Chapter 367: Time to pay

Words : 2298 Updated : Oct 9th, 2025

Chapter 367: Time to pay Storm launched himself forward with every ounce of power he possessed, lightning and ice fusing around his form as he closed the distance between them. The wyvern’s claws extended, each talon crackling with electrical energy as they carved through the air toward Kruel’s transformed chest. The impact never came. Kruel’s hand shot out, catching Storm’s foreclaw in mid-strike. The wyvern’s momentum, enough to demolish a mountain, was stopped as if he’d flown into an immovable wall. The three-horn—now four-horn—didn’t even take a step backward. “Too slow,” Kruel said with casual disappointment. His free fist drove upward, connecting with Storm’s jaw in an uppercut that sent shockwaves rippling through the frozen landscape. The sound was like artillery fire, and Storm’s massive head snapped back so violently that vertebrae cracked audibly. But Kruel wasn’t finished. Still holding Storm’s claw, he pivoted and hurled the two-ton wyvern through the air like a child throwing a doll. Storm’s body carved a trench three hundred feet long through the ice before finally coming to rest against what had once been a cliff face. The wyvern struggled to his feet, shaking his head to clear the stars from his vision. Blood streamed from his muzzle, and one of his electric blue eyes was swollen nearly shut. But he was far from defeated. Storm’s wings spread wide, and the air filled with ice constructs—not the twenty-seven he’d summoned before, but nearly a hundred smaller ones. They swarmed around Kruel like angry wasps, each one shaped like a miniature version of the wyvern himself. “Clever,” Kruel acknowledged, watching the crystalline creatures circle him. “But I’m afraid quantity won’t make up for the quality gap.” He moved like missle. Boom!!! His fists cutting through the air with speeds that turned natural laws guiding motion into a polite suggestion. The first dozen ice constructs exploded into powder before they could even register his presence. The second wave lasted slightly longer—perhaps a full second—before they too were reduced to glittering debris. But while Kruel destroyed the constructs, Storm was already moving. The wyvern dove low, his massive tail sweeping across the battlefield like a siege engine. The strike should have caught Kruel across the knees, shattering bone and bringing him down. Instead, Kruel simply lifted one foot and let the tail pass beneath him. As Storm’s momentum carried him forward, the four-horn’s feet came down on the wyvern’s spine with the force of a compressor engine. **CRACK!** The impact drove Storm face-first into the ice, creating a crater deep enough to swallow a building. The wyvern’s body went limp for a moment as he registered the pain in full fold. Kruel reached down and grabbed Storm by the base of his skull, lifting the massive creature with one hand. The wyvern’s feet left the ground, his body dangling like a broken puppet. “You fought well,” Kruel said, almost gently. “Better than anyone has in decades. But this is where your story ends.” Storm’s response was to breathe lightning directly into Kruel’s face. The electrical discharge was powerful enough to melt steel, concentrated into a beam no wider than a man’s fist. It struck Kruel’s left eye at point-blank range, burning through flesh and cooking the organs in its socket. “Arghhhh!!” Kruel’s roar of pain shook the frozen landscape, and his grip on Storm’s skull tightened reflexively. The wyvern’s cranium began to crack under the pressure, hairline fractures spreading across his magnificent head. But Storm had bought himself the opening he needed. His hind claws came up, raking across Kruel’s torso in four parallel lines that went deep enough to show ribs beneath. The four-horn’s grip loosened just enough for Storm to tear free. The wyvern rolled away, his Winter Vortex ability activating as he moved. A tornado of supercooled air erupted around Kruel, lifting chunks of ice and debris into a spinning wall of destruction. The temperature dropped so fast that the air itself began to crystallize. But Kruel simply walked through it. The winds that should have torn him apart parted around his body like water around a stone. Ice shards that could pierce armor shattered against his skin without leaving marks. When he emerged from the vortex, he was smiling again. “My turn,” he said. What followed was systematic destruction. Kruel’s first punch caught Storm in the left shoulder, dislocating the joint with a wet pop that echoed across the battlefield. The wyvern’s wing folded at an unnatural angle, useless for flight or balance. The second punch found Storm’s