Chapter 75: The Apex Paradox

"Ahahaha! Oh, Ren... you really know how to make a girl smile!" Velista purred, lowering her scythe as her dark violet eyes locked onto his with an icy, terrifying intensity. "That was just 0.2% of my strength."

Ren’s smirk stiffened for a fraction of a second. ’0.2%...?’

A cold knot tied itself in his stomach as her words sank in.

"The real game," Velista whispered, her form melting into pure shadow, "starts right now."

Ren’s pupils contracted into tiny points.

Before his mind could fully calculate the spatial vector, a blinding flash of deep purple light detonated directly in front of his face. Velista materialized out of the shadow realm in a split second, her double-bladed war scythe whistling through the air in a brutal, horizontal crescent designed to decapitate him in a single motion.

CLANG!

Driven by sheer survival instinct, Ren jerked his Void Sickle upward, catching her lower blade at a sharp angle. Sparks of raw, dark energy showered across his face as the physical collision produced a deafening kinetic shockwave.

The ground beneath their boots instantly shattered into a web of deep fissures. The sheer force of the impact blasted outward in a thirty-meter radius, tearing through the ancient cobblestones and causing the surrounding stone monoliths of the coliseum to groan, crumble, and shower the arena with massive stone debris.

Through the crackling violet sparks, their eyes met—her cold, sadistic gaze clashing against his desperate, hyper-focused purple irises.

Velista didn’t pause for a fraction of a second. Using the momentum of the rebound, she spun her waist with frightening speed, shifting the hilt in her palm to drive the upper blade down toward his throat.

Ren grit his teeth, forcing his body into a continuous acting simulation to keep the Nyx bloodline active. He feigned an arrogant, condescending smirk, twirling his own Void Sickle to deflect her strike, but the sheer velocity of her follow-ups pushed him into a desperate, backpedaling defense.

CLANG! CLANG! BANG!

The ruined arena transformed into a blur of violet light and deafening metallic shrieks. Every time their scythes collided, localized spatial distortions ruptured the air, leaving burning purple scars across the stone floor.

Ren was completely overwhelmed.

Even with the Nyx bloodline roaring through his arterial system and his mind acting out the archetype of the Dark God, he was strictly on the defensive. Velista’s weapon mastery was terrifyingly fluid—her attacks were not mere physical swings, but a seamless choreography of spatial blinks, deceptive feints, and cold, calculating precision.

She swung her scythe toward his shoulder in what appeared to be a standard overhead chop. Ren shifted his foot back to execute a tight parry, but in mid-motion, Velista’s wrist flicked at an impossible angle. The blade altered its trajectory instantly, diving straight for his unprotected flank.

’Dammit!’

Ren forced his spine to twist violently, his hip joints popping under the extreme physical strain as he threw himself sideways to avoid being disemboweled.

His boots lost purchase on the slick, dust-covered stone. He skidded out of control, his balance completely ruined as his left knee buckled against the cracked floor.

Velista’s lips curved into a cold, predatory arc. Seeing him slip, she stepped into his guard, bringing her scythe around in a sweeping, low execution arc designed to take off his legs.

Positioned on his knee with zero leverage, Ren’s eyes flickered with dangerous, desperate clarity. He couldn’t dodge. He couldn’t stand.

Instead of trying to pull back, Ren slammed his left palm onto the shattered cobblestones, using his arm as a temporary fulcrum. He swung his lower torso sideways in a ragged, improvised pivot, sweeping his upper body barely an inch below her passing blade.

As her scythe whistled harmlessly over his head, exposing a fraction of her inner shoulder, Ren clamped both hands around his Void Sickle.

"Get off me!" Ren roared, driving his weapon upward in a low-to-high diagonal slash, unleashing a crescent wave of raw, dark energy directly at her heart.

WOOSH!

