Free Web NovelChapter 132: 132
Khan moved. To the naked eye, he did not simply run—he ceased to exist at his starting point, leaving behind a vacuum of displaced air. He flickered through the perimeter of the five SS-ranked silverback gorillas like a ghost.
Chink. Chink. Chink.
The sound of his katana barely leaving the scabbard rang out in disjointed micro-seconds. He did not hack or cleave; he merely grazed their monolithic hides, tapping the earth beneath their massive paws, injecting concentrated packets of volatile, negative ionic mana deep into their nervous systems and the ground.
Khan materialized ten paces past the pack, his back turned to the beasts. The colossal apes stood frozen, confusion tracking across their primal faces.
Click.
The hilt of his katana met the mouth of the scabbard with a crisp, definitive snap. The circuit was complete.
CRACK-THOOM!
The world turned blindingly, violently blue. The air did not just heat up; it ionized instantly, smelling of sharp ozone and burnt copper. Jagged, thick tendrils of plasma erupted from the apes’ chests, arcing wildly across the space between them. In less than a millisecond, a massive, interlocking grid of hyper-voltage caged the monsters.
BZARRRRRRKZZZT!
The gorillas did not even have time to roar. The Blitz Web constricted, completing the lethal loop. Millions of volts fried their internal organs simultaneously, glowing through their thick hides until their very skeletons were briefly visible as stark white shadows against the neon-blue glare.
The blinding light died as abruptly as it had ignited, leaving a suffocating, heavy silence. The five SS-ranked monsters remained standing for a fraction of a second, completely rigid. Smoke, thick and grey, billowed from their nostrils, ears, and open mouths. The concrete plaza beneath them was utterly ruined—the solid pavement violently fractured, scarred by a jagged, spiderweb network of molten craters where lightning had arced. The immense heat had liquefied the artificial stone, leaving behind a glassy, blackened crust of slag that hissed as it rapidly cooled, while exposed, twisted iron rebar glowed a dull, dangerous red.
A gentle breeze drifted through the clearing, carrying the sharp stench of pulverized dust and melted aggregate.
As if on cue, all five silverbacks collapsed inward simultaneously, hitting the scorched earth with a synchronized, hollow thud. They did not bleed; the hyper-current had instantly cauterized every cell in their bodies, leaving them as nothing more than hollow, charcoal husks.
Khan did not look back. He simply adjusted his grip on his katana, the faint hum of leftover static electricity still dancing across the blade.
[The Fulgur-Domain Style: Form I: Chained Discharge (The Blitz Web)]
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"Sire?" The Grand Chancellor turned to the Emperor. Please don’t rave about how you did better in the old days.
"That was a decent performance. As expected of the child of destiny." The Emperor’s expression grew thoughtful. "Back then, aside from the demon emperor, the child of destiny was my most exciting fight. It’s hard to remember what happened. Did the fight last a minute? I don’t remember."
Sigh. Here we go again.
"Looking back, I’m so pissed I’m the emperor. This war, if it follows the normal trend, will be boring." The Emperor sighed. His expression turned serious as he watched Khan. "He reminds me of the young me. He has my swag."
---
’Kenshin.’
Kenshin heard a voice in his head as he walked to the pit.
’Professor?’
’Yo. It’s me. I have one little request for you.’
’Yes, sir.’ Kenshin straightened his back. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
’Destroy.’
’Yes, sir!’
---
Kenshin was the last student to take the assessment. The rest had already gone up and passed. After Khan, Kai had gone up, using [Divine] to conjure giant weapons of light and ending his fight quite easily.
Next was Eden, completing the combat field lineup. His swordsmanship was skilled but less captivating than Khan’s.
Then the class of weirdos took their turns.
Zephyr spammed the SS monster he faced, harassing it with various weapons from his armory. When throwing weapons was not enough, he used magic and his weapon mastery skills to end the fight. His highest-ranked weapon was an A-rank cleaver that granted a forty percent boost to his physical stats and restored itself when it absorbed blood.
Virelle was even more of a harasser than Zephyr. If the monster could file a report, it would have. With ten echo bodies coordinating against the monster and her main body spamming magic spells from afar with her master magecraft skills, it was an eye-opener on how "normies" in an S class faced monsters a rank above them. Normal S-rank students hardly defeated the monsters assigned to them; they tried their best and hoped for a high enough evaluation.
