Chapter 184: The Puppet's Power
Moon skidded backward, his shoes carving twin furrows in the bluish clay. The coppery taste of his own blood filled his mouth, a stark contrast to the cold fury crystallizing in his mind. He saw the possessive, alien light in Kai's eyes, the arrogant tilt of the Red Diamond Crown on his head, and he understood.
So, Moon thought, wiping the blood from his broken nose with the back of his hand, when Anne's body became too weak to bear your burden, you found a new, stronger vessel. You waited until he was exhausted from fighting you, and then you slithered in like the parasite you are.
Before Moon could even voice his accusation, the entity wearing Kai's face spoke. The voice was a distorted overlay, Kai's familiar baritone twisted by a gloating, ancient hunger.
"This body... this vessel is so fucking powerful!" it roared, flexing Kai's hands and staring at them with rapturous wonder. "The strength! The depth of energy! I have never felt this alive in my entire existence!"
Moon's eyes narrowed, his voice dropping to a deadly, conversational calm. "Oh, I see. You think you can just jump from one host to another? You dirty little crown. You dare to create a link with Kai?" A cold, predatory smile touched his lips. "I think you've forgotten about me."
He took a single, deliberate step forward, a silent declaration of war.
The entity reacted with blinding speed. It wasn't a technique Kai would ever use; it was a raw, brutal application of his stolen power. It vanished from its spot, reappearing in front of Moon in a blur of crimson. A devastating kick, reinforced with searing red energy, slammed straight into Moon's gut.
The air exploded from Moon's lungs. Before the pain could even fully register, the entity was already in the air, having used the kick's recoil to launch itself upward. It descended like a hawk, the edge of its hand—a blade of solidified crimson force—chopping down at Moon's collarbone.
CRACK!
Moon grunted, his body buckling under the impact. He was then hurled backward, a puppet with cut strings, tumbling and rolling across the shattered landscape in a cloud of dust and debris. He came to a stop dozens of meters away, half-buried in the loose soil and pulverized crystal.
For a moment, there was only silence, broken by the faint, hungry hum of the corrupted Luminis Aquae.
Slowly, deliberately, Moon pushed himself up from the ground. Dirt and blue clay fell from his clothes and hair. He rolled his shoulders, a grimace of pain and annoyance on his face. He spat out a mouthful of blood.
"Haaawww, man," he groaned, stretching his neck from side to side. "Those kicks are really strong." He looked directly at the possessed Kai, a new, terrifying focus settling in his eyes. The casual demeanor was gone, replaced by the sharp edge of a warrior who has just finished calibrating his opponent.
"Looks like it's my time," Moon said, his voice now devoid of all emotion, "to use my sword."
The fight was no longer about retrieval.
It was about exorcism.
The air crackled with two opposing energies: the ravenous, bloody crimson of the possessed Kai and the sharp, purifying ozone of Moon's Electro element. Although a master of hand-to-hand combat, Moon knew he needed the lethal edge of a blade to break through the crown's defenses.
He raised his hand, and space tore open. From the rift, he drew Ikazuchi, a massive odachi whose blade was longer than Moon was tall. Its hilt was wrapped in dark, weathered bandages, and the dull grey metal seemed to hum with contained lightning. As Moon pointed it at his brother, arcs of blue-white electricity spontaneously danced along the blade, gathering with a rising, thunderous whine.
In response, the corrupted Kai raised Luminis Aquae, the once-pristine crystal sword now a jagged shard of pulsating red light, its 1.3-meter length humming with malevolent hunger.
"Oh, you want a sword battle?" the entity through Kai sneered. "Then be it!"
They vanished.
BOOM!
The first collision was not a clang, but a thunderclap. Their figures materialized mid-air, swords locked in a storm of crimson and blue lightning. Then, they were gone again, only to reappear fifty meters away, their blades meeting in another shattering impact that turned the air to superheated plasma.
Moon was on the defensive. For every ten of his swift, precise counters—parries that sent sparks of lightning cascading—the possessed Kai would unleash a devastating, overwhelming slash.
Slash! A crimson wave sheared off the top of a mountain peak behind Moon.
Slash!Moon barely dodged, the attack vaporizing a trench of rock at his feet.
Slash!He blocked, but the force sent him skidding back, his shoes melting the ground.
