NOVEL NEXT Chapter 380: What's Reality?
Ren launched forward like a shot.
His feet slammed against the tiled floor of the corridor, propelling him through the thickening silence.
His Vine Armor slithered across his body, coiling tight, and a thin shield of Push resonance formed around his fists. The air trembled with pressure as he approached his opponent.
The cloaked figure didn't move. Not until Ren was nearly on him.
Then the figure stepped back and pivoted smoothly, so graceful, it looked almost too fluid to be human. A blade flashed from beneath the cloak, silver and curved, aiming straight for Ren's ribs.
Ren twisted mid-sprint, angling his body. The blade nicked his armor, bouncing off the surface as he used his forward momentum to spin low and slam his elbow upward toward the figure's stomach.
The figure leapt back, just an inch too slow.
Ren's elbow grazed the cloak, sending it flapping up. In that moment, Ren planted one foot and spun again, sending a leg sweeping for the enemy's knees.
The attack connected.
The figure stumbled, sliding along the stone floor. But they caught themselves on one hand and rebounded, a second blade appearing in their other hand. Two blades now, held in a reversed grip, pointed down like fangs.
Ren grinned and surged forward.
They clashed.
Blade met force barrier in rapid flashes of movement. The air was thick with tension, even if the sound was swallowed. Every block, every dodge, every movement echoed faintly around the hallway.
Ren jabbed with his left fist to find it blocked.
He pushed with his right, and it was deflected by a crossed blade.
He feinted left and shot a blast of resonance straight at the figure's chest.
The cloaked fighter spun, avoiding the brunt of it, but the edge of the Push tore part of the cloak, and that's when Ren moved in.
He darted forward, arms sweeping out to grab the cloak. His fingers clutched the edge, yanking hard with the intention of dragging the opponent close and slamming a fist into their face.
But the cloth tore.
The fabric ripped like paper, falling away in tatters as Ren stumbled forward slightly from the force of his own pull.
And then he saw it.
The face beneath the hood. Eyes wide, mouth drawn in a tight frown.
Not a stranger.
Not some unknown zealot from the Choir.
It was one of the eastern mercenaries.
Ren blinked.
The man stared at him for half a second longer, shock flickering behind his otherwise calm expression. Then he surged forward, blades slashing outward in a flurry of rapid, silent cuts.
Ren barely had time to raise his arms. One blade scraped across his left forearm, slicing into the Vine Armor and drawing blood.
The silence was slowly weakening the effectiveness of his Vine Armor.
The second blade he deflected with a burst of Push, the air trembling violently between them.
Ren backpedaled, vines wrapping tighter around his wound.
"You're one of them?" He mouthed silently.
The mercenary didn't answer, just vanished in a blur of motion.
Ren turned, just in time to catch the man appearing behind him. He ducked, rolled forward, and twisted mid-roll to send a shockwave behind him.
The blast caught the mercenary mid-swing, sending him tumbling back, but he landed on his feet, sliding smoothly across the floor, blades drawn once again.
Ren rose, breath quickened, blood dripping down his arm, mind spinning.
The eastern mercenaries. The Choir.
They were the same.
Had they been the one to bring the Shard of Oblivion into Carthage. Were they agents of the Three or Yggdrasil?
He couldn't afford to hold back anymore. Not if this was what they were up against.
Ren blurred forward, leaving cracks in the floor with every step. His arm extended, a burst of Push resonance flaring around his fist like rippling force. His target, the exposed ribs of the mercenary, glowed in his mind's eye.
He struck.
The punch connected.
The mercenary's body shuddered, but not from impact.
Instead of being flung across the corridor like any normal opponent, the mercenary vanished in that instant, reappearing three feet to the left, unharmed, stance reset like he'd never been hit at all.
Ren's eyes widened. "What?!"
The mercenary stepped forward and slashed.
Ren blocked the first swipe with a vine-reinforced guard and leapt back from the second, his feet skidding against the stone. He launched another Push, but the mercenary flicked a finger.
The air shimmered.
The force of the blast curved sideways and smashed harmlessly into the wall.
Ren attacked again.
A juked to the left, before delivering a spinning kick from the right.
His foot connected with the man's shoulder, but again, in a shimmer of impossible reality, the mercenary was suddenly not there. The kick landed on thin air.
He changed the outcome.
'This is his power,' Ren realized, chest rising and falling. He's not dodging, he's shifting what happens.
"You're not dodging me." Ren growled under his breath. "You're cheating the outcome."
As if to confirm it, the mercenary nodded once, silent and composed, like a judge passing a sentence. He lunged again, both blades flickering in and out of existence like faulty memories.
Ren ducked, letting the first blade pass over his head, then twisted and sent a wave of kinetic force through the ground, but before it even reached his opponent, the floor was already intact again.
The quake didn't happen.
'He reversed it?' Ren thought, heart thundering now.
Sweat rolled down his brow.
He slashed with a vine. Outcome changed.
He sent a compressed Push blast. Outcome changed.
He exploded with a heatwave burst. The heat warped midair and veered off like it had been deflected by fate itself.
Ren leapt back, breathing hard, his muscles tense. Across from him, the mercenary stood perfectly still, chest rising slowly. Even he was panting now.
They locked eyes.
For the first time, Ren saw that the mercenary was also at his limit. The strain of rewriting reality again and again was catching up to him.
"So that's it, huh?" Ren muttered, straightening. "You don't just dodge. You choose the version of reality where I miss."
The mercenary didn't respond. His face was pale now, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Ren clenched his fists.
He couldn't beat this guy in a normal fight. Not unless he launched a strike so overwhelming, so absolute, that every version of reality ended the same way.
With the mercenary's death.
Ren's vines slithered around his right arm, retracting and twisting. Flesh bent. Bone shifted.
His forearm morphed, reshaping into something denser. A war spear that looked like it had been carved from hardened vines, curved for piercing and reinforced along the spine.
He wrapped it in Push resonance, and then layered it with kinetic pressure, the resulting mixture sitting thick, wild, and heavy.
A crackling storm of purple lightning burst into existence around the spear, humming, vibrating.
The silence that had swallowed their battle began to push back as the energy distorted it. It sizzled against the unnatural quiet like oil on flame.
Ren took a slow breath, feeling the heat of the weapon charge through his arm.
The air around him vibrated with the pressure of the strike to come.
He met the mercenary's eyes.
And grinned.
"Let's see you rewrite this."