ribs, the impact so powerful that it lifted the wyvern’s feet off the ground. Three ribs snapped like twigs, their broken ends puncturing lung tissue and sending blood streaming from Storm’s nostrils. The third punch was an uppercut that connected with Storm’s sternum. The breastbone shattered completely, fragments of bone driven deep into the wyvern’s chest cavity. Storm’s heart stuttered, missing beats as the shockwave disrupted its rhythm. Storm tried to counter, his remaining good wing generating a blast of arctic air that could have frozen a lake solid. But Kruel simply caught the wing membrane in his fist and squeezed. The thin, sensitive tissue tore like paper, leaving Storm’s wing a tattered ruin. “Is this all the fight you have left?” Kruel asked, his voice carrying mock disappointment. “I was hoping for more from a creature of your caliber.” Storm’s answer was to lunge forward with his jaws wide, attempting to clamp down on Kruel’s throat. But the four-horn was ready. His fist drove upward, connecting with the underside of Storm’s jaw and slamming the wyvern’s mouth shut so hard that several teeth shattered. The follow-up blow caught Storm in the temple, scrambling his vision and sending him staggering sideways. Before he could recover, Kruel’s foot connected with his ribs, the same ones that were already broken. Blood began streaming from the wyvern’s mouth, bright red foam that spoke of internal bleeding and damaged organs. His breathing became labored, each inhalation a struggle against the pain that radiated through his massive frame. But Storm refused to fall. The wyvern’s eyes, swollen and bloodshot, fixed on Kruel with undiminished fury. Ice began forming around his wounds, not for healing but for one final attack. The temperature plummeted again, and the remaining ice constructs that had survived Kruel’s initial assault began to converge. “Persistent,” Kruel observed, watching the crystalline creatures surround him once more. “But persistence without power is just prolonged suffering.” He reached out and grabbed the nearest ice construct, not to destroy it but to examine it. The creature struggled in his grip, its sharp edges trying to cut through his fingers. But Kruel’s skin was too tough, his grip too strong. “Interesting construction,” he mused, then looked at Storm with something approaching respect. “Let me show you a better use for them.” With casual power, Kruel began dismantling the ice construct, reshaping its crystalline form with his bare hands. The creature’s wings became sharp points, its body a handle, its head a serrated edge. In seconds, he had transformed Storm’s creation into a weapon. The improvised ice blade was three feet long and sharp enough to cut through most armor. Kruel tested its edge against his thumb, drawing a thin line of blood that he examined with professional interest. “Perfect,” he said, then looked at Storm with predatory anticipation. “Now, let’s see how well you bleed.” The first thrust went deep into Storm’s left shoulder, the ice blade parting scales and muscle. The wyvern’s roar of pain was weaker now, his voice hoarse from blood loss and exhaustion. Kruel withdrew the blade and struck again, this time targeting Storm’s right flank. The improvised weapon punched through the wyvern’s ribs. Again and again, the ice blade found its mark. Each wound was precise, calculated to cause maximum pain without immediate death. Kruel was an artist working with a canvas of flesh and scale, and he took his time with each stroke. Storm tried to fight back, his claws swiping weakly at his tormentor. But the wyvern’s strength was fading with each passing second, his movements growing sluggish and uncoordinated. The final blow came when Kruel drove the ice blade deep into Storm’s chest, angling it upward toward the wyvern’s heart. Storm’s body went rigid, his electric blue eyes wide with shock and pain. For a moment, time seemed suspended, the only sound the wyvern’s labored breathing and the distant howl of arctic wind. Then Storm began to fall. The wyvern’s legs buckled, his massive frame toppling backward with the slow inevitability of a falling mountain. When he hit the ground, the impact sent tremors through the frozen earth that could be felt for miles. Kruel stood over his fallen opponent, the bloodied ice blade still in his hand. The fourth horn on his forehead had emerged completely now, its sharp point gleaming in the pale light. Power radiated from his transformed form like heat from a forge. “Magnificent,” he said quietly, his voice carrying genuine respect for the creature he had just destroyed. “You fought with more courage than warriors ten times your size. But courage