togophonebook Chapter 146 - 145 : A broken bond (2)
Chapter 146 - 145 : A broken bond (2)
Arina did not give him time to recover.
Her sword was already moving when he found his footing again.
Her attacks came in an unbroken stream.
Horizontal slash, diagonal cut, thrust, spin, another downward chop—each swing dragged arcs of compressed mana behind it. The air rang with metallic cries as her blade sliced through it, shockwaves ripping strips of bark off nearby trees. Stone chips flew from the ground with every missed strike.
Arthur dodged.
Sometimes by a hair, sometimes with more room, but always with intention. He twisted, leaned, and stepped, each movement minimal yet precise. His coat tore in two places. A thin line of red appeared on his cheek. Another appeared on his forearm. Glancing hits, nothing more.
The forest around them was less fortunate.
Tree trunks were carved open and toppled. Rocks split. The ground became a web of fresh gouges, as if a giant claw had raked the earth.
Arina pressed harder.
Her bloodline simmered beneath her skin, reacting every time Arthur tried to step in too close. Whenever his momentum carried him within a meter of her body, an invisible force shoved back at him, diverting his weight and bending his balance just enough to ruin his follow-ups. His sword would deviate by a few centimeters. His foot would land half a step wider than he intended.
"Distance Rejection," Arthur thought, feeling the invisible push each time.
It was subtle, but it made her feel untouchable.
Every time he tried to close in for a clean exchange, he was nudged just slightly away, his attacks losing their perfect line. The ability gave Arina control over the tempo, letting her choose when clashes truly happened.
"You were always good at running away," Arina said, her breath still steady despite the speed of her swings. "Nice to see that part hasn’t changed."
Arthur slipped past another thrust.
"Yeah, yeah I dont want your imperius germs to infect me?" he replied calmly.
Her ember eyes flashed with anger.
Mana surged around her left hand. She flicked her fingers.
Chunks of shattered stone and broken metal rose into the air, caught in an invisible grip. Telekinesis. Dozens of jagged fragments hovered, their points angling toward Arthur like a ring of improvised blades.
She clenched her fist.
The air screamed.
The debris shot toward him from all directions.
Arthur’s eyes glowed brighter. His vampiric vision traced every trajectory at once, mapping the pattern in a heartbeat. He lifted his free hand, palm open, mana condensing at the center.
"Nullify," he said softly.
The spell he had created answered.
A pale, translucent ripple burst from his palm, spreading outward in a thin wave. It did not strike the stones. It devoured the mana wrapped around them—the power Arina used to move and accelerate them.
The telekinetic force vanished as if someone had cut its core.
Every shard, every rock, and every twisted piece of metal lost all support mid-flight and crashed to the ground around him, some bouncing off his boots, others biting into the dirt.
Arina’s eyes widened.
’He erased the mana?’ she thought in disbelief. ’No... he canceled the spell itself. My talent is still active, but the telekinesis collapsed. What kind of magic does that?’
Arthur smiled slightly.
"Nullify," he said, almost casually. "A little spell I made. It doesn’t care what element you use—if it’s free mana shaping a spell, I can shut it off."
He tilted his head.
"So if you plan to throw things, maybe try something heavier than pebbles."
Her jaw tightened.
Inwardly, reluctant acknowledgment stirred.
’How much can a person grow in just a few months?’ Arina thought, her sword carving forward again. ’This speed, this reaction, this kind of spell... someone who was brin with no talent, this growth rate is insane.’
She lunged in again, faster than before.
Arthur watched her.
More precisely, he watched the way her body moved, the exact timing of that invisible push that kept spoiling his attacks.
Bloodline Ability — Distance Rejection.
He had already pieced together the basics.
A bloodline that converted the kinetic energy of any approaching target within one meter into a repelling force. The faster or harder he moved toward her, the stronger the recoil, pushing him back, ruining his balance, and opening him up.
But there was something else.
Each time the repulsion hit him, he felt a faint delay. A flicker before the push. An instant where the force seemed to gather, like a spring being compressed.
’A build-up,’ Arthur thought. ’She can’t generate infinite pressure instantly. There’s a limit. A threshold.’
He slid past another slash, letting it come closer than necessary, testing.
The push came—light, almost gentle, just enough to nudge his footing.
’The gentler the approach, the weaker the repulsion. The heavier the momentum, the stronger it pushes back... but the ability still has to output enough force to match what it receives.’
A slow smile touched his lips.
’So if the incoming force exceeds what the bloodline can generate—’
It would fail.
"For example," Arthur murmured as their swords crossed for the first time, steel grinding against living shadow, his eyes locking onto hers, "if your ability can only generate enough force to repel a hundred kilograms of momentum, then an attack carrying twice that will break through before the repulsion fully forms."
Arina’s expression froze for a fraction of a second.
He pushed off her blade and stepped back a few paces, as if giving her room.
She narrowed her eyes.
"Congratulations," she said coldly. "You can explain my ability. That still will not save you."
She dashed in again.
Arthur’s grin sharpened.
This time, he did not try to slip past her sword with minimal movement.
He moved in hard.
He kicked off the ground with everything his legs could give, muscles coiling and releasing in one explosive burst. His black sword cut in a brutal diagonal slash toward her side, carrying far more mass and speed than before.
The instant he entered that one-meter radius, Distance Rejection triggered.
An invisible force tried to seize his momentum and shove it away.
For the first time, it failed.
The repulsion flickered, unable to fully form under the sheer weight of his accelerating body. Instead of being pushed aside, Arthur’s slash punched straight through the thin, half-formed barrier.
Arina’s eyes went wide.
