Soulbound: Dual Cultivation

Chapter 405: 1v1 with The General

The usurper General’s patience snapped.

He had watched enough.

Everywhere he looked, the masked commander was there. Lines crumpled where he stepped. Entire clusters of seasoned soldiers vanished under invisible compression. Momentum that should have crushed Valerion instead dissolved into hesitation and fear.

If that man remained unchecked, the battle would be lost.

The General tore his helmet from his head and cast it aside. His aura surged outward in a violent wave, forcing nearby soldiers...friend and foe alike...to stagger back. The air thickened around him, heavy with authority.

A third stage Sage cultivator.

Power rolled off him in crushing layers, far denser and more refined than the chaotic bursts exchanged across the battlefield. The ground beneath his boots cracked as he stepped forward, elemental energy gathering around his frame like a brewing storm.

"Enough!" he roared, his voice cutting through steel and screams alike.

Lucas felt it immediately.

Pressure.

Not the unfocused pressure of massed soldiers or collapsing space, but the refined, concentrated dominance of a higher cultivation realm.

He turned.

Across the churn of bodies and clashing weapons, their eyes met.

The General moved first.

He did not charge blindly. He stepped once, and the ground behind him shattered as he propelled himself forward with terrifying acceleration. His blade ignited with layered elemental force...earth reinforcing its weight, wind sharpening its edge, and fire spiraling along its length.

He came down in a descending arc meant to cleave both man and terrain.

Lucas did not retreat.

He raised his hand and twisted space.

The distance between them folded, redirecting the General’s trajectory slightly off center. The blade crashed into stone instead of Lucas’ shoulder, splitting the valley floor in a violent fissure that sent debris skyward.

Shockwaves rippled outward, knocking soldiers from their feet.

The General pivoted instantly, sweeping his blade horizontally with raw physical strength enhanced by Sage-level reinforcement. The strike carried enough force to bisect multiple men had they been caught within it.

Lucas bent backward unnaturally as space thinned behind him, his body slipping through a compressed pocket that absorbed part of the blow’s momentum.

Even so, the residual force slammed into him like a hammer. He skidded backward several meters, boots carving grooves into frozen stone.

Second stage....against experienced third stage.

The difference was real, but that was because Lucas was initially unprepared.

The General advanced without pause, slamming his foot down and sending a wave of jagged earth spikes erupting toward Lucas in a widening cone. Wind amplified their speed, fire licked their edges.

Lucas extended both hands.

The air between him and the spikes fractured like glass.

Space expanded abruptly, stretching the distance the spikes had to travel. Their lethal speed dissipated across unnatural length. Before they could regain acceleration, Lucas snapped his fingers.

The stretched space collapsed.

The spikes crushed inward on themselves mid-flight, shattering into pulverized fragments that scattered harmlessly.

The General’s eyes narrowed.

"You are the architect of this," he growled.

Lucas said nothing.

The General raised his free hand and condensed a sphere of compressed elemental force so dense the air shrieked around it. He hurled it forward with devastating intent.

Lucas responded by stepping sideways into a warped fold of space.

The sphere detonated behind him, obliterating a section of the battlefield and throwing both armies momentarily apart from the shockwave.

When the dust settled, Lucas reappeared several strides away, his mask slightly cracked along one edge, a thin line of blood trailing from beneath it.

The General smiled grimly.

"You cannot bridge the gap," he said, voice steady despite the faint sheen of sweat across his brow. "A third stage Sage is not something you can outmaneuver forever."

Lucas rolled his shoulder once, feeling the tremor of impact in his bones.

He had known this would come.

The difference in cultivation meant the General’s strikes carried more refined density, more stability, more overwhelming force. Each direct exchange favored the higher realm.

But this was not a duel in isolation.

The valley was still his design.

Cold thickened further as the Ice Belle intensified subtle suppression around the General’s position. The toxins in his bloodstream strained against his cultivation, forcing additional expenditure to stabilize his body.

