Chapter 301: Chapter 301

Vaeliyan was the first to move in this new rhythm. The tension between them hung like a stretched wire, humming in the air. He watched Tallo preparing, the man letting himself fall deeper into whatever pattern his blade demanded. The Halo of Blades, that long, Black steel that drank in light rather than reflected it, seemed almost sentient in his hand. Every breath Tallo took fed into that rhythm. His stance was precise, patient, maddeningly calm. A duel of focus before the violence even began. Vaeliyan could feel it, the rhythm behind the blade, the invisible tempo that defined Tallo’s world. But the weapon itself wasn’t dangerous enough to trigger his branching paths, not yet deadly enough to harm him. So, he let him prepare. Let him shape his pattern. Let him believe he was still in control.

Then Vaeliyan changed everything.

He simply shifted the rhythm the way a musician might alter the beat. He could have spread his pressure field outward as before, a wave of condensed force strong enough to shatter armor, but Tallo had survived that trick once already, before they’d even faced each other in truth. So instead, Vaeliyan compressed the field tight around himself, refining it into a dense core where he could direct it with absolute precision. Every molecule of air within that zone became a weapon waiting to be used, every breath a potential strike.

There was no build-up, no transition, no hint of motion before impact. He went from stillness to full velocity and then reversed it in the same breath, forward and back, instant and absolute. The ground split beneath him, fragments lifting from the force that passed through his body as he became a blur of pressure and intent. His right truncheon came down like judgment, all momentum, all weight, focused into one perfect strike.

And somehow, impossibly, Tallo reacted.

It burst toward him before the blow landed, rolling out like breath from a furnace. Reality split. Branching Path triggered, freezing the instant between thought and reaction. Within that suspended second, Vaeliyan saw it clearly: the shimmer of nanites forming a defensive layer around Tallo, air molecules igniting, vibrating, accelerating outward. A burst of burning vapor that cushioned impact and seared anything close enough to touch. The precision of it was staggering. A reactive defense executed at the molecular level. He had to admit, it was beautiful. Terrifying, but beautiful.

So he decided to test its limits.

One projection of himself, the Echo, drove straight through the inferno, embracing the suicidal strike without hesitation. The other, the real Vaeliyan, shifted instantly backward, maintaining perfect momentum in the opposite direction. The Echo swung with all the stored fury of Infinite Sovereign and triggering Aftershock in the same motion, compressing momentum into one impossible arc. The strike broke the sound barrier; a crack of thunder wrapped around a scream of metal.

Tallo was already moving before the world caught up. His body twisted through the plume of vapor, eyes alive, the black steel blade turning in his hand as if weightless. The Echo struck empty air, collapsing into a storm of glowing dust that scattered like fireflies. Steam flared again, cloaking the space between them, the smell of heat and metal sharp enough to sting.

For the first time, Tallo smiled. Not the polite, calculating grin of a duelist performing for an audience, but a real one. Bright. Joyous. Alive. He looked like someone who had waited years for this exact moment.

“So, you have been holding back,” Tallo said, voice smooth and sharp all at once. “How exciting.” He smiled wider, finally catching on that he wasn’t the only predator in the room.

The black steel of his blade extended, vibrating with a low hum that crawled through the air. Heat pulsed through its length, red veins racing along its surface as the nanites inside reached ignition. It was no longer metal, it was something alive, something that wanted to burn the world around it. Vaeliyan didn’t need prediction or instinct to understand. If that thing touched him, armor or not, it would carve straight through him. The air itself seemed to recoil as the two of them met again, one wielding pressure, the other wielding fire, both locked in a rhythm no one else could hear.

As the blazing black steel sword passed mere millimeters from Vaeliyan's face, he could feel the hate radiating from it like a physical heat. Every inch of that weapon screamed purpose. He brought his left truncheon up into the blade, locking it just long enough to feel the vibration thrumming through his arms, the pressure of the strike pushing against his strength. His right hand came around in a brutal side swing, an attempt to impale Tallo before the man could adjust. But the blow met nothing. Empty space. The air carried a ghost of motion where Tallo had been. He had already slipped backward, body weight shifting with liquid precision, as if gravity itself had forgotten him.

Vaeliyan saw it clearly now. Tallo wasn’t reacting with strategy or foresight. There was no conscious decision behind his movement. He wasn’t even looking at Vaeliyan anymore. His eyes were unfocused, gazing through him as if the fight existed somewhere deeper than sight. His body moved on a level beyond intent, pure, unfiltered instinct. Every muscle fiber knew exactly what to do without waiting for a single thought. Where Vaeliyan turned reflex into a weaponized calculation, Tallo turned instinct into art. His muscles didn’t hesitate or pause. They simply acted, guided by an animal sense of survival honed into perfection. Watching him fight felt like watching a mirror version of himself, one that had abandoned control entirely and embraced chaos. If all of Vaeliyan’s choices were reversed, if logic had been replaced by raw instinct, then he would have been Tallo.

