Chapter 258: War machine

Vespera spat blood onto the blackened ground, the shadow still pulsating around her body like a restless veil. Her eyes, once cold and calculating, now burned with a primal fury. She had lost an arm and recovered it at a high cost, her youth and a part of her power.

And now Margaret was dead, a powerful double-aura psychic from her family. The other two girls had been captured. The same went for the hooded ones. And the servant had been decapitated like a mere doll.

All of this because of one person. Her gaze landed on Luke Poe, who stood several meters away with Wednesday.

With a powerful blast of darkness, Vespera threw off Enid and Reina, who had to leap backward.

“Aldric!” Vespera shouted, her voice resonating with brutal, inhuman intensity. “Go! Warn Edward! Tell them… tell them what this boy can do. Tell them Luke Poe is no longer a theoretical threat!”

Aldric didn’t respond. His calculating gaze lingered on the scene for a few seconds more. Enemies surrounded them. Vespera was cornered. Luke, without a single visible wound, was already approaching, unstoppable. His decision was immediate.

The dome above the Marlowe estate vanished.

Then Aldric turned toward Nyra, who barely stood in his way, and delivered a brutal kick. The Wendigo girl barely managed to cross her arms in an X before she was flung like a dry leaf in a gale.

Alecto, wasting no time, tried to stop him. Her gorgon eyes lit up with a glowing green hue, trying to paralyze him.

But Aldric never looked at her.

He clapped.

A simple clap. The air trembled with the shockwave. Forty tons of force shook the field like thunder. Alecto was thrown backward, dragged by the impact.

And then he flew.

Aldric took off at a tremendous speed, without farewells, without looking back.

Wednesday turned to Luke, the scythe already formed in her hand. Her hair, tousled from the battle, fell over her shoulders. The cut on her cheek, healed. Her gaze burned with an icy fire.

“Go!” Wednesday ordered firmly. “Don’t let him escape! Hurt him if you must! We’ll handle this damned hag!”

Luke paused for less than a second. He didn’t know Wednesday like this. It was the first time he’d heard her give an order in that tone.

So commanding. So general-like.

It was a different side. A far cry from the Wednesday with the cold gaze, sharp remarks, and piercing silences. That voice, though still controlled, had risen in volume, a tone of command. It wasn’t anger… it was authority. Dominion.

And, for some reason, he loved it.

A crooked smile briefly crossed his lips. An almost treacherous impulse tempted him to say something.

But it wasn’t the moment.

He simply bowed his head, a silent gesture of acknowledgment. He looked at her one last time, knowing he was leaving her with a berserker fury like Vespera’s, but they couldn’t let another demonic elder escape when they had the chance to wound or kill him.

Luke barely turned his face toward Charles, who was already watching him. No words were needed.

Charles nodded once.

Luke raised a hand, and with an almost imperceptible gesture, enveloped him in his telekinesis. Both ascended instantly, shooting off in pursuit of Aldric, who, to Luke’s surprise, could fly as well.

But he didn’t seem to control telekinesis. Otherwise, he would’ve used it in the fight like Margaret. He merely seemed to possess the ability to fly. A power obtained through some shady deal with demons? Most likely.

Vespera knew she couldn’t stop Luke and Charles, especially not with five bloodthirsty enemies before her.

Darkness began to pour from her back: tentacles, wings of shadow, black spikes sprouting from her spine. Her body trembled with spasms, as if something greater than her was trying to burst out from within.

Her skin tightened. Her hair turned white. Her face… aged even more, but her power increased. The air grew heavy, and the ground beneath her began to crack. The smell of sulfur and rot filled the air.

But Wednesday and the others weren’t afraid, they didn’t back down. They began to close in.

The young Wendigo stepped slightly forward, her glowing red eyes burning with primal intensity. Her mouth, larger than normal, held long fangs that protruded even when closed, as if her wild nature could never be fully hidden.

She smiled.

A macabre, eager smile.

“I can smell your fear,” Nyra murmured, more to herself than to Vespera. “I wonder what you’ll taste like… cooked.”

Wednesday said nothing. She didn’t scold her. This was no time for sermons.

…

Charles Faulkner flew through the gusts, his body suspended by Luke’s telekinesis, the young man he had once taught… and who now was dragging him on a mission far beyond anything he could have ever imagined.

Charles kept his eyes open, not out of physical necessity, but because he needed to clearly see what was happening.

Not for the first time since they had launched after Aldric, he reflected on how absurd and miraculous the situation truly was.

From a critical, nearly hopeless situation to a complete reversal, now the elder Spellmans were fleeing with their tails between their legs. All the other enemies either dead or captured.

All because of one person.

Charles looked at his student. ’Just about two years ago, he was the quietest. Antisocial. Almost feral. Always in the back, as if even breathing near others annoyed him,’ he thought.

