CHAPTER 142: CHEATS

The sword slash Razeal unleashed did not simply travel forward it devoured everything in its path. A long, terrible arc of black, so sharp and absolute that the world itself seemed to split in two.

The slash carved through the thousands of elemental shields Sylva had conjured, layers upon layers stretching for kilometers in range. Her so-called absolute defense vanished in less than a heartbeat.

It sliced through them as though they were illusions. Fire broke. Water parted. Stone crumbled. Wood, even the giant goddess of roots and bark she had manifested, was sheared apart from the center as if it had never been whole. Every layer fell in silence, no clash, no resistance, just a clean, mocking severance.

The arc of darkness climbed higher, cutting on without end, rising through the clouds above. The sky itself split. White clouds sheared apart into two halves, drifting with a visible gap between them as though a scar had been carved across the heavens.

The spectators froze. The air itself seemed still, waiting for reason to catch up with the impossible.

"What... the fuck is this...?"

Areon’s voice broke the silence. His eyes were wide, disbelief painted across his face. He could not look away from the sight of the heavens cleaved in two.

Even Arabella, who had been lounging lazily in her seat moments before, straightened. Her body shifted only slightly, but her narrowed eyes betrayed a rare gravity. She was not one to be surprised easily, and yet she found herself watching with a sharp frown as the endless arc stretched on and on.

There was no end to it.

The strike simply continued, an unrelenting cut extending so far into the distance that even her eyes, sharpened with perception few could match, could not find its terminus. She could only judge the trail it left the severed defenses, the broken wood goddess, the parted sky.

What unsettled her wasn’t only the slash itself, but what it implied. Sylva’s defenses, celebrated as the pinnacle of Faerelith’s elemental mastery, had been reduced to nothing. The goddess of wood itself had been bisected without resistance. Even the clouds in the sky had been scarred apart as though the world itself had been forced to acknowledge Razeal’s swing.

I cannot fathom this kind of strength... from just a kid who popped up sixteen years ago.

Arabella’s eyes narrowed, disbelief clouding her sharp gaze. Even a Sword Saint couldn’t produce a strike like that. Just where the fuck is he pulling this energy from?

Her thoughts turned darker as her focus sharpened on the boy in the center of the arena. And more importantly why the hell didn’t he explode from releasing it? A body that young should’ve been shredded, atomized, spaghettified under that kind of backlash. Yet... he’s standing there.

Her eyes drifted lower, studying the ground. Strange. The arena itself wasn’t destroyed either. No catastrophic crater, no ripped-apart battlefield just a shallow crack where his feet had landed.

Wait a second... She narrowed her eyes further.

That ominous dark aura, that strange elemental coating he’d wrapped himself in earlier it was gone. It had disappeared the instant he swung.

Did he... dismiss it mid-strike? Or maybe... he severed the connection to his blade itself? she thought, fascinated. If he cut off the feedback loop, then none of that catastrophic energy would have rebounded into his body. That would explain it.

Intriguing. Very intriguing. She studied him closely, watching his ragged breathing, his chest rising and falling. That strike... it had been pure physical force. A single swing, raw and unfiltered, that ignored everything in its path. She couldn’t help but wonder, baffled, what the actual hell is wrong with this kid? It was unreasonable.

But still, that didn’t matter.

"The duel is over.. Afterall," Arabella declared, her voice calm but edged with certainty. A faint smile tugged at her lips, as if she had already foreseen what was about to happen.

And just as the words left her mouth

Click.

From above, a sharp emerald beam of light surged downward, piercing the battlefield with divine authority.

"How dare you touch my girl~!"

The voice that followed was sharp and cutting, female, but heavy with a protectiveness so intense it bordered on madness. It wasn’t simply anger it was a righteous, furious promise of retribution, laced with audacity and an almost divine wrath.

Razeal’s eyes nerrowed as the emerald light wrapped itself around Sylva’s battered body, cocooning her completely. The half-cut wooden colossus she had summoned dissolved into nothingness, vanishing as if reality itself had rejected its existence.

Then, before he could even fully register the movement, her form flickered out of sight. In the blink of an eye, she reappeared a hundred meters away, the green light carrying her through space itself.

Sylva now stood within that emerald glow, her figure trembling, her breath ragged. Pain etched across her features as she clutched at her arm yet even as Razeal looked, the wound was already gone. The arm he had severed had regenerated, restored entirely by the emerald power that encased her.

Thought she looked quite shaken.

Sylva had always carried herself as untouchable. She was the child who had never tasted defeat, who grew beneath the protection of powers no one dared to challenge. But now now she stood trembling, her breath shallow, her skin cold, her wide eyes unfocused. For the first time in her life she had felt it. Pain. Real pain. The kind that carved itself into her bones and threatened to tear away her pride.

Two small beings perched on her shoulders now, their voices cutting through her trembling silence.

