Chapter 359: I Lost II

Words : 1724 Updated : Oct 9th, 2025

Chapter 359: I Lost II After hundreds of deaths, Malik broke it. And now... he awaited the walls ahead. He was sure they were coming. Cyrus was strong. Really damned strong. Their fight was just beginning. It was only going to get tougher from here. But hey, at least this wall was destroyed. ...Or was it? Malik lunged in, capitalizing on Cyrus’s stumble. A clean slash, his golden fire arcing like a scythe made of the Shams itself. But the moment Spine Splitter got close, hitting silk— SHRRRRRK—!! Wind interfered. A veil. Cyrus’s air slipped under the edge of the blade, lifting it, turning it, and redirecting it. Malik’s own momentum betrayed him; his blade slid clean off, barely scraping cloth, never flesh. BOOM. Cyrus countered. MaIik deflected. This repeated ten times under a second. Until the twelfth clash... for it was a direct hit. A spear of air, a staff like a battering ram. Right to the ribs. Malik’s bones cracked. His heart burned. Blink. This was the nature of the seven-day wall. Indeed, this was a different one... a long one. Malik pushed it back from the tenth hour, but never ended it. He couldn’t. Every time he cleared an obstacle, another came after. Cyrus held so many tricks in that brain of his that they seemed endless. Still, Malik never paused, pushing back, learning, minute after minute, hour after hour. And yet when the seventh day arrived, he could no longer push the wall back. It didn’t budge. That was it, a point where no matter what he did, his ultimate strike wasn’t enough. No matter how perfect, how brutal, and how damned overwhelming. Even though they were evenly matched, Cyrus’s strike was always stronger. The reason was simple... obvious. The lead-up to that attack wasn’t in Malik’s favor. Wind would always find a path. A path to slide his attacks away, a subtle curl of pressure, a microburst from beneath the wrist, a jet stream kissing the sword’s flat edge, pivoting it just enough to rob it of bite. Cyrus’s attacks weren’t much better. But they were better, a fraction of a fraction better. A fraction that compounded once more, eventually leading to a blink. Air was harder to slide off skin; it punched, it compressed, and hammered. Every moment in time held a near-direct hit. Malik had to adjust. He did, focusing on what mattered most. The beginning of his blink... The third day. Stage one. Fraction by fraction. Death by death. Malik flipped his grip tighter but looser, more flowy, and he tweaked his angles. He applied Sandveil and Zephyr’s Kiss not just for protection and stealth, but also to create micro-pockets of sand, near-invisible particles that ruined the slickness of wind, destabilizing airflow. Every step now dragged sand into the air, and every gust of wind held an edge coated in millions of diamond-sharp grains. It worked, messing up his groove. ...Almost. Cyrus’s wind pressure fought back. The grains were pushed, but not all of them. Malik’s Will started to bite. He held control. And now, they fought on equal terms. They did so for a few hours until suddenly, he felt a shift in the current. Stage two had reached its climax. Malik swung— FWOOOOOM! Wind slammed from his left. And simultaneously— FWOOOOOM! From his right. Two walls of air, harder and denser than any metal, rushing to crush him between them like a vice, throwing off his golden fire. It was something different, new even after all these blinks. "Hm." No matter, Malik quickly recognized it. This was nothing but a scaled-up version of the same Ability he’d faced fighting the Ten Jinn. Seemed the bastard was watching him back then too, casually mimicking someone’s ultimate. Only this one wasn’t just brute force. It was perfected. The walls weren’t just smashing inward. They were spinning, curling, and compressing. If Malik tried to burn them head-on, he’d get caught in the implosion. Even if he tried to escape it, going front or back, it’d implode. But, of course, he wasn’t new to this. His mind ticked, calculating the ever-changing variables. Pressure... Heat... Expansion... Direction... That was what he needed to control. Simple. He dove forward, just between the curl of both streams. His hands flared, his golden fire igniting to expand the very air. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!! A violent detonation of compressed air and flame resounded as the two wind walls exploded outward, spinning into uncontrollable cyclones that ripped the landscape open for miles and miles on end. Malik wasn’t caught. His body whipped forward, the explosion launching him out of the trap. Sand trailed behind him, and his feet slammed down on the patch, leaving hoof prints. BOOM! He was straight back on the offensive. Cyrus caught the first swing—barely, his feet digging into the ground. His staff trembled, and his hands strained, nearly losing strength. "Hah... sharper now... good." But he wasn’t fazed. Because... It was stage three of the second wall. Malik felt it the moment his sword pressed forward, pushing his enemy down— "Look up." Cyrus’s grin widened. SHHHHHHRK!!! The sky shattered. Wind compressed from every angle, spinning, weaving, and solidifying. They