without strength is just—” The words died in his throat as the sky above them began to tear. It started as a pinprick of purple light, no larger than a coin. But it grew rapidly, the edges of reality fraying like old fabric as something forced its way through from another dimension. The air around the tear crackled with energy. The rift widened, and through it stepped a figure that made even the four-horn Harbinger pause. Noah emerged from the purple void like a dark angel of retribution. The Knight’s Grace armor he wore was midnight black, its surface absorbing light rather than reflecting it. In his right hand, he carried Excaliburn, the blade wreathed in dark purple flames that burned without heat. But it was his eyes that truly commanded attention. Gone was the determined young soldier who had entered this system days ago. In his place stood something harder, colder, more dangerous than anything Kruel had faced in decades of conquest. “You,” Noah said, his voice carrying across the wasteland with quiet authority, “made a mistake.” Before Kruel could respond, the air behind Noah began to shimmer again. But this time, it wasn’t purple light that heralded the arrival—it was red mist, thick and viscous, that poured through a second rift like blood from a wound. The mist spread across the battlefield with unnatural speed, its red tendrils reaching into every crack and crevice of the frozen landscape. And from within its depths came a sound that made every living thing for miles around freeze in primal terror. **ROOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!** The sound rolled across the battlefield like a tsunami of pure menace, and even Kruel—who had faced creatures across dozen worlds—felt something cold crawl up his spine. The red mist began to swirl, forming shapes that defied the eye’s ability to process them. Massive forms moved within the red fog, shadows of something so large that its presence warped the very air around it. But the arrivals weren’t finished. High above the battlefield, Lucas materialized with his body wreathed in lightning. Power radiated from him in waves, the air around his form ionizing from the sheer energy he contained. And beyond him, descending from the stratosphere like falling stars, came the Earth Defense Force fleet. Massive dreadnoughts broke through the cloud cover, their weapons already charging with energy that could crack continents. Smaller ships swarmed around them like hornets, their formation perfect and deadly. On board were the rest of the vanguard crew and EDF soldiers. The message was clear, written in steel and lightning and the promise of violence that saturated the air like ozone before a storm. This ends now. Kruel looked around at the forces arrayed against him, his newly evolved form taking in the scope of the threat he now faced. His single remaining eye—the other still a ruined mess from Storm’s lightning but healing—fixed on Noah with something approaching interest. “Well,” he said, his voice carrying the same casual confidence despite the overwhelming odds, “this is more like it.” Blood dripped from his wounds, but he was smiling—the same predatory expression that had terrified countless worlds. “I was beginning to think this operation I was assigned might disappoint me after all,” Kruel continued, flexing his fingers as power built around his transformed form. “But this... this has potential.” Noah stepped forward, Excaliburn’s flames growing brighter with each step. The Knight’s Grace armor moved with him like a second skin, every plate and joint perfectly calibrated for the violence that was about to unfold. “You, you and your army of inbred aliens killed my friends,” Noah said, his voice carrying the weight of absolute certainty. “You tortured Storm. You turned this world into a slaughterhouse.” He raised Excaliburn, the blade’s flames casting dancing shadows across his face. In the reflection of the sword’s surface, Kruel could see something that made even his enhanced nerves twitch with anticipation. Noah Eclipse was approaching a threshold impossible for species of his kind. This was the mystery he wanted to solve before Cassandra’s ship’s arrival distracted him. “Now,” Noah said, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried across the entire battlefield, “you pay.” The red mist surged, and from its depths came another roar that shook everyone present. Lightning split the sky as Lucas began his descent, and the EDF fleet’s weapons reached full charge with a hum that vibrated through the bones of every living thing below. The final battle was about to begin.

Chapter 367: Time to pay

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