Chapter 212
Although there were no major open wounds, thin red lines began to appear across various parts of his skin, like a map of cracks spreading over porcelain.
From those microscopic fissures, drop by drop, thick crimson blood began to seep out.
The droplets surfaced on his tense forearms, on his cheek grazed by the razor-like golden wind, beneath his ribs where bruising throbbed dully.
Each drop was a silent yet undeniable confession: that the image of perfect defense was an illusion.
He had paid for his survival with internal damage, with ruptured capillaries, and with profound physical strain.
He drew in a deep breath, trying to calm the pounding of his heart, which still thundered like a war drum.
The blood that trickled slowly felt warm, a stark contrast to the cold aura of the swords and the mist surrounding him.
This was a sacrifice he had to accept.
In a battle against a power that had transformed his teacher into a chaotic entity like this, escaping completely unscathed was an impossibility.
That single drop of blood was proof that he was still human, still fragile, despite possessing the ability to turn his arms into weapons and forge shields from five elements.
The pain sharpened his awareness instead, reminding him of the real risks he faced and the price that would continue to be exacted if he remained on this battlefield any longer.
"Is this what you call the example of a teacher, Aldraya?
Answering a student's questions with explosions, wounds, and blood you force me to bear?"
Fuuuuh!
"Forgive."
The sting from the minor wounds was ignored, pushed aside into the darkest corner of his consciousness.
What now filled Ilux's mind was a disappointment far deeper and more piercing than any cut on his skin.
He stared at Aldraya's vague silhouette behind the remnants of elemental dust and the silvery mist, and a bitter question formed in his thoughts.
This question was no longer about logic or the reasons behind the explosion, but about the very core of their relationship, about a bond that should have been sacred.
Is this what a teacher teaches?
Is this form of sacrifice and blind violence a lesson worthy of being given to a student?
In every drop of blood that seeped out, there was the sense of a betrayal of the unspoken promise between instructor and pupil.
Ilux felt that he was no longer facing a mentor, but a catastrophe that happened to wear the face of someone he once respected.
He cast that question forward not with the hope of receiving an answer, but as a declaration and the final stab of a dying respect.
His voice might not have been heard, or it may have drowned within the charged and suffocating silence, but its intent was unmistakable.
He challenged the remnants of Aldraya's humanity, questioning the sanity of an entity that had crossed so many lines.
Yet what returned was neither defense, nor regret, nor an outburst of rage.
What came back was a single word, spoken in a voice that sounded like an echo from an immense emptiness far away, yet at the same time intimate and personal.
'More like the idea of flesh forced into existence, then regretting its own being.'
There was no shockwave pushing outward, no violent gust of wind.
What erupted from Aldraya's body was an energy release in silence, a visual distortion that made the surrounding space seem to tremble and fracture for a moment before settling again.
Ilux, standing opposite her, felt the impact not in his physical body, but inside his mind, like a blunt strike delivered directly to his consciousness.
The next four seconds felt like a compressed eternity.
The formless flesh and mass writhing around Aldraya's silhouette began to move at a horrifying speed, clumping, swelling, and mutating in patterns that defied all biological law.
It was like a forced reassembly, or a torturous rebirth.
Less than a second later, from the heap of rotten flesh pulsing and crawling across the ground, something broke through upward.
It did not thrust violently, but instead rose with inverted gravity, slow and commanding.
It was Wu.
The sacred sword that had long been an inseparable part of Aldraya, her staff of piety and the symbol of her unshakable faith.
Yet the sword that emerged now was nothing like the Wu Ilux recognized.
Its holy light, once gentle and soothing, now flickered erratically, like a candle flame on the verge of extinction under an unseen wind.
Along the length of the blade, fissures of light appeared, blinking as if the sword itself were fighting a desperate internal war against the dark corruption trying to consume it from within.
The details were far more disturbing than mere dimmed light.
Wu's blade was now wrapped in a thin layer resembling living tissue, yet it was neither flesh nor skin.
It looked more like the concept of flesh that had failed to find form, a constantly shifting mental protoplasm.
Fine fibers like veins surfaced briefly only to vanish again, as though rejecting their own existence.
At times, faint pulses ran across the steel, but they carried no rhythm and did not originate from any known life.
The stench accompanying it stabbed at Ilux's nose, a mixture of heated metal and cold flesh that was not decaying, but instead resembled the scent of burned emptiness, a wounded void.
Most alarming of all was the metaphysical sensation it emitted.
Ilux was not the only one who would feel it.
Anyone, even an ordinary person, would sense a deep, indefinable discomfort near this sword.
It was not ordinary fear or disgust, but the feeling that something fundamental within them was shifting, rocking loose from its foundation.
For Ilux, the sensation was more personal and more horrifying.
He seemed to hear a faint voice calling his name from an immeasurable distance, a voice not coming from Wu, but echoing as if from a lost version of himself.
And when his eyes fixed upon the sword, he felt an unoriginated gaze looking back, a foreign awareness trapped within the cursed metal.
Wu was no longer a weapon.
It had become a monument to downfall, a sacred relic defiled to its core, now standing before him as the final threat.
"Are you truly going to use that corrupted Wu against me?
To face your own student, the student you accepted and taught by the direct order of the Head of Star Academy?"
"Imitation."
Duuufffh!
Hsssssh!!
'This space refuses to be recognized.
Like fragments of a shattered world, where distant things feel unnervingly close and clinging, while what is truly near vanishes without a trace.'
The domain was not born with thunder or an explosion of light, but grew silently like a bruise on the surface of reality.
Before Ilux could process his last hanging question, the world around him began to melt.
The walls of space did not collapse into rubble, but into fragments of unordered concepts.
The floor beneath his feet lost its consistency, alternating between the cold texture of cracked marble and the sensation of pale, lifeless flesh, before finally dissolving into a frozen expanse of shadow.
Distance became a traitor.
A far horizon suddenly folded inward to within arm's reach, only to blink and vanish, replaced by a dimensionless vacuum.
This was a space that refused definition, an empty canvas that was simultaneously filled with every possible form that had failed to materialize.
Light hung without any visible source, pulsing in a broken, unfamiliar rhythm, as though illuminated by a dying consciousness.
To be continued…