Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 413: Speed

Kilometers away from the location of the city where the Assassin Guild headquarters was situated, two streaks of light could be seen tearing through the skies at an impossible speed. One was black, pitch black, so dark it seemed to devour the light around it. The other was golden, radiant and blinding, shining with a brilliance that eclipsed the sun itself.

With a cataclysmic impact, the two streaks of light collided. The resulting collision was nothing short of titanic. The world burned around them in vast, overlapping waves of destruction. Forests were obliterated out of existence, trees erased as though they had never been rooted into the soil.

Mountains were split apart and reduced to nothingness, hills annihilated in an instant, and the landscape itself was torn to shreds as though reality had grown fragile beneath their might. Yet they did not stop. They did not dare to stop. They did not care to. Instead, they remained in motion, unceasing, relentless, forever on the offensive.

Their feet danced across the earth below with ceaseless and overwhelming force. A spear thrust forward with merciless precision, while a short blade screamed through the air in response. The atmosphere rippled violently, then tore apart in the very next millisecond. The moment the two weapons clashed, the entirety of the battlefield was swallowed by an incandescent explosion of black and gold.

It was as though one side embodied absolute evil while the other represented divine justice, their powers clashing in a spectacle that defied mortal comprehension.

Smoke billowed violently into the skies with frightening speed and force, rising as though the world itself were unraveling. Kilometers around the epicenter, everything was ravaged beyond recognition. Massive chasms yawned open across the land, as though the gates of hell themselves were clawing their way to the surface. Sword marks and spear scars decorated the broken earth below, each one etched with nothing but raw, unrestrained power.

For a brief moment, the two streaks of light remained stationary, their weapons locked midair, halting one another with overwhelming force. Yet even in stillness, destruction continued unabated. The residual energy pouring off their bodies, combined with the violent backlash from their collision, tore into the surroundings in endless, overlapping waves, refusing to subside.

Slowly, the dust swirled and began to clear.

Two figures emerged from the chaos.

The black streak revealed itself first. Cloaked entirely in darkness, the figure wielded two short blades, their edges shimmering with lethal intent. He was Valentine, the Assassin Guild Leader, an existence forged in shadow and blood. His presence alone exuded death, a suffocating aura that spoke of countless lives taken without hesitation.

Opposite him stood the golden streak.

Duke Azaron Wargrave.

His tall frame stood firm like an unyielding giant, his golden armor gleaming beneath the fractured sunlight. The armor shimmered brilliantly, reflecting radiance in every direction, as though he were an angel that had descended from the heavens themselves. Power rolled off his body in visible waves, noble yet overwhelming, dignified yet utterly destructive.

Azaron’s eyes met Valentine’s.

A wild grin stretched across Azaron’s face, unrestrained and feral. One did not need to be told, merely by looking at him, it was clear that he was enjoying every single moment of this battle. This was exhilaration incarnate, a thrill he had long yearned for. Valentine, on the other hand, remained cold and composed. His expression was emotionless, yet within his black eyes, countless calculative flashes flickered and vanished in rapid succession. One glance was enough to understand his intent, he wanted nothing more than to kill the man standing before him.

”Valentine,” Azaron spoke, his voice echoing across the ruined landscape, carrying an amused lilt. ”I’m sure you can do better than this. Let’s pick up the tempo, shall we?”

Azaron was here for amusement, and he fully intended to savor every second of it. If this had been an official battle, one against a neighboring empire or a political enemy, his demeanor would have been entirely different. He would not smile. He would not taunt. He would not speak. But this battle was not bound by such constraints. This battle existed solely to entertain him and to momentarily dispel the boredom that plagued his existence.

Within Azaron’s palm, Ender hummed softly, vibrating with excitement, as though urging the short blades in Valentine’s hands to respond in kind and increase their own tempo.

Valentine clicked his tongue inwardly, irritation flickering briefly through his thoughts. Yet he could not deny it, he was enjoying this as well. Still, enjoyment did not mean recklessness. His eyes remained sharp and calculating, his posture precise and controlled. He was an assassin. This cold, composed state was his natural condition in battle.

Without further hesitation, Astra energy erupted from both of their bodies, thundering into the skies as though two newborn gods had declared their presence to the world. Their forms were instantly engulfed in their respective Astra energies, black swallowing light, gold radiating supremacy. Neither wasted time.

There was no need to test the waters. What waters were there to test? Both stood at the Crownstar Life Rank. That alone was proof enough of how calamitous they were.

In the next blip of existence, they vanished.

The ground beneath their feet shattered violently, tearing upward as massive chunks of earth were flung skyward by the sheer force of their acceleration. In a blur, they transitioned into subsonic speed, yet to them, it felt no faster than the crawl of a snail. Dissatisfied, they pushed further.

In the next instant, they breached transonic speed.

The air around them convulsed violently, pressure coiling and distorting until it finally exploded outward in utter madness. Deafening shockwaves blasted backward and outward, pulverizing anything unfortunate enough to be caught in their wake.

Still, they did not slow.

Their bodies moved faster still, legs tearing through the limits of sound as they entered supersonic speed. Every single motion triggered apocalyptic shockwaves, devastation erupting with each step and strike. Their speed continued to climb, reaching hypersonic levels, then surpassing them entirely. Relativistic speed followed, then high relativistic speed, until they brushed against the threshold of light itself.

Then they exceeded even that.

At nigh-irrelevant speeds, it appeared as though they were tearing free from the fabric of reality itself. Space warped and twisted around them as they pushed one another beyond every known calculation of speed and raw strength. Their muscles coiled and strained violently with each movement, Astra energy reinforcing their forms and allowing them to perform feats that defied logic and reason.

The world of Crymora struggled to keep up. It groaned beneath their presence, unable to suppress them any longer. Astra energy surged more violently, pushing them further still, as though they stood at the precipice of stepping beyond reality’s containment altogether.

Yet for all this grandeur, this overwhelming display of power, there was no one left to witness it. The subordinates of these two titans, beings clad in human skin yet far removed from humanity itself, were simply too weak. Too slow. Even the residual shockwaves alone would erase them from existence before they could so much as blink.

And so, much like Malrik’s battle before it, this clash would likely go down in the annals of history.

A battle of legends. A battle of gods. But a silent one.