I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1387  The Power of a Child

Commander Zebelon stared, face deathly pale, eyes wide.

'What is this thing? What is it? What's the secret? What am I missing? What trick is he using?'

His eyes drifted slightly towards Northern. He couldn't afford to take his gaze off the child standing before him, so he could only spare the briefest glance before turning back, questions churning through his mind with no answers to catch.

He froze in position, his hand trembling. His bones, broken only a moment ago, were snapping back into shape with wet crunches, but the healing did nothing for the horror now etched across his face. His body was restoring itself. His confidence was not.

And before him, Lord stood like a child who had just been woken from sleep and was still feeling slightly drowsy.

He stood about ten meters from the Commander, with everything around them drenched in a flood of blood and flesh.

Commander Zebelon trembled. His heart was beating fast. So fast that he recognized the heartbeat.

There was only one person who had ever made him feel like this. The Crimson Sun of the Empire. The day he had been opportuned to be in the palace, thirty years ago, the Emperor's presence radiated so powerfully that Commander Zebelon felt like nothing but a grain of sand beneath his feet. He understood then that even if he were afforded ten life cycles, he would never reach the heights that man had reached.

The presence of the Emperor had pressed down on him like the sky itself was about to fall.

And his heart had responded with a strange, furious throbbing. Excitement or fear, Zebelon never truly understood which. He had never gotten the opportunity to stand before the Crimson Sun since that day, so the only thing he was left with was the feeling itself. He never got the chance to explore its meaning.

But he knew it was something beyond mere fear. Something more supreme. It was a feeling that drove him into battle and made him strike down every opponent of the Emperor with brutal efficiency. It had been the fuel that pushed his every word, every action, that made him a terrifying force, which led to him being permitted to establish his own Legion and becoming a Commander himself.

All of it, from one encounter. He wasn't even the center of that meeting thirty years ago. But the mere presence of the Emperor had carried him this far.

The Emperor's presence had built him up. Made him more than he was. Given him purpose and drive and the will to carve a path through every obstacle in his way.

And today, standing before this child, Zebelon felt something that gripped him in a comparable manner.

But with a completely opposite effect.

This child's presence tore all of that down.

Every effort of his, every step he had taken to get this far... this feeling that twisted in his chest upon looking at this child made all of it feel insignificant. Like none of it had ever mattered. No matter how much he tried to matter, he was never going to.

He was never going to stand amongst the league of legends. He was never going to see the Emperor again. He was never going to attain that height... a height that even a mere child could reach.

'No! He's not a child.'

There was no way he could be a child. That was impossible. It was impossible for a child to be this powerful.

Lord was getting slightly tired. He fixed his gaze on Commander Zebelon indifferently and said:

"Are we going to end this? Or should I play with you a bit more?"

He tilted his head to the side, looking past the Commander at Northern.

"Can I just end it and go back to fighting Thoraxis?"

Northern sighed.

Lord hadn't even used Chaos Ascendant the way he wanted him to. But he had applied it nonetheless, bending his form to that of light while retaining the rigidity of his muscles, and still, at the same time, dissolving them. Existing between states of matter. That was what Lord did, and he did it with a fluency that was becoming terrifying in its own right.

The youngling's battles with the echoes were breeding results. He was getting more clinical, more efficient, applying his ability across different areas of combat with an adaptability that shouldn't have been possible at his stage. Of course, Lord still had the ability to become whatever he consumed, but there would only be a handful of times he would need that, given how broken Chaos Ascendant already was.

'And he has only taken one vestige... I wonder how much he would evolve if he gets the others.'

Northern smiled inwardly. The thought of staging Lord against Anki made something warm and vicious bloom in his chest. He could picture it already, that smug bastard's expression crumbling the moment Lord stepped forward.

'We will cross paths again... and I wouldn't even need to deal with you. My son is going to destroy you all on his own.'

The thought nearly made him burst out laughing. But he didn't. He kept his gaze straight through it all.

"Fine. Finish it."

Commander Zebelon frowned first. Then something shifted behind his eyes, and a wide grin spread across his face. He spread out his arms and looked at Lord with cold defiance etched into every line of his expression. If he was going to die here, he would die speaking.

"You think it is possible to kill me? I have tried to die a thousand times. And yet, here I am, still living. No one has been able to kill me, not even fate!"

He glared with demented glee.

"Take out my heart? Another one will grow out before the effect sets in. No matter what you do, it is only a matter of time before I com..."

His voice froze midway as Lord lunged forward with a palm strike that punched a hole twice the size of his hand clean through Zebelon's stomach.

Blood pooled from his mouth. His eyes, frozen in fear, slowly drifted down to the gaping hole in his chest. The speech died on his tongue. All that bravado, all that defiance, snuffed out in a single wet instant.

Lord was not done.

A dark and vicious aura surrounded the child, thick enough that the air itself seemed to recoil. It hit Zebelon like a wall, every hair on his body standing on end. Fear ravaged his entire soul as he felt something he had never felt before.

Purple-dark Essence fumed from the child's outstretched fist, coiling and writhing in the air between them. And every cell in Zebelon's body was torn apart by the primal fear of... of death.

Lord opened his fist and shot another palm strike forward.

This time, the Commander did not survive it.