The dark wave ripped through the air, but Velista didn’t even attempt to block. With terrifying agility, her body flipped backward into a high acrobatic vault, her dark gown fluttering gracefully as she floated over the destructive energy wave.

Ren didn’t let the momentum die. As she rotated mid-air, suspended against the sky, he saw his opening.

He planted his feet firmly into the fractured ground, unleashing every ounce of dark energy burning within his core. The violet aura wrapping his body surged to a fever pitch, illuminating his eyes with a terrifying, apocalyptic glow.

"Die!" Ren yelled, mimicking the dark god’s ruthless tone as he brought his double-bladed scythe down with a full-power, vertical chop.

A colossal, forty-foot wave of dense, light-devouring purple energy detonated from the tip of his weapon, tearing up the arena floor as it surged directly toward the airborne Velista.

Suddenly, mid-vault, Velista’s form dissolved into a cluster of sharp, starlike purple specks.

Ren’s breath hitched in his throat. The massive energy slash tore through empty air, slamming into the far side of the coliseum walls and reducing half a dozen ancient stone pillars to fine dust.

’Behind me!’

Every nerve in Ren’s neck flared with cold, primal terror.

He spun on his heel, but Velista had already materialized directly behind his back. She stood in a low, murderous stance, her dark eyes glowing like twin burning embers through the settling dust.

She didn’t twirl her weapon. She didn’t feign a move. She locked both hands around the hilt of her war scythe, charging the dual blades with a suffocating, hyper-dense concentration of dark divinity that turned the surrounding air ice-cold.

A condescending, pitying smile touched her lips.

"Goodbye, Ren," Velista whispered softly.

She thrust the scythe forward, unleashing a dense, compressed beam of catastrophic dark energy at point-blank range.

The sheer volume of the oncoming wave blinded his vision, the heat radiating off the dark energy crisping the edges of his hair before the attack even reached his skin. There was no space to dodge, no time to roll.

Driven by absolute desperation, Ren pulled his Void Sickle across his chest, locking both hands around the central hilt and planting his rear foot deep into the stone floor, using his own weapon as a makeshift kinetic shield.

BOOM!

The catastrophic beam slammed directly into the broad face of his Void Sickle.

Ren’s vision flared white as an unimaginable weight crashed into his arms. The kinetic shockwave drove his boots deep into the cobblestones, dragging him backward across the arena floor, carving two deep trenches through the rock.

"GAAAAAH!"

Ren shrieked through his teeth, his jaw locked so hard his gums bled. The dark energy beam gnawed viciously at his weapon, sending violent tremors through his wrist joints and cracking his finger bones. The protective barrier of his Void Sickle groaned, turning thin and translucent under the sheer volume of her dark divinity.

He was losing ground fast. His arms trembled violently as the dark beam pressed him closer to the edge of the cliff.

’I can’t hold this... My physical body is going to shatter!’

In that split second of total desperation, a crazy thought struck his mind.

The Nyx bloodline was operating at maximum throughput, but his physical vessel was struggling to handle the raw output. If he overlaid the System’s internal enhancement mechanism—*Celestial Rage*—directly over his current Nyx bloodline state, the structural synergy might amplify his output enough to breach her attack vector.

He closed his eyes, forcing his chaotic pulse to focus.

’System... Activate Celestial Rage! NOW!’

```

[SYSTEM NOTICE]

WARNING: OVERLAYING CELESTIAL RAGE WITH NYX RESONANCE WILL CAUSE EXTREME NEURAL STRAIN.

PROCEED? -> AUTOMATIC OVERRIDE.

```

BOOM!

A blinding wave of crimson kinetic energy erupted from the core of his chest, instantly merging with the deep purple aura wrapping his body. The two conflicting powers fused into a violent, tempestuous dark-crescent aura that surged down his nerve pathways like liquid fire.

Ren’s eyes snapped open, blazing with a terrifying hybrid light of dark violet and blood-red.