And he loved it. Every damn second of it. Every near miss, every grazing strike, every heartbeat where death brushed close enough to taste the iron in the air. This was what he lived for. This was the kind of fight that made every battle before it feel like rehearsal.

The entire exchange had lasted maybe fifteen seconds, but in that span of time, they’d learned more about each other than most soldiers ever did in a lifetime of war. It wasn’t combat anymore. It was communication through motion, a conversation written in violence. Every attack carried a question. Every counter was an answer. Every dodge, every shift, a statement in its own language of intent.

Tallo retreated half a step, and the Halo of Blades responded instantly, its orbiting weapons tightening into formation before snapping forward in a deadly volley. Vaeliyan swung up to intercept, striking one out of the air, only for the truncheon to pass clean through it as though through a phantom. The blade dissolved into a shimmer of heat before reforming near Tallo’s flank, already poised for another strike. The bastard could sense the danger of his own weapons and recalled them mid-flight before they could be turned against him. It was elegance wrapped in malice.

Vaeliyan’s pulse thundered through his chest. Every part of him hungered for that precision, that maddening, impossible rhythm. He wanted Tallo’s skill the same way Tallo seemed to crave his own. They were reflections of each other’s flaws, opposites that fit too perfectly together. Both of them understood that only one would walk away, and both of them wanted to see which of them the world would allow to remain.

The predators circled. Every exchange was faster, sharper, and more violent than the last. Pressure met fire. Force collided with instinct. Each violent burst of motion seemed to cancel the other out. Sparks of heat flared from clashing strikes, and the air around them began to warp from the intensity of their movements. Every strike found a counter; every advantage was stolen back an instant later. Neither could find the flaw. Neither gave ground for more than a heartbeat.

Vaeliyan unleashed Razor Sand, the storm of nanites bursting outward in a sweeping surge that tore grooves into the ground. The metallic storm screamed toward Tallo, hissing as it cut through the air. But Tallo was already moving, his arm raised as a wall of molten red nanites erupted between them. The Scarlet Field caught the sandstorm in full force, burning it mid-flight and hurling it back in a cloud of superheated particles. Vaeliyan caught the storm with his pressure field before it could tear through him, the energy hissing out harmlessly around his body. The air between them shimmered with heat, light bending under the pressure of their collision.

Nothing worked. Nothing surprised the other. It was a stalemate that neither hated. In truth, they both reveled in it.

They circled again, weapons raised but eyes alive with something brighter than anger. It wasn’t rage that drove them. It was recognition. Understanding. The kind that only killers could share. If Tallo could have seen Vaeliyan’s face beneath the helm, he would have seen his own grin staring back at him, wide and manic, a reflection of exhilaration. Two predators locked in perfect balance, each chasing the other’s shadow, and neither willing to yield. Every movement promised escalation. Every second whispered that the next moment could be their last.

Tallo and Vaeliyan clashed again and again, their movements too fast for the eye to follow, the air shuddering around them as streaks of gold, silver, and black tangled like living lightning. Sparks carved burning lines through the haze while heat and pressure collided in rippling waves. Between strikes, they spoke, their voices cutting through the roar of destruction like brief flashes of humanity in the inferno. Compliments flowed between them, half-taunts, half-recognition, every word proof that they understood one another better through combat than any conversation could allow.

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“Good counter,” Tallo called out, his tone light but edged with exhilaration, his grin wide and feral.

“Better recovery,” Vaeliyan replied, his breath even but excited, twisting aside from another arc of blade fire that threatened to carve through his armor.

They spoke as killers do, without malice, without hesitation. Every word was a form of respect. Every motion, an answer. To civilians, it looked like madness. To them, it was honesty.

The mech pilots, and researchers watched in rising horror. The fight had long since surpassed anything measurable. Structural damage reports screamed across their consoles: floors splitting open, wall plating warped, ceiling braces snapping like brittle bones. The power grid failed in bursts as the lights strobed erratically, throwing the room into alternating moments of darkness and searing glare. The observers could no longer tell if they were witnessing a battle or a ritual.

Each strike was lethal. Each counter could have ended the fight. But neither man seemed intent on ending it. They moved as if they were dancing, circling in an endless rhythm that grew more refined with every heartbeat. Every brush with death brought laughter. Every near-fatal exchange pulled a grin from both of them.

