Empires | Arc 3 | Chapter 6 | Number One Vs Only One

Moments after the booming voice echoes up from the canyon—sounding as though the heavens themselves are clapping —a sudden wind sweeps in from the West of the grasslands. It is completely unnatural. It is heavy, thick, and suffocating, howling through the clearing as if demanding the group acknowledge its presence.

Lesca doesn’t even try to fight the air pressure. As the gale strikes her body, a torrent of tears splashes from her eyes, striking the dirt. From the blackness of the crater, a low, rhythmic vibration begins to reverberate directly into the hearts of everyone present.

Dhup. Dhup. Dhup. Dhup.

The footsteps are wrong. The impacts are traveling vertically up the sheer canyon walls rather than horizontally across the floor.

Leon slowly turns toward the edge. Before a head even breaches the lip, columns of dense, scalding vapor begin to hiss out of the chasm like an industrial steam engine, thickening by the millisecond. Whoever is releasing it is right at the edge.

The entity does not climb. There is no desperate reaching of hands or scraping of fingers against stone. Instead, a right foot simply steps out over the void, searching for a platform that isn’t there, having already reached the absolute vertical peak of the wall.

With a sudden, violent torque, the figure hurls his upper torso upward, planting his right boot firmly onto the grass field. He stands.

Jarrod, Friling, and Lesca slowly lift their eyes. They know this silhouette. They witnessed it on that fateful night, and their bodies instinctively remember what it is capable of.

Taglia is no longer 5’10”. He stands much taller now, a towering 6’2″. His olive duster coat has been entirely shreded, buried somewhere beneath the tons of debris in the abyss. His trousers remain, but the fabric is split and frayed, desperately straining against the unnatural thickness of his thighs and calves. A dense shroud of steam wraps around his frame.

As the vapor slowly evaporates into the wind, his body comes into view. He is vastly more jacked, his definition moving completely out of human proportions. His shoulder delts, traps, chest, and neck are heavily engorged, and his skin color has turned a visceral, deathly grey. Thick, pulsing veins crawl like steel wires around his feet, the backs of his palms, and his forearms. His long hair, freed from its snapped ponytail band by Leon’s final strike, streams wildly in the howling gale.

Lesca stares at the 50% Primal Mode. An involuntary, hysterical chuckle escapes her lips as another stream of tears spills down her cheeks.

Makisa narrows her eyes, muttering a single word. “Ugly.” But a lethal, knowing smirk cuts across her face.

The rest of the group is frozen to the spot. Jarrod has completely forgotten to breathe; this is the exact nightmare that slapped his ears and knocked him into unconsciousness. Friling takes a reflexive, terrified step backward, shifting his weight sideways to hide his vulnerable right wing-root from view.

Taglia twitches his neck to the right, a sickening crunch echoing from his vertebrae. When he speaks, his tone is visibly deeper, vibrating with concussive weight.

“Congratulations. You pushed me to my fifty percent. That last attack… I would have lost a limb if I hadn’t activated my Heat.”

Leon fully turns his body, his focused eyes locking onto the monstrosity. “So what was all this until now? Testing how thick your skin is?”

Taglia lets out a deep, booming laugh. “Something like that. But more so, I was testing you… and your spot. You are right. You are number one.”

Leon blinks.

WHOOSH.

In the span of that single eye-blink, Taglia vanishes into thin air without a single rustle of grass or gust of wind. Leon’s eyes snap upward, searching the sky, but before he can look to his flanks, Maven’s voice cuts through the clearing like a siren.

“To your right!”

Leon whips his head to the side. Taglia is already standing right beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder, staring blankly out at the panicked group in front of him. His right arm is casually, lazily draped over Leon’s collarbone like a loose scarf.

Without even turning his head to look at him, Taglia whispers. “But I am the only one.”

Leon’s mind screams in pure disbelief. What was that? He just covered fifteen meters in the absolute blink of an eye without taking a single visible step.

Jarrod has seen this anomaly before, and he speaks the terrifying answer aloud. “He went Mach on the air currents.”

