Chapter 234
His movement was not dramatic, nor was it fast, but measured and deliberate.
He did not fully draw the sword, lifting the blade only seven percent out of its sheath.
It was a minimalist gesture, almost like someone parting a curtain just enough to peek through, or more precisely, like a specialist who required only minimal exposure of his tool to perform the task.
Yet from that narrow opening, something extraordinary was triggered.
Not a single explosion of energy, but a simultaneous manifestation.
Fifty-four pale blue lines of light—an unfeeling, cold dawn-blue—appeared in the air around Theo.
At first, they seemed randomly scattered, like directionless miniature flashes of lightning, forming a pulsating web of light within the dim cave.
However, that disorder was an illusion, merely a brief gathering phase.
In an instant, all of the light-lines shifted direction with painful speed.
They spun, veered, and like a school of piranhas scenting blood, ferociously converged toward a single focal point.
That focal point was not Ilux's body as a whole, but a specific limb.
Theo's strike was not meant to kill instantly, but to cripple, to teach, and to stop.
Those fifty-four slashes of light fused into a single, brutally focused attack, smashing into Ilux's body—perhaps the arm that controlled the elements, or the leg that supported him.
The impact was immediate and severe.
A harsh sound rang out, like flesh and bone being torn apart by an energy saw, followed by a heavy spray of blood.
The wound was not a shallow cut.
It was deep, ragged, and unmistakably serious.
Blood splattered, staining the dust on the cave floor and perhaps some of Aldraya's discarded clothing as well.
The sudden, searing pain must have surged through Ilux's entire nervous system, shattering his concentration and transforming his rage into shock and tangible physical agony.
"This has gone too far.
The fact that we know each other's true nature should have been enough for you to understand."
Blood poured freely from the many open wounds on Ilux's body.
At his arm, where muscles should have been channeling elemental power, the flesh was now torn apart.
At his shoulder, his cheek, beneath a chin that might once have been held high with arrogance, and around his thigh and the back of his torso—each wound gaped like a grinning mouth, wide open and vomiting life in a red stark against his pale skin.
The pain was no longer abstract.
It became a wild electrical pulse ravaging every nerve, turning irritation into boiling suffering.
Amid the flood of pain and shock, Ilux's base instincts surfaced.
He clenched his teeth, the grinding sound echoing sharply in the cave's sudden silence, now filled only by the hiss of his own breath and the drip of blood striking the ground.
From between clenched teeth and ragged breaths, his voice emerged, hoarse and laced with toxic disbelief.
He stared at Theo, eyes wide with a mixture of anger, confusion, and a grotesquely twisted moral claim.
In a mind scrambled by pain and wounded pride, he constructed a horrifying equation.
He equated himself with Theo.
He accused Theo of being a "fellow sexual criminal," a projection born from his own darkness, as if Theo's precise and ruthless action shared the same motive as his own depraved intent toward Aldraya.
To Ilux, Theo's violence was not a response to his actions, nor an assertion of a larger plan, but an outrageous form of hypocrisy.
His words were the victim's scream of an abuser, a desperate inversion of the narrative.
"Crossing the line," he spat the phrase, as if Theo were the one who had gone too far, not the one who had just attempted the most intimate violation and deepest humiliation.
Within this distorted logic, Theo's physical attack was deemed more depraved than his own intent to violate and kill, because in Ilux's mind, his actions against Aldraya at least had a reason—punishment for the destruction of the academy.
Theo's strike, by contrast, was viewed as violence without cause, or worse, violence born of false morality.
He failed—or refused—to see that the blood now flowing from him was the direct consequence of the blood of corrupt intent that had already pooled within his own mind.
"Fifty percent. Half of Aldraya's beauty, half of everything that makes him valuable in your eyes.
Of course, I'm not asking for moral approval, I'm offering compensation.
The rest? It stays mine, entirely. That's a non-negotiable condition."
The burning pain and ceaseless bleeding left no room for remorse or introspection within Ilux.
Instead, they sharpened his most basic brutality and cunning.
Amid his physical suffering, his distorted thoughts still circled the object he considered his own, his trophy.
Rather than acknowledging defeat or showing even a trace of mercy, he hurled an offer even fouler than his original intent, as though negotiation were still possible upon this stage of depravity.
With brazen shamelessness, he declared compensation.
His voice may have faltered from pain, but its tone still carried remnants of possessive arrogance.
He offered—framing it as a noble concession—to "give" fifty percent of "Aldraya's bodily beauty" to Theo.
In his diseased mind, Aldraya's limp and wounded body was no longer a living being, but a commodity to be divided, spoils whose ownership could be negotiated.
He would share, he claimed, willingly.
On one condition.
The remaining fifty percent would remain entirely his.
That offer was the pinnacle of his moral degradation.
He not only reduced Aldraya to an object, but also presumed Theo to be a potential accomplice, a "fellow sexual criminal" who might share the same tastes.
"Don't pretend to refuse it. You know yourself that the lust—"
'The more I listen, the more nauseating it becomes.'
Wuufffh!
That rotten offer did not even have time to crystallize in the air before it was answered by an action more decisive than any verbal rejection.
Theo gave Ilux no time to finish his sentence, no chance to elaborate on the obscene bargaining over Aldraya's body.
There was no explosive display of disgust, no shouted anger.
His response was an active silence, a movement that severed the narrative in the most final way possible.
He closed his eyes.
Not because he did not wish to see, but as if to focus completely, to align himself with a rhythm known only to him.
Then, with a speed starkly contrasting his prior stillness, Theo surged forward.
His step was not a blind charge, but a sequence of fluid, calculated motions.
His left and right arms moved, rising and falling not at random, but in precise patterns, forming a choreography that resembled a dance, yet carried lethal danger in every shift.
His entire body followed the flow of those arms, spinning, bending, and stepping with a terrifying elegance.
Every movement appeared efficient and purposeful, as though every muscle and joint were part of a complex machine coming to life.
This dance was not for display.
It was Theo's physical language, a way of positioning himself, perhaps to gather momentum, or to synchronize with the flow of power he commanded.
With eyes closed, he advanced toward Ilux, completely disregarding the obscene offer that had just been made.
"Damn it… my chest—!"
Blasst!!
To be continued…