Chapter 155 - 154 : End of the Entrance Exam (4)

For a heartbeat after the spear dropped at his feet, Arthur did nothing.

He simply looked at Damian.

Red aura burned around the spear wielder like a wildfire, rage twisting his features. Everyone could feel it—if there had ever been a moment for Arthur to back away, this was it.

Instead, he moved forward.

In the next instant, Arthur stepped into Damian’s range.

BAM!

His fist buried itself in Damian’s midsection.

The punch was clean, direct, and brutally efficient. There was no flourish, no wasted movement—just a perfectly timed strike enhanced by his demonic strength and the cold precision of Omnicognition.

All the air was forced out of Damian’s lungs in a single, painful gasp.

His body folded around the blow before he crashed to his knees, one hand instinctively clutching his abdomen. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, his vision flickering at the edges.

’What... the hell...?’ Damian thought, shocked. ’How strong is he...?’

Arthur stepped back just enough to avoid a desperate grab, his eyes calmly watching Damian’s reaction.

Damian’s instincts screamed.

Danger.

He forced himself to move, pushing off the ground and creating distance between them with a backward leap. His boots skidded across the torn earth as he retreated, his spear recalling to his hand in a flare of red light.

But something astonishing happened.

Arthur wasn’t where he had been.

He was already behind Damian.

It wasn’t teleportation—not quite. He had simply predicted the exact angle and speed of Damian’s retreat and moved along a path that intersected it perfectly, Infinity cushioning any stray debris as he passed.

Arthur leaned in close, his breath brushing Damian’s ear.

"What’s wrong?" he whispered lightly. "Already scared?"

Damian’s muscles reacted before his brain caught up.

He spun, his spear and free hand lashing out at the same time, aiming to smash Arthur’s face and skewer his ribs in one motion.

Arthur’s demonic hand shot up.

He caught Damian’s wrist mid-swing.

For a split second, their eyes met.

Then Arthur squeezed.

Bones cracked beneath his grip with a sickening series of snaps. The Primordial Crush ability sank its fangs into Damian’s arm, breaking through muscle and bone as if they were brittle glass.

Damian’s eyes widened, a strangled sound torn from his throat.

"Kh—!"

He tried to pull back, but Arthur didn’t give him the chance.

"Sit down," Arthur said.

His foot came up and drove into Damian’s side with savage force.

The kick launched Damian like a projectile. He tore through a thick tree trunk, then another, then the crumbling wall of a half-destroyed building behind them. Stone and bark exploded in his wake, dust and splinters filling the air.

Damian’s body finally smashed into the ground, bouncing once before sliding to a stop amid the rubble.

Arthur lowered his leg and straightened, rolling his shoulder.

He lifted his head and stared up at the sky overhead.

"I hope you guys are watching," he said, his voice carrying clearly. "Because this will be the biggest shock of your lives... Adrian Evan Imperius."

Wherever the exam overseers were observing from, those words would reach them.

He looked back down at the others.

"What are you all waiting for?" Arthur asked, his demonic hand dripping blood. "Come at me."

For a moment, no one moved.

Liana was the first to respond.

Her expression, usually playful and relaxed, had hardened into something cold. She slowly drew her sword, the polished mithril blade reflecting the broken light of the shrinking forest-city.

Jasmine’s violet eyes narrowed, fixed on the shimmering distortion around Arthur’s body.

She had recognized that ability immediately.

Distance Rejection.

But something about the way it had stopped Damian’s spear...

Something felt very wrong.

"It’s Arina’s power," Jasmine whispered, finally snapping out of her daze. "But at the same time... it’s different."

Around her, elemental spirits began to gather again—tiny forms of light and energy peeking out from behind trees and stones, drawn to her agitation.

Isabella’s blood boiled in her veins.

She could feel it—not just Arthur’s challenge, but the fact that he had essentially invited all of them to fight him at once.

A chance like that?

She would never turn it down.

A feral grin spread across her face.

"I am not letting this chance go," Isabella said, excitement buzzing in her voice.

A matching, slightly twisted smile formed on Julia’s lips.

"Neither am I," Julia murmured. "It would be rude not to answer such an invitation."

But the first one to move was Liana.

