NOVEL NEXT Chapter 383: 383: Level up, again!
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[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
Only ten plus left. A cold bell again.
[Ding! EXP threshold reached. Congratulations host. Level Up → 45.
Current EXP: 0/1000.]
He felt the world sharpen just a hair more. He rode that edge.
A four-star with a hook bladed spear tried to catch his weapon and twist. Kai twisted first, snapped the hook, stepped inside, and drove the broken hook into the man's eye.
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
Another made a brave, clean thrust for Kai's belly. Kai knocked it aside, grabbed the shaft, and used Devourer's Bite again—on wood this time. The shaft splintered; the man froze. Kai didn't.
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
The last of the right wing broke. Three tried to flee into the gloom down the dune. Azhara picked one with an arrow in the back of his knee; Kai reached the other two in six long strides and ended them back-to-back, quick and silent.
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
Forty. Eight to go. Rauk and seven men, bleeding and stubborn.
The seven circled, panting. One dropped his spear and drew a knife with shaking hands. Bad choice. Kai shattered his forearm with a downward smash, then put him down.
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
Two more came as a pair. Kai let them cross and stab at each other by mistake with a small sidestep, then harvested both while they cursed.
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
Rauk lumbered in again, head ringing, jaw a balloon. He swung a stolen spear like a club. Kai stepped under and through, raked the man's thigh plate with his point, cutting straps. Armor slipped. Rauk grunted and almost fell. He caught himself with pure spite.
Three left besides Rauk. One tried to beg with his eyes and stab with his hands. Kai didn't let either work. He killed him clean. The last two came together in a last rush. Kai knocked one spear aside, took a slice across his bicep for it, then rammed his own blade through the first man's heart and ripped free to take the second through the throat before the man could change his mind.
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
Forty-seven.
The saddle was a field of dark shapes and shallow breaths. Blood soaked into sand that didn't care. The wind tugged at fallen feathers, loose straps, a dropped cord. The moon watched without blinking.
Rauk stood there swaying, alone with Kai. His face was a ruin. One eye swollen shut. Blood all down his chest. His right knee bent wrong. He still lifted the spear.
"Good wall," Kai said. It wasn't mockery.
Rauk laughed once and coughed blood. "Good cliff," he said. It wasn't praise. It was a fact.
He came in a final time, a tired bull. Kai didn't toy with him. He cut the spear in half with a hard, clean strike, stepped inside the arc of the useless haft, and drove a heavy knee into Rauk's ribs. Something broke. Rauk folded. Kai caught his collar, twisted, and smashed him down onto his back. The ground shook a little. Rauk groaned. He tried to push up. His arm failed.
Kai stood over him, spear point down. He could end it. He didn't. Not yet. He wanted the message to reach the camp before the last breath left this man.
A small movement to the left. One more four-star trying to rise, retching, knife shaking in fingers. Kai walked over and ended it with a soft, precise thrust.
[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]
Forty eight dead.
Silence took the saddle, broken only by Rauk's rough breath and the low hiss of wind across ripples. Azhara stepped into the edge of the light, blood on her sleeve, face calm.
"No more runners," she said quietly.
Kai nodded once, eyes never leaving Rauk. "Good."
Rauk stared up at the sky. Then he turned his head, slow, to look at Kai. The one eye that still opened held something like respect and something like hate and something like relief that the day was done.
"Name was Rauk," he rasped.
"You can keep it," Kai said. His voice was flat. His chest heaved. The spear did not tremble.
Rauk spat red. "Tell… your girl… I held the line," he said. "Not for you. For my men."
Kai's jaw worked. He didn't answer. He set the spear point near Rauk's throat, not touching. The message would travel either way—breath or body.
Inside him, the system hummed, cold and neat, tallying the night's math.
[Ding! System notifications- EXP total update: Level 45 — 520/1000.]
He let the numbers fade. They didn't matter. What mattered was a dome, a cage, a small white shape, a friend with whiskers, a man with a grin. What mattered was east.
Rauk coughed, choked, and subsided. His breaths got shallower. His eyes did not leave Kai's.
Azhara's voice touched the road, low and steady. "Silvershadow has your reed. Alka is a whisper above the cloud. The cage sits where we left it. The grin still sits by it."
"Good," Kai said again.
He looked down at Rauk. "You did your work," he said. "I'll do mine."
He lifted the spear a finger's width, held, and then let the point hover — mercy or end, not chosen yet.
The saddle waited, quiet as a held breath.
The battle ends with forty-eight dead in the sand, a captain broken and barely breathing under Kai's apex form shadow, and the east calling like a hard, straight line. Kai's spear hangs for one more heartbeat. Then the next heartbeat will decide.