“He didn’t use the ground to jump,” Friling whispers to himself, his voice trembling as he breaks down the physics. “He jumped using the localized air currents right around his feet. That’s why he went supersonic without triggering a sonic boom.”

Leon doesn’t have the luxury to quip back. He slams his eyes shut. This time, no vibrant red light wraps around his body; his exhaustion is setting in. He simply whispers the command.

“Sword.“

The stat distribution locks—Strength 50, Speed 50.

Leon drives a brutal, lightning-fast hand-chop straight toward Taglia‘s open right flank. Taglia doesn’t panic. Tracking the incoming strike purely through the periphery of his vision, his head completely stationary, he smoothly fires his left arm through the microscopic gap between their bodies.

CATCH.

Taglia hooks the chop flawlessly in his palm. The sheer wind pressure generated by the deflected strike causes a massive gust to rip through the grass behind them, flattening the soil. Leon immediately exerts maximum leverage, locking his right hand against Taglia’s grip to balance himself, and launches his entire body into the air. He delivers a devastating, diagonal double-kick straight into Taglia’s right waist and thigh.

CRACK.

The impact forces Taglia to release his hold, taking a few heavy steps to the side. Free from the trap, Leon lands several feet away, huffing violently—not from a lack of oxygen, but from the terrifying realization of how close he just came to execution.

Friling looks at the fading aura. “Why didn’t the red heat come out?”

“He’s tired,” Maven says somberly, her eyes tracking her student’s posture. “His concentration is withering away.”

“The boost is gone then?!” Makisa mumbles, her eyes narrowing.

Taglia smirks at him, genuinely impressed by his resilience. Then, in a flash, he faces Leon fully and extends both of his massive, grey-skinned arms out as wide as they can go. It is a grotesque spectacle; his hands look as though they are physically trapping and compressing the atmosphere, forcing the very air into a highly pressurized sphere.

The localized vacuum is so intense that Jarrod, Friling, and the others experience a sudden, agonizing pop in their ears, their lungs straining as the oxygen is violently vacuumed into Taglia’s radius.

He brings his palms together in one violent, explosive motion.

SLLAAAAPPPPP!

In human terms, it is a simple clap. In the hands of a fifty-percent Primal, it is a localized thunderclap that detonates a concussive shockwave straight down Leon’s throat. The trajectory between them is instantly pulverized; the tall grass isn’t ripped or thrown away—it is instantly shredded into microscopic dust, completely vanishing from existence.

Maven moves on pure muscle reflex. She knows Leon‘s stamina is spent, and she knows his pride will never allow him to dodge. She leaps directly into the path of the incoming shockwave, her voice piercing the roar of the wind.

“Holy Blades of the Divine!“

Ten blades manifest—five on her left, five on her right. Before they can even fully solidify into an offensive line, she violently throws her arms forward, interlacing them into a rigid, dual-layer shield. Five in the front row, five in the back.

The shockwave slams into the steel.

TRUNGGG!

The first layer shatters like glass. The concussive residual force hits Maven and Leon like a battering ram, launching them both violently backward through the air. Leon reacts instantly, wrapping his arms around Maven’s deltoids to absorb her momentum and anchor her before she can be thrown further across the field.

As the dust settles, both stand unharmed. Leon keeps his grip tightly secured on her shoulders, his eyes wild with frustration as he glares at Taglia, who has simply dropped his arms to his sides, waiting.

“Back off!” Leon screams, his voice cracking with a toxic mix of exhaustion and feral pride. “He is mine! It’s one-on-one! I GAVE MY WORD!”

Gently but firmly, he places Maven back onto the grass. Watching from the sidelines, Makisa crosses her arms, a rare look of grim respect in her eyes. Leon is facing an absolute ceiling, but he is demanding to go down with his dignity intact. That is something she respects.

Before Maven can even formulate a counter-argument, Taglia begins marching toward them.