His dead limbs suddenly surged with absolute, unnatural strength. The excruciating fatigue in his arms vanished, replaced by an intoxicating, overwhelming burst of raw kinetic power.

"GET BACK!" Ren screamed, his voice carrying a double-layered, demonic echo.

Driven by the fused energy, Ren took a heavy, forward step against the crushing beam. He drove his back into the push, channeling every drop of energy through his palms into the hilt of his weapon, and swung his Void Sickle upward in a violent, desperate parry.

CRACK-BOOM!

The point-blank dark beam was forcibly deflected off its vector, shooting skyward like a massive laser and piercing straight through the cloud layer above.

The redirected force ricocheted backward, sending the remaining energy wave surging directly toward Velista.

Velista’s dark eyes widened slightly in genuine surprise. She reacted instantly, leaping sideways into a low, acrobatic flip.

The deflected beam slammed into the surviving eastern wall of the coliseum, detonating with the force of a high-yield warhead. The massive stone structure disintegrated into fine grey dust, sending a rain of heavy boulders crashing down into the open arena floor and shaking the entire mountain peak.

Velista landed lightly on a fallen stone pillar, her dark gown swaying in the wind as she looked back at him, a rare, irritated scowl touching her pale face.

Ren collapsed onto one knee, his breath coming in ragged, violent gasps.

His dark coat was torn, his hands were bloody and trembling uncontrollably, and every muscle in his body felt as if it had been scorched by acid. Combining Celestial Rage with the raw Nyx bloodline had successfully deflected her execution strike, but the physical recoil was devastating. He used the hilt of his Void Sickle as a crutch, barely keeping himself from falling face-first onto the stones.

’Hah... hah... almost died there...’ Ren thought, his vision swimming with dark spots.

Velista smoothed down her gown, her scowl vanishing as her lips curled back into a cold, intrigued smile.

"Incredible," Velista mused, her voice carrying across the quiet, ruined arena. "In such a short span of time, you not only managed to unlock Nyx’s bloodline, but you actually survived a direct execution strike. You truly are a dangerous anomaly, Ren."

She stepped off the pillar, her boots clicking softly against the debris. "If I let you walk away from here today, you will become the single greatest threat to my plans."

Her expression instantly wiped clean of all emotion, turning as cold as ice.

Snap.

Velista casually flicked her slender fingers.

Ren’s brow furrowed in deep confusion. *A finger snap...? What is she doing?*

For three long seconds, absolute silence hung over the mountain peak. Nothing happened.

Then—

THUD. THUD. THUD.

The entire mountain range began to tremble violently. Loose gravel bounced off the ground, and deep, rhythmic vibrations echoed from the valley below, growing louder and heavier with every passing millisecond.

Ren’s heart plummeted into his stomach. Cold sweat broke out across his neck as a colossal, oppressive shadow fell over the ruined coliseum, blocking out the sun entirely.

Ren slowly lifted his head, his dark eyes widening in utter horror.

Leaning over the shattered crest of the coliseum wall was a colossal, nightmarish abomination. Its skin was a sickly, mottled grey, stretched tight over a massive, eighteen-meter muscular frame. Four glowing red eyes burned with mindless, predatory hunger set above a gaping, split jaw lined with rows of jagged, yellowed fangs. The creature looked down into the coliseum arena, its foul, acidic breath misting in the cold air as it fixed its gaze directly onto Ren’s bruised form like a child staring at an ant.

Ren’s body froze completely, his breathing stopping in his throat.

’That thing...’

Ren’s mind raced back to the tactical briefings Evelyn had delivered at the round table before their departure.

’It’s the Apex Aberrant... the titan-class siege monster that broke through Evelyn’s Skyblade barrier and spearheaded the slaughter of the upper districts!’

The massive creature let out a low, guttural growl that vibrated through Ren’s very ribs, resting its colossal, clawed hands on the ruined stone walls as it prepared to crush him into red paste.