The Sinful Young Master

Chapter 461: Fighting the two duke Nynthralls -2

That was immediately apparent in a way that distinguished them from everything Jolthar had fought since entering the Depths.

The nynthralls outside had been hunger given shape. These two looked at him with something that processed, evaluated, and formed conclusions.

The one on the left spoke first. Its voice was layered, multiple frequencies compressed into something that approximated language, deep enough to feel in the sternum rather than simply hear with the ears.

“Quite powerful,” it said, and the words carried genuine assessment rather than mockery.

“We felt you from the moment you crossed the Veil. We have felt many things cross the Veil. But you carry something that does not belong in this place.”

Its eyes — pale points of cold light in the dark of its face — moved to Knashii.

“That blade. It creates discomfort in us that we have not experienced before.”

“Discomfort,” the second duke said, its voice slightly different in quality — higher, more discordant.

“An inadequate word. It offends the malice. It offends what we are.”

It tilted its enormous head, studying Jolthar the way a predator studies something it hasn’t classified yet.

“You are mortal. We can smell mortality on you. Yet you walk through our domain as though it belongs to you.”

“I’m here to kill you both,” Jolthar said plainly.

“Seemed worth being direct about it.”

A silence stretched between them, the kind that precedes violence when both sides have finished the formalities.

Then the first duke moved.

The speed was extraordinary for something its size — closing thirty feet in less than a second, one massive arm swinging in a horizontal arc that carried enough force to flatten the spire’s walls if it connected.

The corrupted air screamed around the limb, trails of black malice energy streaming behind the movement.

Jolthar didn’t want to spar with them; if possible, he wanted to finish the battle quicker.

So he was already using his heavy attacks.

Jolthar dropped beneath it, feeling the displacement of air across the top of his head, and brought Knashii upward in a rising cut.

[Blade of the Forgotten Void.]

The technique emerged from the sword as silver light that preceded the actual blade edge, extending the cut into dimensions that physical steel couldn’t reach.

The attack passed through the air, making loud shrieking noises.

The void energy bit into the duke’s forearm as Jolthar’s body passed beneath it, and the creature’s forward momentum carried the wound past the blade rather than pulling it free cleanly.

The duke landed, turned, and looked at its forearm.

A deep channel of silver-edged darkness ran from wrist to elbow where the void had consumed flesh and the malice binding it together.

If we were to gauge their level, they were in the last stages of tier 9, so they didn’t pose much threat to Jolthar but the two of them make him weary and make the battle prolong. Jolthar had already been exerting strength since his arrival into the depths.

The wound didn’t bleed in any conventional sense — instead it radiated silver light from its edges, the voidwrath energy continuing to work at the borders of the cut, slowly consuming the corruption it touched.

The duke made a sound that wasn’t quite pain but was adjacent to it. Something that had forgotten pain encountered a close enough approximation to remember it existed.

The second duke came from the opposite side simultaneously, its movement coordinated with its companion’s with the precision of two entities that had existed in proximity long enough to develop something like tactical synchronization. It struck downward with both hands clasped together, a hammering blow aimed at driving Jolthar straight through the floor.

He was already moving, Knashii tracing a defensive arc that intercepted the attack at an angle. The collision between the duke’s fists and the void blade sent a shockwave radiating outward that cracked the floor in a starburst pattern extending several feet in every direction.

Jolthar skidded backward, his feet carving channels in the corrupted stone, absorbing force through his legs rather than trying to fully redirect something that massive.

He stopped, and for a moment, he stared at the duke, assessing the creatures. Even the injured duke was fighting with the same strength. It seemed like they don’t feel any pain.

Both dukes reorienting toward him, the first still examining the wound on its forearm with pale eyes that now carried something beyond simple evaluation.

“That sword,” the first duke said, its voice lower now and more dangerous.

“We will destroy it.”

“You’re welcome to try,” Jolthar replied.

They came together this time.

The coordination between them was formidable — attacks timed to prevent Jolthar from fully committing his defense to either one, forcing him to split focus between two enormous sources of corrupted power moving in calculated patterns.

The first duke attacked high and wide, using its reach to control space and limit movement options. The second struck low and fast, targeting the legs, trying to remove his mobility.

Between them they were creating a shrinking box of available space.

Jolthar let the box shrink.

When they thought they had him contained, he stopped moving and planted his feet.

Then suddenly his body started to glow with silver energy, and then it started to rotate around him in a blinding whirlwind of power.

[Abyssal Void Storm of Ascent.]

Knashii drove into the corrupted floor point-first, and from that point of contact the voidwrath energy detonated outward and upward in a spiraling column. It didn’t expand gradually — it existed all at once, a cylinder of silver-black energy perhaps forty feet in diameter that tore through the spire’s interior with the contained violence of something that had been compressed into a point and released without restraint.

The floor of the chamber disappeared.

Not destroyed in the conventional sense — consumed, the corrupted stone and the malice saturating it simply ceasing to exist as the void energy passed through it.

A crater forty feet across and twenty feet deep replaced where solid ground had been, its walls smooth as polished obsidian where the void had touched and restructured matter at the fundamental level.

Both dukes were caught in the edges of the column.