Lucas lifted his hand slowly.

The space around them began to ripple, not in wide bursts but in tight, controlled distortions.

"If you wished to stop me," Lucas said evenly, "you should have arrived sooner."

The General roared and surged forward again, blade descending with enough force to split the battlefield in two.

Lucas met him head-on.

Space twisted violently between them as their battle erupted in full, Sage-level confrontation amidst the chaos of war.

The third exchange nearly tore the ground apart.

The General descended with a crushing vertical strike reinforced by earth and wind, the sheer density behind the blade forcing Lucas to split space twice in rapid succession just to avoid being cleaved in half. Even then, the shockwave caught him along the side, sending him skidding across stone before he forcefully stabilized himself by compressing the ground beneath his boots.

The difference in realms pressed down on him like a physical weight.

Lucas inhaled slowly.

Every time he warped distance, every time he folded space to redirect force, he survived.

But survival was not victory.

The General advanced again, relentless, each step cracking stone despite the thin glaze of frost coating the valley floor.

"You rely too much on evasion," the General said coldly as he thrust forward, blade piercing through a distortion pocket and grazing Lucas’ shoulder. Blood sprayed briefly before Lucas twisted away.

Lucas retreated several strides, expanding the distance unnaturally between them. The General’s next swing traveled through a stretched corridor of warped air, losing some of its lethal immediacy.

Yet the truth settled in Lucas’ mind with uncomfortable clarity.

Space was supreme for control.

For positioning.

For disruption.

But it lacked raw destructive penetration against someone fortified at the third stage of Sage.

The General’s body was reinforced layer upon layer with elemental density and cultivated resilience. Each time Lucas compressed space against him, the man endured through brute realm advantage, dispersing force through reinforced meridians.

If he wanted to break him...

He needed heat.

Pure destructive intensity.

He needed to burn through the reinforcement rather than crush around it.

The General lunged again, summoning a spiraling column of wind and flame that corkscrewed toward Lucas with terrifying velocity.

Lucas did not dodge immediately.

Instead, he raised his palm.

Space bent just enough to divert the core of the spiral past him, but he allowed the outer flames to graze his cloak, letting heat lick across fabric as if reminding himself of something deeper.

Fire.

Lucas exhaled.

The warping distortions around him began to stabilize, no longer flickering defensively in rapid succession. The General sensed the shift and slowed slightly, wary.

"You are tiring," the General said, though his own breathing had grown heavier than before, the toxins and cold subtly gnawing at his stamina.

Lucas straightened fully.

"I was measuring you," he replied quietly.

For the first time since their clash began, faint embers appeared along his fingertips.

Intensely concentrated.

The General’s eyes sharpened.

"You think flame will close the gap between our realms?"

Lucas’ gaze hardened behind the cracked mask.

"No," he answered.

"I think it will burn through it."

He stepped forward instead of back.

The air around his palm shimmered as space compressed tightly around a forming core of fire, increasing its density beyond ordinary manifestation. Rather than expanding outward, the flames folded inward repeatedly, layered by spatial pressure until they glowed white at the center.

Heat distorted the battlefield around them.

Nearby soldiers instinctively stumbled away.

For the first time since the duel began, the General did not attack immediately.

He felt it.

A different kind of threat.

Lucas released the compressed fire forward in a narrow lance rather than a wave.

It did not explode outward.

It pierced.

The General crossed his blade to intercept, earth reinforcement surging up his arms to brace against impact.

When the white-hot lance struck, the valley echoed with a violent hiss as superheated energy drilled into his defenses, burning through layered reinforcement rather than dispersing against it.

The General’s boots slid backward several meters before he forcefully anchored himself.

Smoke rose from his bracers.

His expression shifted from confidence to grim acknowledgment.

Lucas lowered his hand slowly, embers still flickering along his fingers.

He could evade forever with space.

But if he wanted to win...

He would have to burn his way through a realm higher than his own.