Chapter 364: Kruel vs Storm 2

Chapter 364: Kruel vs Storm 2

“Lucas, get away from here!” Cassandra’s voice cracked with desperation as she struggled to her knees, blood streaming from her broken nose. “Are the others alive? Pierce—how is Pierce? Everyone else?”

Lucas landed hard beside Storm, electricity still crackling around his form like a living aura. His face was grim, haunted by something that went beyond the carnage spread across this killing field. “We can account for some of them,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “But Noah… Noah was taken.”

The words hit Cassandra like a physical blow. Noah gone? The first SSS ranked soldier in years of humanity looking for one just gone? Besides being the one with the most potential amongst human, he had a one of a kind mind. And to be fair, she was starting to feel attached to all of them.

Kruel’s laughter erupted across the battlefield, a sound like breaking glass mixed with thunder. “Truly remarkable!” he called out, clapping his hands slowly in mock appreciation. “The little humans keep coming, one after another, like insects drawn to flame. Do you know what I find most amusing about your species?”

He gestured broadly at the devastation around them, the bodies of fallen Vanguard soldiers scattered like broken dolls. “You never learn when you’re outclassed. Even now, watching your friends die, you still think you have a chance.”

Storm’s massive head turned toward Kruel, electric blue eyes narrowing to slits. Ice crystals began forming along the wyvern’s scales, and the temperature around them dropped ten degrees in as many seconds.

“But this,” Kruel continued, his attention shifting to the magnificent creature before him, “this is genuinely interesting. According to your planet’s historical records, beasts of this magnitude went extinct millions of years ago. Dragons, wyverns, the great serpents of the deep—all gone, turned to fossil fuel for your primitive machines.”

He took a step closer to Storm, and the wyvern’s wings spread wide in warning, each membrane crackling with contained lightning. The span was enormous—nearly creating a canopy around them from tip to tip, casting shadows that swallowed entire sections of the battlefield.

“So tell me,” Kruel said, his voice taking on an almost childlike curiosity, “how did you manage to find one? Did you dig it up from some forgotten glacier? Clone it from ancient DNA? Or…” His eyes lit up with sudden understanding. “Ah, I see. This is connected to your friend who was ‘taken,’ isn’t it? Some kind of summoning ability? What is the young soldier’s name, Noah, correct?”

Storm’s response was a roar that shattered the air like a sonic boom, ice and lightning streaming from his maw in a devastating display of raw power. The blast carved a trench fifty feet long in the earth between them, turning stone to slag and sand to glass.

Kruel barely tilted his head to avoid the attack. “Magnificent. I can feel the energy radiating from you, beast. Such power, such potential…” His smile widened, revealing teeth that gleamed like polished bone. “I’m going to have to subdue you for myself.”

What happened next was almost too fast to follow.

Kruel’s feet left the ground, his massive frame launching forward with acceleration that defied physics. The impact when he collided with Storm’s chest was like a meteor strike—a thunderclap that rolled across the landscape and sent shockwaves through the earth itself.

Storm, despite his enormous size and obvious power, was lifted completely off his feet and hurled backward through the air like a child’s toy. The wyvern’s body carved a trench through three hills before finally coming to rest against a cliff face, the rock cracking and crumbling from the impact.

“You see?” Kruel called out conversationally, not even breathing hard from the exertion. “You can see the disparity between us friend. I was just playing with you, girl. I could have ended you at any moment. You were never a threat—just entertainment.”

Lucas’s fists clenched, electricity arcing between his fingers as he prepared to launch himself into the air. Storm was hurt, possibly badly, and every instinct screamed at him to help, to fight, to do something other than stand here watching.

Cassandra’s hand caught his wrist, her grip surprisingly strong for someone so battered. “Wait,” she gasped. “Think about it. Noah wouldn’t send Storm into a fight that would kill him. There has to be a reason, a plan—”

Her words were cut off by the sound of Kruel’s footsteps, each one creating small craters in the pulverized earth. The three-horn had reached Storm’s position and was now holding the wyvern by the tail, dragging the massive creature like a dead weight.

“No,” Lucas whispered, watching in horror as Kruel swung Storm’s body in a wide arc, using the wyvern as a club to demolish what remained of the mountainside. Rock face after rock face crumbled under the impacts, each strike sending avalanches cascading into the valleys below.

“I’m not sure anything is beating this Harbinger,” Lucas said, his voice hollow with despair.

But Cassandra was looking more closely, although her suit was mostly broken, her visor was picking up details that Lucas had missed. Storm’s claws, all four sets of them, were extended and digging deep furrows in the earth. Each talon was as long as a man’s arm and sharp enough to cut through starship armor, and they were finding purchase in the bedrock itself.

Kruel took another step, preparing to swing Storm again, but this time something was different. His foot came down, his muscles bunched for the throw, but the wyvern didn’t move.

“What—” Kruel began, then looked down to see Storm’s talons embedded deep in solid stone, anchoring the creature like the roots of some impossible tree.

