Chapter 480: The Heavens Shall Fall (XXI)

For a moment, she did not respond.

The words settled into the space between us, the kind of statement that should have ended things.

But suddenly… a sudden energy started flowing through the air.

It was subtle at first.

I looked at her, and then noticed something…

A tremor in her hand.

A tightening in her shoulders.

Her breathing changed, not in rhythm, but in depth, each inhale drawing in more than the last, each exhale carrying something heavier with it.

Her fingers curled slowly.

“…No.”

The word came out hoarse, if it had been forced through something resisting it.

Her head tilted downward, her white hair falling across her face, shadowing her eyes from view. For a second, it looked like she might stop there, as the refusal would end as nothing more than that.

It didn’t.

“No…”

Her voice steadied slighly, losing the hesitation that had been there a moment before.

“I did not lose.”

The air changed.

CRACK!

The remnants of creation authority that had been fading across the arena reacted first, the dying fragments of her domain flickering back into existence in uneven pulses, as if something deep beneath the surface had been forced awake and was reaching outward without structure or restraint.

Her head lifted.

Her eyes… they were not the same anymore.

The gold was still there, but it burned now, brighter than before, the light within them unstable, flickering at the edges as something else pressed behind it.

The composure that had defined her through the entire match was gone, replaced by something strangely raw…

…Something that did not care about control.

“I refuse.”

The words came out sharper now, stronger, carrying a force that pressed against the air itself.

CRACK!

Cracks spread further across the platform beneath her feet.

FWOOOOOOOOM!

Creation authority surged out of her again, but this time it did not shape itself cleanly into constructs or formations

It spilled outward in violent bursts, uneven, unstable, forcing growth into existence without refinement.

Vines erupted in jagged clusters, twisting over each other without pattern, splitting the already broken stone apart as they forced their way through.

The arena reacted.

The walls groaned under the sudden pressure.

Fragments of debris lifted again, not in the controlled rotation of her domain, but in erratic motion, rising and stuttering in the air as if caught between opposing forces.

Her breathing started growing heavier.

“Ha-ah…”

Each exhale carried a faint distortion, the sound bending as her authority pushed into the space around her without restraint.

“You don’t decide that.”

She took a step forward.

The ground beneath her foot shattered further on contact.

“I decide that.”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The authority around her spiked again, higher than it had been even at the peak of her domain, but there was no cohesion to it now, no clean structure holding it together.

It tore outward in all directions, forcing creation into existence and destroying it in the same motion, an endless cycle of forming and collapsing that filled the space around her.

Her gaze locked onto me.

Nothing else in the arena seemed to exist in that moment.

“I am not done.”

She moved.

Fwish!

The distance between us closed in an instant, her hand coming forward with a strike that carried far more raw force than any refined technique she had used earlier.

The air screamed around it.

I brought Midnight up to meet her.

BAAAM!

The impact hit harder than anything she had thrown so far.

Not precise or controlled, but overwhelming.

The force drove through the blade and into my arm, forcing me back a full step as the ground beneath my feet cracked again from the pressure.

She didn’t stop.

Thwamp!

Another strike followed immediately, then another, each one faster, heavier, less refined but more dangerous because of it.

The authority behind them surged wildly, forming partial constructs mid-motion, fragments of lances and jagged growth appearing and collapsing around her attacks as she forced everything she had left into forward momentum.

This wasn’t a technique anymore.

It was a refusal given form.

“YOU DON’T GET TO END THIS!”

Her voice broke through the arena, sharp and raw, carrying across the shattered space as she drove another strike toward me, her eyes burning with something that had moved far past composure.

“I HAVEN’T LOST YEY!”

CRAAAAAAAAACK!

The ground beneath us continued to fracture with every movement, the arena itself struggling to hold together under the strain of her uncontrolled output.

She came at me again, and this time the first strike carried so much raw force behind it that the moment it collided with Midnight, the impact did not stop at the blade.

CLINK!

It traveled straight through my grip, up my arm, and into my shoulder in a deep, vibrating shock that had none of the refinement she used earlier, and did not need any, because the sheer output behind it was doing all the work on its own.

I held the block, but only just.

My fingers tightened around the hilt as I reset my grip, feeling the strain settling into the muscles of my arm.

’Fucking hell… I can’t believe that she’s using her authority to refine her own body!’ I groaned inwardly.

The second strike came before the thought had fully settled.

Clang!

I turned the blade and deflected it sideways, and the redirected force slammed into the broken remains of the platform beside me, driving a fresh crater into the already shattered surface.

Stone fragments burst outward in every direction, sharp and uneven, scattering across the debris field.

The third strike didn’t meet the same clean defense.

It caught the edge of Midnight at an angle, slipping past my guard just enough to carry through, the impact connecting with my forearm and spinning me sideways.

My footing gave out for a brief second on the unstable mix of vines and broken stone, and I had to catch myself against a raised fragment that had once been part of the platform’s edge.

Blood from the cut along my forearm flicked outward with the motion, streaking across the stone.

She was already there.

“YOU DON’T GET TO END THIS!”

Her voice tore through the arena as her palm drove straight into my chest at point-blank range, creating authority compressed into the strike with no refinement at all, only raw, unrestrained output forced into a single point of contact.

The impact lifted me off the ground.

I traveled backward through the air for several meters before something behind me stopped me abruptly, the remains of a half-collapsed creation formation catching me across the back.

“Kughh!”

The force knocked the air completely out of my lungs, leaving me suspended against it for a breathless instant before I dropped.

“Ugh…”

I slowly pushed myself back up.

