CHAPTER 1169: FIGHTING AGAINST ME.

Nebula grinned viciously, his teeth glinting beneath the fractured light.

"So you want to kill me, huh? Why don’t you give that a try and see how it goes?"

Cain summoned the {Golden Tyrant} and instantly fired off a spray of golden bullets. The roar of the gun tore through the air like thunder. Each bullet was a shard of molten light, trailing radiant arcs as they screamed toward their target.

With a faint smile, Nebula raised a hand. A storm of blades—razor-thin, flawless, and impossibly fast—spiraled into existence before him. They weaved together into a shifting wall that intercepted every bullet with surgical precision.

Each impact burst into clouds of shimmering gold dust, lighting the air like a sunrise born of war.

However, Cain wasn’t done.

The barrels of his guns continued to spit out torrents of magic-saturated light, the runic inscriptions across the weapon’s surface glowing hot from the overload.

Every bullet was filled to the brim with condensed metal elemental energy—volatile, brutal, unforgiving. Upon contact with any surface, they erupted like miniature suns, carving craters into the ground and shattering the nearby cliffs into slag.

Nebula, though, didn’t even flinch. His conjured blades absorbed the incoming energy like dry earth swallowing rain. And even when a few shattered under the pressure, it didn’t matter—thousands more filled the skies, humming and circling him like a living storm.

Cain clicked his tongue and shot backward, boots grinding across scorched earth.

His wounds had already begun to heal, flesh knitting itself back together under the faint gleam of divine restoration, but his stamina was far from recovered.

He grimaced, darting between the hailstorm of blades, each swing and parry fueled by sheer instinct.

Nebula chuckled softly. "You’re fast," he said. Then he took a single, measured step forward—

And his body vanished.

Cain’s eyes widened.

’Wha—!’

He barely managed to bring his arms up before a blade struck, slicing through his forearm like paper and stopping only when it hit bone.

Blood sprayed into the rain-soaked air.

Nebula appeared behind him, tilting his head curiously. "That was supposed to take off the arm. I might be underestimating you, it seems..."

Cain shoved him back, teeth clenched, and the two separated. His face was dark with fury and disbelief.

’That spell...’

He knew that pattern. That shimmer in the air before teleportation, that glint of metallic mana—it was something painfully familiar. Something that used to be his.

His ability, {Divine Essence of Metallurgy}, had once given him absolute control over the metal element, allowing him to forge weapons, armor, and mechanisms directly from mana.

But when combined with {Nexus Tether}, that ability evolved into something terrifying. It allowed him to create nexuses—tiny points of mana-bound space—capable of exchanging positions with his body instantaneously.

By anchoring those nexuses to moving objects like blades, Cain had once created an omnidirectional movement technique. He could flash across a battlefield, strike from blind angles, evade before impact, and reposition faster than human senses could track.

It had been the cornerstone of his combat dominance.

And now, he was staring at someone else using it—perfectly.

The bastard’s movement, the instant shifts, the near-untouchable speed—it was the same concept, executed with the same predatory precision.

’This shit is too damn unfair!’ Cain snarled inwardly.

How the hell was he even supposed to catch him? His bullets were useless—each one intercepted, deflected, or absorbed by that swarm of floating blades.

Even the {Golden Tyrant}, a weapon capable of leveling fortresses, looked pathetic here.

’If only I had—’

He froze mid-thought, then let out a short breath, shaking his head.

’No. What I have now should be plenty to deal with this guy.’

At least, that was what he told himself. Deep down, even he wasn’t sure.

The air vibrated with Nebula’s presence. The cultist’s aura had changed—gone was the mocking calm, replaced with something sharp, almost joyous. The pressure of his magic warped the rain, bending light around his form.

Cain ducked under a passing blade, boots sliding across molten mud as he barely avoided being skewered.

The blades were everywhere now—thousands of them. They danced and swirled like a metallic hurricane, biting at his heels with murderous hunger. And hidden among them, Cain could feel Nebula, shifting from point to point, watching, waiting for him to make the slightest mistake.

It was a trap of absolute control.

Cain’s breathing grew heavy. His every movement was calculated, reflexes burning at full throttle. Each dodge shaved inches off death, each mistake was nearly fatal. But even in that chaos, Cain’s mind was razor sharp.

He was observing. Measuring.

And what he found made his gut twist.

Nebula’s ability resembled {Nexus Tether}, yes—but that’s where the similarity ended. The structure of the magic wasn’t the same. Even without his ability to sense mana, Cain could feel the difference.

This wasn’t spatial manipulation. The energy moving through those blades was something else entirely—something primal, raw, and unnatural.

While it mimicked the effects of spatial transference, its nature was deeper, as though it bent the laws of distance rather than moving through them.

Cain’s brow furrowed. ’That’s not teleportation... it’s replacement.’

The bastard wasn’t moving between points—he was rewriting the rule that determined where he was.

He wasn’t breaking physics. He was redefining it.

Cain’s stomach sank. If that was true, then Nebula’s mastery wasn’t just dangerous—it was apocalyptic.

And yet, even then, something didn’t quite fit.

The energy itself was unstable, flickering between solid and ethereal states. Nebula’s control wasn’t perfect; his movements lagged at odd intervals, the flickers growing worse the more he used the ability.

Cain’s lips curved slightly.

’So you’re not a god. You’re just a thief playing with stolen fire.’

The thought grounded him. Despite the chaos, he felt his pulse steady.

He adjusted his stance, golden light pulsing faintly around his hands.

’Alright then,’ he thought grimly. ’Let’s see who burns out first.’

Nebula’s laughter echoed through the storm, metallic and warped. The blades trembled in the air, then turned in unison—every edge pointing at Cain.

The air went still.

Cain exhaled, eyes narrowing. The {Golden Tyrant} hummed in his grip, runes flaring back to life.

In the next instant, both of them moved—

And the world disappeared into a roar of steel and light.