I Ascend Alone-Chapter 133: The Birth of National Level Part XII

The heat rose around him, but it no longer surged outward. It collapsed inward, gathered like a star preparing to detonate.

He pointed one clawed hand at me—then slowly turned it palm up.

"Now show me... if that power of yours can swallow a god."

The ground between us cracked. The sky still held at bay by my aura, and trembled.

The instant the last trace of transformation settled over Pyraethrax's hybrid form, the pressure changed.

It wasn't just heat now. It was density. Every particle of the air felt heavier. The colors of the world desaturated, as if light itself feared lingering too long around him.

Then I vorathos' voice in my head. "Be warned, my King. This form... it is not like before. His soul-furnace burns hotter. Stronger. This is no mere ascension.His power has grown... tenfold."

I said nothing aloud. Just stared at the figure across from me—Pyraethrax, now standing in a regal, terrifying stillness. Flames curled lazily from the joints of his armored limbs. His tail split small trenches into the scorched earth behind him as it shifted.

Tenfold.

That explained the tremor beneath my boots.

That explained the subtle ache pressing into the edge of my own aura—pressure, yes, but something else, too. A challenge. A test of supremacy, one only someone with the System's eye could perceive.

"Good," I thought back to Vorathos, my jaw tightening just slightly.

"Then I won't have to hold back either."

"You're the first," he said, his voice now sharper, resonating with unnatural clarity. "The first human who made me retreat. The first who made me think."

His claws flexed. Fire ran down his arms like liquid metal.

"I won't make that mistake again."

He vanished in a pulse of force, flame exploding outward—and I was already there to meet him.

We clashed mid-air.

I met his clawed fist with my own—a collision that detonated between us like compressed thunder. Shadows exploded outward, meeting magma in midair, the resulting shockwave shredding the ground beneath us. Reinforced street steel buckled. Light posts bent in half like paper.

Pyraethrax didn't wait—his second strike was a flame-coated knee aimed for my ribs, but I spun sideways, letting the shadows split and re-form around me. My counter was immediate: an uppercut laced with abyssal density, sending him airborne—but only for a breath.

He twisted mid-air and spat a concentrated beam of draconic flame toward me.

The crowd behind the barrier gasped as it arced over the rooftops like a second sun.

But I met it with a wall—not of magic, but of unbeing. The Abyss bloomed outward from my palm like a flower blooming in reverse, swallowing the fire whole. The explosion it should've caused never came.

Reporters screamed into their mics.

"—What kind of power is this?!"

"Is this still a Hunter?! What rank is he?!"

Agent Hale stared, jaw clenched, hand frozen mid-comm-call. "President Vaughn... is that even possible?"

Vaughn's gaze didn't shift from the battlefield. "No. But it's happening."

Pyraethrax landed again, but this time with a snarl, and whipped his tail toward a toppled weapons depot.

I flicked a shadow thread from my index finger, slicing it in mid-air. The tail never reached its target.

We clashed again, but this time is faster.

I blinked left; he was already there.

He swept fire through the air; I inverted the space behind him, stepping through and delivering a heel strike to the back of his neck.

He whirled and caught my foot mid-spin.

I let him, and detonated the shadow compressed in my heel.

A burst of kinetic force ripped through him, sending him smashing into a ruined exosuit factory. The building collapsed inward, burying him in steel plating and half-melted servos.

But he wasn't down.

A heartbeat passed, and from the wreckage, his roar split the sky again. He emerged cloaked in flame, arms coated in molten armor he forged in real-time.

"Burn, Human!" he roared, flinging both hands forward.

Twin beams of compressed flame—pure destructive will—howled toward me like lances.

This time I didn't absorb, but parted them.

A pulse from my core—silent, invisible to anyone without a sense for what lay beneath reality—and the beams split in half, spiraling around me like rivers finding new paths.

I was already beneath him again—already mid-strike.

Abyssal spears formed from the shadows around me, flinging upward in an arc. He blocked two. The third struck his left shoulder—severing the joint.

He roared in agony and fury, snapping back, and his molten blood sizzled against the pavement.

The elite orcs stood at the edge of the barrier now, guarding the injured. Leon gritted his teeth, watching. Mirae, held upright by another elite orc, stared in silence—her pupils dilated, lips trembling.

"Ryzen..." she whispered. "What are you?"

She wasn't the only one asking.

Across the world, tens of millions watched through screens, drones, and hovering cams. The chat feeds overflowed. Emergency broadcasts had overridden global networks.

The moment his blood hit the pavement, it ignited.

Flames didn't just hiss—they sang, a high-pitched, keening resonance that shimmered through the broken air like a blade through silk. It was the sound of his soul-furnace adjusting, compensating. The severed limb began to reform—not instantly, but actively, as if his body refused the concept of injury altogether.

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I didn't let him finish, and I lunged forward.

Shadow lashed from beneath my feet like tendrils of an angry god, anchoring my movement. I snapped my hand forward and twisted—not space, but presence. His. Mine. Ours.

Pyraethrax's eyes widened, but too late.

I was inside his guard before his other arm could rise.

My palm slammed against his chestplate. Not a punch. Not a blast.

A pulse.

Abyssal compression, focused into a single trembling beat. The shockwave didn't explode—it collapsed, like a black hole trying to form inside his ribs.

The armor cracked.

He howled, and for the first time, he stumbled backward—not from force, but from instinct. From something primal in him realizing: that could kill me.