They accelerated again, faster than even the augmented cameras of the mechs could track. To those watchers, the feed degraded into a blur of colors and light distortion. Only the aftermath was visible, the shockwaves rippling outward from their collisions. Gold and black for Vaeliyan, silver and black for Tallo. The colors crossed and clashed in streaks that bent the world around them.

Pressure met flame. Echo met ghost. The room convulsed beneath their power. Every collision sent debris spiraling through the air, pieces of steel twisted into molten ribbons by the heat. Each motion carved deeper into the building’s structure. Walls folded inward, ceiling supports dropped like felled trees. Still, they did not stop.

Vaeliyan’s truncheons slammed into Tallo’s blade, the resulting explosion of kinetic force blowing both men apart, only for them to re-engage a heartbeat later. Their weapons blurred into afterimages, strikes overlapping in impossible rhythm. Updates are released by novel fire.net

They were equals, locked in a perfect loop. Each hit that should have killed instead became another invitation to continue. Both were hunting for the same impossible thing, a way around the other’s defense, a single break in the flawless rhythm. But there was none. For every trick Vaeliyan had, Tallo had an answer. For every strike Tallo unleashed, Vaeliyan was already there to stop it.

The heat from Tallo’s blade seared the ground, leaving glowing scars that spread like veins of magma, while Vaeliyan’s compressed pressure warped the air, creating invisible barriers that exploded outward with each swing. Every time they collided, reality itself seemed to buckle under the weight of their combined force.

The onlookers could do nothing but stare as the battlefield dissolved around the two of them. Entire support walls collapsed. A secondary reactor line ruptured and bled white light into the room. The duelists ignored it all. They were far beyond strategy, far beyond consequence. Each of them hunted the other for the same reason: to find the limit of their own existence.

And yet, the rhythm grew heavier. The walls groaned under the strain. The temperature spiked past safe limits. Sparks turned to flame, flame to smoke, smoke to glowing mist. Through it all, their laughter continued, two predators in perfect understanding, too enthralled to notice the world breaking beneath them.

“You’re enjoying this too much,” Vaeliyan said, voice half a growl, half a grin.

Tallo laughed, blade spinning once as he met the next strike. “Wouldn’t you? It’s been so very long since I’ve had someone truly match me on this level.”

“I can tell there’s still more to you. You’re deadly now, but I can only imagine what you’d be like in your mech.” Vaeliyan said, forcing Tallo back a step with a burst of pressure.

Tallo’s smile widened. “Oh, you should see her. She’s glorious. My Antoinette is an engine of beautiful destruction. Her frame sings when I let her loose.” He ducked under another swing, countering with a flash of red light. “Though, I don’t get to take her out as myself. I have to pretend to be someone else when I take her out for a ride.”

“I would love to clash with you again,” Tallo continued, his tone softening with something that almost resembled sincerity. “With my lovely Antoinette if you somehow survive.”

Vaeliyan caught Tallo’s blade against his truncheon’s spike, pressure bending around him in a halo of distortion. “I would love to take you up on that offer. You know… if you somehow manage to make it out of this alive.”

The rest of the Complaints Department grew uneasy as the fight dragged on and the facility groaned like a wounded beast. Each impact sent tremors through the structure, shaking loose panels and scattering debris across the room. None of them had ever expected to meet someone who could match Vaeliyan’s level out in the wild, let alone to stand by while he treated the duel like a private exhibition. Their voices stayed low, tense, carrying beneath the hum of failing systems. A plan began to take shape on how to deal with the mech pilots and the researchers once the fight reached its end. Vaeliyan could hear every word of it without needing to focus, but he let it go. He wouldn’t have stopped them, but they all knew he was enjoying himself far too much to be interrupted.

Still, the problem remained: someone had to make sure the researchers didn’t walk out alive. The Complaints Department quietly prepared for what came next.

Fenn finally put away Betty, stood empty-handed, posture coiled like an archer with an invisible bow. Wesley kept a steadying hand on his shoulder; eyes fixed on the chaos ahead. The floor shuddered again, dust falling like ash from above.

Elian’s voice cut through the tension before anyone else could act. “You know you can’t kill him,” he said, blunt and unflinching. “Not here. Not now. If their precious princeling dies in this facility and the Legion is at fault, the entire Princedom will use it as cause to escalate. They’ll come down on us like a hammer. Graveholt already cost them too many. We can’t afford to publicly execute someone that connected, not yet.”

Vaeliyan let the words land, then laughed softly. “I know. I know all of that,” he said. “My AI hasn’t stopped pouring it into my head since this started.”

Jurpat asked, “Is that why you haven’t switched to Warren then?” His voice was clipped, strained with disbelief.

