through his training memories quickly, pulling at everything Arthur had put into him, looking for something that translated to this situation. Nothing jumped out at first. Then an idea found him.

It had worked once. The Blessing, drawn from around him, turned into something usable. The determination and confidence had been there that time, and if he could find them again, he could repeat it.

It wasn’t easy. He was moving at speed, reading Adisa’s attacks, and blocking what he couldn’t avoid.

Through all of that noise and motion, he was also trying to reach inward and outward at the same time, forcing himself to feel the Blessing sitting somewhere in the space between him and Adisa.

<< Flash Step >>

The step was subtle, barely a touch against the air, and then Scar was there, hovering right before Adisa as though the space between them had simply ceased to exist.

His blade was already in motion, tearing through the air, angled for Adisa’s neck.

“Burning Breath!” Adisa yelled.

The blade didn’t land.

Dark smoke poured from Adisa’s mouth before the blade could, swallowing Scar entirely. And in that same instant, Scar’s breath simply stopped.

He held his breath as quickly as he could manage, but it was already too late for that to mean much.

His throat burned. His insides followed, lighting up with an intense pain that felt less like injury and more like being set alight from within. He wasn’t breathing. It didn’t matter. Whatever was burning him didn’t need air to do its work.

’What’s going on? I’m dying.’

He dropped his sword without thinking about it. His hands moved to his throat on instinct, scratching at the burning sensation as though the skin itself was the problem, as though tearing it away might reach whatever was underneath.

His body had gone crimson, heated past anything normal, and his mind, usually sharp and occupied with angles and strategy, had emptied of everything except one word. Survive.

’How—how can this happen? After all that?’

He couldn’t stop blaming himself, even as everything burned. He had awakened his Emotional State, and this was still how it was going to end? Like this, of all ways? Pitiful barely scratched the surface of what this was.

And yet, through the scorching and the panic, something settled. He had no way to stop the burning.

Death was a real possibility. But dying without taking Adisa with him wasn’t acceptable. Isaac deserved better than that. Whatever strength he had left had one purpose now.

Concentrating through that kind of pain cost him. Blood came up with the effort, the agony refusing to quiet even for a moment. He pushed past it.

The Blessing was out there in the air, and he reached for it, stretching his awareness through the dark smoke, trying to feel where Adisa was. His eyes were useless here. This was the only way.

When he finally felt something, it wasn’t Adisa. On the floor below, someone lay unconscious.

He didn’t need long to know who it was. Haven.

Something tightened in him at the sight of her like that, a pain that had nothing to do with the burning in his body. But he couldn’t stop. He pushed the feeling aside and kept reaching and found Adisa fifteen meters out, hovering in the dark smoke.

With sheer desperation and determination, Scar called Black Sun to his hand and dashed toward Adisa at an incredible pace.

Adisa never saw it coming. One moment the smoke held everything, and the next Black Sun was buried in his chest, pierced straight through to his heart. The decomposition started immediately, spreading from the wound outward.

Adisa looked perplexed, which made sense. There was still a fight in him, that much was obvious, but his hands didn’t move toward it.

He smiled anyway. But his eyes weren’t cooperating. The pain lived there openly, unaffected by whatever his mouth had decided to present.

“Easy does it, Scar… I—I knew this wouldn’t be easy. You’ve won, master. I’ll make sure I never defy you again.”

Scar’s life was draining faster than Adisa’s. But he pulled together what little strength he had left and made himself speak.

“Fuck you… don’t come near me again! And you’d better apologize to Isaac in your next life.”

Scar didn’t care for a response. He grabbed the blade tightly and pulled, tearing Adisa apart completely in the process.

There was relief… It was subtle, but present.

He watched Adisa’s corpse fall toward the ground and let himself feel it, just for a moment.

Isaac was avenged. He had done it.

But the moment didn’t last. His Emotional State deactivated without warning, and Scar dropped from the sky, plummeting toward the same ground.

“Ha! Finally… I—I hope Haven’s okay.”

After the words left him, everything went dark.

…

Night was still a few hours away when an elderly man appeared, his walking stick serving its purpose.

He found Scar and stood beside him, poking at him with the stick with a persistence that suggested he had nowhere more pressing to be. Nothing happened.

While he stood there, Luccy and Purple emerged from behind him. Haven was draped over Luccy’s shoulder, unconscious.

Purple had a walking stick of her own, her leg injury had decided for her, leaving Luccy to handle everything Haven-related without assistance.

The old man turned toward them. He looked like a strong breeze might finish him off, and the prospect of conversation seemed to weigh on him like a burden he hadn’t signed up for. But strangely, he looked excited to be there.

“Is he with you? He… he looks dead.”

Purple came to check on Scar’s pulse and smiled.

“What did you see?” She asked.

The old man acted too enthusiastically for his own good.

“The bad guy… is there. The good guy… this one.”

Purple’s expression shifted for just a second, something contorting in it that she didn’t quite manage to suppress. The old man’s words had landed somewhere she hadn’t prepared for.

Annoyed, Luccy spoke:

“Can we get them to the academy already? I’m your enemy, not someone to be fussed over. I can’t stay here any longer.”

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