Over a year ago
High in the mountains, hundreds of kilometres from the Giant Village, Valerius sat cross-legged on a stone outcrop. He was nearly eight feet tall. Both his arms glowed an otherworldly green, vibrating with pent-up power. He clenched his fists and thrust them toward each other with all his might—
—but they could not meet.
The opposing Bravo forces crashed together, space between them warping, before erupting in a blinding blast.
Esky’s voice cut through the roar.
“Damn it—!”
In less than a heartbeat, Esky had fortified Valerius and conjured a perfect sphere of Cushion around them, no more than four metres wide. The explosion slammed into it, pressing inward with terrifying force—contained, perfectly.
When it was over, Esky’s glare could have cut stone.
“Never. Ever do that again. Do you understand me? If I’m not here next time, you’ll die. I’ve told you before—Bravo is not a toy. How many times must I repeat myself before it sinks in?”
---
Present
Eryndor’s magic shimmered, replacing Valerius’s ruined clothes with a fresh set—loose, elegant robes clearly tailored for someone taller.
Valerius tugged at the sleeve. “These yours? They’re huge.”
Eryndor snapped his fingers. The fabric tightened, shrinking until it fit Valerius perfectly.
“Better?”
“Much.” Valerius rose, rolling his good arm. “I’ve got to get those relics for you.”
As he turned to leave, Eryndor’s voice called after him. “Valerius.”
He turned back. Five bottles of shimmering elixer floated toward him.
Valerius caught them, slipping them into his bag. “Thanks, man.”
He was already walking away when Ziraiah muttered, “Just try not to blow yourself up again.”
Valerius bolted through the fractured battlefield, his breath sharp in the cold night air.
Damn… I got careless. His jaw tightened. But my mission’s not done. Can I finish it with only one arm?
Up ahead, a Pesterio darted between the shadows—four-armed, lean, and clutching the Wailing Crown.
Valerius lunged. His left hand grazed the relic—
—but the Pesterio twisted away with inhuman speed, teeth bared in a grin. Two of his right hands lashed forward like spears.
Valerius spun mid-air, avoiding the blow—only for a second Pesterio to flash in from the flank, his heel slamming into Valerius’s ribs.
The impact hurled him back several kilometres. He struck the ground hard but landed on his feet, skidding to a stop.
The first Pesterio’s voice boomed from above.
“You didn’t really think I was alone, did you?”
He slammed both fists into the earth.
The ground erupted in a shockwave, soil shattering into a forty-kilometre-wide crater.
Valerius slipped past the blast, vaulting up chunks of rock as they tore free from the earth. Each step he took fortified the boulder beneath him, turning it into a solid springboard.
Mid-leap, he twisted and kicked the air.
A wall of invisible Cushion slammed forward, catching the first Pesterio full in the chest. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he was flung hundreds of kilometres, smashing through a chain of mountains.
Valerius didn’t slow. He launched off the air itself, his heel crashing into the second Pesterio’s face. Bone crunched—nose shattering, teeth flying—and the Pesterio was blasted toward the island’s edge.
There, he hit something unseen in the air—an elastic barrier that stretched for nearly five hundred metres before snapping back like a slingshot.
The Pesterio shot forward at terrifying speed, reappearing in Valerius’s blind spot.
A flying kick screamed toward Valerius’s head—
—but Valerius tilted just enough to let it pass. The Pesterio’s inner elbow hooked around his neck instead, the momentum yanking them both into a violent tumble.
They spun, and the Pesterio whipped his arm with brutal force—sending Valerius hurtling away, smashing through several mountains before an invisible wall stopped him cold in mid-air.
Thunder Stride.
He leapt instantly, closing the gap—his limp right arm flailing behind him. He cocked his left fist back and swung—
—but the Pesterio caught the blow with his upper arms. His lower left hand clamped around Valerius’s right arm and squeezed.
Valerius’s roar ripped through the air. Pain lanced up to his shoulder.