She barely twisted her torso in time, her sword jerking up to block. The collision detonated between them. The shockwave blasted her backward, her boots carving trenches in the dirt before she slammed into a tree hard enough to crack the trunk.
Pain lanced through her arms and ribs.
’He broke through...?’
Arthur did not let her breathe.
Now that he understood the threshold, he played with it.
Some attacks he made deliberately light, baiting out a small repulsion. The ability nudged him away—but in doing so, it forced Arina to commit to specific positions, subtly disrupting her own footwork and leaving brief gaps in her guard.
He used those gaps.
The first kick slammed into her ribs.
She tried to move her sword arm to block, but Distance Rejection had activated a heartbeat earlier to deflect his feint. The ability couldn’t respond in time to the new strike.
Her breath hitched as his heel sank into her side, sending her stumbling.
The second blow was a punch to the shoulder.
The third was the flat of his blade striking her thigh.
None of them were killing blows.
All of them landed.
Each impact chipped away at her rhythm, her composure, and her confidence.
’He’s using my own bloodline against me,’ Arina realized, a cold bead of dread forming in her chest.
Her breathing grew heavier.
Arthur’s eyes gleamed a darker red.
He let another power unfurl quietly within him.
His bloodline of the blood-monarch.
Blood.
He could feel it—rushing through her veins, pulsing against the walls of her arteries in time with her racing heart.
He did not seize it outright.
He nudged it.
Just a little.
Her next step felt heavier than it should have. Her ankle did not quite lift high enough. Her toes scraped the ground.
Arina frowned.
She swung her sword again, changing her angle, and felt her arm lag by the barest fraction of a second.
’What—’
She pushed more mana into her limbs, forcing them to move at full speed.
It helped.
For a moment.
Then Arthur twisted his will again, ever so slightly increasing the resistance in the flow of her blood. Muscles that should have responded instantly now took just a heartbeat longer.
In a battle at their speed, a heartbeat was enough.
Arthur slipped past her next swing and drove his knee up into her stomach.
Air exploded from her lungs as she folded over, eyes wide.
She thrust out her left hand in reflex, telekinesis flaring on instinct.
Branches, broken stones, and scattered debris shuddered, then shot toward Arthur in a swirling storm.
He lifted his hand, his expression almost bored.
"Nullify."
The pale ripple burst out again, devouring the mana binding everything together. The debris dropped around him in a clattering ring, powerless.
"You really like throwing things," he said. "Are you planning to hit me eventually, or is this just for show?"
Hatred burned in Arina’s eyes.
’This is impossible,’ she thought. ’This trash, is the one pushing me back?’
Her aura exploded.
Mana roared out of her, a torrent so intense that the surrounding trees shook. Every loose object in the clearing—rocks, roots, shattered weapons, even entire tree stumps—wrenched itself free of the ground and floated into the air, circling her like a storm waiting to be unleashed.
She flung it all at him.
The world became a blur of spinning stone, wood, and metal. From any other perspective, Arthur should have been buried.
He stepped through it.
His black sword moved in sharp, efficient arcs, cutting apart anything that came too close. Telekinetically hurled stones shattered into dust. Metal fragments sparked off his blade. A tree trunk screamed past his shoulder, close enough to ruffle his hair, before crashing behind him and carving a trench.
His expression barely changed.
Within seconds, the storm had spent itself.
The ground around them was a cratered mess. Trees lay broken. Dust hung in the air.
Arina’s shoulders heaved.
Her breathing had turned ragged. Sweat ran down her jaw, mixing with the dust on her skin. Her sword wavered slightly in her grip.
Arthur stood a few meters away, almost untouched, his crimson eyes colder than ever.
"Was that it?" he asked. "That is all you have after all your gloating?"
His sword dissolved.
Black metal peeled away from his hand like smoke, then vanished, leaving his bare knuckles.
Arina clenched her teeth.
"You—"
She never finished.
Arthur closed the distance in a blink. His fist crashed into her face.
Bone met bone with a crack. Her head snapped to the side, blood spraying from her nose. Her feet left the ground for an instant before she crashed down onto one knee.
She tried to raise her sword again.
Arthur’s fingers struck several points along her arm and shoulder in quick succession, precise and merciless. Numbness flooded the limb.
The sword slipped from her hand and hit the ground with a dull thud.
Arina stared at her own fingers in disbelief, trying to will them to move.
She tried to gather mana.
It stirred—then met heavy, unnatural resistance, refusing to flow where she wanted it.
Arthur watched her struggle.
"No matter how much you try," he said quietly, his voice cutting through her ragged breathing, "nothing will work."
He looked down at her as if she were already a finished problem.
"I have blocked the flow of mana through your limbs," Arthur continued. "If you keep forcing it, it will only pile up inside your core until something breaks. You will explode and get eliminated."
His eyes narrowed.
"All while your oh-so-great father and mother are watching your pathetic state."
Horror flickered across Arina’s face.
The boy standing in front of her did not look like the one who used to stand awkwardly at her doorway with flowers in his hands.
There was no warmth left in his eyes.
No clumsy kindness.
No defeated smile.
Only cold, unblinking cruelty remained—tempered and sharpened by every slight, every insult, every time he had been treated as less than nothing.
He looked less like the stain she had tried to erase and more like the consequence of that erasure.
A demon born from everything the Imperius family had thrown away.
"I warned you before," Arthur said. "You did not listen. I told you to go away peacefully."
He stepped closer, his shadow falling over her.
"Now pay the price."
Inside his mind, he spoke again.
’Absorb her blood,’ Arthur said. ’Let’s see what we can create.’
[ As you command, host. ]