The white lines were everywhere.
Noah stared at the faint, spider-web traces of light that surrounded Arthur Kaine, his enhanced vision picking up dozens of potential death trajectories. Each line represented an attack that could kill himânot wound, not disable, but end his life completely.
âI havenât seen these since Kruel.â The four-horned Harbinger whose casual missed punch had shattered an entire mountainside. The same creature that had held its own against Nyx himself.
Arthur Kaine was operating at the same threat level as humanityâs greatest nightmare made flesh.
"I can tell youâre scared," Arthur said, his voice carrying across the chamber with casual confidence. "Those innate senses of yours are probably screaming warnings right now, arenât they?"
Arthur began walking closer, his movements fluid despite the death sentences written in light around him.
"You know what Iâm thinking? I could make excellent use of someone with your abilities. You could serve a far better purpose than wasting your potential in the EDF, fighting Harbingersâhumanityâs actual existential threatâor getting dragged into ancient family politics you donât understand."
Noah felt something cold settle in his stomach.
"Youâve been here this entire time," Noah said, his voice cutting through the chamberâs silence. "While humanity fought for survival against the Harbingers. While entire worlds were consumed. While billions died... you were here building an army to kill other humans."
Arthurâs expression hardened. "Building an army? No, child. Iâm correcting centuries of mistakes. The bloodlines have grown weak, complacent. They squander gifts that could reshape reality itself."
"So your solution is murder?"
"My solution is evolution. The families have proven they cannot govern themselves responsibly. They need... guidance. Proper leadership." Arthurâs voice carried the tone of someone explaining basic concepts to a slow student.
"Leadership? You mean tyranny."
"I mean order. Structure. A system where power flows to those who understand its true potential, not spoiled children who inherited abilities they never earned." Arthurâs eyes gleamed with conviction.
Noah felt his stomach turn. "Youâre talking about people like theyâre resources."
"Because thatâs what they are," Arthur replied without hesitation. "Resources that have been catastrophically mismanaged. Iâm simply... optimizing the system."
"And youâre just another megalomaniac who thinks mass murder is justified if you call it evolution."
Lightning erupted around Arthurâs legs as he drew in a sigh "I have grown tired of trying to make you see my vision. Itâs simply beyond you."
**CRACK!**
The sound wasnât thunderâit was the air being split apart by electrical energy that made Lucasâs attacks look like static electricity. Spider-web cracks spread across the polished floor from Arthurâs position as he launched himself forward at speeds that turned sound barriers into nothing, moving like a lightning bolt given human form.
Noahâs enhanced reflexes kicked in. The white lines converged on his position like laser sightsâdeath coming from twelve different angles simultaneously. He read the pattern in milliseconds: feint left, real strike center, follow-up from above.
[Void Blink - Activated]
Purple energy swirled as Noah phased out of normal space, reappearing behind Arthurâs predicted trajectory. Excaliburn swept in a perfect arc aimed at the older manâs exposed neck, void energy crackling along the bladeâs edge.
But Arthur was already a step ahead.
Without turning around, Arthurâs hand shot upward, fingers gesturing into a closed fist and metal screamed as a massive chunk of the throne platform tore free, accelerating toward Noahâs head with rifle-bullet velocity. The improvised projectile moved with precision that defied normal telekinetic control.
Noah raised his left hand, void energy meeting steel in a violent collision. The metal chunk dissolved on contact, molecules unmaking themselves where void touched matter. But Arthur was already moving again.
They separated, circling each other across the vast chamber. Arthurâs movements were fluid, achingly slow, almost like a hunter who had been perfecting his craft for centuries.
"Impressive reflexes," Arthur said, not even breathing hard. "But youâre still reacting instead of anticipating."
Noahâs mind raced as he processed what heâd witnessed. "How are you doing this? Lightning beyond what Lucas can manage, metal manipulation ontop of that. Those arenât normal Grey family abilities. And you are even wielding two!"
Arthurâs smile was cold. "Youâre cataloguing abilities, trying to understand what youâre facing. Let me educate you, child. The original family heads donât conform to your militaryâs neat little rankings. Each one operates at what youâd call guaranteed alpha territoryâS-rank minimum, most pushing SS or SSS levels naturally."
Arthur raised both hands toward the chamberâs ceiling. Lightning began building around him, but this wasnât the wild electrical discharge Noah expected. This was controlled, architecturalâlightning that formed - precise three dimensional lattice crystal lattice patterns in the air above them.
