Chapter 169 - 171: Tier 6 Skill – Xhar's Final Stitch

Words : 1669 Updated : Sep 29th, 2025

Gander coughing, blood seeping from his mask's seams, he chuckles. "You really want me dead." He raises both hands. Runes begin circling his body like dying stars. "Fine." "Let me show you a curse meant for gods." Tier 6 Skill – Xhar's Final Stitch. The sky begins to dim—not like a sunset, but like a shadow falling across the world from something above. The light bleeds from the clouds, replaced by a suffocating violet hue. Then— It opens. A colossal eye materializes in the sky, stretching miles wide, its iris spiraling with writhing script from a language long dead. Veins of cursed energy web out from it, pulsing with each slow blink. The Hollow goes silent—like the world is holding its breath. Carwel stares up, jaw clenched. "This is bad," he mutters, voice hoarse. "We don't know what his skill will do." Tandu snarls, veins bulging across his neck. "Fuck it. I'm done playing careful." He slams his axe into the ground, golden runes exploding outward like a wildfire. "We hit him with everything." Carwel nods grimly. "Then together." They rise—mana howling around them like a storm. Twin cores ignite, the leyline threads beneath their feet burning with Tier 6 resonance. The terrain cracks beneath the pressure. Tandu roars. Tier 6 Skill – Primordial Flame Burial. Golden fire erupts from his sword, expanding into a burning wave that twists reality. The flame devours sound itself, reducing everything it touches into glowing fragments that drift upward like dust in a furnace. Carwel follows. Tier 6 Skill – Heavenfall Judgment. From the sky descends a titanic war-axe formed of light and stone, etched with the laws of the world. It falls slowly—inevitably—as if carried by divine gravity. The clouds spiral around it as it drops toward Gander, who stands unmoving, hands raised. The eye above them blinks. Tier 6 Skill – Xhar's Final Stitch. A circle of dark sigils bursts open around Gander, reaching out across dimensions. Tendrils of space itself unravel and wrap around his form. The eye in the sky weeps black light, which falls like rain. Each droplet carries a curse older than time. Each syllable of the spell twists the law of mana. Gander's body cracks, stitching itself anew in real time—becoming something not quite mortal. His voice echoes across the battlefield—not from his mouth, but from the air itself. "I unmake, to remake. I tear apart, to survive." He steps forward, and the sky breaks. The three Tier 6 skills collide. Primordial Flame meets Xhar's cursed deluge—fire roaring upward, black rain plunging down. The moment of contact warps the air, then detonates. A blinding sphere of destruction expands outward—too fast to escape. Heavenfall Judgment crashes in a heartbeat later, its divine impact compressing the explosion into a singularity for a blink of time—before reversing outward in a wave of annihilation. The Verid Hollow doesn't just explode—it ceases. The entire zone where they are fighting, a radius the size of a city, is swallowed by cascading voidfire and molten light. Mountains flatten. Canyons are carved where hills once stood. Mana is ripped from the air, leaving a silence more terrifying than any scream. When the light fades— A crater remains. Miles wide. Scorched black. The land is warped, spiraling out from the impact like a cyclone frozen in stone. The smoke rises slowly, carried by a dead wind. Embers drift across the shattered crater, settling on molten stone and fractured earth like snow from a ruined world. At the center, two figures remain standing. Carwel coughs, blood running down the side of his face. One arm hangs useless at his side, his armor shattered in several places. His breathing is ragged. Beside him, Tandu sways slightly, half of his axe gone—melted away. His stone-forged skin is cracked, glowing faintly at the seams. But he's alive. Barely. Across from them, Gander lies motionless. His body is broken. Not like before—beyond repair. The cursed threads that once knit him together now fray, struggling to hold his form intact. One eye glows weakly through the cracked seam of his mask. Tandu stares down at him. "Damn bastard..." he breathes, voice rough and shaking. "You're really strong." He wipes blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. "No wonder you injured Lord Astram." Gander doesn't respond at first. He can't. His limbs won't move. Not even his fingers. Inside, his thoughts are slow, muddled, bleeding from exhaustion and pain. Should I just end it now? It would be easy. A final curse, one that eats his own heart. He has the runes for it etched beneath his skin. Just one trigger. But... His mind drifts—to him. To Alix. To the moment of his revival. The faint light, the voice calling him back. His king's voice. His Majesty's hands gripping the shattered locket and pouring in the gold. So