On her right sat a miniature woman, no taller than a forearm, but impossibly radiant. Her body was woven entirely from vines and leaves, each movement causing a rustle as though she carried a forest within her. Tiny flowers bloomed in her braided hair, crowning her like a goddess of nature. She was so intricate, so alive, that even the great statue Sylva had made earlier seemed a crude imitation by comparison. The spirit’s emerald eyes burned with authority as she scolded sharply:

"Hey, hey it’s already healed, idiot. Don’t be this dramatic. It’s alright. You’re fine now." her leafy fingers pressed into Sylva’s cheek "We moved you as fast as we could, but... that was still far too close BUT still not a big deal."

Sylva flinched, her lips trembling. "I... I almost died."

The words came out as a whisper, fragile, as if speaking them aloud might shatter her completely. A traumatized expression twisted her face, and even the two shoulder-spirits could sense it the shock of one who had never been vulnerable, never truly hurt. She had never known what it meant to stare at death until now, and the weight of it made her shudder violently.

The second spirit on her left shoulder leaned forward. Unlike the goddess-like lady of vines, this one was bizarre and almost comical: a tiny, light-brown creature with stubby arms, two disproportionately huge legs that dangled down Sylva’s arm, and a head like a miniature tyrannosaurus. Its oversized jaws were lined with sharp teeth, yet perched on its snout was a pair of round spectacles that made it look more eccentric than terrifying. It swung its legs idly, the glasses flashing as it studied Sylva’s expression with concern.

"Don’t let it shake you so much," it muttered, though its voice carried a strange mixture of gentleness and caring. "You survived. That’s all that matters."

But before either could say more, a sharp, cutting voice rose into the air a voice full of arrogance and fury.

Hovering in front of Sylva was a being no larger than a palm. A fairy like, her translucent wings buzzing like a hummingbird’s. Her form was almost an exact miniature of Sylva herself, right down to the proud arch of her eyebrows and the haughty tilt of her chin. Dressed in an emerald-tight dress that clung like a second skin, she radiated beauty sharpened to a blade’s edge.

Her high voice dripped venom as she pointed one delicate finger toward Razeal. "You lowly human. I was merciful because I thought you smelled pleasant. I let you live. But you dared" her tiny face flushed crimson with rage "you dared to hurt my girl? You will pay. Die!"

Before Sylva could protest, the fairy swung her arm downward in a decisive arc.

"No don’t kill him!" Sylva’s cry cracked through the air, panic flashing in her voice. This tiny spirit was not only her closest companion but also her most dangerous. Unpredictable, violent, acting on whims without the slightest care for consequence. Sylva knew what one of her outbursts meant, and she remembered Arabella’s warning. If Razeal died here, That be problematic even for her.

But the spirit had already moved.

A vertical slash of green light burst forth, searing through the air toward Razeal with the speed of lightning.

Razeal’s pupils shrank to pinpoints. He didn’t even feel the pain only the sudden, sickening plop of something wet hitting the ground.

His arm. His entire right arm, severed cleanly at the elbow, fell onto the stone floor.

he looked down

The cut was too perfect, too smooth. His obsidian-black bones bones stronger and tougher than anything had been sliced as if they were butter. The severed surface gleamed with an unnatural polish, unnervingly flawless.

"Impossible..." His voice cracked as his mind struggled to accept what his eyes saw.

He lifted the stump of his right arm with his trembling left hand. Blood poured freely, hot and dark, mingling with the gleam of his sliced muscle and nerves. He could see the inside of himself, the grotesque cross-section of flesh and bone.

The system’s cold voice chimed in his mind:

[Host, run. Current threat: three SS-ranked spirits, 3,679 S-ranked spirits, and millions of hostile lower spirits targeting you.]

Razeal did not waste a second. With a sharp motion, he bent down, snatched his severed arm with his remaining hand, and retreated backward. His face was pale, yet his eyes sharp.

"Don’t worry, girl, I won’t kill him just yet." The spirit, "Silly," crossed her tiny arms, floating smugly. "Everyone deserves at least one hit for daring to touch you." Her tone was arrogant, almost playful, but the power she had displayed was unquestionable.

And then the air itself changed.

Clutchhh.

The atmosphere grew heavy. The arena trembled as, one by one, spirits materialized out of thin air. Thousands of them, glowing in different colors and shapes, their gazes united. Every eye blazed with hostility.

"How dare you touch our friend..."

The spirits’ voices fused together, a thunderous growl that rattled the air like the wrath of a thousand gods. Their combined killing intent was suffocating, so thick that even breathing felt like inhaling knives. Every glowing eye in the arena thousands, tens of thousands locked onto Razeal as if they were ready to drink his blood then and there.

Razeal’s expression tightened. His lips curled into a half-smile, half-grimace as he lifted both hands high. One of them still clutched his severed right arm by the wrist, blood dripping steadily onto the arena floor.

"Ohhh, I forfeit! Why so angry, huh? Chill out already!"

He forced out the words in a mocking tone, but the truth was far from casual. His heart pounded like a war drum. He hadn’t expected them to go this far. To really mobilize everything. This was ridiculous even for a Faerelith heir.

Just how petty were they?

