Chapter 226: The Wrath Of Essence

He growled and spoke through his bloodied mouth.

“I’m going to end you.”

I ignored his threat. My mind was already racing.

He’d figured out I had a talent—that I could brush off. But he also contacted someone… maybe a group. That was the real problem.

My brows furrowed. I narrowed my eyes.

I gave myself one minute. That’s all I had to kill him and get out.

At first, I considered capturing him alive, maybe wringing out some answers. But that window had closed. Things had just turned far more dangerous than I anticipated.

I only hoped the Grandmaster wasn’t the one he contacted. If it was… then the Ferans weren’t the only ones being experimented on.

The man’s fury turned into motion. He vanished.

A blur passed in front of me, and my instincts screamed.

Clang!

His sabers slammed into my light shield. Sparks erupted from the impact as the force pushed me back a few steps, the shield pulsing from the strain.

He was faster now—angrier, more precise. His form darted between trees like a phantom, then vanished again.

“[Infinite Barrage],” he whispered.

My Psynapse flared in warning.

Then came the storm.

He erupted from the side, both sabers spinning as he slashed at me in a blur. I blocked the first strike, parried the second, and twisted aside to dodge the third—but the fourth and fifth landed. Steel kissed flesh.

Blood burst from my left shoulder, then my thigh. He moved too fast.

A sixth strike carved across my ribs, slicing deep through skin. I roared and struck with a burst of fire from my palm, momentarily staggering him.

But he didn’t stop.

Like a whirlwind of blades, he spun and slashed, his sabers leaving trails of blood-red light in the air.

Each cut sprayed my blood across the forest floor. My staff moved fast, blocking high, parrying low, countering mid—but not fast enough. Cuts opened across my forearms, a gash opened beneath my eye, and another split my side.

The ground beneath us was soaked in red. My red.

I summoned ice under his feet.

Snap.

Spikes erupted upward.

He jumped. Mid-air, his sabers came down again—fast and furious.

I raised my staff.

Clang!

But the impact forced me down to one knee, and then he landed behind me.

“[Blood Bind].”

The temperature dropped.

Something shifted in the air.

My blood—my own blood—shivered. Then surged.

Tendrils of red twisted in midair, coiling around my limbs, yanking me backward and down. The very liquid from my open wounds betrayed me, snaking like serpents and locking my arms.

I struggled. Fire pulsed in my chest and erupted outward, burning a few strands away.

But he was already upon me.

His foot crashed into my chest, slamming me flat to the ground. I gasped—and then steel tore through me.

One of his sabers plunged into my abdomen, piercing flesh, slicing deep. I felt it tear through muscle, past bone—then grind against something deeper.

My liver.

Pain surged through my body. My vision exploded into white static as the blade sank further.

“You should’ve run,” he rasped, twisting the blade.

The blood bindings tightened around me like a vice, preventing even a twitch.

“You’re not the only one with tricks,” he hissed.

I locked eyes with him, my perception stretching across the space around us. Then, without hesitation, I released all restraints on my Psynapse.

And everything froze.

He must have sensed it too.

The air shifted. Vibrated.

A subtle hum turned into a deafening howl.

Essence flowing through the atmosphere thrummed. Blue Essence answered.

Every particle in the area shivered at my command. My Psynapse flared as I took control of everything.

Blue streaks of light flooded in from the trees, the soil, the very air itself. They obeyed.

At the same time, the violet Essence inside me erupted like a storm.

It burst from my pores, from every crack and cut in my body, swirling violently like a solar flare. The blood bindings were shredded in an instant, scattered by sheer dominance.

Abe Holt staggered back, instincts suddenly flaring with terror.

“What… are you—?”

My body rose into the air, lifted by the sheer concentration of Essence swirling around me. I hovered upright, suspended by power alone. The blood dripping from my wounds evaporated, consumed and erased by the violet Essence radiating from my body.

Bleeding. Breathing. Burning.

I raised my hands.

Two spheres of spinning Essence formed—one blue, the other violet.

The blue orb crackled with natural Essence, wild and untamed, drawn from the world itself. It surged with purity, flowing like a living tide.

The violet orb pulsed with force born of my core—concentrated, refined, and absolute. It trembled with the weight of my will, shaped by command, not nature.

Both floated at my sides, growing, spinning faster and faster until the wind howled around us, trees bending under the pressure.

He slashed at me again, wild and desperate, panic clear in his movements—but I didn’t even need to move.

A barrier of wind burst to life around me, swirling in a tight spiral. The incoming strike deflected harmlessly, the air itself bending the arc of his saber away from my body.

I whispered, steady and cold, “[Absolute].”

“Freeze.”

The space around him, already warped from the intense flow of Essence in the air, twisted violently.

The natural currents curled inward, collapsing like a net of pressure around Abe. For a second, just a single second, he was locked in place. Arms frozen mid-swing, feet rooted to the cracked forest floor, breath caught in his throat.

But a second was all I needed.

I hurled both orbs.

The blue one streaked forward first, like a comet.

But the violet followed immediately, smashing into the blue mid-flight.

They collided.

Essence met Essence. Natural Order met chaos born within me.

And they rejected each other.

A shriek erupted from the collision point as both spheres spiraled, each fighting for dominance, spiraling tighter and tighter—until they collapsed into each other.

And exploded.

BOOOMMM!!!

The blast turned the colorful world into white.

A dome of pure white energy erupted outward, swallowing trees, rocks, everything. A shockwave flattened the forest around us, leaves disintegrated, and debris soared into the sky like a volcanic eruption.

I was thrown back, slammed into a tree as my breath knocked out of me.

The silence that followed was deafening.

I pulled myself upright, half-drenched in blood, half in dirt, and looked toward the blast zone.

Smoke curled upward from the huge crater.

At its center lay Abe Holt—no longer standing.

His body was scorched, twisted. Both of his arms were gown below the elbows.

His sabers were shattered, his breathing shallow.

He was at death’s door.

His single remaining eye stared at the sky, wide with disbelief and pain.

I approached slowly, staff dragging behind me.

He turned his head just barely.

“You… were supposed to be just a kid,” he croaked. “What a… freak.”

I stared down at him, every breath tearing through my ribs like a storm. My chest rose and fell in uneven rhythm, pain flaring with every inhale.

His eye lingered on my face for a moment longer, then dimmed.

With a final, shallow exhale, the last of his life slipped away. A faint shimmer, a blue orb—the shape of his soul—rose slowly from his chest and floated upward, vanishing into the sky.

I lowered my staff, placed its tip against his chest, and let fire bloom. Flames surged out in a controlled burst, wrapping around his body. In moments, he was nothing but ash.

I winced and clutched my side where his saber had pierced deep into me—right across the liver.

The pain burned hot, and I could feel the wound bleeding steadily beneath my hand. I was running on fumes now, only a small reserve of Essence left. I had left that on purpose—for Silver to function properly.

But I had absorbed some energy from the force of the explosion, and the generator core was already at work, producing Essence.

Creation is hard, cheer me up!