much gold. He knows. He knows the toll. And it wasn't just the cost. Alix had looked at him—not like a weapon, not like a cursed thing—but like a person. Like someone worth the price. Gander's eye dims. How would he feel... if I just threw that away? But before he can decide— A pulse of air. A crack in the wind. A figure slams into the crater between them with a burst of wind and crimson light, kicking up a cloud of soot and ash. The earth beneath the impact shatters. Tandu stumbles back a step, weapon half-raised in reflex. Carwel's eyes widen. "What—" The dust clears. A long coat ripples. A shadow stands straight, eyes burning with clean, cold fury. Alix. He doesn't look at Tandu or Carwel. Not yet. His gaze goes straight to Gander. Gander's eye flickers wide. His lips crack open. "Y-Your Majesty..." he croaks. "You're here...!" For the first time, something breaks in his voice—not defiance, not venom. Just raw relief. Alix kneels beside him in a flash, one hand already glowing with warm light, the other steadying Gander's head. "You held them off," Alix said. "I'm proud of what you did." Gander tries to laugh, but only blood escapes his lips. "I... couldn't die before you got here." Alix doesn't hesitate. From his coat, he pulls out a sleek, obsidian vial laced with golden filigree—an high-grade elixir potent enough to stabilize someone at death's edge for minutes, maybe seconds more. He uncorks it with a flick of his thumb and presses it gently to the edge of Gander's cracked mask. "Drink this," he says firmly. Gander coughs again, but he drinks—his throat convulsing to force it down. Within moments, the potion works. The runes along his arms stop fraying, the worst of the bleeding slows, and his breathing evens slightly. "I'll do the rest later," Alix says quietly. "Just stay with me." Then, slowly, Alix rises. He turns. Now he faces the two monsters—Tandu and Carwel. Their auras are still massive, burning and trembling from the aftermath of Tier 6 convergence. Tandu eyes him, scoffing with blood in his teeth. "And here I thought a great enemy had arrived," he growls. "But what is this? A Tier 5 ant?" He gestures mockingly with his half-melted axe. "Why would trash like you even bother showing up here?" Carwel doesn't speak, but his eyes narrow, watching—waiting. Alix doesn't answer. Instead, he exhales once—and the air shudders. A sharp click sounds as Alix snaps his fingers—and in that instant, thirteen rings of mana ignite around him. Buff after buff unfurls in rapid succession, crashing into his body like divine chains latching into place. One. Two. Five. Thirteen. Each one pulses with ancient power—speed, strength, regeneration, reflex, defense, aura amplification, precision, willpower reinforcement, element harmonization... The sky ripples as if a second sun has risen inside the crater. And then— His aura explodes. A tidal wave of pressure floods the battlefield. The very earth cracks beneath his feet, the crater groaning as if rejecting the mana weight pressing down. The sky above bends inward, clouds swirling into a spiral vortex directly over Alix's head. Carwel flinches. "What... the hell?" Tandu staggers a step back. His pupils dilate. "That can't be Tier 5," he mutters. "That's not Tier 5..." Alix's eyes glow like twin suns. His voice is steady, quiet—but it cuts through the roar like a blade. "You made three mistakes." Tandu grits his teeth. "What did you say?" "One," Alix continues, raising a finger, "you underestimated him." He glances at Gander. "Even now, he's still alive." "Two—" Alix steps forward, the ground shattering under each step, "you assumed my Tier defines my threat." He stops just a few meters away. "And three..." He raises his hand, his aura tightening into a single, focused point of lethal calm. "You spoke to me like I was prey." The words land heavier than any spell. For a heartbeat, no one moves. Then Carwel suddenly swears under his breath. "This is bad... This feels like when we faced Lord Astram." Tandu's jaw clenches. "Don't joke like that. There's no way—he's just Tier 5!" "Do you feel like that matters right now?" Carwel snaps, eyes wide. "I don't care what Tier he says he is—look at that aura. That's not something we can deal with." Tandu hesitates, sweat breaking across his forehead despite the molten cracks on his body. The weight pressing down on them is suffocating. He tries to laugh, but it comes out shaky. "Shit... you might be right." Carwel doesn't wait. He turns in an instant. "We're leaving. Now." Tandu snarls, still staring at Alix. But after a long second, he growls, "Next time, then." And then they rise—mana flaring, launching them into the sky like twin bolts of fleeing lightning. Alix doesn't move. He watches them disappear into the swirling clouds above.

Chapter 169 - 171: Tier 6 Skill – Xhar's Final Stitch

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