Chapter 371: And Me Learning It Broke The Man
A silence followed the crash, heavy and stretched, broken only by the crumbling of stone and the faint wind blowing over the ruined skyline. I hovered above the crater, letting the silver Essence slowly fade from my legs. My breath was calm. Controlled.
Then—
"You..."
David’s voice echoed out, raw and cracked.
A moment later, he shot out of the crater in a burst of wild repulsion, his body bruised, his expression twisted in fury. His hair flew wildily, one shoulder torn, his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths.
"You...You....you," he growled, eyes wide with disbelief. "You mastered my law."
He pointed at me, hand trembling from outrage. "That law took me decades to shape. To feel. To control. I built it from the bones of failure. I broke my body to earn it."
I said nothing. My domain remained open, my wings spread quietly behind me. The runes were still glowing, softly observing, gently recording every shift in force around him.
He lunged.
"You don’t deserve it!"
A flurry of punches came my way, coated in erratic repulsion bursts. Each strike twisted the air, cracked the sky around us but I was faster. My body swayed, tilted, and weaved between them. His knuckles missed by inches.
He wasn’t calm anymore.
"You think you can just watch something once and own it ? That’s not comprehension. That’s theft!" He launched a heavy palm strike, this one infused with pure emotion, a scream of pride and shame turned to power.
I let the strike crash into the vortex, absorb most of its energy and then strike me. It stung, sure but I didn’t flinch.
I spun around him and elbowed his ribs gently, not enough to injure, just to remind him I was still here.
"I saw it," I said calmly. "And I understood it."
He roared and punched again.
"You haven’t suffered enough to hold that law! You haven’t bled enough for it!"
I blocked the next blow with another vortex and my forearm, letting the residual repulsion scatter against my aura. Then I kicked gently off his leg, flipping backward to hover at a distance.
He panted midair, his chest heaving with rage, his eyes almost bloodshot. "I spent years lost in trial and error. Failing. Hurting myself. Begging the world to let me see what it meant to push away. And you" his voice cracked " you just take it in a fight."
"I didn’t take it," I said softly. "It belongs to everyone who can learn it."
That made him pause. Just for a moment.
"I don’t have decades to waste," I added, eyes glowing faintly. "I saw your rhythm, your control. Your approach to repulsion. My mind comprehended it. And then I rebuilt it into my own."
He stood frozen for a second, stunned by my arrogance and the cold, simple truth of it.
Then he screamed.
"I WILL KILL YOU!"
He blasted forward, faster than before, his rage turning into a storm of blows. I began to move again dodging, shifting, blocking, each motion smooth and deliberate. I let him tire himself, his wild heart driving his hands while mine remained steady.
It was strange, almost sad. His law had become part of me now and watching him lose control of it like this, I could feel a shadow of the pain beneath his voice.
He wasn’t just angry that I had mastered his law.
He was angry because he had thought it was the one thing that made him special.
And I had taken that away just by being me.
David’s attacks were growing desperate.
Each swing was louder, sloppier, and filled with less technique. The repulsion bursts around his limbs had lost their rhythm, no longer smooth pulses of force but wild, staggered explosions. He was falling apart midair.
I could see it all clearly, his foot placement, his clenched teeth, the fury behind his eyes, the way he bit down on his tongue to stop it from trembling.
"You think you’ve won?" he gasped, flinging another repulsion-cloaked punch that I parried with my palm. "You think laws are just tools? Weapons to be taken and used?"
I didn’t answer. There was nothing left to say.
"You’re just another freak trying to play God."
I sidestepped his next blow and lightly tapped his stomach. The pressure sent him tumbling backward through the air, coughing, his body twisting as he righted himself again.
"You don’t get it," he snarled, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. "That law was the only thing I had. I gave up everything to grasp it. My friends, my squad, even my love.....all gone because I wanted to understand something."
I hovered still, wings out, silently watching him unravel.
"I told myself it would be worth it. That if I mastered something real, something fundamental, I’d matter. I’d have a place in this world." His voice cracked, but he pressed forward, launching himself again, slower this time.
I dodged easily and placed a hand on his back as he passed me, channeling a soft burst of repulsion to send him spinning downward. He caught himself just above the crater.
I could feel the pain leaking off him. Not physical pain, but the kind that came from watching your life’s purpose crumble.
"I wasn’t special," he said, floating in place, barely able to hold his stance. "But this Laws made me feel like I could be. And now you’ve taken that too."
I began descending toward him. Slowly. Calmly.
My right arm shifted.
A layer of thick, clawed armor began forming from my elbow down, Knight’s trait, the one I’d taken from him. The gauntlet was sleek and black, the claws glinting in the daylight. But I wasn’t done.
Over that, I began layering Essence.
Silver light flared as I channeled Repulsion into it, raw, clear, controlled. It began to coat the gauntlet like a second skin, humming softly as the runes across my arm glowed in tandem. The force around it twisted the air itself, creating a localized vacuum in its path.
David’s eyes widened in slow horror as he saw the weapon I had made.
"Wait..." he whispered. "Don’t—"
But I was already moving.
With a single flap of my wings and a burst of self-repulsion, I surged forward, appearing right in front of him in a blink. He tried to raise his arms, tried to summon one last burst of force, but it was too late.
I plunged the clawed gauntlet directly into his chest.
The silver-coated repulsion split the force around his torso, separating flesh, muscle, and bone with surgical precision. My claws wrapped around his heart before the rest of his body could react. There was no blood. Just a shimmer of distorted space where his ribs had been parted.
His mouth opened in a silent scream.
And then I tore through it.
The heart beat once, twice in my hand. Then stopped.
David’s body froze. His limbs twitched once, then fell limp. His eyes stared forward, unblinking, mouth slightly parted. The glow of Repulsion around him faded like a dying candle.
I pulled my hand back and let his body drop.
He fell soundlessly into the same crater he had been flung into before. This time, he didn’t rise.
I looked down at him. Not understanding why I acted so violent. Maybe his taunts got to me.