Chapter 213
The air—if it could even be called that—felt heavy and charged, each breath more like inhaling sedimented meaning than the molecules of life itself.
The sound of Ilux's footsteps or breathing was immediately swallowed by the hungry void, leaving no echo behind, making the silence feel thicker and more oppressive than any clamor could ever be.
In the shifting distance, faint silhouettes seemed to struggle to form memories.
The shadow of a classroom, the skeletal frames of trees, or the outline of a human figure.
Yet they always failed, dissolving into mist or mutating into abstract fragments of flesh before reaching completion, like memories endlessly forgotten and reconstructed incorrectly.
Amid this creeping distortion, the final remnants of the Aldraya of old still glimmered faintly.
Cracks of golden light—warm and familiar—were scattered through the air like fractured porcelain, struggling to keep this space from plunging entirely into formless chaos.
That light was both a marker and a prison, a bitter admission that beneath all this darkness and deviation, the core of the teacher's faith and goodness still existed, buried and tortured.
Ilux stood at the center of it all, the only point that remained solid within a reality that flowed like liquid.
Blood from his wounds continued to drip slowly, each drop falling onto the ever-shifting illusory floor, becoming the sole marker of time and physical presence within a domain that rejected all certainty.
And at the heart of everything, the wounded Wu continued to float, its pained pulse synchronized with the wounded heartbeat of the domain itself.
"Are you truly serious about venting your wrath like this, my teacher?
If there is a reason behind all this madness, a reason I have yet to understand, tell me now—before we go too far."
Ilux absorbed every distortion and every strand of madness displayed within the formless domain through his cold eyes.
The arm that had transformed into a weapon responded with silent defensive instinct.
His left arm maintained the form of a blade—part sword, part katana—emanating a freezing aura, poised to strike, while his right arm underwent further metamorphosis.
Metal and technology flowed beneath his artificial skin like living liquid, assembling themselves into a marvel of hybrid weaponry.
From shoulder to wrist, his right arm formed a monument to future warfare.
At the shoulder, sleek and lethal fighter-jet missiles locked into embedded launchers, their red sensors blinking slowly like a predator's eyes.
Along the forearm, the massive, cold-lined barrel of a tank cannon fused seamlessly with a laser launch system composed of ten pale blue crystalline nodes, all connected to a low-humming energy core within the elbow joint.
The entire arm was a perfect fusion of conventional artillery's destructive force and the lethal precision of energy-based technology, a silent threat contained within a single form.
The transformation was not merely physical preparation, but a silent question engraved in metal.
Ilux let his weapon's transformation speak in place of words, his sharp gaze piercing through the trembling fog of the domain, searching for the remnants of his teacher's face behind the erratically pulsing silhouette.
His held breath condensed in the charged, frigid air.
He prepared himself for two extreme possibilities.
An impossible final conversation, or the opening movement of an unavoidable dance of total annihilation.
His two dissimilar arms—one elegant and lethal like a samurai's blade, the other heavy and laden with the promise of technological devastation—embodied the two sides of his inner conflict.
The side that still hoped, and the side that was ready for the end.
'This is not a warning, but a judgment.'
Aldraya vanished from the ground in an instant—not with a hiss or an explosion, but like a thought shifting from one corner of consciousness to another.
She reappeared at a great height, hovering within the formless void of the domain, becoming a dark, pulsating focal point.
Her jet-black hair, flowing like a river of night, suddenly billowed in slow, theatrical motion, despite the absence of any wind.
Each strand moved with its own rhythm, ordered and filled with intricate, beautiful patterns, as if pulled by unseen hands from another dimension.
Below her, Ilux watched the horrifying dance of that hair, realizing that its elegance was a sign of absolute and terrifying control over the chaos she embodied.
The rotting flesh that writhed endlessly across Aldraya's body began to resonate with the motion of her hair.
From that mass of distorted organic matter, dense clumps broke free.
They were not mere debris, but transformed midair into hundreds, thousands, then trillions of solid cores glowing with dim light, resembling a suddenly born meteor belt orbiting the teacher who had lost her form.
The artificial sky within the domain was instantly filled with a sickly rain of stars, spinning in a deadly orbit around Aldraya, who had become the black sun of this newly born solar system.
In a single blink of Aldraya's eye, an unspoken command was issued.
All the meteors formed from flesh and suffering halted their rotation instantly, then reversed course.
They descended.
Their speed surpassed conventional physics, surpassing even the travel of light itself within this distorted space.
There were no trails of light, no guiding streaks through the air.
One moment they clustered in the sky; the next, they were already mere meters above Ilux's head, filling his entire field of vision with solid shadows of impending destruction.
Time compressed, then stretched, granting Ilux a final moment to comprehend the magnitude of the catastrophe unleashed upon him.
'Teacher or not, I cannot allow you to sink this far, Aldraya.'
Ilux was no statue meant to stand idle and await destruction.
Amid the meteor storm descending like judgment from a wrathful sky, his survival instinct screamed louder than any reverence or dogma.
Even with his teacher's reputation as the unmatched figure of the Star Academy, a deeper resolve burned within his chest.
A compulsion to save—or at the very least, to understand and end the suffering that had transformed Aldraya into this pulsating calamity.
Blind destruction was not the answer, and Ilux refused to become a passive victim in the tragedy of his own teacher's downfall.
With an explosive surge of power from his muscular calves, he launched himself upward, defying the flow of illusory gravity and the crushing pressure around him.
His body then spun through the air, a human top driven by the momentum of his initial leap.
The movement was not a random rotation, but a controlled spiral that fused acrobatic agility with precise military calculation.
He spun from the apex of his jump, descending rapidly while forming a defensive vortex with the blade on his left arm, then used that rotational energy to shoot off in a slightly altered direction.
This entire complex sequence unfolded within a gap where time did not exist, beyond normal perception, achievable only by reflexes forged in the harshest battlefields.
And then, the foothold arrived.
In the midst of his tornado-like spin, his sturdy foot landed—not on ground long since erased, but on the rough, glowing surface of one of the meteors themselves.
The celestial rock, forged from corrupted flesh and materialized rage, became his temporary footing.
He stood upright atop the very object meant to annihilate him, a gesture both symbolic and tactical that openly defied the logic of Aldraya's assault.
To be continued…