"But even SSS-rank has limitations when youâre working with a single bloodlineâs natural constraints," Arthur continued, his tone taking on that of a professor delivering a lecture.
The electrical grid pulsed once, then activated.
Lightning erupted from every metal fixture in the chamber simultaneously. Not random bolts, but a three-dimensional web of destruction that filled the entire space with crackling death. The attack was almost too perfectâevery possible escape route calculated and sealed.
Noahâs white lines went insane, showing overlapping death trajectories that turned the entire chamber into a maze of annihilation.
[Void Rifts - Activated]
Noah tore holes in reality, creating portals to absorb the incoming electrical death. Dark purple tears in space swallowed bolt after bolt, the void energy consuming the lightning like a hungry mouth.
But Arthur had anticipated this response.
Metal fragments throughout the chamberâdecorative elements, chunks of columns, pieces of Arthurâs own throneâsuddenly accelerated to hypersonic speeds. Not aimed at Noah, but at his void rifts themselves.
âHeâs attacking my defenses.â
The strategy was brilliant. Noah was forced to choose: maintain his defensive portals and let the metal projectiles through, or close the rifts and face the lightning grid directly.
Noah chose a third option.
[Phase Step - Activated]
He moved at maximum speed between lightning strikes, his enhanced agility carrying him through gaps in the electrical web that existed for mere microseconds. With the void striders equipped, this feat nearing the territory of impossible became absolutely doable.
Metal projectiles whistled past his head as he wove between death. However, he couldnât dodge them all.
A twisted piece of iron grazed his shoulder, the impact spinning him around despite his enhanced durability. The fragment had been moving fast enough to slam against his armorâs outer layer. The speed and force of flight alone was what did the most damage as the metal itself couldnât bypass his defense.
"Even with Knightâs grace on, Iâm taking huge damages!"
[Health Points: 3,470/3,520 (-50)]
Noah landed in a crouch near the chamberâs far wall, breathing hard. Arthur stood calm in the center of his electrical storm, completely unaffected by the lightning that would have killed any normal human instantly.
"What are you?" Noah demanded, watching Arthur manipulate multiple elements with impossible precision.
"Iâm what the bloodlines were always meant to become," Arthur replied, slamming his hand against the chamber floor. Shadows erupted outward like spilled ink, but these werenât normal darknessâthey moved with purpose, flowing around obstacles and reforming when damaged.
âThree abilities. How does one human have access to three? Two makes sense if itâs a subsidiary of a primary ability. Most Third generation can do this. Water and ice, fire and smoke. But lightning and shadows or metal manipulation do not have anything in common,â Noah had the wheeels in his head turning for this one. Except the wheels were unable to turn him in the right direction this time.
What he didnât know was that Arthur wasnât simply using multiple bloodline abilities in sequence. The eighth bloodlineâs true power was far more insidious than mere copying. His ability was to copy, transfer and use other abilities as in ... many at once.
The burning shadows raced toward Noah in patterns that seemed almost alive, splitting and merging like a liquid predator.
[Entropy Touch - Activated]
Noah pressed his palm against the nearest shadow construct, channeling decay energy through his fingertips. The power that could age steel to rust in seconds should have unmade the construct instantly.
Instead, the shadow absorbed his entropy effect and grew larger.
"What theâ"
Noah rolled sideways as the enhanced shadow construct lashed out with tendrils that left smoking gouges in the stone floor. Whatever these things were, they didnât follow normal rules.
He kept his distance while trying to make sense of what he was against. Arthur was powerful, that much he already knew. What he didnât understand was how. And the first step to beating someone when a straight jab to the face didnât work was out thinking them.
Just then a pillar exploded behind Noah as another shadow struck it. The stone didnât just crackâit aged centuries in seconds, crumbling to dust as if time itself had been weaponized.
Noah was forced into constant motion, using Void Blink to stay ahead of the intelligent shadow constructs. But they were learning from each teleportation, predicting his emergence points and converging faster than should be possible.
Arthur pressed his advantage, moving with lightning-enhanced speed while his shadow constructs herded Noah like prey. Each step Arthur took left crackling footprints in the stone, his body wreathed in electrical energy that made the air itself burn.
"You want to lecture me about using my gifts for the greater good?" Arthur called out, appearing beside Noah with impossible speed. His fist, wreathed in electrical energy, aimed for Noahâs head. "Tell me, what have the families accomplished with all their supposed noble intentions?"