And it was true. When young Luke had started his first year at Nevermore, he barely spoke beyond what was strictly necessary. If anyone tried to get close, he wasn’t kind, he drove them away.

And yet now…

Now Luke had allies. He had a circle. He had Enid in his first year, something that astonished many. The most cheerful, exuberant girl werewolf in the entire school had fallen for him.

For a while, Charles thought, the light had managed to balance the shadow.

That relationship didn’t last, they broke up at the end of first year.

And the following year, Wednesday Addams arrived at Nevermore. Colder than Luke. Sharper. More distant.

A soul as dark as a winter night, but with a brilliant edge to her intellect. Two antisocial, grumpy, sarcastic individuals, in different ways. Clearly bonded by a shared taste for the macabre.

Charles had watched them grow closer. It was slow at first, almost nothing. They barely spoke, as if both were too proud to start a conversation, no matter how simple.

Then he learned they had joined forces over the mystery of the Jericho murders. And that slowly brought them together, until the first Blood Moon, when it was clear that feelings had started to form.

Charles still remembered the Rave’N dance, when Wednesday stood up in her black dress and walked over to Luke to kiss him in front of everyone. They ended up being the most talked-about pair of the night, and also crowned king and queen.

Now they were chasing a demonic elder, likely over 150 years old, or close to it. And Charles knew what his role was.

Luke only wanted support. Protection for his mind. Because no matter how strong Luke was, his mastery of the blue aura was still young. Still penetrable.

And Charles would not allow any Spellman, no matter how cunning or ancient, to touch even a corner of his student’s mind.

The air shifted. Charles had barely enough time to react when he felt it.

Luke released his sword.

Eclipse shot from his hand like lightning. The blade carved a glowing arc through the air, a trail of fire tearing across the sky. Its speed was impossible to follow with the naked eye.

Aldric, flying a few hundred meters ahead, sensed it. He didn’t see it. He didn’t hear it. He felt it.

Pure instinct.

He twisted his body, diving downward just in time before the blade reached him. Eclipse’s edge grazed his side, slicing the air with a sonic boom.

But Luke was no longer beside Charles.

’His strange teleportation technique,’ Charles thought.

Luke reappeared above Aldric. At the tip of his index finger spun an orb, a condensed telekinetic core. It vibrated. It crackled. Like a star forcibly compacted.

Luke hurled the orb.

The Spellman sorcerer barely had time to raise a barrier. It wasn’t enough.

The blast didn’t strike him directly, but the shockwave sent him flying. His body flipped multiple times before crashing into the forest, shattering branches, smashing through trunks, and finally crashing into the earth, forming a crater around him.

Charles landed gently, still wrapped in Luke’s telekinesis. He touched down a few meters from the smoking crater where Aldric’s body lay among rubble and dust.

Luke, in contrast, descended without hurry, without urgency, as if he already knew the outcome. Eclipse had not returned to his hand. The sword floated across the clearing, suspended like a sentinel awaiting a silent command.

From his position, Charles watched young Poe advance toward the crater.

Four auras.

Four.

That alone was already an anomaly. A psychic with three auras was a prodigy, something seen only once every… what, two hundred years?

The oldest psychic families were lucky to have one or two such users in their entire bloodline. A psychic with four… simply didn’t exist. Until Luke. At least, not in the history of outcast beings in the United States.

The first aura Luke mastered was the yellow one, and without a doubt, it remained his central pillar. But thanks to his clairvoyance, he had become even more effective. That ability to foresee, combined with his precise control of telekinetic waves, allowed him to attack and move with an efficiency no other marginado possessed. He wasted no energy. Every movement was calculated with surgical economy.

That’s why he stood there without panting, without his stamina on the verge of collapse despite everything he had done: using his teleportation technique multiple times, flying at absurd speeds, attacking with Eclipse repeatedly, and more.

Of course, part of the explanation lay in his fourth aura: the green one. Charles, as a close ally of the Addams family, already knew.

The healing aura.

An aura that not only allowed the user to heal themselves and others but also to optimize metabolism, reduce cellular fatigue, and regulate internal functions. An aura of constant regeneration. And, naturally, it enhanced base strength, endurance, and speed.

Now add to that the blue aura, and the Poe soul weapon that turned every strike into a lethal one:

The perfect war machine.

Luke stopped when Aldric emerged from the crater. The distance between them was about ten meters.

Aldric looked at him, then noticed Eclipse floating behind him, about twenty meters away, ready to strike if he tried to flee. Then his gaze returned to Luke.

“Regeneration in exchange for years of youth?” Luke asked aloud.

He had noticed that Aldric bore no wounds despite taking the full blast of the telekinetic orb. But with eyes trained to see even dust particles, Luke could tell that Aldric’s skin looked older.