She raised her sword, purple hair flowing behind her as a steady breeze answered her spike in mana.

"Even if a dog learns to bite," she said coolly, "it still shouldn’t try to bite its owner."

Then she moved.

One heartbeat she was standing there.

The next, she became a violet streak lancing across the ground toward Arthur.

"First Form," Liana said under her breath. "Raging Tide."

Mana surged around her like a tidal wave.

It wrapped around her blade, condensing into a sharp, flowing edge. The technique passed down through her family was designed for a single purpose—overwhelm and bypass any defense through sheer, focused force.

She had watched Damian’s spear be stopped.

She had seen Infinity delay and kill momentum.

But she also understood its limitation—or at least, she thought she did.

’Even if he’s using Arina’s ability,’ Liana thought, ’there’s a limit to how much force his bloodline can repel and return. I just have to step beyond that limit and crush it.’

She reached him in less than a second.

Her blade swung in a fluid arc, aimed cleanly at Arthur’s neck. The air screamed as the mana-laden strike descended, packing enough force to cleave clean through an armored opponent and the ground behind him.

The blade reached the edge of Arthur’s invisible domain—

CRACK.

Liana’s confidence shattered with the sound.

Her mithril sword stopped mid-swing.

Not because it had met Arthur’s flesh.

But because the blade itself broke.

The refined metal snapped in half as if it had been brittle, the tip and upper half spinning away in slow motion, glittering in the air as they fell.

Liana stared at the broken hilt in her hand, her eyes wide.

Her mind refused to accept what she was seeing.

"Im... possible," she whispered.

It didn’t matter how much force she had poured into the strike.

Infinity had not tried to repel it with equal force the way Arina’s old bloodline had. Instead, Arthur’s calculations had strangled the momentum gradually, slowing the blade in that final fraction of distance until force met immovable spatial interference.

The sword couldn’t endure the contradiction.

It broke before Arthur had to move a single step.

As long as he perfectly calculated the incoming attack and manually controlled Infinity, he was nearly invincible. Untouchable. Impossible to eliminate through conventional physical means.

Liana realized all of this in a single flash of horror.

And in the very next second, Arthur’s demonic hand moved.

SLASH.

For a moment, no one understood what had just happened.

Arthur’s body had barely shifted. His arm traced a short, sharp line through the air, black claws leaving a faint trail of corrupted energy behind.

Liana stood there, her eyes still locked on him.

She swayed slightly.

"You... monster," she whispered.

Then her body came apart.

Her head slid sideways.

Her torso split diagonally.

Her lower half crumpled.

All three pieces hit the ground at almost the same time before breaking into motes of light. The fragments lifted gently into the air, glimmered faintly, and then vanished.

Liana Clington had been eliminated.

The clearing fell into dead silence.

No one spoke.

Jasmine felt her throat go dry, elemental spirits trembling around her. Evangline’s confident smirk had vanished, replaced by an expression she rarely showed—caution. Julia’s fingers tightened around her weapon. Isabella’s grin had faded, replaced with something sharper and more focused.

Even Aiden’s usual reckless excitement cooled into wary calculation.

Damian, still struggling to rise from the rubble in the distance, stared in disbelief.

Arthur stood in the middle of it all, his demonic hand dripping with fresh blood, crimson streaks drying on his face.

He looked at each of them slowly, one by one.

"Who’s next?" Arthur asked, his eyes cold.

No one spoke.

Then Isabella and Julia glanced at each other.

They shared a look.

Both of them nodded.

"Front," Isabella said quietly.

"Back," Julia replied.

The next second, they moved.

They exploded into motion in perfect sync—Isabella rushing in from the front, her sword low at first, while Julia circled wide, her steps light and silent as she blurred toward Arthur’s blind spot.

Arthur’s gaze tracked the movement in front of him.

Isabella’s sword came first, stabbing directly toward his chest.

The blade entered the radius of Infinity and slowed, the air around it warping ever so slightly. But unlike Liana’s strike, Isabella had not poured all her strength into this one thrust.

She didn’t force it.

She felt the invisible resistance.

Felt her momentum being strangled.

She stopped pushing.

Her sword did not shatter.

