Chapter 49: This is the end for you, or not?
They clashed again, and this time the sky itself cracked.
Hawkin had abandoned all pretense of testing his nephew’s abilities.
His power sword blazed with radiant fire as he activated its most devastating settings, while his armor’s full arsenal was activated.
Wind accelerators tracked Jorghan’s movements, firing streams of mass-reactive shells that exploded in cascading chains of destruction. Missile pods on his shoulders added their own deadly contribution, each warhead capable of leveling a city block.
But Jorghan had transcended the need for mere dodging.
He flowed through the storm of death like smoke, his body becoming partially incorporeal as his bloodline abilities reached new heights of expression.
When solid, he struck with the force of falling mountains.
When ethereal, he passed through attacks that should have obliterated him utterly.
[CARNAGE REQUIEM: EVOLUTION THRESHOLD REACHED]
[BLOODLINE ABILITY: ASCENDING TO SECOND FORM]
The transformation was subtle but terrifying in its implications.
The tattoos covering Jorghan’s body began to shift and writhe, rearranging themselves into new configurations that pulsed with deeper, more ancient power.
His wings, already devastating, sprouted additional segments that folded and unfolded in patterns that hurt to perceive directly.
When he spoke, his voice carried harmonics that existed in frequencies beyond human comprehension.
"You killed more than just my father that night," Jorghan said as he effortlessly deflected a strike that could have split lands.
"You killed my mother, my people. My sense of normality."
He gestured, and reality obeyed.
A wave of pure annihilation swept outward from his position, not an attack in any conventional sense but a fundamental assertion of dominance over the basic forces of existence.
Where it passed, matter reorganized itself according to his will.
Stone became liquid fire, air transformed into crystalline structures that sang with trapped lightning, and the very concept of distance became negotiable.
Hawkin’s armor, for all its technological marvels, was designed to function within the normal parameters of reality. Faced with an environment where physics had become optional, its systems began to falter.
Warning runes flashed across his visor display as the machine struggled to compensate for conditions that shouldn’t exist.
But Hawkin was more than his armor.
He was a warrior who had carved his legend through a thousand battles, who had stared into the abyss and forced it to blink first.
Drawing upon reserves of will that had seen him through the darkest campaigns, he began to fight the environment itself, imposing his own understanding of reality through sheer bloody-minded determination.
"I am Hawkin Sol’vur!" He roared, and the name carried weight that made the altered reality shiver.
"I am the Breaker of Worlds, the Extinction of Bloodlines! I have walked through the furnaces of hell and emerged unburned! I will not be undone by the tantrum of a child!"
His power sword suddenly blazed brighter than ever before, not with technological enhancement but with something far more primal—the accumulated legend of ten thousand victories, the weight of a reputation that had become its own form of magic.
When he swung the blade this time, it carved through Jorghan’s reality-warping as if it were a mere illusion.
The strike caught Jorghan across the chest, and for the first time since his awakening, he bled.
[CRITICAL DAMAGE DETECTED]
[REGENERATION SYSTEMS: OVERWHELMED]
[BLOODBORNE RAGE: MAXIMUM THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]
[WARNING: HOST PSYCHOLOGICAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED]
[CARNAGE REQUIEM: ENTERING BERSERKER PROTOCOL]
The sight of his own blood seemed to flip some fundamental switch in Jorghan’s psyche.
The careful control he had maintained, the strategic thinking that had guided his actions—all of it evaporated in an instant.
What remained was pure, primal fury given form and purpose.
AAAAHHHHHH!!!!
His scream of rage didn’t just sound—it shook the very air around and isles too.
Hawkin’s people have already fled away from the battle space of these two, and Turtle Rock had disappeared from that place.
The massive turtle rock, even at its great distance, felt the call and began to retreat further, its ancient wisdom recognizing a force of power that predated its own considerable age.
Sigora, still maintaining the evacuation portals, staggered as the psychic backlash washed over her consciousness.
When Jorghan moved this time, it wasn’t flight—it was the realm itself bending to accommodate his passage.
He appeared not in front of Hawkin but overlapping with him, occupying the same space through sheer force of will. His wings swept forward and down, no longer weapons but fundamental expressions of ending.
Hawkin’s legendary armor, blessed by war-priests and forged in divine flames, lasted exactly three seconds before beginning to fail catastrophically. Layer by layer, the protection that had seen him through countless battles was stripped away by forces that operated on principles older than technology itself.
But even as his defenses crumbled, Hawkin refused to yield.
He grappled with his transformed nephew in the heart of a reality storm, trading blow for devastating blow while islands crumbled and the sky itself bled light.
Each impact sent shockwaves racing across clouded space, causing the whole area around them to tremble.
In the end, it was not skill or power that would determine the victor, but something far simpler and far more terrible: the fundamental question of who wanted victory more—the man who had built his legend on the graves of the innocent, or the child who carried within him the accumulated rage of an exterminated bloodline.
Rage of a vengeful child.
[FINAL PROTOCOL AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED]
[CARNAGE REQUIEM: ULTIMATE MANIFESTATION AVAILABLE]
[WARNING: ACTIVATION WILL REQUIRE ALL MANA]
[PROCEED? Y/N]
As the battle raged on, reshaping everything around them, Jorghan’s consciousness touched that pulsing red dot in the void of his mind and made his choice.
The final moment came not with the clash of titans, but with the whisper of steel through flesh.
Jorghan’s small hand, wreathed in molten fury, had found its mark.
The blade of concentrated lava that extended from his fingertips punched through Hawkin’s legendary armor as if it were parchment, sinking deep into his uncle’s shoulder.
The smell of burning Maltneite and searing flesh filled the air as the commander’s systems screamed warnings that no longer mattered.
[CRITICAL STRIKE CONFIRMED]
[TARGET VITALITY: COMPROMISED]
[CARNAGE REQUIEM: EXECUTION PROTOCOL READY]
[BLOODBORNE RAGE: DEMANDING COMPLETION]
Hawkin’s power sword clattered from nerveless fingers as his left arm went completely limp. Through the cracked visor of his helm, Jorghan could see his uncle’s eyes—no longer filled with military precision or cold calculation, but with the dawning understanding of defeat.
The great Hawkin Sol’vur, Breaker of Worlds, reduced to a wounded animal awaiting the killing blow.
"This is for my father," Jorghan whispered, his voice carrying harmonics that made reality itself shiver.
His other hand began to glow with the same lethal radiance, positioning itself over his uncle’s heart.
"This is for my clan. This is for—"
Suddenly there was a sharp, chilling noise, which made him stop.