“You should know better,” the Pesterio sneered, tightening his grip, “than to fight while crippled.”
The other Pesterio shot in, grabbing Valerius’s left arm. Together, they slammed him into the ground—fortified earth cracking in a thirty-metre ring.
Still holding his right arm, the first Pesterio planted a foot on his chest.
“What do you say, brother? Tear his limbs off?”
The second grinned. “Yes. Dismemberment.”
Valerius roared like a beast, muscles straining. He drove the second Pesterio down, smashing him into the dirt.
The first, refusing to let go, coiled a leg around Valerius’s neck, locking his trapped arm between his thighs and pulling.
Valerius’s face twisted, teeth gritted in agony. His arm began to dislocate further with every wrench. His muscles began tearing.
His green eyes flared. The Pesterio saw the sudden intensity and faltered.
“What’s with this bastard? JUST DIE ALREADY!”
The second Pesterio lunged—
—and met the side of Valerius’s green fist.
The punch detonated like a bomb. His jaw broke, his neck snapped, and his body was hurled away in a blur, vanishing over the horizon.
Valerius’s fingers straightened, stabbing into the chest of the Pesterio still holding him. Blood gushed as the fortified ground cratered beneath them, widening to eighty metres.
The man’s leg loosened from Valerius’s neck.
In the same motion, Valerius tore the Wailing Crown from his grip and kicked him away.
Without pausing, he leapt clear, his eyes locked on the location of the Blood Chalice.
No time for another drawn-out fight, he thought.
He raised his left hand, fingers straightening. The skin flashed green, ringing with a sharp metallic clang.
Then he brought the edge of his hand down—
A green crescent of Bravo tore through the air, rippling outward and down toward the challenger holding the Blood Chalice.
She was a Dragoon—armoured, battle-hardened, and trained in both magic and close combat—but Bravo had no mana signature. It arrived without warning, a silent executioner.
Four Bravo users saw it.
Their eyes widened.
Arms outstretched, faces twisted in urgency, they surged toward her from all directions, their bodies breaking the sound barrier several times over in unison.
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One of them slammed his foot into the ground, fortifying the earth in a desperate wave that raced toward her position.
The world seemed to slow to a crawl—only they were moving.
The green slash closed in.
Closer.
Closer—
Impact.
The explosion hit like a bomb. All four Dragoons shouted in unison,
“NOOOOOOO!”
Her right arm vanished from the shoulder down, shredded into mist. A crater ten metres wide punched straight through the island’s surface—then kept going, carving a shaft over a thousand kilometres deep. The strike tore clean out the bottom of the island, leaving molten edges glowing in the dark.
The four men landed around her, glaring down as she writhed in agony, clutching the smoking stump. Then, slowly, they all turned their heads toward the sky.
Valerius.
They couldn’t see him at this distance—yet they felt him. The source of the attack.
Their teeth ground audibly. Rage twisted their faces.
All four were Dragoons.
The eldest and most muscular, standing at the front, snapped over his shoulder to the youngest:
“You stay and guard her!”
Without hesitation, the youngest fell back to the wounded woman’s side, spear ready.
The other three launched into the sky like meteors.
At the lead, the middle-aged Dragoon’s scythe gleamed under the moonlight. Behind him, the other two carried giant swords—each over ten feet long—cutting arcs through the clouds as they closed the gap.
The Dragoon with the scythe reached Valerius first, swinging in a blurring, silver arc that passed just before Valerius’s eyes. The two swordsmen moved as one, slashing the air in rapid succession—each swing releasing crescents of Bravo that screamed toward him.
Valerius leapt from air-step to air-step, dodging with fluid precision. The scythe came again—he slipped under it, then twisted aside from another flurry of slashes.
Annoyance flared in his eyes. He batted one Bravo arc away with his forearm, then caught another—with his bare hand. The effort made him groan.
“I don’t have time for this,” he snarled.