Vaeliyan’s laugh deepened, a low rumble that carried through their shared channel. “Brother, do you have any idea how good this fight is?” he said. “I haven’t felt this alive since you beat me over and over in training. I want to crush this man, but I’m not stupid enough to think I can end this cleanly. If he does get away, which, it seems, we’ve already agreed to allow, I’d rather my secret stay buried until the next time we clash.”

He clashed with Tallo again, their impacts bleeding through the comms as bursts of static. “There are too many eyes here. If I kill him in front of them, it becomes a political incident, and we don’t need to give the Princedoms another reason to unite. Could you imagine how they would react to Warren. I’m not going to hand them another excuse. This is war, not politics. Nothing that happens here can go public. Unless, of course, their beloved fool of knives dies at the hands of a unit of High Imperators while trying to ‘protect civilians.’”

Tallo’s blade screamed against Vaeliyan’s truncheons as the duel continued. “And the storm,” Vaeliyan went on, “I’ve never used it underground, not even in the Red. I don’t know how it would behave in an enclosed facility. Mondenkind says it wouldn’t be clean. So no, I’m not pulling Warren out. If Fenn cracks that glass, I can end every researcher in this room at least.”

Rokhan barked a rough laugh, static fuzzing the line. “That skill is still the worst thing we made that night.”

Vaeliyan grinned, his voice edged with satisfaction. “Yeah, I might’ve gone a tiny bit too far with it,” he admitted. He blocked another blow from Tallo, the impact splintering the floor beneath them. The shockwave rippled through his boots as he let the force flow through his body and disperse harmlessly into his field. His focus never wavered. Even as he spoke and the others planned, he remained in the center of it all, locked in the same vicious rhythm, laughing through the ruin of the world around him.

Fenn loosed his non-existent bow, his Soul Skill igniting with invisible precision. Wesley’s own Soul Skill wrapped around it, merging seamlessly in a synchronized flow. Instead of a single beam of force or an arrow of condensed pressure, what followed were fine fractures, spiderweb-thin and almost imperceptible. If not for the mechs’ sensors, no one would have noticed. The cracks crept through the reinforced glass that sealed the mech pilots and researchers inside their makeshift escape pods.

In that heartbeat, Vaeliyan’s voice came through, low and sharp. “I’m truly sorry about this. But that's all the time we have I'm afraid. We have a mission to complete and all. You have to understand I wish we could've played forever.”

Tallo froze mid-step. Something had changed. The rhythm of the fight had stopped dead. Vaeliyan rising his right hand as a pulse of light gathered at his palm. A strobe flared outward, not toward Tallo, but past him. His back was to the mechs. The light angled toward the cracked glass.

The light power into the unprotected humans inside the first few mechs.

Luminophage had been designed for augmented humans, built to infect and consume the strong. But these were ordinary people. The effect was immediate and horrifying. The light embedded itself into their blood, spreading like a contagion carried by every heartbeat. Their bodies convulsed violently, each pulse driving microscopic blades through their veins. Within seconds, flesh tore from the inside out. They screamed for only a moment before their throats filled with blood. Light radiated from their eyes and mouths as Luminophage burned them hollow from within.

Even Vaeliyan hesitated, surprised by how fast it worked.

Tallo stood frozen, horror and rage carving across his face. He had expected truth from the man who fought with such brutal grace. Not this. Vaeliyan had broken their unspoken pact, the duel had ended not in victory, but in betrayal.

The moment stretched. Then Tallo moved. His body became motion, pure, impossible speed. Vaeliyan tried to process what had just happened. Tallo wasn’t simply gone, there was an afterimage where he’d stood, a ghost of movement carved into the air. Vaeliyan could almost trace the path, see the heat and motion ripple from where Tallo had been, but the speed was so extreme it looked like Tallo had teleported. He could have followed after Tallo, if he wanted to. But right now, he had to finish the job.

The light from his palm spread wider as he flooded the rest of the mechs. He could stop now or he could complete the mission they had come here for.

“Damn it,” Tallo spat, berating himself. “Damn me for indulging myself. For thinking I could enjoy this.” He slammed his palm against a wall panel, breathing hard. “If I’d taken the test subject or even head researcher with me, maybe I could’ve salvaged it… but those bastards just erased years of work.”

His teeth ground together. They had backups, yes, but not the critical trials data. That had only existed here. Cursing again, Tallo activated the facility’s Clean Slate protocol. Warning lights began to pulse through the halls as he triggered the sequence. Explosive charges armed deep beneath the foundation.

Support pillars shuddered. Steel groaned. Then, one by one, the detonations began. The facility began collapsing inward, dragged into a yawning chasm below.

Tallo swore that he would never forgive the Siren for betraying the honor of the duel. “That thief,” he spat as he stumbled out, every muscle screaming, his stamina nearly spent after burning it all in one use of his escape skill.