“Take her help,” Taglia calls out, his deeper voice cutting through the wind. “Maybe you are too deaf to notice, but she has fallen for you.”

He stops walking. And

DHUM. DHUM. DHUM. DHUM.

Taglia charges into a full, rhino-like sprint, his heavy, steel-cable legs tearing literal craters into the earth with every single stride.

Leon freezes for a microscopic second. Fallen? What the fuck did that just come from?

The cognitive dissonance is total. The power gap, the sudden, indirect confession, and the incoming freight train of a 50% Primal Mode slam into his brain simultaneously. Leon’s Zen state completely fractures. Operating on pure, panicked survival instinct, he screams the command.

“Axe!”

Strength 90, Speed 10.

He launches himself directly into a head-on collision to stop the charge with his own.

DHABOOM!

The head-on impact detonates a circular shockwave so violent that the entire group is physically lifted from their stances and deposited one full step backward.

Jarrod and Friling instantly rush forward through the blinding debris to see the result.

When the dust clears, the horror is absolute.

Leon stopped the charge, but barely. Crimson blood is pouring freely from his mouth. Taglia’s massive, grey fists are glued deep into Leon’s abdomen, planted with such concussive force that Leon’s skin is stretched backward like taut rubber. Taglia’s engorged shoulder delts are locked directly under Leon’s collarbones, driving forward with continuous, crushing mass.

CRI. CRK.

The sound of bone buckling echoes with every step Taglia takes. It is a brutal, sumo-like lock. Both men have their left legs anchored into the dirt, their right legs driving forward, but Leon is being systematically dragged, his boots acting as plows as he slides helplessly across the ruined turf before finally planting his heel.

He refuses to let go. In his fractured mind, he is the shield keeping Taglia away from Maven.

Taglia cleanly retracts his right fist and drives it back into Leon’s gut.

DHUMP!

The compressed air pressure explodes violently out of Leon’s back in a visible cone. In one fluid movement, Taglia snaps his left hand upward, wraps his grey fingers around Leon’s throat, and lifts the heavy brawler completely off the ground by his neck.

“What’s next, number one?”

Leon suffocates, his legs dangling a few feet above the grass. He frantically unloads three to four desperate punches through the air, but Taglia’s arm is locked completely straight, holding Leon’s body far outside his reach. Even if they connected, his un-boosted fists lack the mechanical leverage to pierce the dense muscle mass of the Primal form. Leon can feel it through the throat-grip; the fingers are like solid iron clamps. They cannot be pried open.

Because of the crushing choke, Leon’s eyes flood with ruptured blood vessels. He coughs violently, choking on the crimson pool rising in his own throat.

Jarrod taking a step forward to end the madness. But before he can breach the perimeter, Leon lets out a manic, gurgling laugh.

“Wanna kill me?… I know you want to… Do it… but I am taking you with me!”

For the first time, something human flashes in Taglia‘s dead eyes: pure, unadulterated ego. The sheer, trembling rush of an adrenaline dump hits his nervous system. His lips tremble in a sudden rush of pride. To hear a broken, suffocating human threaten him is an insult to the natural hierarchy of power. He wants to feel this man break.

Taglia folds his straight arm, violently pulling Leon’s gasping face closer to his own chest.

“Show me.”

It is the exact micro-opening Leon’s suicidal gambit required. He roars through the blood in his throat.

“Lance!” (Strength 40, Speed 60) on his right fist.
“Sword!” (Strength 50, Speed 50) on his left fist.

He forces a dual-activation, channeling two completely different weapon into his arms simultaneously. He unloads an ultra-close-range, blinding barrage directly into Taglia‘s exposed torso.

DHA SHIK DHA SHIK DHA SHIK DHA SHIK!

At first, the grey skin absorbs the impacts. But Leon’s velocity does not slow. The Sword aspect maintains a balanced, concussive rhythm, while the Lance aspect channels razor-sharp precision, making his hand-chops strike with the piercing depth of a dagger. Taglia’s smirk fades, his features twisting into a deep annoyance. He is actually feeling the damage.

