Chapter 40: Crimson Thunder

Chapter 40: Chapter 40: Crimson Thunder

Kane’s next strike came so fast Jason barely registered the motion before pain exploded across his forearm, a shallow line opening through skin.

He staggered back, boots skidding against loose stone, and felt something shift in the air around Kane, a pressure that hadn’t been there a heartbeat earlier.

His Perception fed him the number before his conscious mind had finished catching up.

[Kane]

[Cultivation: Third Level, Initial Stage]

’Third Level. He actually forced it. Whatever was in that needle just bought him an entire stage.’

’And I’m still standing here at Initial Stage Second, freshly minted.’

Jason knew the implications of such drugs. Kane’s breakthrough was unstable.

His strength wouldn’t compare to what he could’ve achieved if he broke through naturally.

Kane rolled his shoulder once, testing the new weight of his own body, and something in his expression shifted from strained desperation into cold, focused hunger.

"There we go," he said, voice rougher now, edged with something feral that hadn’t been present a moment before. "That’s better."

He surged forward.

---

The equilibrium Jason had spent the last several minutes carefully maintaining simply ceased to exist.

Kane’s blade came in high, then low, then high again, a blur of silver and crackling lightning that Jason could barely track even with every ounce of focus he had left.

He caught the first strike on the Stoneborn Spear’s shaft, the impact rattling up through both arms hard enough to numb his fingers.

He twisted away from the second, felt the wind of it pass close enough to stir his hair. The third connected, a glancing blow across his shoulder that would have taken the whole limb off at a worse angle.

He gave ground.

Then gave more.

Every attempt to counter met a wall of speed and raw output that simply outclassed anything he could currently offer, Kane’s new strength bulldozing through defenses that had held perfectly well against his old, Peak Second Level self.

’I can’t trade blows like this. Not anymore.’

He funneled essence into his Perception instead, flooding his senses the same way he had in that final spar with Darius, and the world around him fractured into something slower, more readable, Kane’s shoulders and hips betraying his next move a fraction of a second before the strike itself arrived.

It was enough to survive.

It wasn’t enough to win.

He deflected a diagonal slash meant to open his throat, redirected a follow-up thrust wide of his ribs, retreated in small, controlled steps that cost him ground with every single exchange, and through all of it Kane kept coming, relentless, delighted, clearly savoring every inch of territory he claimed.

"You held your own against me a minute ago," Kane said, between strikes, breathing hard but grinning through it. "Let’s see how long that lasts now."

Jason didn’t waste breath answering. He needed every scrap of focus just to keep his head attached to his shoulders.

---

The growling reached them before either combatant noticed it.

Three wyrms burst into the chamber from a side passage, drawn by the wild, bleeding essence pouring off both fighters like a beacon neither of them could afford to hide, jaws already snapping, claws already scraping against stone.

"Perfect," Kane snarled, and without so much as breaking his rhythm against Jason, pivoted his blade sideways and opened the nearest wyrm’s throat in a single fluid motion, lightning crackling down the wound before the beast had even finished collapsing.

Jason had no such luxury.

A second wyrm lunged for his exposed flank the same instant Kane pressed forward from the front, and for several brutal, disorienting seconds he was caught in a vise between blade and claws, forced into a desperate spinning parry that barely, barely kept either threat from connecting cleanly.

He drove Crimson Blaze through the wyrm’s skull in the same motion he used to knock Kane’s follow-up strike wide, buying himself a single ragged breath before the pressure resumed in full.

The third wyrm circled wide, patient in the way only a predator sensing weakness could be, and Jason caught its intent a half second before it committed, twisting aside from its charge and letting it barrel straight into the space where Kane happened to be standing.

Kane cursed, forced to actually deal with the beast himself, his sword flashing twice in quick succession before the creature finally dropped.

For one brief, precious moment, neither of them was actively trying to kill the other.

Jason used it to breathe. To think.

’Can’t keep doing this.

Can’t out-trade him, can’t out-endure him, can’t out-power him. Something has to give, or I’m not walking out of this chamber.’

---

The idea surfaced from somewhere beneath the exhaustion, half-formed, reckless, exactly the kind of plan he’d have laughed at from anyone else.

’He’s reading my essence signature. Every strike, every guard, every retreat, he’s calibrating off what my output actually looks like to him.’

’What if that output is lying?’

He tested it carefully in the next exchange, drawing the outward reading of his essence down through ’Veil’ without actually reducing anything underneath it, letting Kane’s senses register something considerably weaker than what actually remained in his Core.

Kane’s next strike came in looser. Less guarded. The small, telling difference of a man who believed his opponent had nothing left worth respecting.

’It’s working.’

Jason let himself stumble on the following exchange, spear dipping lower than it should, breath ragged and visible, every outward sign screaming exhaustion he didn’t fully have.

"Finally cracking," Kane said, delight bleeding into the words, something almost gleeful in the way he pressed forward.

Jason let the next strike land clean, a shallow, controlled cut opening across his ribs, hissing in genuine pain but exaggerating the stagger that followed it, letting his knees buckle slightly more than the wound actually demanded.

’Come on. Commit. One more strike. Just one more.’

Kane did.

He surged forward for what he clearly believed was the finishing blow, blade angled for Jason’s throat, every last drop of his forced Third Level output flooding into the strike.

Jason dropped the Veil entirely.

His true essence signature roared back into existence all at once, Fire and Lightning both surging through his newly expanded Core in a single unified pulse, and he funneled every remaining drop of it directly into the Stoneborn Spear, the two essences twisting together along the shaft rather than fighting each other for dominance, crimson flame wrapped around white-hot lightning in a shape he’d never attempted before.

"Crimson Thunder," he breathed, and drove the spear forward to meet Kane’s committed strike head-on.

Kane’s eyes widened, the realization arriving a half-second too late to matter.

"You-"

The spear met his blade and simply didn’t stop.

It tore straight through steel, through the desperate essence flooding his arm in a final, useless attempt at defense, through everything Kane had left to offer, and buried itself deep in his chest.

Kane’s expression froze somewhere between fury and disbelief, mouth still half-open around a word he never finished.

Then he collapsed, and the chamber fell silent except for Jason’s own ragged, uneven breathing.

He stood there a long moment afterward, spear still smoking faintly with the last dying traces of the technique, staring down at the man who’d nearly killed him twice within the span of a single fight.

’This move.....

It’s not quite as dangerous as the one I used against the Stone golem but it burns through frightening amount of essence.’

His legs finally gave out from under him, and he sank down onto the cold stone floor, chest heaving, the aftermath of everything, the egg, the breakthrough, the fight, finally catching up all at once.