Still, the duel was meaningless now. Victory had already been decided. And when his gaze drifted to Sylva, a small, crooked grin tugged at his lips. He had still gotten his revenge.

Her hair.

Once flawless, silky, and flowing in perfect symmetry now uneven. On one side, cut jaggedly short in a vertical line. She hadn’t even noticed yet, but Razeal had. And that was enough.

A revenge is revenge.

But her spirits didn’t care.

"Forfeit?" the emerald fairy spirit scoffed, her tiny voice laced with venomous arrogance. "We gave you a chance. And no..." Her glowing wings flared wide, eyes narrowing to slits. "No one leaves alive after laying a hand on our girl."

The entire arena seemed to hum as the spirits’ auras synchronized, a chorus of impending doom. Emerald, crimson, azure, gold lights of every color swirled and converged, thousands of attacks forming at once, all aimed at one boy.

Razeal’s lips twitched, the grin dying from his face.

"...Should I run?"

The thought wasn’t cowardice it was survival.

But another thought gnawed at him. His severed arm.

"Why the hell isn’t this healing...?"

He glanced down again. The stump of his right arm remained as it was, blood dripping freely. His regeneration, S-ranked and unstoppable against all wounds he’d ever taken, was utterly useless. The obsidian skeleton he’d inherited, supposedly indestructible, had been cut like paper and worse, the damage refused to mend.

"What the fuck...?" he muttered under his breath.

He didn’t know the reason. Didn’t have time to figure it out. Whether it was his obsidian skeleton interfering, or the fairy’s emerald strike carrying some bullshit reason, he didn’t know. All he knew was that this was bad. Very bad.

But worrying about his arm wouldn’t save him now.

The situation had spiraled beyond repair.

And as for why he had forfeited without hesitation? That was simple.

Because Sylva was no longer Sylva.

Before, she had been herself arrogant, prideful, rejecting her own powers out of sheer stubbornness. That had been a duel between two humans, however unfair her natural advantages were.

But now? Now she wasn’t even conscious. Her body, her aura, everything was swallowed by tromotization and everything now taken in control by the beings perched on her shoulders. She had stepped aside, and the true monsters had stepped forward.

Her spirits.

Her family’s cheat.

Razeal clenched his jaw.

"It wasn’t even that painful..." he muttered looking at her almost crying eyes. "Is she about to cry just for that little? WTF"

And this situation

This was about absurdity. About impossibility. About being dragged into a battlefield.

Because Sylva’s true ability wasn’t just hers.

It belonged to her bloodline.

The Faerelith family.

The most broken ability of them all.

Contracts.

Yes. Those bastards could sign contracts with spirits. A privilege so rare that most families could barely manage one spirit per generation. And the Faereliths? They weren’t just allowed. They weren’t just compatible.

They were built for it.

Their family’s unique bloodline abilityban inheritance carried through every generation was known as:

[ Absolute Spirit Integration. ]

It was simple, on paper. Almost deceptively so.

100% mana and elemental affinity assimilation.

In other words... every single member of the Faerelith family could seamlessly connect with their contracted spirits. No backlash. No side effects. No limit. Whatever mana pool the spirit had, whatever elemental control it wielded it became theirs. Perfectly. Effortlessly.

And the worst part?

There was no ceiling.

No limit to the number of contracts they could forge.

Every spirit they bound became part of their arsenal, their mana, their power. One spirit, two spirits, ten, a hundred it didn’t matter. All of them flowed into the Faerelith body as naturally as blood through veins.

A living paradox. A walking army. A single person wielding the power of thousands.

The ultimate cheat.

And this woman... she was sitting there with three SS-ranked monsters perched on her shoulders, and thousands literally thousands of S-ranked spirits swarming at her command. As for the rest lurking below? Best not even mention them.

This was cheating.

[ I told you beforehand. Just leave the match. Why are you still bothering with this? Didn’t we already win? Why drag this out against a walking cheat code? ]

The system’s voice buzzed in his head, sharp and annoyed, but underneath it there was something else unease.

[ Remember, she’s the holder of this generation’s Ultimate Elemental Body. Not to mention the Crowned Princess of the Forest of Sylvasyl. ]

[ She has the highest natural attraction to elemental spirits. The highest affinity. Why would you ever want to fight her in a straight hand-to-hand duel? Sigh... ]

Razeal’s lips twitched. "I just wanted to enjoy the fight..." he pouted "And besides she doesn’t even like using her cheat code, remember? Girl with attitude issues, right?"

[ ...And what about now? ] the system asked, this time not sarcastic, but genuinely concerned.

"Umm well I do have a plan... Its just" he said, his voice low, his mind already pulling toward one of his hidden cards.

But before he could act

"Nova~"

Merisa’s lips parted, her voice soft as silk yet carrying across the arena like thunder.

And just as her words faded

Click.

The sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath came

Nova turned. A cold, bloodthirsty smile spread across her face

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First of all, big shoutout to our boy Yuri_IsNTR for the Golden Gachapon worth 15,000 coins really appreciate it once again 💓❣️

Extra Chapters coming for this 💀 I’ll try my hardest tonight

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