Arthur’s attention, however, snapped fully toward her. Omnicognition mapped out her angle, the pressure on his barrier, and the exact moment she might transition into a slash.

He brought his right hand up to parry—

BAM!

A foot crashed into the side of his head.

Julia’s kick connected cleanly.

He had seen Isabella.

He had miscalculated Julia’s timing.

Arthur’s body flew sideways, Infinity still active but useless once the force had already been transmitted.

He slammed into a giant boulder hard enough to crack the stone.

BAM.

Dust erupted around him.

Everyone stared.

He had taken blows before, but this was the first time since Infinity’s appearance that they had seen him sent flying.

Julia landed lightly, lowering her leg.

Isabella pulled back her sword and jumped away, regrouping beside Julia.

They turned to each other and high-fived, grins flashing.

"Looks like we found a little weakness," Isabella said.

"It’s the user, not the ability," Julia added. "He can’t perfectly track everything at once... yet."

From within the dust, Arthur pushed himself up.

He cracked his neck first to one side, then the other, the sound echoing faintly.

"Damn," he said, rubbing his jaw once. "Looks like I need some practice after all... if I want to use this to its full potential."

The demonic arm faded.

The black claws, twisted veins, and crawling sigils receded, his skin returning to normal as the Primordial Daemon Form’s timer finally ran out.

"Looks like its time limit has been reached," Arthur muttered.

A sleek black sword materialized in his hand, the blade simple yet unnervingly sharp, its edge seeming to devour the light around it.

He pointed the sword casually toward Julia and Isabella.

"Come," Arthur said. "I won’t make it painful."

Isabella’s eyes widened slightly.

He had just taken a direct kick to the head, smashed into stone, and yet he stood there with barely a scratch, his aura steady.

"His endurance really is on another level," Julia said quietly. "It still astonishes me."

They didn’t hesitate.

Once again, they moved together.

Their strategy did not change—only the tempo.

This time, Julia went in first, cutting the angle from the front.

She closed the distance in a blur, her fist coated in condensed qi, her family’s martial art focusing all her strength into a single point. Her strike aimed straight for Arthur’s midsection, intending to blast the air out of his lungs just as he had done to Damian.

At the same time, Isabella’s sword streaked in from the side, its edge sweeping toward his neck in a decapitating arc.

A two-pronged assault.

Front and side.

Arthur saw them coming.

Too fast for normal eyes, but no longer beyond his.

He smiled faintly.

[ Blink has been activated. ]

In the next instant, space warped.

Arthur’s body flickered.

He and Isabella swapped places.

Julia’s punch, still driving forward, now raced toward the person who had been beside Arthur a heartbeat ago.

Isabella’s sword, mid-slash toward Arthur’s neck, now carved through the space Arthur had just occupied—directly toward Julia.

In the span of a breath, both girls realized something was wrong.

Their attacks were no longer aimed at Arthur.

They were aimed at each other.

Shock froze their movements for a fraction of a second.

Both tried to pull back, but technique and momentum betrayed them. Their fist and sword stopped mere inches away, their bodies twisting into unnatural angles as they aborted their attacks.

They managed to stop themselves from killing each other.

But that moment of confusion was all Arthur needed.

Before they could reset their footing.

Before they could create distance.

He was already there.

A blur of black and red.

Two clean arcs.

They barely felt it.

Arthur appeared behind them, his sword already lowered.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then Julia’s head slipped from her neck.

Isabella’s followed.

Their bodies remained standing for a fraction of a second longer, as if even gravity refused to accept what had happened, before collapsing forward.

All four pieces—two heads and two bodies—hit the ground almost simultaneously.

Then they dissolved into countless motes of light, drifting upward and fading from existence.

Arthur watched them go.

He clicked his tongue softly.

"That was definitely not an elimination either of you would have preferred," he said. "But you were both quite dangerous."

He shrugged.

"So it doesn’t matter."

He turned back toward the rest.

Jasmine stood rigid, elemental spirits swirling anxiously around her shoulders.

Evangline’s expression had turned razor-sharp, her magenta hair stirring in the lingering gusts of mana.

Aiden’s eyes were narrowed, his sword resting at his side, aura steady but simmering.

Arthur leveled his gaze at them.

"Do you guys need an invitation?" he asked.