NOVEL NEXT Chapter 216: Twitching
It was now a one on one fight between Damien and the Bonewing Wyrm which had easily annihilated over two dozen black dragons.
He stood, barely. His body was already knitting itself together, but the pain screamed in his nerves. He blinked through the blur. The Wyrm was charging again, bones humming, talons out.
He dodged, barely. It clipped his shoulder, tearing silver-flesh into ragged meat. Blood splashed the water, hissing as it touched the Wyrm's bone-forged aura.
"It's soul isn't flickering. It's fused."
This wasn't a beast that died and lingered.
This was a beast that became death.
Every attempt Damien made to unravel it was rejected. Its soul was like obsidian, smooth, sealed, inviolable. The Core couldn't read it. The runes couldn't penetrate it.
His refined spells were too clean.
This thing demanded violence.
Damien clenched his fists and switched tactics. He abandoned the spiral runes and called raw death force, ugly, dense, and brutal. The swamp darkened as the water around him curdled. Fumes rose. Air screamed.
He leapt back in, low and fast.
This time, he met the Wyrm head-on.
A claw swung. He deflected. Another came from below, he kicked off it, vaulting up. A tail lashed, he twisted in midair, blade flashing from his sheath, carving across bone.
Sparks.
Not blood.
The blade skittered, useless.
The Wyrm responded by spitting a cone of acidic soulflame. Damien dropped, covered his core with his arms.
It hit him like molten air.
Searing death-energy wrapped his body and bit in. His silver skin blistered. For one second, just one, Damien screamed.
Then he hit the ground again, smoking.
But he didn't fall.
He rose.
Teeth bared. Face scorched. Aura wild.
Not refined. Not elegant.
But furious.
His Core flared. Death surged, not to kill, but to call.
And this time, the world answered.
Flickers. Soul fragments. Old dead things buried in the swamp. Their truths, their final breaths, their rage, they rose.
A mother's scream.
A soldier's oath.
A beast's dying roar.
Soul Flicker.
They spiraled around Damien like a storm of unfinished deaths.
He launched forward, wielding them not as spells, but as weapons of memory and intent.
The Wyrm shrieked. It reared back, wings cracking the sky.
And Damien struck.
The battle had only just begun.
The Bonewing Wyrm loomed overhead, its skeletal wings casting jagged shadows through the thick swamp mist.
Every breath it took distorted the air with the weight of ancient death. Its body was a fortress of fused bone and spiritual corrosion, layered with soulforged armor that denied reason, denied decay.
But Damien was changing.
His immunity to fire helped him resist the worst of its fire attacks, but its physical attacks still hit him.
Blood still seeped down his side, but his footing was firm. He exhaled once, and something clicked.
His death aura rippled, not with fury, but with rhythm. With purpose. His body, beaten and bleeding, aligned with the mindset drilled into him during the nightmare crucible of the super soldier program.
That cold space. That brutal clarity.
His eyes steadied.
His hands stilled.
And then, in a whisper of darkness, he drew the invisible sword, the powerful blade he had taken from the Black Dragon Armory.
He didn't need the Legendary Spear of the Eternal Storms, not yet.
There was no flash. No clang of steel. No aura of power.
Only silence.
Even the Wyrm paused, its draconic instincts sensing something had shifted.
Damien moved.
He dashed forward, not fast, but efficient. No wasted motion. Just raw control and sheer aggression.
It was [Sovereign Stride]
His silver-grade body, once too stiff from new strength, now flowed. Muscles, tendons, mana threads, every fiber worked in harmony.
He had finally adapted.
His sword arced, quiet and unseen.
But when it landed, the Bonewing Wyrm shrieked in pain.
Boom.
A crescent slash cleaved across the Wyrm's ribbed torso, and for the first time—bone cracked.
Not shattered. But cracked.
The beast howled, wings beating furiously. It surged forward, tail spinning like a scythe.
Damien ducked, deflected with his forearm, and slashed again.
Boom.
Another crack. The invisible blade struck with the force of a meteor compressed into a thread of air.
He was in his zone now, a living weapon that could slay demigods.
The same mindset that had allowed him to cut down royal lightning dragons under enemy fire bloomed once more within him.
Strike. Shift. Counter. Advance.
Each move precise. Each impact brutal.
Where his death energy once raged outward in waves, now it condensed tightly around the blade, shaping the flickers of the dead into pure destructive intent.
A soldier's final spear-thrust.
A dying knight's spinning cleave.
A suicidal king's last lunge at fate.
He chained their truths into his swings.
And the Bonewing Wyrm responded with equal fury.
Its claws came in streaks. Its tail cracked stone. It spun, bit, flew, dove, shrieked.
One slash nearly tore off Damien's arm.
Another crushed his ribs again, his body regenerating just fast enough to stay in the fight.
But he endured.
Again, they clashed.
Bone against blade.
Death against undeath.
They fought across the swamp, trees falling, water boiling, the very sky trembling as the Core pulsed faster inside Damien's chest.
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
They moved so fast now, the world couldn't keep up.
Invisible arcs. Bone trails. Shimmering shockwaves.
Each collision split the earth, yet neither gained ground.
Finally, they stood across from each other.
The Wyrm, battered, cracked, bleeding soul-smoke from its wings.
Damien, panting, shirt half-burned, his invisible blade gleaming with flickers of the dead, his death energy whispering with a thousand voices.
They watched one another in silence.
Locked in a perfect impasse.
And Damien… smiled.
Because beneath the thunder of claws and the roar of bonefire, he could feel it, his Death Intent twitching.
A subtle pulse.
A call across the veil.
The Bonewing Wyrm's soul, once fused and sealed like obsidian, had begun to flicker. Just faintly. A tremor beneath the armor. A loosened thread in the tapestry.
It was almost ready to come home.
The wyrm roared and lunged again, this time faster than ever. The sky cracked behind it, swampwater hissed into steam, and the air blurred with raw kinetic rage.
Its jaws opened wide, bone fangs glowing with soulflame.