Chapter 292: Single Strike Blows the Minds (Part 2)
"What a high mastery of a Spark Skill," many thought in unison. A few could not keep the thought inside, and the words escaped as a thin whisper while they watched Adyr sheath the blade’s hard, precise edge in Sonic Burst.
At that moment, the same question ran through every mind: if a Practitioner could wield a skill with mastery like that, what kind of force would the strike carry? The answer came without delay.
As Adyr saw the Umbraen formation primed to launch their attack, he refused to give them the count. He cut first.
The swing was measured. The angle was perfect. From the black blade’s tip, a half-moon of compressed sound tore free and raced downrange.
The first noise was not a boom, not yet. The air parted with a clean, even swish, and only after the arc traveled did the sound climb into a heavy, rolling thunder.
Dust on the marble shivered into tight rings as the crescent skimmed low, fast, and exact, a flawless blade of pressure with no wasted spread.
"It will not be enough to pass me." The Rank 2 tank sent the words at the oncoming wave as if the voice itself were part of his shield.
He adjusted his stance in a single heartbeat. Heels bit into stone. Knees bent just enough. Torso angled forward to take and turn the force. The great round shield rose to the centerline, an unshakable wall. Every muscle locked to meet impact and bleed it sideways.
But his expression changed in the space of a blink.
The sonic arc met the black-light film first. It did not shatter the barrier. It cut it. A seam opened as if the film were oiled silk. The parting edges flashed once and went dark, the line so clean it looked drawn by a razor in a single pass.
Without dropping speed, the wave struck the shield dead center.
BOOM!
The sound that followed was not a simple crack. It was layered: a hammer and an anvil and the ring of torn metal all at once.
The plate bent along the line of impact. The dish of the shield folded at the hit point as if some deliberate hand had pinched a crease through it.
The Rank 2 lost the ground under him. He was ripped out of his footing and thrown, body and shield torn backward as one mass, carried across the arena’s edge and past the boundary in a single violent arc.
The attack did not end with him. The crescent was wide. It kept its shape.
The 2 attackers took the strike next. They were tuned for output rather than survival. Both were only Rank 1. The hit snapped them backward as if a hook had yanked them by the chest. They pinwheeled out of the arena.
For a heartbeat, they were motion and color, then thin red ribbons spiraled behind them, a broken comet tail of blood marking their path through the air.
The 2 supports fared worse. The pressure hit them at mid-frame. It folded them at the waist. Sound carved across their centers in a deep, brutal line, the kind of cut that shows what should never be seen.
The strike lifted them clear off the marble and swept them outward beyond the boundary. A fine, fading spray stitched the air in a dotted path that broke up as it fell.
Silence claimed the stands in a single breath.
Liora watched and did not speak. Even Caprion’s calm face shifted, the result settling into his eyes as the short, brutal exchange ended almost before it began.
On the floor, the hum at Adyr’s blade died down to nothing. Around the empty space where the Umbraen formation had stood, the black film fluttered. It collapsed in on itself and vanished as if it had never been there.
One strike. One swing of the sword.
In seconds, the Umbraen 5 were gone from the arena, their bodies thrown to the hard earth beyond the boundary. The ring was left to the sound of its own echo.
On the marble, only proof remained that they had stood there at all. Spreading pools of blood darkened the pale stone. A scatter of weapons lay on the ground where fingers had opened without willing it, steel skidding to a stop in harsh, scraping arcs.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" A Rank 2 Practitioner in the stands, a competitor waiting for his turn, could not hold the words. Disbelief crushed the air out of them. He was one voice, but he was not alone in the thought.
"How can he be Rank 2? He cut a Rank 2 Nether Path Practitioner with a single attack skill." Another voice came sharp and fast, as if trying to reach the higher seats where the leaders watched.
Eyes already lifted toward the elders and leaders, searching for someone to blame for letting a Rank 3 step into a match meant for Rank 1 and Rank 2.
While the lower ranks fumbled for an explanation, the elders and race leaders, those with sharper eyes, had already dismantled the scene in their heads. They had watched every part of it with trained calm. Now they began to explain to their younger generations in voices that did not shake.
"It was not one skill. He used two."
A thin gasp moved through the arena as the words landed.
Most had assumed Adyr had driven Sonic Burst to a terrifying edge, carving a sword arc with a mastery difficult enough to accept by itself.
That alone was hard to believe, but still within what a genius might reach. Hearing that he had added another skill at the same time, with the same level of control, set every mind buzzing.
Eyes went back over the strike in memory, frame by frame. The bead, the ripple, the sheath of vibration. The clean sever of the barrier. The way the shield folded at a single, precise line instead of crumpling into a general dent. The sustained coherence of the crescent as it carried through five bodies without breaking apart into ragged pressure.
These were not the marks of raw force alone. They were the fingerprints of compound technique, the sort of interaction that never happens by accident.
The questions formed at once and did not find an easy place to rest.
How can someone use 2 skills at once, keep both under equal mastery, and blend them into a single strike without a flaw?
How does a Rank 2 Practitioner hold the shape of one skill steady while another one modifies it in motion?Where does the mind sit when the edge must be sound and the sound must be the edge at the same time?
No one in the stands answered. No one in the ring spoke. For a long breath, even the smallest sound felt out of place, as if the arena itself were thinking.
Adyr was thinking too...
This 2-skill combo is really something...
His mind felt tired, but watching Sonic Burst and Burst Hop lock into a single, clean sequence under the guidance of his Gaze bloodline talent was deeply satisfying.
Flooded by Gaze with countless trial-visions of angle, timing, and force, he mapped and mastered the combo in 10 seconds. Executing it against the Umbraen 5-man team proved the result of his training and made the strain worth it.
Both skills were Rank 2, yet together they produced a force beyond a low-grade Rank 3.