Chương 373: Chapter 363 - When the Strongest Meets The Sky

Leonie narrowed her eyes as she studied him. She noticed a couple of openings. Small ones. Were they bait? In any case, she would know soon enough. Let's see how good you really are, Alonso. She pressed her boots into the floor and launched forward. The air cracked around her as her acceleration shattered the stillness of the white room, sending a sharp gust trailing behind her. Her sword blurred into motion, cutting a straight line toward his right shoulder with perfect precision. Alonso tilted a fraction.

Her blade passed through empty air. Leonie didn't slow. She twisted her wrist, redirected the momentum, and slashed horizontally. Her Dark Star gauntlet reacted instantly, metal rippling and shifting into a dagger that jabbed straight for his ribs. Two perfect attacks at two different angles. Alonso stepped between them. His left blade tapped her sword, deflecting it lightly. His right slid under her dagger, guiding it aside with effortless control.

Sparks danced from the magnetised edges as the metals kissed and parted. Leonie gritted her teeth and blurred backward, only to lunge again. This time she came low, sweeping his legs with the dagger while the sword descended in a tight arc for his collarbone. Wind peeled and screeched against her movements, vibrating across the barrier around them. Alonso's foot shifted half a centimetre. The sweep missed. His shoulder slightly leaned back. The descending slash whistled past, missing by a fraction of a hair.

Leonie felt a chill crawl up her spine. How was he reading her so well? She forced it away and spun, letting the Dark Stars detach and split into six thin shards circling her arm. They shot forward like metal bullets, each angled to force a reaction, to limit his path. He didn't react. He was already moving. Before she even released them! Alonso wove through the shards like they were drifting leaves.

His swords rotated once, deflecting those aimed for his throat and heart, the remaining ones slicing past his coat without touching him. He wasn't just reading her. He wasn't countering after seeing them. He was moving as if he knew where each shard would pass even before she shot them. Leonie felt her heartbeat spike. She pushed her mutation harder, sharpening her senses further, letting the boost settle deeper into her muscles.

She feinted left, then darted right, her Dark Star gauntlet flattening into a shield to block his line of sight while the sword thrust from below. Alonso slid one foot back. The blade missed by a whisper. One of his swords tapped her shield, just with the necessary force and at the exact angle and timing to break her stance. She stumbled half a step. Her chest tightened. She could feel it clearly—her physical stats were higher than his. Her reaction speed was sharper.

She had more angles of attack, more tools, more versatility with the Dark Stars. By all means she should have been pressing him. So why… why did it feel like she was being toyed with? She launched a flurry then. A true test. Her strikes chained seamlessly from form to form, each transition clean and lethal—cuts, thrusts, feints, hooks, kicks. Her gauntlet spikes flipped out mid-motion, shards rotated around her wrist, her shield morphed into a dagger that stabbed from impossible angles.

A storm of technique and creativity, enough to overwhelm anyone near her level… and force those stronger to step back at the very least. And yet— Alonso did not even disengage. He stayed put. Every dodge was precise, sub-millimetre. Every block came at the exact moment to redirect instead of collide. Every step placed him exactly where her next strike wasn't. Her breath caught. This was not reflex. This was not technique alone. Was it… precognition? Did his mutation give him something like that? She tested it.

She spun and let her Dark Stars scatter again, shifting unpredictably mid-flight. She changed her stance mid-motion. She even altered her muscle tension last-moment to adjust the angle of her thrust. He still avoided everything. Her sword stopped a millimetre from his cheek. His blade rested against her gauntlet. She hadn't even seen him move the last step. Her eyes widened as the truth settled into her bones. If this was not precognition… then the alternative was far worse. His swordsmanship…

his ability to read intent… his combat awareness… Had to be so far beyond hers it was unreal. Her heart pounded. Her pride took a blow harder than any strike she had ever received. She had trained so much, even before entering The Tower. She had been given the best modules, the best teachers, the best simulations, and once she was summoned she had not rested a single day without training for hours. So how… how could the gap in technique be this large? Even if he were to be a world-tier prodigy, to reach this level…

how many fights had he been through? No matter the talent, to refine one's skill to this point would require tens or even hundreds of thousands of battles against opponents on a similar level, over and over and over… How? Just… who are you? She kept pushing, faking her intent, shifting angles, merging the Dark Stars into every motion, adding layers of feints, recalculating distance, timing, pressure— And yet… If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. It did not work.

He was simply too good. Not a quantitative difference, but a qualitative one. Their combat skill… was simply not in the same league. … No. She could not think like this. She knew he was strong. She expected it. This was Alonso. The Alonso. As for his combat skill, maybe it was just part of his mutation. Yes… that had to be it. In that case— She disengaged, stepping back as she steadied her breath. She would play toward her strengths too. It was time to raise the level. The warm-up was over.

She sent her waves through the Ajnal nodes in her body, and they lit up immediately, answering her with a smooth surge of power. The boost from her brother made them feel fuller, sharper, more alive than ever before. She squeezed them open. They flared to life, merging with the in-built pattern woven into her tailored armour and sword. The air around her crackled and boomed as lightning manifested along her frame, coiling around her limbs like living chains.

Sparks jumped from shoulder to wrist, blade to gauntlet, as if a storm had chosen her as its conduit. Arcs danced across her armour. Her blade hummed with electric heat. Everything aligned into perfect synergy with a technique she had pushed far beyond her peers, already surpassing the 18% threshold. Heart of Sparks Lightning snapped around her as she launched forward, the floor flashing under her feet.