“Fucking hell…”

She crossed the distance while I was still rising, her knee already coming up toward my midsection.

I twisted at the last moment, taking the impact across my hip instead of the center, but the force still spun me sideways.

I let the rotation carry through, turning it into motion as I brought Midnight around in a horizontal arc.

She stepped into it without fully avoiding it.

The flat of the blade struck her shoulder and snapped her head to the side.

Clank!

A sharp, broken sound escaped her, and blood from the earlier wound scattered outward in small, dark drops, catching the light before falling into the debris below.

She didn’t slow.

Her hand caught my collar, and instead of pushing me away, she pulled me forward, using my own momentum against me.

Her forehead came forward immediately after, driven with enough force to make it a problem if it landed cleanly.

I dropped my chin.

The impact struck the top of my skull instead of my face.

Pain burst across my head in a sharp, disorienting wave that rattled through my jaw and behind my eyes, and for a brief second, my vision struggled to decide what it was willing to process.

’That was a bad one…’

Keep moving.

She pulled me again, and this time I let her.

Instead of resisting, I stepped into the motion she created, driving forward in the same direction she was pulling me, and slammed my shoulder into her midsection before she could redirect it again.

BAAAAM!

The impact sent her backward.

I went with her.

We crashed into the debris field together, stone fragments and dead vine matter bursting upward around us as we hit.

I freed one arm in the motion and drove the pommel of Midnight into her ribs on the way down.

“HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!”

The authority around her spiked violently in response, bursting outward in uncontrolled surges that forced me to roll away before something dangerous formed too close to matter.

I came back to my feet breathing harder, blood running from a fresh cut along my temple, the warmth of it slipping into my eyebrow.

My ribs had moved from protest to active complaint, and my forearm was beginning to make its own case about the treatment it had received.

Emyria rose as well.

Her white hair had lost any resemblance to its original state, streaked with blood and dust from multiple wounds, her shoulder and ribs both marked clearly now, and a new cut along her cheekbone adding to the damage.

The faint glow within it remained, pushing through everything else with stubborn persistence.

Her eyes found mine across the debris.

“I am not done…” she uttered coldly, spreading her killing intent throughout the whole arena.

“I can see that.”

Fwish!

She moved.

What followed was the worst stretch of the fight.

There was no structure left in what she was doing, no technique guiding the movement, only will forced into motion.

Creation authority erupted around each strike in unstable bursts, making every exchange unpredictable in a way that trained instinct did not account for cleanly.

Her right fist came for my jaw.

I slipped it by a narrow margin, the energy around it detonating close enough to feel like heat against my skin.

Her left followed immediately toward my ribs.

THUMP!

This one I took.

The impact forced a rough sound out of me, unplanned and unavoidable, my body reacting before I could control it as I stumbled back, my guard dropping just enough for her to notice.

She did.

Her palm drove into my defense again, lower this time.

I redirected it downward, but the force discharged into my thigh, dropping my leg for a step and forcing my knee toward the ground before I caught it.

Her knee came up toward my face.

I got my arm in the way.

The impact cracked against my forearm, and something in it protested sharply, not broken, but close enough to make the point clear.

Her hand caught my hair.

Pulled.

My head snapped up, and her fist connected with my cheekbone on the opposite side, the impact sending a burst of light across my vision that took a moment to clear.

Blood joined the rest already running down my face.

I answered with a short punch to her stomach, enough to loosen her grip for a fraction of a second, and used that fraction to pull back and create distance.

Two meters.

We stopped.

Stood across from each other in the wreckage of the arena, breathing hard, both marked by the fight in ways that could not be ignored.

The authority around her still surged in unstable bursts, her eyes still burning with that same intensity, but beneath it, I could see the cost beginning to settle in.

…She had moved past reserves.

She’s going to keep going until she physically can… this damned thirst for winning is getting to her.

I glanced at both blades in my hands.

At Midnight, and at the Heavenly Swallowing Sword… still waiting to be used.

Then back at her.

This won’t end cleanly…

I moved.

Not forward, but sideways, cutting across the debris field at an angle she had not been focused on, forcing her to turn and adjust.

The unstable bursts of her authority followed her previous line of focus for a fraction too long before shifting.

She pivoted quickly.

Faster than expected.

But the pivot shifted her guard.

I changed direction mid-motion and stepped inside that shift, closing the distance before the unstable output could reorient, and brought Midnight across her forearm in a controlled strike aimed at disruption rather than damage.

The flat of the blade connected with the nerve cluster along the inner arm.

Her response faltered.

Only for a second.

But that was enough as her guard dropped on that side.

The Heavenly Swallowing Sword came up, not in a cutting motion, but placed directly against her shoulder, where the concentration of her authority was thickest, where the uncontrolled bursts seemed to originate.

I pushed the blade’s effect into that point.

The authority there faltered…

CRACK!

Then broke.

The connection feeding the rest of her output fractured at that exact point, the chain collapsing outward as the source failed to hold.

She felt it immediately.

Her eyes widened.

“Noo!!!”

The unstable surges weakened, then stuttered, then began to fail, the intensity in her gaze dimming from its peak as the output dropped with it.

Her body followed.

Her legs gave way slowly as she directly knelt before me.

Both knees against the broken platform, hands braced against the debris, her breathing heavy in the quiet that followed as the last remnants of her authority faded.

The arena settled.

What remained of it, at least.

Cracked walls, scattered debris, the aftermath of everything that had happened. She stayed there for a long moment, and then she lifted her head and looked at me.

“Y-you…”

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