The Sinful Young Master

Chapter 474: Fight against the nyphorite – 4

The Phantom Curve and Chaos Resonance in close succession after the reserve expenditure of the earlier engagement had pushed him past concerning and into territory that required an honest assessment.

One more technique. Maybe two if the first one didn’t finish it.

Yan seemed to reach a similar conclusion from its own perspective. The amber eyes steadied, the calculation behind them settling into a decision rather than continued assessment, and when Yan moved next, it moved with the particular quality of something that had decided to use what it had left rather than continue conserving.

It hit Jolthar’s telekinetic field with a strike that carried the accumulated malice of something that had been building power for a very long time, and even degraded by the chaobane disruption in its left side, even partially compromised in the right arm, the force delivered through that strike was enough to collapse the telekinetic field entirely and arrive at Jolthar’s body with enough residual force to take him off his feet.

He went backward through the air for the second time in this engagement.

This time he used the trajectory rather than fighting it, orienting his body in the air, landing with a roll that converted the horizontal momentum into controlled movement rather than impact absorption, and came up on one knee with Horgath already repositioned.

His system was reporting things he was choosing not to fully process yet because full processing would require acknowledging constraints that he didn’t have time to work around.

Yan was walking toward him. Not running. The amber eyes were fully committed now, no assessment left in them, just the focused intent of something that had decided the engagement would conclude in the next exchange.

Jolthar’s hand steadied on Horgath.

He had one technique left before his body would genuinely begin refusing instructions.

“Bloodwake Cleave,” he said.

The fifth form was the antithesis of subtlety.

Where the previous techniques had used the chaobane’s diagnostic intelligence to find precise angles and specific vulnerabilities, Bloodwake Cleave was the technique for when precision had accomplished its preparatory work and what remained was delivery of consequence. It took everything the chaobane threads had mapped, every fault line identified, and every layer of energy structure that the preceding contacts had compromised and addressed all of it simultaneously through a single committed strike that channeled the accumulated diagnostic intelligence into one devastating application.

It was expensive. Significantly expensive. The kind of expensive that left very little afterward.

Jolthar put everything available into Horgath and moved directly at Yan.

No angles, no misdirection, no telekinetic manipulation to create openings.

Straight at Yan with the chaobane blazing at full expression through the blade, the amber light of the technique visible even in the corrupted daylight of the Depths, the disruption field ahead of the blade preceded its physical arrival by enough distance that the first thing to reach Yan was the frequency wave carrying the accumulated map of every weakness the previous strikes had built toward.

Yan caught Horgath’s blade with both hands.

The grey hands closed around the chaobane steel, and the disruption frequency hit both compromised regions simultaneously — left side fault lines and right arm accumulation — and the cascade that Chaos Resonance had started and Bloodwake Cleave was now completing ran through Yan’s layered energy structure with the propagating force of something that had found the correct frequency to make a structure shake itself apart rather than requiring external force to do the shaking.

Yan’s legs buckled.

The amber eyes stayed open, stayed focused, stayed committed — but the body was not following the intent behind them, the layered energy structure having entered a state of internal contradiction severe enough that voluntary control was being contested by the system trying to resolve the contradiction the chaobane had introduced.

Jolthar held the blade in Yan’s grip, not trying to pull it free, letting the contact continue because every additional fraction of a second the chaobane had direct interface with the compromised structure was another fraction of a second the disruption deepened and propagated.

Yan’s knees hit the corrupted ground.

The amber eyes looked up at Jolthar from that position with an expression that contained it, without embarrassment.

“That energy of yours is more sophisticated than it looks,” Yan said, its voice carrying the slightly strained quality of something maintaining composure while its internal structure ran diagnostic processes at full capacity trying to arrest the cascading disruption.

“Most things are,” Jolthar replied.

He was operating on what felt like the last viable layer of his reserves.

Behind him, the battle between the two expedition forces and the horde was ongoing but had changed in character — Yan’s descent from the ten-tailed entity and the subsequent focused engagement between them had drawn the entity’s own attention, the massive form having shifted its orientation to observe rather than participate, as if the outcome of this specific confrontation held information it needed before deciding its own next action.

The horde, without the nyphorite’s directing presence, was becoming less coordinated — still dangerous in numbers but losing the purposeful quality that had characterized its initial assault, the creatures reverting toward the more basic malice-driven behavior that experienced expedition forces knew how to manage.

Caelum and the seniors were managing it.

Jolthar looked at Yan, still on its knees, the chaobane disruption still working through its system.

Suddenly, Jolthar staggered; his vision had become hazy.

The Bloodwake Cleave’s aftermath settled over Jolthar’s body like a tide going out and taking everything with it.

He managed to stand his ground, but it was impossibly hard to maintain.

Horgath was still in his hand.

Yan remained on its knees, the chaobane disruption having done its thorough work through the layered energy structure, the amber eyes still focused, but the body beneath them engaged in the kind of full internal crisis that precluded immediate action.

The nyphorite was not finished — Jolthar understood that with the clarity of honest assessment — but it was temporarily constrained by the cascading contradiction the Bloodwake Cleave had introduced into its foundations.

Temporarily.

Jolthar attempted to take a step toward Yan and his left leg provided feedback that reclassified the attempt as aspirational rather than achievable.

He stopped to check himself.

The reassessment produced the same answer the first assessment had produced, and he had no energy left in him.

There was nothing left.

It was a miracle that he was even standing.

Not nothing in the sense of being reduced to minimal reserves — nothing in the absolute sense, the tank not running low but having been turned upside down and shaken.

The Void Requiem against the dukes had drawn from depths that needed days to replenish.

The extended chaobane engagement with Yan had drawn from everything above those depths. The telekinetic maintenance through the entire horde engagement had consumed what remained of the middle layers.

What was left was the biological baseline that kept his heart moving and his lungs working and his eyes processing light, and that baseline was not available for combat expenditure because it was already committed to keeping him alive.

He could not kill Yan.

The recognition arrived without drama, without the anguish that might have accompanied it in better circumstances.

Yan’s amber eyes had focused on Jolthar and he could tell that Jolthar had no energy left in him to deal with him. And before he did anything, Yan wanted to kill Jolthar and he wanted to be swift.

So he made a move.

Yan’s right arm moved.

The disrupted left side was still non-functional, but the right arm had accumulated less chaobane damage, and the intent behind the move was readable — not a fully committed strike but enough, aimed at someone whose telekinetic field was gone and whose body couldn’t move reliably to avoid it.