He was losing ground, his Electro-infused strikes being consumed by the crown's boundless, parasitic energy.
Seeing its master pressured, Kuro acted. The massive wolf, a blur of crimson fur, didn't attack Kai directly. Instead, he bounded across the battlefield, his howls generating visible sonic pulses that disrupted the crimson energy fields around Kai. At a crucial moment, as Kai lunged for a finishing strike, Kuro slammed into his side, not to injure, but to unbalance him.
It was the opening Moon needed.
"Ikazuchi: Raijin's Fang!" Moon roared.
He didn't swing the sword; he became the lightning. A colossal bolt of pure Electro energy, channeled through the odachi, lanced forward, not at Kai, but at the Red Diamond Crown itself. The world turned blinding white, and the very planet seemed to scream in protest.
The silence that followed their draw was heavier than any sound. It was the calm before the storm.
Then, they moved.
It wasn't a dash; it was an instantaneous teleportation of pure intent. The space between them vanished.
BOOM-CRACK!
Ikazuchi, wreathed in a storm of lightning, met the corrupted Luminis Aquae in a mid-air collision that wasn't just metal on crystal. It was a fundamental clash of energies. A shockwave of crimson and blue-white energy exploded outwards, vaporizing the ground beneath them into a glassy crater.
Moon's eyes were narrowed, his entire being focused on the flow of the fight. He was a master, his movements a blend of brutal efficiency and fluid grace. He used his odachi not just for slashing, but for leverage, deflecting Kai's more aggressive, straight-line thrusts with angled parries that sent sparks of lightning flying. For every ten exchanges, Moon was a tempest of defense:
Kai brought his red blade down in a vertical chop. Moon met it with the flat of Ikazuchi, lightning grounding the crimson energy with a sizzling roar.
A deceptive swing at his ankles. Moon pivoted, his sword's tip digging into the ground to block, kicking up a shower of electrified rocks.
Kai lunged, the red crystal sword aiming for his heart. Moon slapped it aside with a sideways flick of his odachi, the movement so precise it created a sonic crack.Moon evaded a horizontal sweep by dropping low, his own blade swinging upwards in a lightning-fast arc that forced Kai to leap back.
A whirlwind of crimson attacks. Moon spun with them, Ikazuchi a blur of grey steel and blue lightning, creating a defensive sphere around himself.As they closed in, Moon used the heavy hilt of his sword to smash against Kai's guard, creating a moment of disorientation.
He never stopped moving, his steps a dance of evasion, making the possessed Kai constantly readjust.
Moon pretended to go for a mighty overhead strike, only to suddenly drop the blade and deliver a powerful kick to Kai's midsection, making the entity grunt.
Their swords locked, hilt-to-hilt. Muscles strained, lightning and crimson energy warring in a violent, crackling dome around them.And after this flurry of ten counters, the opening always came. The entity, frustrated, would overextend. A massive, wild horizontal slash, fueled by the crown's rage, would come too wide. Moon would lean back, the red energy searing the air millimeters from his face, but he was unable to fully counter-attack in time. The sheer force of the missed slash would tear a new canyon in the landscape behind him.
He was holding his own, but he was losing. The crown's power was endless, and Kai's physical prowess, amplified by it, was a perfect vessel. Moon's lightning was being slowly, steadily overwhelmed.
This is where Kuro, the crimson-marked wolf, proved his worth. He didn't recklessly charge. He was a phantom on the periphery. As Kai prepared for a powerful thrust, Kuro unleashed a deep, guttural howl that seemed to vibrate the very air. The sonic wave disrupted the concentration of crimson energy around Kai's sword, making it flicker. In another instance, as Moon was being pushed back by a series of blows, Kuro darted in, not to bite, but to slam his massive shoulder into Kai's side. It wasn't enough to hurt him, but it was enough to break his stance and momentum, giving Moon a precious half-second to regain his footing and parry the next attack.
Kuro was the strategist, the disruptor, using his intelligence and speed to level the playing field against an opponent who had raw, overwhelming power.
The battle raged on, a deadly ballet of flickering light and earth-shattering impacts, with Moon and Kuro fighting a desperate, coordinated war against the brother they were trying to save.