Each step left thin trails of blue-white arcs flickering in her wake, like the afterimage of a storm trapped in the white room. Her blade hummed violently as she channelled magnetism through it, pulling her Dark Stars into a tight, lethal orbit around her—dozens streaks of metal crackling with electricity. Faster. Faster! Her speed skyrocketed. The ground blurred. She vanished from where she stood, reappearing above him, lightning swirling like a cloak. Her descending strike split the air with a deafening crack.

This time… she had him. He hadn't activated any skill. Not a single spark of enhancement. Such arrogance. Her Dark Stars curved around his flanks like hunting blades, passing— Her breath hitched. They passed less than a millimetre from his skin. They should have cut him… but they didn't. Something—something invisible—bent their path. Her own sword pulled slightly off-line. The magnetism reacted wrong, as if the entire field around him was tilted.

Her armour tugged, her balance slipped— what — Before she could correct, his swords moved. He didn't rush. He simply stepped in and let the blade glide, almost casual, tracing a faint red line across the side of her neck. Just a touch. Yet the intention was clear. In a real fight… That would have been the end. Leonie landed hard and slid back, boots carving a thin streak across the white floor. Her heart hammered. How? How did he do that? The air around him… was warped. As if space itself obeyed him.

Even the light around his silhouette shimmered, his form hazy and blurred. It wasn't Eclipse. It wasn't any skill she knew of. An original skill? A unique path? Like Pablo? Her heart thumped hard in her chest. She didn't want to stop now, not when the fight had finally reached this level… and yet she needed to ask. Because for all intents and purposes… she had already lost the spar.

"Can we continue?" Alonso nodded.

"Sure. But don't hold back anymore. If this is all there is… then further fighting is unnecessary." Leonie clenched her jaw. Such arrogance. Since when had anyone spoken to her like that? In every competition of her life, she had always stood at the top. Always. The only person she had ever considered her equal was her brother, and even then, his calm nature and team focus meant he never pushed himself as relentlessly as she did. And now… this young man before her… Alright then. You want me to go all out. I will.

If you get severely injured… you only have yourself to blame. Lightning erupted from her body as she forced the Ajnal nodes to flare brighter. The Dark Stars separated, each one glowing like a miniature sun wrapped in stormlight. She thrust forward with everything she had, the air erupting in lightning. Storm Domain Thunder burst outward. Arcs crawled across walls and floor as a dome of lightning expanded. Sparks leapt between the shards, forming threads, then lines, then a tightening cage. A net of pure EM force.

Now boosted far beyond her limits. The Dark Stars snapped into formation, more than a hundred points locking into a storm lattice that closed around him with no openings. No path out. He can't dodge this. Meaning: he will have to finally show what his skill is truly about. Come on, show me wha— Alonso lifted both swords. A smooth, almost bored motion. He swung. Two diagonal arcs. The sound cracked like the entire room had inhaled sharply. The EM lattice—her net, her perfected technique, her Domain—warped.

And then it shattered. The thunder died. The arcs flickered out. The Dark Stars spiralled apart, their formation ripped to pieces like toys caught in a tide. Leonie's vision froze for a heartbeat. No… no way… Her fingers trembled around her hilt. That was her strongest skill, boosted to a level she had never reached before. A Domain enhanced by her armour, her blade, her internal nodes, her mutation, and her brother's boost— And he broke it? With a swing? A single fucking swing!?

Her eyes widened, chest tight, lightning still crawling along her skin as if refusing to accept what had just happened.

"Do you possess other skills or techniques beside the Ajnal path?" he suddenly asked.

Alonso studied Leonie. She wore a worn yet finely crafted set of armour, the kind shaped by countless hours of refinement rather than vanity. Two familiar pieces stood out immediately—the silver-dark wristguard from the Overseer and the dark-gold shoulder plate from the Ajnal Empress. Slightly visible beneath them, the pale-blue Wyvern mark ran cold along her arm, glinting faintly each time the lightning crackled across her skin. In terms of Tower items, she matched him piece for piece.

But unlike him, it was clear she had followed the conventional path laid out in the last stage's script for the Ajnal. The woman herself was undeniably beautiful—by any standards—but what defined her wasn't her looks. It was the way she carried herself. Golden hair, now clinging slightly to her forehead with sweat. Eyes sharp with competitive hunger. A posture that screamed confidence—borderline arrogance. The stance of someone who knew their worth, and believed firmly in it.

Her weapon, a single-edged backsword crafted for high-speed cutting and lightning conduction, hummed with residual charge. The Dark Stars twisted around her left arm, shifting between forms. Her leg armour—sleek Ajnal-forged greaves—still crackled faintly, the lightning residue crawling down in thin veins. And yet… even with all that power, her fingers trembled ever so slightly around the hilt. Her expression was a perfect clash of frustration and disbelief.

A warrior realising, for the first time, that her ceiling might not be the sky she thought it was. He almost felt bad for her. His Path of Shards was a perfect counter to the Ajnal way—almost unfairly so. And her swordsmanship, though clearly honed and disciplined, could not match the refinement he had gained through the relentless, unforgiving spars with Darius. Meaning…

while he could tell she was strong—far stronger than Wang or anyone else who had walked the Ajnal path—against him there was simply nothing she could do. His Path of Shards, at its current level, meant that unless an external EM field was absurdly powerful, it wouldn't reach him at all. He exhaled softly. Maybe she should have sparred with Ayu instead. She would have still lost, but at least it would have been a closer match given her speed and the variety of her attacks.

A second passed in silence before she lifted her gaze toward him.

"I do. However… I won't be able to hold back after I use it," she said. Alonso raised a brow. Oh… so she did have more. Interesting. Still… would it require him to respond in kind? He would see first. He would see whether Lukas' sister was truly as strong as she believed herself to be.

"Alright. Let's have it."