Storm’s head turned, electric blue eyes meeting Kruel’s gaze. The wyvern’s mouth opened, revealing rows of teeth that crackled with contained lightning, and for the first time since the fight began, Kruel’s expression showed something other than boredom.

It showed concern.

The payback began immediately.

Storm’s body twisted with serpentine grace, his massive tail whipping around to catch Kruel across the torso. The three-horn’s grip broke, and he was sent flying backward, his body carving its own trench through the landscape before he managed to regain his footing.

But Storm was already moving, his wings catching the air as he launched himself skyward. The wyvern’s flight was poetry in motion—each wingbeat a thunderclap, each movement precise and deadly. At full speed, Storm moved faster than sound itself, his body creating sonic booms that rolled across the battlefield like artillery fire.

Kruel looked up just in time to see two tons of furious wyvern descending on him at Mach 4.

Boom!!!

The impact crater was perfectly circular and thirty feet deep. At its center, Kruel lay embedded in the earth, his body pressed into the stone by forces that could crush mountains. For a moment, there was silence.

Then Storm’s claws closed around Kruel’s torso, lifting the three-horn from his crater like a child picking up a doll. The wyvern’s other foreclaw drew back, ice crystals forming along the talons as the temperature plummeted.

The punch that followed could have demolished a city block. Kruel’s body became a projectile, flying through three separate mountain peaks before finally coming to rest in a lake that instantly began to boil from the heat generated by his passage.

Storm didn’t give him time to recover. The wyvern was already in motion again, his Arctic Shroud ability activating as he flew toward the lake. The air around him turned to visible frost, ice crystals forming in complex geometric patterns that spread outward like a living thing.

When Storm reached the lake, it was already beginning to freeze. The wyvern’s Winter Vortex erupted from his wings, a spinning column of supercooled air that turned the entire body of water into a solid glacier in seconds. Kruel was trapped within, his body visible through the clear ice like some prehistoric specimen.

But Storm wasn’t finished.

Lightning began to gather around the wyvern’s form, not the random electrical discharge of a storm, but something focused and intentional. His Thunderbolt Strike ability charged to full power, the energy building until the air itself began to ionize.

The blast that followed was visible from orbit—a column of pure electrical energy that struck the glacier with the force of a divine judgment. The ice didn’t just melt; it vaporized instantly, creating a steam explosion that could be heard for hundreds of miles.

When the vapor cleared, Kruel was standing in the center of a perfectly circular crater, his skin blackened but his expression more alive than it had been all day.

“Now this,” he said, his voice carrying genuine appreciation, “is what I came for!!!”

But if one listened carefully, they could hear exasperation. Just then, if anyone had paid attention, behind the excitement was tiny groan. The three horn felt pain after all.

However, he launched himself upward, his fists trailing vapor as he accelerated toward Storm’s position. The wyvern met him halfway, ice and lightning streaming from his maw in a devastating fusion attack that turned the air between them into a field of pure energy.

The two titans collided in midair, the impact creating a shockwave that flattened everything within a five-mile radius. They fell together, locked in combat, their bodies carving a trench through the earth as they fought with savage intensity.

Kruel’s fists found their mark repeatedly, each punch creating thunderclaps that rolled across the landscape. But Storm gave as good as he got, his claws raking across the three-horn’s torso while his tail whipped around to catch Kruel’s legs.

They separated, circled each other like gladiators in some cosmic arena. Kruel’s chest rose and fell with exertion—the first sign of fatigue he’d shown since the massacre began. Storm’s scales were cracked in several places, ice crystals and blood mixing on his magnificent hide.

“You fight well, beast,” Kruel said, wiping what might have been blood from his mouth. “Better than any of your human friends.”

Storm’s response was to activate his Blizzard Legion ability. The air around him began to shimmer, and then they appeared—twenty-seven constructs of living ice, each one shaped like a smaller version of Storm himself. They surrounded Kruel in a perfect circle, their crystalline eyes reflecting the dying light of the battlefield.

“Clever,” Kruel acknowledged, but his smile never wavered. “But can your minions keep up with this?”

He moved again, that impossible speed that turned physics into a suggestion. The first ice construct exploded into powder before it could react. The second and third followed, their forms dissolving under the assault of Kruel’s fists.

But Storm was no longer on the ground.

The wyvern hovered two hundred feet above the battlefield, his wings spread so wide they seemed to blot out the sky itself. Lightning and ice were building in his mouth, the two elements fusing into something that made the air itself scream with potential energy.

Below him, Kruel finished destroying the last of the ice constructs and looked up, his expression shifting from satisfaction to something approaching respect.

“Show me what you’ve got, dragon,” he called out, his voice carrying across the devastated landscape.

Storm’s mouth opened wider, the fusion of lightning and ice reaching critical mass. The attack that was building there wouldn’t just destroy Kruel—it would reshape the geography of this world itself.