Chapter 235
Ilux, still burdened by his bleeding wounds and staggering under the weight of his own vile offer that had been flatly rejected, struggled to find his footing amid the chaos that was becoming increasingly unreadable.
He responded, his voice sounding more like a confused lament than a powerful threat.
He stated that what Theo was doing now was "utterly illogical."
For Ilux, the logic he understood was the logic of power, desire, and bargaining.
This silent dance with closed eyes, which ignored words and moved straight into motion, did not fit within his framework of thought.
It was a foreign language, a threat he could not classify, and it only made him more frustrated and unprepared.
As Theo continued to approach, the movements that initially resembled a ritualistic dance began to change.
Theo's two arms, which had been rising and falling gracefully, suddenly began spinning at high speed, like wheels or propellers torn loose from an unseen machine.
The movement remained perfectly integrated with his steps and the continuous rotation of his body, creating a silhouette that was both confusing and deadly.
Theo kept his eyes closed, as if the entire surrounding reality was being mapped through senses other than sight, through the rhythm of motion itself.
Ilux, unprepared, could not find any pattern to block or counterattack.
His usual survival instincts, which relied on elemental power and raw fury, proved useless against an approach so fluid and unpredictable.
Instead of attacking, he retreated.
His backward steps were awkward, staggering under the weight of his injuries and confusion.
And in the midst of that retreat, a strange sensation struck him.
Something was wrong in his chest.
He checked, and only then realized that there, near his heart, a new slashing wound had opened.
The wound was deep and clean, as if made by an extremely sharp scalpel, yet he saw no sword or weapon in Theo's hands.
The slash had come from Theo's own hands—or more precisely, from the movement of Theo's hands as they "danced."
As those arms spun like wheels, the fingertips, the palms, even the air cut by the speed of the motion had transformed into invisible, lethal blades.
"Don't… don't touch my abdomen—"
Blaaam!!
Inside the cave that trembled with wounded fury, five elemental flares shot forth like manifested vengeance.
White shards of ice shattered and danced beside black fire that greedily devoured every trace of light.
Golden wind whispered annihilating mantras, while obsidian stone rumbled up from the belly of an enraged earth.
At the peak of that uproar, a red pulsar burst—long dormant—awakened and tore through reality with ancient heat.
Yet all of it appeared merely as a chaotic painting to Theo, whose body shifted to the right with a single fluid, simple step, avoiding every elemental onslaught like wind slipping through a rain dance.
His movement was unhurried, merely a precise displacement, leaving the storm of destruction to erupt and fade behind his upright back.
Ilux's arms, still radiating remnants of wild energy, spun violently from top to bottom in deadly patterns driven by desperation.
Each rotation was a final attempt to seize a victory that had already slipped away, cutting down the distance between hunter and hunted.
But within that increasingly confined space, Theo no longer evaded.
His two arms, which had been resting calmly, suddenly hardened—its transformation subtle yet absolute—forming an edge that was invisible yet felt more real than any steel.
A perfect fusion of a crushing greatsword and the separating sharpness of a samurai blade.
The cave's dim light seemed to split along that line of resolve.
Then, with a motion closer to calligraphic cutting than combat, he swept it through.
Ilux's left arm separated from his body in a clean, almost elegant line.
The severed limb was flung into the air, spinning slowly, forming a red parabola that sprinkled its last traces of life onto the dusty ground.
The motion did not stop.
While the fragment was still airborne, Theo's hand and left arm—now transformed into a blade of death—had already continued their orbit, thrusting forward.
"No… no, this is wrong.
I'm retreating… I'm retreating first—damn it—!"
Ilux felt a cold reality pierce his bones, far sharper than the physical pain tearing through his chest.
This had gone beyond a mere battle.
It was a systematic dismantling of everything he relied upon.
His most primal survival instincts screamed inside his head.
His body moved faster than thought, hurling itself backward with a desperate explosion of energy, leaving behind a trembling trail of fearful aura in the air.
His breath came in ragged gasps, becoming the only rhythm in his ringing ears, each inhale an effort to fill lungs that felt besieged by an ever-expanding void.
His eyes, widened by uncontrollable horror, locked onto the stump of his severed left arm.
There, at the wound that should have been sealed by his specialized healing skill, there was only a silent, rejecting emptiness.
His weaponized healing skill, the trump card that had always revived him from the brink of defeat, was now powerless.
The healing light that usually radiated like the dew of life, when applied to the wound, simply faded and burst like a soap bubble touching thorns.
There was no regeneration, no closure.
Only a clean, cold, permanent cut, signifying that the very concept of "healing" had been erased from the reality surrounding the wound.
"Dual five-element staves—synchronize, and hold!!"
Yet distance and speed proved to be nothing more than illusions within the space dominated by Theo.
Before the relief of retreat could sink in, before Ilux's heartbeat could find a new rhythm, a presence had already perfected its position behind the former disciple.
Theo appeared like a shadow crystallized from the air itself, without sound, without a ripple of warning.
His presence was not an arrival, but a certainty that suddenly became real.
The dance of death began again.
Theo's two arms moved, forming intricate geometric patterns in the air.
Up, down, left, right.
Each motion was a preparatory stroke, an invisible calligraphy that primed the canvas of space for the final mark.
Its rhythm was mesmerizing yet terrifying, a musicless ritual preceding sacrifice.
Then the pattern changed.
The arms that had been painting the air suddenly transformed into two rapidly spinning wheels, turning his limbs into mechanical vortices radiating pure danger.
The rotation was perfect, stable, and silent, producing a thin hiss that sliced through the tension.
Ilux, with instincts sharpened by sheer panic, spun around to face the unexpected threat.
From somewhere deep within him, two short staves appeared in his grip.
Each was roughly half the length of a shattered Crusade spear, light in weight yet containing concentrated ferocity.
Across their surfaces, five elements flared and churned wildly.
Fire, ice, wind, stone, and dying starlight all spun like the cores of miniature galaxies within his grasp.
With a strangled scream caught in his throat, he crossed the two staves, attempting to block the whirring wheels, hoping the chaotic elemental energy he wove could disrupt the lethal precision bearing down on him.
"A mad, feral dance—yet damn it, it's terrifyingly neat!"
Despite repeatedly parrying, even managing to force Theo back momentarily, that small victory was nothing more than a mirage in a desert of despair.
Theo granted only a brief pause, a short breath within his symphony of violence, before deciding to advance once more.
To be continued…