He kicked off the air diagonally and slammed into one swordsman, his left fist driving straight through the man’s torso. The Dragoon gagged, blood spraying as he fell limp.
In a single motion, Valerius gripped the very air—Cushion—and pulled. Reality stretched under his hands like a sheet of taut rubber, then collapsed inward.
The other Dragoons jerked as if caught under a falling curtain, dragged from the sky.
Valerius dropped with them, fortifying the ground on impact. The three men slammed into it with such force that craters five metres deep bloomed beneath each one.
Without hesitation, Valerius shot forward—straight toward the lone Dragoon guarding the woman.
The man’s eyes darted. Then—
Valerius was gone.
In the blink of an eye, he reappeared in front of him, snatched the Blood Chalice clean from the woman's grasp, and was already moving before the shockwave of his arrival blasted them both backwards.
Balling’s voice rang out across the island, cheerful and cruel:
“One more minute, people! And don’t worry—after this phase, you’ll have time to rest… unless, of course, you’re resting permanently!”
Valerius slid the Chalice into his spatial bag. “Just one more,” he muttered.
That’s when he felt it—Valtos’s presence, heavy and sharp, brushing against his awareness. The lights above the man flared.
You’re lucky I can’t take you on in this state, Valerius thought.
Yelleen’s voice coiled into his mind.
“Valerius—stop. Your right arm is being destroyed from the inside. What are you doing to yourself?”
“I know, Yelleen,” he growled. “That’s why I have to finish this quickly.”
“Is this the effect of your Bravo?” she pressed.
“You bitch,” he snapped, “so you do know about Bravo. And you didn’t say shit. Doesn’t matter now. The Mirror Blade’s right in front of me. Stay quiet like you’ve been—don’t distract me.”
His gaze swept the battlefield.
“All the weak ones are dead by now. Only the strongest remain.”
Yelleen’s voice cut sharply into his mind.
“Control your anger, Valerius. Don’t let your Bravo corrupt you.”
A faint smile tugged at his lips. “Of course you know that too. Well, don’t worry about it.”
Her tone rose, edged with something dangerously close to panic.
“Don’t take this lightly! You have no idea what it can do to a person. I’ve seen what it did to your fath—”
She stopped. Mid-word.
Valerius’s eyes narrowed. The smile returned, wider this time.
“Oooh… so you knew my old man, huh? You’ve got some explaining to do, Yelleen.”
She didn’t answer.
He didn’t wait for one.
With a single step, the world blurred. Mach 2000. The ground fractured beneath his launch, and he was nothing but a streak of green and black across the shattered battlefield.
Ahead—his target.
The one holding the Mirror Blade.
The elf stood like a tower—over eleven feet of solid muscle, the air around him humming faintly from the sheer density of his mana. His hair was shaved close on the sides, leaving a dark crest down the centre. In his hands and across his person gleamed all three relics—the Wailing Crown, the Blood Chalice, and the Mirror Blade itself.
This was Poliandrew—twenty-five years old, an Unbound, and one of the infamous Young Catastrophes. Blessed from birth with a staggering affinity for vitalis and a core so vast it seemed bottomless, he was one of the rare combat mages capable of standing toe-to-toe with advanced Bravo users.
Valerius closed in from behind, the green glow of his left arm beginning to hum.
Poliandrew didn’t turn fully—just shifted his head slightly, glancing over his shoulder. His eyes were calm. Ancient, even.
And then, without moving his lips, a voice entered Valerius’s mind.
You’d better rethink your next decision.
---
What the— Valerius’s eyes narrowed. Did I just hear that… in my head?
Valerius’s brow lifted slightly. A mana user who can react at this speed… and even cast mid-movement?
Then, a grin broke across his face.
Well, I’ll be damned. Bravo users aren’t the only monsters here.
Before the thought could settle, the elf’s voice slid into his mind again, smooth but edged like a blade.
Ignoring my warning? Very well. But know this—come near me, and you will rue the day you were born.
To Be Continued...
