Awakening the Great Bloodline Chapter 146

Chapter 146 – One Who Connects the Path

The battlefield was still filled with the clash of steel. Yet Imran Akran cut through all that chaos and seized upon a single figure.

Calix.

The young swordsman's blade had already touched the realm of the Empty Heart. It shed black droplets and held its center even on shifting mud. But his body, in stark contrast, was crumbling.

Irregular waves from an overloaded neural accelerator, blood dripping steadily from cracked knuckles, lungs gasping as though his breath might stop entirely.

Boom!

In the midst of clashing repeatedly with Kohtan, Imran caught that sight and, for a fleeting mont, turned his gaze inward.

'There was a ti when I believed talent alone was enough.'

The instant their blade-backs t again, a fragnt of mory brushed past him.

A distant childhood. He had been a boy who gripped a sword faster than anyone, who cut sharper than anyone. In those days when priests and nobles poured out their admiration, he had firmly believed he would beco sothing great. He had thought that innate talent, not effort, decided everything.

But that light did not last long.

Crash!

He thrust his sword straight ahead, and sparks leapt before his eyes. With an acceleration rate reaching 5.0, they were unmistakably fragnts of energy rather than true fla.

Through those sparks, the Emperor's gaze surfaced next—cold and heavy eyes. Before a man who had read the human heart down to its every layer, Imran had knelt. Neither talent nor sword had been of any use. He had crumbled before power, and the sha of that mont still gnawed at his bones.

Without warning, Calix's body wavered beside him. Imran's eyes snapped back to the present. Yet as he drove into the enemy once more, another mory forced its way in.

In his younger days, he had struggled endlessly to grow stronger. He burned his body to draw out energy, and radiated a bloodlust fierce enough to make even his master flinch. All of it was to ensure he would never yield again.

'It was nothing but vanity, all of it.'

Looking back, as much as he had burned, ash had piled up in equal asure. In the place where rage retreated, only hunger and hollowness remained—spreading poison deep within his heart.

And now, before him stood a young man of similar age to the Imran of those days. The hand gripping the blade was stained with blood, yet those feet never stopped moving.

"Greatness…… Is born from humble sacrifice."

He was only now, with his entire being, accepting that truth.

The three of them clashed without end.

Kohtan attacked and recovered repeatedly, his shell half-exposed. Trendous energy surged from Calix's blade. He had taken yet another slash to the shoulder in the anti, yet still blazed with radiant light.

Imran, on the other hand, found it increasingly difficult to keep pace with both of them.

[Unstable Output Warning]

[Internal Energy Decreasing]

The neural accelerator at the back of his neck flickered ominously. His energy lost its flow and knotted frequently, and his breathing grew ragged and intermittent alongside it.

Crackle!

The instant he t Kohtan's sword, Imran's shoulder was driven straight down. The pressure that surged through the grip dug into his bones. A shockwave split the ground, and mud erupted upward. The cries of soldiers fighting at the rear cut off all at once.

Then, Imran's vision briefly doubled. The enemy's form blurred, and the strength drained from his grip—he nearly dropped his sword hilt. The warning tone from his neural accelerator rang loudly inside his ears.

Simply pressing blades together gave him the sensation of being absorbed by his opponent.

'I've pushed too hard.'

He reproached himself quietly. At the mont he was most needed, his strength was giving out. Several faces flashed through Imran's mind like lightning.

Adrian, who had offered hints in his blunt manner. Gregor, bound to him by old ties. And Calix, who had resisted with the single-minded resolve to protect a newborn child.

Perhaps this was his last chance.

His chance to beco great.

Far off, beneath the darkness outside the barrier, a silver mass swayed like a wave. A quiet prayer reached closer, brushing against the very bottom of the air.

When Imran pressed blades together for the third ti, Kohtan's words resonated within his head.

[Stake your life, as this body once did.]

This was, in effect, his second ti facing a Legion Commander. Imran instinctively reviewed the previous battle. He had certainly touched Kohtan's core, yet had been unable to shatter it. It had been the sa for him and the sa for Calix. They had been blocked by so invisible veil, unable to advance further.

In that mont, he sensed it intuitively.

That veil was Kohtan's order—his absolute rule. Yet there was no ability that was perfect and without flaw. As it was with Masters, Kohtan too must inevitably pay so price.

'There must be a weakness that cannot help but reveal itself. And that is……'

All at once, Imran's gaze deepened. There was no need to think in complicated terms. Kohtan had proclaid a mighty law, and had spoken of it with equal candor.

The answer was already inside his words. And only two people were capable of carrying out that thod. Calix was far too young to et his end—so soone else had to shoulder it in his place.

At that mont, the sound of the rear line collapsing reached him. While three swords clashed inside the barrier, the outer battlefield had reached its breaking point.

"Kraaaagh!"

The Mountain Rabbits alone could not hold back creatures that refused to die. The left-flank phalanx was breached, and a wave of monsters poured in. The rcenaries thrust out their spears and blades, but were quickly trampled, broken, and buried in the mud. The veteran soldiers of the Silver Shield Legion held out to the last before being swept away.

Sound was swallowed whole—even screams were buried.

The desperate situation shoved at Imran's back.

He drew a short breath. His heart slipped—one beat, two beats—sliding off its rhythm. His energy was on the verge of bottoming out. Then, sothing kindled from deep within him, rising like an ember.

Crackle.

A heat that began in his chest spread along his spine. His blood seed to bubble and seethe, and the skin across his entire body flushed red, like iron being heated to luminescence. The sll of burning flesh sizzled from where his palm t the sword grip.

Like moisture spreading through dry sand, white light surged upward.