Not as dramatically aged as Vespera’s had been when she regenerated her arm, aging visibly by twenty or thirty years. But here… it was like he had aged five.

And since Aldric had no intention of replying, Luke moved without warning.

He shot forward like an arrow, the air roaring around him. His fist already wrapped in telekinetic waves. Thirty tons of combined force between his green aura and the telekinesis enveloping his punch.

And yet, the deadliest part wasn’t the power, it was the precision.

With his foresight active, he had already seen the exact spot where Aldric would try to dodge.

There was no escape.

Luke’s fist slammed into the old man’s face with a muffled boom. A direct blow to the jaw, powerful and brutal.

Aldric’s head snapped to the side violently from the force of the strike… but not without consequence.

Because, like a veteran, he had anticipated he couldn’t avoid it. Instead of defending or fleeing, he counterattacked at the very moment of impact.

His fist rose at the perfect angle, aimed directly at Luke’s face.

But Luke had seen that too. And at the last moment, just a blink before contact, he turned his head.

The blow didn’t land fully… but the friction of the airwave, combined with the pressure of Aldric’s fist, was enough to slice open his cheek.

A line of blood ran down his face, from his ear to the corner of his mouth. Not deep. But it hurt. And it bled. A lot.

Aldric, on the other hand, was sent flying backward like a bullet.

His body spun midair, but he managed to land on his feet, sliding several meters along the ground before stopping with a crunch of dirt.

A small cloud of dust rose around him.

Aldric spat blood. His nose was broken. But within seconds, the bones began to regenerate.

’His physical strength is around forty tons… maybe slightly more,’ Luke thought.

If he fought using only his telekinesis wrapped around his fists combined with his physical power, Luke could reach about thirty tons. Clearly, it would take a while to bring him down, though with his clairvoyance, he could aim for vulnerable points. Plus, he could launch telekinetic orbs with explosions that caused both external and internal damage.

However, that’s where Eclipse came in. Each slash channeled his telekinesis, sharpening it. Each strike cut through matter as if it were air. Its speed was supersonic. Its trajectory, flawless. Its lethality, unquestionable. And added to all that, Luke’s clairvoyant precision…

Aldric looked at Luke something surprised him.

Luke wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, and in that moment, the wound began to close, healing from the inside out. In just a few seconds, his skin was good as new, smooth and unblemished.

“What?” Aldric asked aloud, his eyes wide. For the first time, his expression showed genuine surprise.

Luke gave him a smug, silent smile.

“What’s wrong?” he said, in a tone so calm it bordered on mocking. “Did you really think you were the only ones who could regenerate? Though luckily, I won’t be aging in the process.”

He didn’t even finish the sentence, Eclipse moved.

Taking advantage of Aldric’s shock at discovering Luke possessed a fourth aura, something that would stun anyone who heard of it.

The battle continued.

Aldric tried to dominate Luke’s mind from the very first move. Illusory traps. Subtle invasions. Psychic attacks that would have shattered the mind of any normal telepath, or any outcast without mental defenses.

But Luke was protected.

Not just by his own defenses through his blue aura, but also by Charles, who remained at a safe distance, reinforcing Luke’s mental barriers like an invisible fortress. Together, they formed an unbreakable shield.

The elder Spellman was rendered useless in the realm of mind attacks, which was precisely why Luke had brought his professor with him.

Aldric had only his physical strength and flight left.

But Luke didn’t need to match him in raw power.

He surpassed him in everything else.

Speed. Clairvoyance. Precision. Versatility. Energy optimized by the green aura. Technique. And Eclipse.

The sword flew, struck, sliced, withdrew, charged again, shifted angles, appeared where it was least expected.

Luke used his Shambles like a deadly dance: appearing in front, behind, above, at the sides, without any predictable pattern.

Every strike was a kill attempt.

Aldric held on. He was strong. His regenerated body gave him endurance. But his barriers were useless against Eclipse. His strength helped him defend, not win.

The pressure was total, and where he was truly an expert, it served him no purpose at all.

Luke struck his side once. Another time, he slashed his thigh. Then, his shoulder. Little by little, he wore him down.

Until Luke saw the final opening.

Aldric stepped back. Exhaled. His body turned just half a second slower.

And that was all Luke needed.

Eclipse shot forward, vibrating through the air like a black streak, propelled by telekinesis.

The sword pierced straight through Aldric’s chest, side to side. The impact stopped him cold.

Aldric staggered a step, looked down.

The blade had entered through his left side, passed through his heart, and exited cleanly out his back.

One arm dropped lifelessly. Blood spilled from his mouth. And just in case, Luke appeared beside him, Eclipse already in hand… and cut.

Aldric’s head spun through the air like a fallen crown. The body, now lifeless, collapsed slowly.

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