Seraphin simply crushed her opponent, not easily and not demurely enough to leave a lasting impression. She had used up her mana to do it. Fortunately, as soon as she won, her condition returned to normal—a change that had taken place during the combat section, between Jude and Khan’s attempts. During the interval, the judges concluded that the students were too exhausted after their fights to even walk out of the arena, so they decided to lift the simulation once a winner was declared, allowing them to return to their peak state quickly.
Aelric fought five SS-ranked monsters at the same time, using his Grandmaster [Ossian Martial Arts]—a fusion of his [Ossian Curse] ability and his martial arts skill. Every jab, every hit was supplemented with a protruding bone. He hardened his bones, enhanced his strength and endurance, shaped detached bones into constructs supported by his weapon mastery. He was a battle machine with one job: deteriorating the opponent until they died.
Rhaegar had the easiest fight. The mental capability of simulated monsters could not keep up with his [Psychic Sovereign]; he made them fight each other, simply watching them tear each other apart. To the crowd, it was one of the most boring fights they had watched. To Zeke, it was a waste of Rhaegar’s skills—skills he had forcefully imparted in him.
Nyssara’s attempt was a breath of fresh air for Zeke. After all, she was the only Grandmaster Mage in the class of weirdos.
Step forward. She did not bother with a dramatic stance. She simply raised her right hand, her thumb and forefinger forming a precise pinching motion aimed at the arena. A low, heavy frequency hum vibrated through the air—a sound felt more in the teeth than the ears.
Hummmmm—
Instantly, the ambient wind died. An invisible, perfect geometric box locked down over the target zone, isolating it from the rest of the world. Nyssara’s eyes flared with power as she spoke, her voice calm, cold, and carrying an echoing resonance that commanded the elements to obey:
"Define the coordinates. Sever the dimensions. Let the distance between existence and nothingness... become zero."
The boundaries of the box violently flashed to life, tracing the air with glowing, razor-sharp indigo ley-lines. Vrrrrt!
For a split second, everything inside the matrix froze perfectly in time. The five SS-ranked monsters—hulking, terrifying abominations caught mid-roar—solidified like statues. Even the dust motes around them hung suspended in the glowing purple grid.
Then Nyssara closed her fist.
The grid lines did not shrink; they violently imploded inward toward a single microscopic point with a blinding, absolute flash of indigo light. No explosion. No blood, no screams, no shattered bones.
When the light faded, the monsters were simply gone. A sharp, deafening THWIP-THOOM echoed across the field as the surrounding atmosphere rushed in to violently fill the vacuum left behind.
Where the five apex beasts had stood just a heartbeat ago, there were now five perfectly smooth, hemispherical, hollowed-out craters in the earth, as if a giant, cosmic scoop had cleanly bitten them out of reality.
Nyssara lowered her hand, exhaling a soft breath as the wind finally kicked back up, leaving the crowd stunned.
Zeke was elated. He had been pivotal to her development of the spell. With his and her talents in magecraft, it was a joyride. Once it was completed, he had copied it easily, with pathways for evolution opening in his mind. It was one of the reasons he encouraged them to learn new magic spells: whatever they learned and demonstrated, he would simply copy and open even more pathways. Like Jude’s [Sol Invictus]; the moment Jude used it, he copied it.
Daemion’s fight was another boring one, because Daemion had an easy time facing the five SS-ranked monsters. He sent them to his separate dimension. Some he touched; most he drew into localized spatial distortions. Seeing that the monsters had no chance to escape, he was granted a victory. After the simulation ground was released, Daemion found the monsters had dissipated the moment they entered his dimension.
Samuel Winchester’s turn was aesthetically unpleasing. He read the monsters’ moves before they attacked, harrying them with magic spells, facing them with weapons, and overriding their motor functions with his ability. Boring, but he left without a scratch.
Unlike Dean.
Dean faced monsters that had a seventy-five percent reduction in defensive and regenerative capabilities thanks to the [Predator’s Suppression] of his ability. He still fought recklessly. With [Baby] in his hands, he cleaved through them, every hit stacking the effects of [Adrenaline Conversion]. Thanks to [Immovable] and [Pain Resistance], he was simply a machine—a machine that eclipsed Aelric’s version. Thanks to [Combat Intuition], every move worked to his own gain.
If Virelle and the others represented what "normies" could do against higher-ranked opponents, the Winchesters were an example of "normal" geniuses facing multiple opponents—with Dean as the broken example