[Energy Depletion Imminent, Vital Force Exhaustion Warning]

The neural accelerator's alarm echoed, but Imran paid it no attention. The heat and the pain were trivial factors. He was burning his own life force and using it as fuel. With every exhale, smoke drifted from his lips, and each heartbeat lifted his sternum with its force.

Then the light flowing from Imran's body collided with Kohtan's darkness. The extre of perfect extinguishing—a power that created not fla but silence, not explosion but void.

Yet Kohtan did not retreat. He had not simply swung a sword. His very existence was the rule itself, and his darkness rejected not only Imran's power but every order in the world. The wall of his absolute authority laid itself bare.

Boom!!

Space distorted, and the battlefield's colors vanished without a trace. Sound and light—even the twisted passage of ti itself—lost all regularity and broke completely apart.

All that remained in that narrow space was the trajectory of three blades, thrust out by three people. Chaos and darkness and white light intertwined, giving birth to an enormous shockwave.

***

Calix witnessed the light.

It was a miraculous ray of light, born from Imran's will. Yet he sensed intuitively that it would not last long. It was a fla that would dim soday.

'I'm at my limit too.'

In truth, the state of Calix's own body was not good either. His Divinity had been exhausted long ago, and his Chaos had reached its floor as well. His energy reserves still had so room, but only darkness filled them entirely.

With every labored breath, it felt as though his ribs might split apart, and his heartbeat was irregular—as if it might stop at any mont.

To make matters worse, the outer line was on the verge of collapse.

"Gather here!"

"Shields, shields!"

Volga, his face sared with blood, struggled to restore the crumbling phalanx. The standard had broken and sunk into the mud, and the veteran soldiers of the Silver Shield Legion had t their end beneath black droplets raining down from above and below. Even the noble troops who had scattered to find their own way out were being torn to shreds by the tunnel worms.

Every one of those images pointed to the defeat of the allied forces.

Yet the signal had already been sounded.

Calix took in the flow of Imran's energy with his eyes. The pure white force was fracturing into fine pieces, breaking from its course and pouring outward. It was inefficient movent unbefitting a Master—it had gone beyond overexertion into the stage of self-destruction.

'He has made his decision.'

They had not shared their thoughts with one another, but they had looked upon the sa goal.

Their purpose was one and only one.

To shatter Kohtan's rule and destroy his core.

Boom!

Calix moved his feet. His ears had gone muffled from successive explosions, and the sensation in his fingertips had long since grown faint. Even so, he pressed boldly forward and t the enemy's blade.

Crack!!

The powerful impact buckled his knees. Had Imran not swung his sword to help, he would have been driven back in an instant. He had by now adapted to Kohtan's swordsmanship, yet was still being overpowered in sheer strength. Simply touching the enemy's weapon sent the energy within his body into turmoil.

Calix gritted his teeth.

If he fell back now, everything was over. He cast aside doubt and hesitation, threw caution to the wind, and took one more step forward.

Again and again, Kohtan's sword strikes flowed in with fluid grace. His shoulder pauldron was sliced away, leaving a numbing paralysis behind. The Chaos rising from Calix's core, the heat radiating across his entire body, even the rhythm of his breathing—all of it broke apart.

[Muscle Rupture Warning]

He scattered the warning into empty air. While Imran's flash of light held back the darkness, he twisted at the waist and drove into the enemy's flank.

And then, amid the exchange of blade strikes, darkness t darkness. The greater portion had Kohtan absorbing his—but a part of it beca the reverse as well.

[Core Instability Warning]

[Absorbing Dark Energy]

In that mont, Calix stepped into the realm of the unconscious. In the midst of a fierce exchange of blows, a single question brushed across his mind.

Where does the limit of a human being lie?

Hanging from the edge of a cliff, all the agonizing questions he had wrestled with beca worthless things. Just then, a faint light seeped out from the necklace at his chest. It was the power of Minebris, The Enveloping One. That force—closer to magic than to Divinity—did not directly aid its bearer, but called upon sothing else instead.

Sss-ttttt.

A faint vibration that began from sowhere far away. Ripples that might have been buried in the noise of battle rode in on the sound of wind sighing through the air.

At the outer edge of the battlefield, the man who had been supporting Zahira stopped dead.

"Volga? Why……"

"Reinforcents, reinforcents have arrived!!"

Thick fingers pointed toward the horizon. Thousands of cavalry stirred a cloud of dust as they approached from far off. Yet that aid arrived larger and faster than what the eye could see.

Whoosh.

Following a single gust of wind, the black ichor at the edges of the barrier shuddered violently. The breath of the world, sealed away by Kohtan's order, began to move once more—strand by strand.

Calix recognized the true nature of that power imdiately.

The Pointing One, Yelayen, had co.

The magical wind drove into the hairline cracks the two n had created and widened the path. In its wake, the silver army's chorus settled in low and deep, and the Kriya Order's prayers flowed in like a river.

In an instant, Calix's vision opened wide. As though soone had wrenched him out by force, he returned from the unconscious into a world of cool, lucid light.

No—it had not been the unconscious. Brief as it was, he had set foot in the world of shadows.

"Now."

Calix whispered to himself. He did not know who the words were ant for. Only his body responded first.

His core greedily drew in the Divinity pouring in from outside. The darkness did not cancel one another out but instead fused together into one. The weight of the sword in his hand lightened for a fleeting instant, then settled back down with depth and gravity. The beating of his heart was resonating with the blade.

Thud, thud, thud—

Kohtan's slash ca flying in at that very mont, yet it glanced off by half a beat. The trajectories of the swords tangled and sparks flew, but he was driven back no longer.

By now, Calix's core was filled to the brim with Chaos.

And he had finished preparing to open the path.