I Can Copy And Evolve Talents - Chapter 1385 The Monstrous Child [part 1]
Chapter 1385 The Monstrous Child [part 1]
Commander Zebelon and Jeci’s fight was nearing its conclusion. One of them moved slower with every passing exchange, limbs dragging as though the air had thickened around her.
While the other regarded her with contempt, ease, and disgust.
No one joined the battle. Of course, simply because Revant had asked them not to and Jeci herself had demanded it. Lynus was locked in his own fight with another thrall, this one different from the rest. Easy enough to deal with on any given exchange, but the bastard kept coming back.
If he were to count how many times he had struck it down, it would probably number around a hundred. And yet it kept standing up. Kept healing. Kept grinning that hollow grin.
The dawn was rising. Golden light poured out of the horizon and the sky stretched into something glorious, radiant enough that it almost seemed to carry the sound of victory on Ryugan’s behalf.
Although that sound was rather silent and somber… could it have been the sound of defeat then?
No… It was too resplendent to be one.
Jeci stood up once again, leaning on her spear for a couple of seconds before pushing herself upright. Almost every possible break in her armor leaked with blood. It ran in thin rivulets down the plates, pooling where metal met metal.
Worse for wear was not a term that fit her current state. She was far worse, far more broken and debilitated than that word could carry.
And yet she was standing again.
“This is going to be your last stand.”
The commander spoke with an irritated tone, the kind of irritation born not from effort but from the indignity of being made to wait.
“I’ve had enough of you. Be gone from this place.”
He lunged forward with intense speed, his sword flying back in a wide arc. As it curved forward to swipe across Jeci’s neck, his eyes suddenly widened and he battled against the trajectory of the blade at all cost. He threw the weapon away abruptly in order to diminish its velocity and, in the same breath, flew backward as far as he could manage in a single leap.
He was standing over seventy meters away from Jeci now. The distance had opened between them in the span of a heartbeat, and the commander’s expression had changed entirely.
In the bathing golden light of the rising day star, Northern finally reached the battlefield.
He supported Jeci with one hand, smiling warmly at her. Not the smile of a commander assessing damage, or a strategist calculating what had been lost. Just simple and steady warmth.
Jeci looked at him weakly and pressed her lips into a painful thin line, suppressing whatever it was she was feeling. Her fingers tightened on the shaft of her spear, knuckles white beneath the blood.
Northern’s smile didn’t waver.
“You shouldn’t push yourself too much like this. I understand the desire to be stronger. I strive for all of you to be individually stronger, to be able to protect yourselves and other people. But I also do not want you risking your entire life for that goal.”
He shifted his gaze forward, looking at Zebelon. Then turned back to Jeci.
“Not all battles are won at once, you know? Especially the ones with yourself…”
He let the words settle.
“Especially the ones with yourself. You have to fight them over… and over again. Your intense desire to overcome all of that within a single battle is unfair to all the hard work you have put in so far, Jeci.”
Her lips were still pressed tight. After a moment, she muttered something inaudible.
Northern smiled.
“There’s no need to be sorry. You were awesome today. Very awesome. I learnt so much watching you.”
Revant had landed on the ground the moment Northern arrived and was now standing behind him, posture straight and gaze flat, hands clasped behind his back like a shadow given form and purpose.
As Northern stood up, Revant stepped forward and received Jeci without a word.
Northern then turned towards Zebelon. Fighting a Sage was somewhat beneath him at this point. He had what he needed from Zebelon already, so he didn’t need to cross swords against the commander himself.
There was someone else’s growth he was curious about.
“Lord.”
A black flame appeared and extended, forming into a boy that looked about thirteen. He had black hair that flowed with the subtle air of the twilight and pitch black eyes that caught no light at all.
He looked so much like Revant, if the Tyrant had been a child once. Granted, his childhood most likely looked nothing like this. Lord was wearing Northern’s face, after all.
“Shall we test your abilities in real time battle?”
The nebulous Lord stared forward with a conflicted expression, his small hands fidgeting at his sides.
“Master, can’t I simply continue with the echoes in your soul? Those ones are much stronger, and they can come again too!”
Northern sighed.
“Fighting a mindless echo is different from fighting a human. Humans have amassed thousands of experiences that you will benefit from. Fighting echoes of monsters can get boring, you know?”
Lord scratched his chin, turning the statement over in his head again and again, visibly chewing on it like something that didn’t taste right.
“Thoraxis is very strong and intelligent, you know? And I’ve not been able to defeat him once!”
His eyes lit up with something between frustration and genuine hunger.
“Dang, I wish to taste his flesh one time…”
Northern sighed.
“Lord. Focus.”
The nebulous Lord quickly straightened, and his childlike gaze fell on the opponent standing before them.
“I know you have been familiarizing yourself with your evolved abilities and trying to define them better, but today I want to make an observation for myself on how far you’ve grown. Okay?”
Lord seemed to have objections still, but he suppressed them and stared forward. His grin surfaced slowly, the kind of grin that had no business sitting on a child’s face. It stretched too wide, held too many teeth, and the eyes above it went flat and empty while the mouth promised something terrible.
“Then I’ll be quick?”
“No, I actually want you to take your time.”
The childish disaster scratched his head in confusion again. He wasn’t getting the point. But he fixed his gaze forward, and the grin settled into place like a mask clicking shut.
Meanwhile, Annette, Raven, Vida, and Thalen were watching from the edge of the flying Tower of Trammel.
They had seen Northern summon what appeared to be a child, and were first confused.
Thalen spoke first.
“Who is that? Is Lord Rian going to make a child fight that grotesque commander?”
Annette looked at him, one eyebrow raised.
“You see Northern summon a child and you seriously think it’s a child? That’s a new level of naivety I am yet to see.”
Raven nodded expressionlessly.
“Northern never summons anything that is not monstrous.”
Vida was silent, but her expression carried the same understanding. They all remembered what Northern had commanded back in Lotheliwan. The backbone of the destruction that wrecked the entire grave zones of monsters. Northern single-handedly did that.
Tharion was still new to all of this, still learning the shape of what Northern was. But when the ground beneath the child cracked and exploded into the air as Lord lunged forward, the confusion on his face died quickly, replaced by something far more honest.