A strange, resigned smile touched Moon's lips. It wasn't the ecstatic, manic grin he wore when pain fueled him. This was different—the bitter, knowing smile of a warrior who sees the end of the road. He had given it his all, his swordplay flawless, his Electro element pushed to its limit, but the gap in raw power was an insurmountable wall.
Kai, or the entity puppeteering him, stood almost unblemished. His stolen body showed no fatigue, no strain. In stark contrast, Moon's body was a canvas of suffering. Deep, weeping gashes crisscrossed his chest and arms, his black shirt now a tattered, slick mess of fabric and blood. Each movement was a fresh wave of agony.
Then, the possessed Kai vanished.
He didn't move; he simply ceased to exist in one spot and reappeared inches from Moon's flank. Before Moon could even pivot, Kai's hand—fingers rigid and sharpened by a blade of crimson energy—shot out and slammed directly into Moon's abdomen.
SHLUCK!
It wasn't a punch; it was an impalement. The sound was wet and brutal. Moon's eyes flew wide, a strangled gasp escaping his lips as he felt the invasive, burning energy tear through his flesh.
"AAAAAAAH!" The scream was torn from his very soul, a raw sound of agony that echoed across the desolate plain.
Kai was a phantom of pain. He vanished again, reappearing on Moon's other side, his blood-red fingers carving another deep trench across Moon's back. Again, and again, a blur of crimson motion and searing pain. Three, four times in the span of a single second, the entity used its impossible speed to surgically dismantle Moon's body, leaving him standing only through sheer, stubborn will.
The crown's voice echoed in the sudden silence, dripping with condescending praise. "You... in this black shirt. You really should be proud. I had to use my Blood Authority on you. Consider it a tribute."
Moon stood, swaying. His entire body was drenched in a blackish-red liquid, a horrifying mixture of his own blood and the crown's corrosive energy. He was a statue of agony, on the verge of collapse.
But his grip on Ikazuchi never loosened.
A low growl started deep in his chest, fighting its way past the blood filling his throat. It built into a roar, a final, defiant war cry that channeled every last spark of his spirit, every ounce of his remaining power.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
He wasn't aiming for precision anymore. This was a sacrifice. He poured every last volt of his Electro essence, his very life force, into Ikazuchi. The massive odachi erupted in a light so blindingly white it consumed all color. It was no longer a sword; it was a fragment of a dying star, a contained supernova held in his hands.
With the last of his strength, he didn't swing at Kai. He swung at the space between them, a final, all-or-nothing release.
SLASH!
A wave of pure, apocalyptic lightning, wide as a horizon, screamed forward. It wasn't an attack meant to wound; it was an attack meant to erase everything in its path, including himself.
The world held its breath.
Moon's final, desperate slash was not just an attack; it was a cataclysm. The wave of pure, white lightning did not cut through the ground—it unmade it. A canyon, hundreds of meters deep and wide, was instantly carved into the planet's crust, the edges glowing with molten rock. The air in its path didn't part; it was transformed, ionized into a searing, expanding cloud of superheated plasma that lit up the violet sky like a second, dying sun.
Moon collapsed to his knees, his body finally giving out. Ikazuchi, now dull and grey, slipped from his numb fingers and clattered to the ground. He had poured everything—his essence, his will, his very life—into that single strike. There was nothing left.
As the blinding light and plasma dissipated, his hazy vision cleared, focusing on a single point.
There, standing calmly just a few feet to the side of the newly-created canyon, was Kai. Not a scratch marred his stolen form. The crimson energy around him flickered softly, undisturbed. On his face was a look of profound, arrogant distaste, his lips curled in a sneer.
"All that... build-up," the entity's voice dripped with contempt, "that pathetic, self-sacrificing drama... just to be sidestepped. How utterly disappointing."
The words were a final, brutal blow, more crushing than any physical injury. Moon's last hope shattered. His body, already broken, sagged further. He fell backward, landing on the scorched earth with a dull thud, staring up at the alien sky, utterly defeated.
The possessed Kai strode forward, the corrupted Luminis Aquae humming with eager malice in his grip. He loomed over Moon, a crimson god of death. He raised the blood-red crystal sword high, positioning its tip directly above Moon's exposed neck.
"You also stood no chance against the great me," the crown declared, its voice the only sound in the sudden, terrible silence.
The sword began its final, fatal descent.
To be continued…