Noah twisted, Arthurâs strike grazing past his head for a second and he felt the jolt.
[Health Points: 3,420/3,520 (-50)]
"Theyâve protected people. They may not actively participate in the war against the Harbingers but I have come to learn that they lend their resources and man power. Hell, my friend is a royal blood serving as an EDF soldier!" Noah shot back, recovering into an Enhanced Null Strike. His void-coated fist aimed for Arthurâs exposed ribs, the attack designed to unmake whatever it touched.
Arthur sank partially into his own shadow, Noahâs devastating punch passing through empty darkness while Arthur emerged from a shadow cast by debris across the chamber.
"Protected people?" Arthurâs laugh was bitter. "Protected them so well that dozens of inhabited worlds turned to ash while the families squabbled over territory and refused to unite under proper leadership."
The words hit Noah like a physical blow. "Dozens of worlds? What are you talking about?"
"The Harbinger expansion, child. Worlds that could have been saved if the bloodlines had worked together instead of fragmenting into petty kingdoms. Entire civilizations that died because your friendâs precious family and those alike couldnât see past their own narrow interests."
Fire erupted from Arthurâs hands, plasma roaring forward in a concentrated blast. Noah barely had time to reactâhe dove behind a pillar just as the beam hit.
BOOM!
The stone disintegrated on impact, blowing apart in a shower of molten fragments. Shards hissed against Noahâs armor.
"The families had their chance to prove they deserved their gifts," Arthur continued, his voice carrying centuries of accumulated disappointment. "Instead, they let lesser beings suffer for their incompetence."
âLesser beings. Heâs talking about normal humans like theyâre insects.â
Noah emerged from cover with a void Barrage. "So your solution is to enslave them?"
Arthur danced between the projectiles like he was performing ballet, his movements were too quick and sharp to be caught by the speeding void bullets. But it wasnât just evasionâmetal fragments in the air were repositioning themselves, creating a defensive grid that intercepted void bullets while Arthur flowed between them.
The rest of the barrage were being intercepted by his shadow constructs. Getting caught in dark structures resembling a thick syrup.
"Enslave?" Arthurâs tone suggested Noah had missed something fundamental. "Iâm offering them what theyâve never hadâcompetent leadership. A proper hierarchy where power flows according to merit, not accident of birth."
The few void bullets that got through struck Arthurâs shadow constructs, but instead of destroying them, the attacks seemed to make them more solid, more real.
"Youâre feeding them," Noah realized with growing horror. "The shadows are getting stronger from my attacks."
"Your ability appears to unmake things. It is basically entropy given form. Your entropy and shadow energy are just different forms of destructive force," Arthur replied, never slowing his advance. "And Iâve had centuries to learn how to turn destruction into construction."
Arthurâs fist erupted in white-hot flames as he swung. Noah ducked under the punch and drove his elbow up into Arthurâs ribs. The fire seared across Noahâs shoulder, but his strike connectedâArthur grunted and staggered back.
Arthur shook his head, refocusing instantly. His eyes blazed as lightning began crackling between his fingers. He thrust his hand forward, but Noah was already moving, grabbing Arthurâs wrist and twisting. The bolt went wide, carving a smoking scar across the wall as Noah drove his knee toward Arthurâs stomach.
Arthur caught the knee with his free hand, flames roaring to life around his palm. Noah hissed as the heat bit into his leg, but instead of pulling away, he pressed closer. His free hand found Arthurâs throat.
"Too close for your tricks now," Noah growled.
Suddenly, the shadows at their feet suddenly writhed upward like living things, wrapping around Noahâs ankles and yanking him off balance. As Noah stumbled, Arthurâs lightning-charged fist hammered into his ribs.
Noah cursed and tore rifts into the air, jagged holes of darkness snapping open in quick succession.
Noah drew Excaliburn and kicked it through a rift above Arthurâs head. The portal snapped shut, swallowing the blade.
Arthur looked up, then spun as another rift tore open beside him. Excaliburn burst through, driving for his shoulder. Arthur tried to deflect it with flame, but the blade vanished again into another closing void-space.
Behind himâthe sword swept low at his legs. Arthur jumped, shadows lashing out, striking nothing.
Left sideâthe blade materialized at throat level through another rift. Arthur twisted away, fire erupting defensively.
Rightâlowâhighâthe weapon kept emerging from impossible angles, forcing Arthur into a deadly dance as he tried to track attacks that came from everywhere and nowhere.
