CHAPTER 41: ADVANCING 2

The spear flickered with pale lightning, humming with a low, predatory sound that filled the shattered stone chamber. Lucian rolled his shoulders, feeling the stiffness in his ribs where fractures throbbed faintly under his skin. His half-lidded eyes stayed locked on the Echo ahead, watching its every micro-shift of balance.

[Combat Echo: Azure Spear Warden – Rank D+ Simulation.]

[Objective: Neutralise. No restrictions.]

The spear-wielding Echo didn’t speak. Its black robes drifted in the violet fog, silver-blue circuits glowing faintly across its chest and arms. Its pale eyes flickered once before it vanished in a burst of compressed air.

Fold Step.

Lucian tilted his head sideways just as the spear tore through the space his skull had been, the lightning tip slicing a thin line across his cheek. Sparks exploded outward, blinding white, as he twisted under the thrust. His hand flicked upward.

[Dimensional Claw]

A tear of compressed space ripped along the Echo’s forearm, rupturing circuits and spraying faint blue ichor across the cracked stone. But the Echo didn’t falter. It spun the spear mid-strike, slamming the haft into his stomach with bone-crushing force.

The impact rippled through his entire frame, lifting him off his feet before his boots slammed back onto the marble, fracturing it under him. He exhaled sharply, feeling blood rise in his throat. The Echo didn’t stop, its spear sweeping sideways in a blur of silver arcs.

[Temporal Slow]

Lucian flicked his fingers lightly, collapsing the surrounding time flow around him. The spear’s movement slowed to a crawling ripple, lightning arcs drifting like lazy falling snow. He stepped inside the strike radius, his palm pressing flat against the Echo’s chest.

[Temporal Disruption Pulse]

Compressed time-energy burst through its torso, rupturing mana circuits and sending fractures spiderwebbing across its armor plates. The Echo staggered back two steps, lightning flickering wildly along its spear as its internal mana stabilisers fought to compensate.

Lucian exhaled softly, blood dripping from his lip onto the cold stone.

Fold Step.

He flickered forward, reappearing behind it mid-spin. His hand sliced downward, claws of compressed spatial force raking down its back and shredding black robes into drifting strips of fabric and scattered blue ichor. But as he landed, the spear tip flicked backward like a striking serpent.

He pivoted his hips sideways just in time to avoid a direct impale, but the lightning edge grazed across his side, burning through skin and muscle in a line of searing white agony. His vision flickered for a moment, black static crawling at the edge of his sight.

The Echo turned slowly, its dead eyes flickering faint pale blue as it raised the spear again.

Fold Step.

It flickered out of existence, reappearing directly above him mid-air, spear driving down like a divine javelin. Lucian raised his hand calmly, palm open.

[Dimensional Lock]

The air around the spear shaft rippled and froze, an invisible wall locking it mid-descent. The Echo flickered with blue sparks as it tried to force the weapon through the anchored space, but Lucian twisted his wrist lightly.

[Spatial Displacement]

The spear vanished from its grip, reappearing in his own hand, humming with pale lightning against his palm. The Echo’s dead eyes flickered for the first time with faint static confusion.

Lucian exhaled softly, the corner of his mouth twitching upward into a small, cold smile. He spun the spear lightly, feeling the familiar hum of compressed lightning mana vibrating through his bones. Then he lunged.

The spear blurred in his grip, arcs of pale lightning ripping through the violet fog as he drove the weapon into the Echo’s chest. The impact exploded with a thunderclap that shattered the stone under their feet, sending black shards cascading outward in all directions.

He twisted the spear once, feeling the ruptured mana circuits tear apart under the pressure. The Echo gasped soundlessly, its pale eyes flickering with ruptured static as cracks split across its chestplate.

But it wasn’t done.

Fold Step.

It flickered backwards, reappearing twenty meters away. Its hand rose to its chest wound, black ichor dripping between its fingers as it flicked them outward.

[Lightning Spear Manifestation]

Five silver-blue spears formed instantly around it, each crackling with pale arcs that lit the fog in ghostly flashes. They launched forward simultaneously, splitting the air with high-pitched shrieks.

Lucian didn’t move. His half-lidded eyes flickered with faint black light.

[Fold Step – Multiphase]

He vanished and reappeared in four successive flickers, weaving between the incoming spears as they exploded against the stone pillars behind him, shattering them into collapsing rubble. He landed lightly, his coat drifting down around him in the settling dust.

The Echo formed a sixth spear mid-chant, the rune circuits along its arms glowing bright blue-white. But Lucian was already moving.

Fold Step.

He flickered forward, appearing directly in front of its chest with his hand already extended.

[Dimensional Claw – Compression Variant]

His fingers sliced forward in a single focused blade of compressed spatial force, tearing through its chestplate and rupturing the core embedded within. The Echo spasmed once, the spear fading into drifting static as its pale eyes flickered out.

Then it shattered, dissolving into motes of black and silver light that drifted away into the violet fog.

Lucian stood still for a moment, his breath ragged, blood dripping freely down his ribs from the cauterised burn. The lightning spear in his other hand flickered once before dissipating into sparks.

[Floor Two – Completed.]

[Recovery Interval: Thirty Seconds.]

[Floor Three: Manifestation – Combat Echo.]

[Initiating.]

He exhaled softly as the world flickered around him, the shattered stone pillars reassembling themselves into towering obsidian walls lined with glowing crimson runes. The air grew heavier, thick with a choking metallic scent that burned faintly in his lungs.

The fog parted, revealing the third Echo.

It was massive. Seven feet tall, clad in pitch-black armor engraved with crimson etchings. Its helmet hid its eyes, but black smoke drifted from the gaps in its plated joints. In its right hand, it wielded a greatsword the width of a man’s chest, humming with a deep, thunderous vibration.

[Combat Echo: Abyss Knight – Rank D++ Simulation.]

Lucian rolled his shoulders lightly, ignoring the pain that flashed across his ribs. His half-lidded eyes flickered upward, sharpening faintly as the Abyss Knight raised its sword to its shoulder with a single fluid motion.

The ground beneath its feet cracked with each step forward.

Fold Step.

He vanished and reappeared directly in front of its chest, his hand slicing upward.

[Dimensional Claw]

But the Knight raised its armored forearm instantly, the black steel deflecting the compressed spatial blade with a shrieking spray of sparks. Its other hand came down in a hammerfist that Lucian barely dodged, the impact cratering the stone beneath them with a deafening boom.

He twisted sideways, reappearing behind its back with another flicker. His palm pressed against the base of its neck.

[Temporal Disruption Pulse]

Compressed time-energy burst into its armor, slowing the mana flows within. But the Knight only shuddered for half a second before its internal circuits rerouted, compensating instantly. Its elbow slammed back, catching him in the chest with bone-crushing force.

Lucian gasped, blood bursting from his lips as he flew backwards across the obsidian chamber, slamming into a pillar hard enough to fracture it from base to crown. Dust rained down around him as he forced himself back onto shaking legs.

The Knight turned slowly, lifting its massive blade as crimson light flickered along the runes etched into the black steel.

He exhaled softly, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his trembling hand. His half-lidded eyes narrowed to cold slits as shadows flickered faintly beneath them.

"Let’s see," he whispered softly, rolling his neck as the vertebrae cracked in a low cascade, "how far you can push me."

And in that silent obsidian chamber filled with drifting violet fog and pulsing crimson light—

Lucian Black stepped forward without fear,

Toward Rank D,

Toward the abyss itself.