didn’t make the usual wall or barrier, no, they made weapons. Tens of thousands... hundreds of thousands... millions. Right... Millions of weapons. Swords. Halberds. Lances. Axes. Daggers. Chains. Spikes. All air. All solid. All laced with his own {Ember’s Touch}. Malik jumped away, landing opposite the weapons. He wasn’t surprised, for he too had built a repertoire. Every hoof, every trickle of fire, they all flew up, pillars of flame. They paused once high in the air, each turning into the same weapon. The only weapon he’d ever wield... his Spine Splitter, Zulfiqar. It claimed him, and he claimed it till death came calling. And so, millions of double-bladed curved swords greeted Cyrus. They pulsed with gold and heat, melting the entire rocky landscape. A new Shams had befallen the world, nearly blinding every monster in the region. The two had obviously been building this up since the beginning. With every step and every clash of blades, micro-threads of Aether were seeded in the ground, waiting for the moment they’d transform into layered constructs. "Go." Cyrus triggered his army of weapons first. The blades fell, a storm of pure annihilation. "Fall." Malik’s hands moved, calling upon his own right after. SNAP. SNAP. SNAP. SNAP. SNAP. They met, creating otherworldly sounds. Everything around and away from them was being decimated, everything, and they only heard a repeating snap. Blade met curved blade. Aether met Aether. The sky ceased being blue; it was just black, white, and fire. Every molecule in the air turned into a bomb, then shattered into fragments, then exploded again. By the first millionth blade, the ruined canyon, which was already a wasteland, completely ceased to exist. A crater had formed instead. Then another. Then another. They were digging into Fam Iblis. Attacks so powerful, the ground flattened for as far as a mortal eye could see. Malik stepped left, and a few hundred thousand wind spears followed. He slid under, pivoted, and set fire to the air beneath them. BOOOOOOOOM. They detonated mid-path. Cyrus spun right, ducked, and made a series of a thousand micro movements, dodging around the same number of blades. His wind kept its compressed presence around him, allowing him to deflect any that came close to making direct contact, flinging them away. For minutes, hours, and days, they continued this exchange. They spoke no words, thought no thoughts outside the fight. Their Mithqal minds were in full use. Every feint was layered with a thousand counters. Every step was a trap layered with another thousand. Every other dodge was bait for a bigger strike. Malik’s fire was laced with poison, and Cyrus’s wind was laced with vacuum pockets designed to implode organs. Both only needed one proper hit. Only one... but that seemed as far as life was from death. At least until one special moment had arrived. It came on the night of the seventh day. The second wall’s climax. They both moved. Ascended. Straight into the sky. The ruined ground far below. Nothing but clouds now. Both Ember’s Touch maxed. Both weapons forward. Both eyes locked. One last time. They knew. They knew early on. It was the only way through this. A direct attack with no holds barred. They both thrusted their weapons. What came next was a flash. An even brighter Shams was born in the sky. The shockwave blew the clouds off the continent. Its rivers bent and its mountains cracked. The hills in the region ceased to be. A scar on the world was all that was left. No sound came about; perhaps there wasn’t anything to describe it. Only imagery could, and even that was momentarily taken away. Long moments passed, and when the fire cleared. When the pressure equalized, existence itself remembered how to hold shape, how to follow the Laws ordained upon it— Malik landed back on the ground. He was still breathing. ...Finally, he’d done it. The third wall was broken. But unfortunately, this fight didn’t seem to follow the trend of three. The fight wasn’t over, no, not even close. Even though it had been seven days. Thousands of deaths, of fractures, resets, fractures again. Fighting, breaking, dying, blinking, returning. Malik should have long since collapsed. This had taken on his mind like never before. He had to be beyond full focus for so many years. So, so many years of the divine, that his mind should’ve simply ceased. But instead, he got faster, sharper, and somehow smarter too. Cyrus, even though he shouldn’t, seemed to notice. Perhaps because the fight itself... Was a lesson. Every block Cyrus made was a lecture. Every dodge was a critique. Every trap was a question. Every kill was an answer. A brutal, merciless classroom. And finally, now, five days after the seventh... Five days after the third wall, many ultimate attacks later... Now Malik was standing at the fourth and final wall. The moment it began, he knew. Cyrus’s strategy had shifted. Their fight had turned completely mental, both literally and metaphorically. His wind no longer pressed from outside. No. This time... it was inside. It started in Malik’s shoulder. A tiny pinprick of vacuum. POP!

Chapter 359: I Lost II

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