Just then Arthurâs movements stuttered for half a second, then he was simply gone. The shadows beneath his boots rippled like water, and his body sank into them as though swallowed whole.
Noahâs eyes snapped around the chamber.
Whereâ
The answer came immediately. Every wall, every surface, every shadow began vomiting out Arthurâs presence. He wasnât stepping through portals one at a timeâhe was multiplying. His figure split and folded into half a dozen silhouettes at once, each crackling with lightning, each dragging jagged ribbons of molten steel.
Noah barely brought up a rift in time as the first copy hurled a spear of metal through it, only for another Arthur to bend the exit space and fire the projectile back out at him with double the velocity. Sparks erupted against Noahâs armor as he staggered under the impact. Noah stopped his own rifts and grabbed hold of excaliburn
Then the nightmare truly began.
The chamber filled with a lattice of flickering holes, hundredsâno, thousandsâof shadow-gates all snapping open at once. From each aperture poured violence: lightning forks that screamed like banshees, shards of steel sharp enough to cut through reinforced plating, even phantom fists swinging in from impossible directions.
It was Noahâs own technique reflected back at him, but swollen to monstrous scale, as if Arthur had studied his method in an instant and asked: why stop at ten when you could have a thousand?
The void became a storm. Noah was in the center.
"How are you channeling multiple bloodlines simultaneously?" Noah demanded.
Arthurâs smile was genuinely pleased, as if Noah had finally asked the right question. "My ability allows me to take abilities. You are just wondering what I do with them now? What do you think I do with the kings? Better question...What happens when you take seven SS-rank power outputs and funnel them all into a single technique?"
What made Arthur genuinely terrifying wasnât just the way he foughtâit was what he fought with.
The white arcs of Grey lightning which Noah had seen already.
The endless sea of shadows belonging to the fourth family, the Veyras. The shards of metals that almost decapitated Noah, that was the 7th familyâs bloodline, the Leviticusâs metallurgy.
Each one belonged to a family bloodline that had shaped history in its own right. Noah had seen some in action before, had fought against some before. But never had he seen them all in the hands of a single man, never woven together so seamlessly that you almost forgot they werenât his to begin with.
And the worst part? Those were only the ones Arthur had chosen to show.
But that wasnât where things. got bad.
It was the principle behind it all.
Bloodline talents were never meant to overlap. A Greyâs lightning was devastating in its own right, enough to turn battlefields into ash. A Veyraâs shadows could dominate an army without ever touching a blade. A Leviticusâs control of metal could decide the outcome of wars. But no matter how fearsome, each bloodline had a ceiling. A Grey would always be lightning. A Veyra would always be shadows. A Leviticus would always be steel.
Arthur Kaine? He didnât respect ceilings.
To understand why, you had to think about the way the Earth Defense Force measured power. First-generation talents were weak sparks, barely enough to light a torch or move a nail. Second-generation talents could tear through squads, level structures, and make governments take notice. Third-gens were monsters in their own rightâforces of nature that could end campaigns singlehandedly.
And above even them were the Alphas.
The EDF broke its own charts for them. They didnât fit neatly into first, second, or third gen. They existed outside the curveâgraded S, SS, SSS. Lucas was an S-ranked Grey, his lightning enough to split cities apart. Noah himself sat at the top of that curve: SSS, the kind of existence that bent the rules of combat just by showing up.
But Arthur wasnât Alpha-ranked. He was something else entirely.
Because he wasnât just borrowing powers. He wasnât stealing them. He was stacking them.
Think of it like this: if he copied a first-gen fire user, the ability was pitiful on its own, barely enough to burn a branch. But then he layered onto it the raw output heâd copied from a second-gen ice wielder and a third-gen wind wielder. That first-gen spark didnât stay weak. In Arthurâs hands, it scaled into something beyond even Alpha-tierâflames powered by strength it was never meant to hold.
That was his secret. That was his terror.
Where the EDF measured people by their birthright, Arthur had rewritten the math. He could take crumbs and forge them into storms. He wasnât bound by gen or rank. He was all of them at once, stacked and refined until no scale could measure him.
He wasnât Grey. He wasnât Veyra. He wasnât Leviticus. He was the culmination of every bloodline, a nightmare stitched together over centuries.
For the first time since Kruel, Noah felt the terrifying certainty that survival wasnât possible if he played Arthurâs game. He could dodge for a second, maybe two, but not foreverânot against this.
His grip on Excaliburn tightened until his knuckles went white.
"Domain," Noah muttered.