But Leon is paying the ultimate biological price. The stress of dual-channeling causes the skin across his forearms to violently split. Brilliant, raw red Heat begins to tear through his own flesh from the inside out, spraying a mixture of metaphysical energy and boiling blood across the grass. The tears spread rapidly, ripping open his forearms, tearing up his upper arms, and shredding through his delts. He is literally tearing himself to pieces to deliver the combo.

Taglia has had enough. Annoyed by the stabbing pain, he locks his right fingers into a massive, finishing fist. Leon eyes the incoming execution blow, his lungs screaming for oxygen as he gathers the very last of his life force for one final, mutual-destruction strike.

“HAHHHH!”

Suddenly, the ground goes bloody.

Two hundred blood-soaked skeletons erupt directly behind Taglia. In a fraction of a second, the skeletal horde swarms him, their bony limbs violently wrapping around his forearms, his bicep, his thighs, and his waist, anchoring his mass backward. Dozens more manifest a defensive phalanx directly between the two men, forming a wall of solid marrow to shield dying Leon.

Taglia whips his head to the left.

Lesca stands with her arms raised high, her eyes bleeding a deep, hemorrhagic red. Her Swan’s Song of the Red Lake is pushed to its absolute limit. She isn’t just trying to save Taglia from a suicidal blast; she is trying to save Leon from execution. Because she is completely drained from her prior match with Makisa, the skeletons are fragile, struggling to maintain their physical forms against the sheer, radiant heat of the Primal mode.

Taglia refuses to be stopped. His ego demands the kill. He flexes his grey body, and the pure, suffocating heat of his 50% state instantly vaporizes dozens of the clinging skeletons into gray ash. He begins to drive his fist forward anyway, the remaining constructs snapping like twigs under his forward momentum.

Then, the sky cracks.

DHADHUM!

Taglia snaps his head upward. A colossally massive, un-hilted holy blade—the exact size of an ancient redwood tree—is plummeting directly out of the clouds, tracking a vertical line straight toward his outstretched arm.

The calculus is instantaneous. If he does not release Leon’s throat right now, the descending blade will sever his arm cleanly at the shoulder.

Taglia releases the choke. He uses his legs, executing a massive, high-velocity leap backward. Even with twenty remaining skeletons desperately clinging to his limbs like parasites, his raw primal strength shrugs off the weight effortlessly.

The colossal blade drives into the dirt exactly between the two fighters.

DHUUUSH!

The concussive impact of the redwood blade combined with the vacuum of Taglia’s retreat creates a secondary shockwave, instantly obliterating every single remaining skeleton into dust.

As the debris settles, the blade is carved into the grass.

Maven walks towards between him and Leon, and stands firmly at the base of the massive blade. Behind the steel barrier, Leon sits collapsed on his knees, his head hanging low, completely near-unconscious as his torn arms bleed out into the soil.

Maven glares across the divide, her voice echoing through the valley like a crack of thunder.

“ENOUGH!”

It is an absolute ultimatum.

Taglia looks at her, then looks at the massive redwood blade slowly beginning to dissolve into thin air as Maven breaks into a desperate run toward Leon. He realizes the match is over. If he takes another step, he will have to fight Maven to the absolute death.

Maintaining unbroken eye contact with Maven, the steam begins to purge from his pores.

His grey skin fades back to its natural tone. His height shrinks back down to 5’10”. The massive, engorged muscle mass deflates, venting out of his body like the heavy exhaust of a cooling steam engine.

Maven breaks the stare, dropping to her knees to check Leon‘s pulse.

Makisa walks up to Taglia’s side, her expression unreadable, her tone dropping into a somber quiet.

“What happened?”

Taglia looks down at his own hand. It is trembling slightly from the residual adrenaline and the cooling tissue of his cracked rib. He lets out a long, heavy sigh, a faint trail of grey smoke drifting from his lips.

“I lost control of my emotions for a moment,” he says quietly, his voice returning to its lazy, apathetic register. “And I miscalculated my move.”