Chapter 211
Each of his steps was a violation of that darkness's personal space, an attempt to pierce the projection of a wounded soul and drag Aldraya's true human core back to the surface.
He struggled to regulate his breathing, even though the air he inhaled felt saturated with metallic stings and sorrow given physical form.
'Direct attack.'
Buuuk!
Before reason could process the danger signal, Ilux's body had already moved, driven by reflexes fueled by pure adrenaline.
He was no longer stepping forward, but throwing himself ahead, his body dipping low until it nearly brushed the cold ground, then rolling swiftly away from the spot where he had been standing.
All of it happened in a fraction of a second, propelled by survival instinct whispering of mortal peril.
From Aldraya's pulsating, formless back, not one or two, but fifty dense spheres of bleak silvery energy shot forth, identical to the mist surrounding her.
They left brief trails of light in the air, like a miniature meteor shower meant to erase him from existence.
The detonation that followed was not merely a burst of sound, but a violent shock that slammed into the entire area.
The ground trembled, debris scattered, and shockwaves spread with destructive force.
The impact was so overwhelming that Ilux, who had just completed his roll and was still low to the ground, was shoved forward a step by invisible pressure.
His balance nearly failed, yet his feet instinctively clawed into the earth, struggling to remain upright amid the storm of energy he was evading.
The missed spheres struck the surrounding area, exploding violently and carving small craters while thickening the cloud of dust and silvery particles in the air.
"If you want to talk, why do you choose an attack as your answer?"
Fuuuuuuuhhh!
'She is still silent.
There is no other choice.'
Though his chest burned with the heat of that sudden assault, Ilux stubbornly compressed all surging emotions into a single cold point at the center of his awareness.
His voice carried across the distance filled with silvery dust.
Not as a shout of anger, but in a flat tone heavy with unresolved questions.
He demanded the meaning behind all of his teacher's actions, a final attempt to reach the remnants of humanity that might still be hidden behind that horrific form.
Yet the question was not an invitation to continue the dialogue.
It was a marker of transition.
The moment the last word left his lips, his body was already moving.
Three quick, measured steps backward, increasing the distance between himself and the storm named Aldraya.
Each step left a faint pressure mark in the dusty ground, while also setting the rhythm for the next transformation.
Both arms, already shaped like tank cannon barrels, began to hum with an alien hiss, venting hot vapor that strangely carried a piercing cold into the surrounding air.
That contradictory combination of temperatures formed a miniature fog around his elbows and wrists.
Without pause, the barrel on his left arm trembled lightly and fired a projectile meant not to attack, but to defend.
The shot missed by only ten centimeters in front of the tip of his own left foot, embedding itself into the ground with a dull thud.
At the instant it struck the earth, an extraordinary elemental phenomenon was triggered.
From the point of impact, a primordial shield erupted violently.
Pure white ice, gleaming like a shattered crystal sea, formed the first layer, adjacent to dense black fire that emitted no light but instead devoured it.
Deep-gold wind spiraled into whispering patterns of ancient incantations, while at the base, volcanic obsidian pulsed with dark energy as if alive.
And at the apex of the formation, a blazing crimson flare ignited like the core of a newly awakened pulsar, radiating raw and primeval power.
The formation did not stop there.
Moving at a speed surpassing the standard of light itself, the single shield containing five elements replicated, expanded, and stacked.
Ten identical layers, each radiating the same power and strangeness, spread into a semicircular formation before Ilux, forming a wall of defense that was not only physical, but metaphysical, directly facing the threat emanating from Aldraya's increasingly unreadable form.
"The shield is shattered.
That means I have to become the shield myself."
The explosion that followed was not merely an energy release, but a small inversion of reality vomiting its own force outward.
The blast was so violent that the ten newly formed layers of elemental shields shattered not into dust, but into a deadly rain of fragments infused with residual ice, black fire, golden wind, living obsidian, and pulsar energy.
Even more horrifying, the fragments did not scatter randomly.
As if guided by the fury of the explosion itself, they reversed direction and shot at high speed straight toward Ilux, their creator.
Each shard gleamed with its remaining element, forming a storm of lethal projectiles that filled his entire field of vision.
Realizing that the danger he had created was now turning back on him, Ilux moved.
His reflexes cut away all hesitation.
Both arms, still venting remnants of hot-cold vapor, underwent another instant transformation.
The massive tank-cannon forms melted and shrank, their metal gleaming as it elongated and sharpened, until they finally took shape as a pair of blades combining the thickness and power of Western swords with the flexibility and serene lines of a katana.
These swords were not mere steel.
Their blades radiated a cold aura that sliced through the humidity in the air, while their hilts felt alive in his grip.
Then, the dance of evasion began.
Ilux's body, while overall maintaining its static backward position, moved with extraordinary agility in place.
His feet stepped rapidly in tight patterns, his body bending, twisting, and evading with millimeter precision.
As his body avoided the storm, the twin swords in his hands became a blur.
They spun, crossed, slashed, and deflected with such speed that they resembled a protective fan of molten steel.
Every approaching shield fragment—whether frozen with ice crystals, blazing with dark fire, or spinning with golden wind—was cut down, redirected, or shattered into finer particles before it could touch his skin.
Metallic clangs filled the air, sparks and small bursts of elemental energy scattering around him like grim fireworks.
He became the center of his own storm, a calm point sustained by speed, precision, and merciless blades.
"Every drop of blood is the price of survival, and I am not allowed to fall yet."
When the final chime of severed fragments faded and the elemental storm at last subsided, Ilux was still standing.
Technically, he had succeeded.
Not a single large fragment had pierced the insane defense he had displayed.
All of them had been reduced to dust and sparks now drifting slowly around his body, mingling with the bleak silvery mist that refused to dissipate.
The fusion of swords and weapons that had replaced his arms still left traces of freezing aura, yet that success unveiled a painful truth.
His taut body suddenly trembled lightly, a chain reaction from muscles forced to operate beyond normal limits and to withstand countless shockwave pressures.
The pain did not arrive as a single explosion, but like a creeping tide.
It began at a point near his temples, where he had unconsciously been grinding his jaw with enough force to nearly crack his teeth.
Then it spread, crawling into every joint, every tendon, every inch of skin touched by the wild energy blasts and shards he had cut down.
To be continued…