Huiron's darkness spread for half a mile, a rectangular box of writhing madness that bubbled and twisted, burst and stretched. Keilan shivered as shadowy figures pushed against the surface—prisoners trying to escape its enclosed depths.

  Through the filmy walls that closed them in, he made out the sheer terror in their faces, the lips stretched into massive sardonic grins. Countless of them pushed and pulled as they called out in silent screams. And as he watched, the darkness opened up, a part of it detaching into a great maw filled with countless razor-sharp teeth. It snapped forward in a flash, elongating towards the flock of bird people striking at it.

  The others managed to escape the attack, but one of them wasn't so lucky. It hadn't gone more than a few meters, its movement technique on the cusp, before Huiron's construct snapped closed around it.

  And like that, another tortured soul joined his dark prison.

  Keilan wasn't the only one who felt fear after that. The figure of the captured creature appearing a moment later on the dark walls didn't make things any better. Huiron made things worse when he laughed, a dark chuckle that emerged from the depths of whatever he'd created.

  Seeing this, the other Aveanii made to flee but Keilan was already behind them. His spear flashed out, cutting off the wings of one. A tornado of wind embraced him, dislodging him a few distances away just as a jail of jagged ice blades rained down on his former location.

  Huiron stepped out from a patch of darkness beside him, a playful grin on his face.

  “Fun, eh?” The other man said when Keilan turned to stare at him.

  “Any other day I'd disagree with you.”

  “Ha! I knew you had some fun in you. Come, let's teach these birdies how to fly.”

  Keilan lost track of time as he moved from one Aveanii to another, tearing off wings, hands, and any other appendage that so much as came near his reach. Some were even so unlucky that he dispatched them in one powerful cleave, taking off heads and dividing bodies in twain.

  Huiron was like death itself. The other man vanished, only to appear a distance away, and wherever he popped up, an Aveanii fell. He made it seem effortless, barely exchanging more than a couple of strikes between his opponents before dispatching them in one brutal fell swoop.

  “Already at my seventh!” Huiron called as he was swallowed up in a maw of darkness, emerging behind another Aveanii and stabbing into its head in one swift motion. “Eight now! Don't slack on me, Keilan!”

  Keilan snorted, swishing his spear. He stepped back, wrapping himself with the wind and appearing away from his opponents. They didn't pursue; instead, waiting warily for what he'd do. Keilan didn't keep them waiting for long.

  The next technique he brought out was something he'd been working on for months now.

  He'd long noticed that despite wielding wind essence, which usually gave an overwhelming reach when it came to combat effectiveness, he didn't really have any long range techniques. Atleast one he was satisfied with.

  At first, he'd thought of picking up a bow, a bow and arrow—even done so—but he'd quickly realized he wasn't as adept at bow wielding as he was with the spear. It would take him years to truly get comfortable with the bow, years he couldn't afford to spend.

  The second option that came to his mind had been to take up the use of constructs. It was a sound idea, many people did it. He'd simply commission one from an artificer, and boom, he had his very own launcher. But the thing with constructs was that they weren't built to last, only working for a short period before they needed to be changed lest the wielder suffer devastating consequences. Ironically, the more powerful the construct, the quicker it was to degrade.

  Keilan had the funds, even more so after he'd invested the money he won from Solis, but dabbling with constructs was a hole that had no bottom. The more powerful he became, the more rare and more expensive the materials needed to make constructs suited for his realm.

  In the end, he'd settled for working out a technique.

  He had no name for it, and it wasn't up to the level he'd envisioned when he'd created it. But Keilan knew that with continuous gradual use, the technique was going to shape up to be something truly legendary, a technique of the ages.

  Something must have shown on his face because the Aveanii that had been happy with keeping their distance suddenly surged forward.

  A wave of white mist flowed outward, surging forward with a chilling effect that left cracks of ice in its wake. The other Aveanii's avoided it and Keilan mirrored them, hopping backwards and leaving the wind to ferry him out of reach.

  He stared at the Aveanii. “Let's feed you a taste of your own medicine,” and then he stabbed his spear into thin air.

  There was no physical tell at first, nothing whatsoever to indicate the effect of whatever he'd just done.

  ... until an Aveanii suddenly dropped from the sky, dead.

  The shock came in an instant. The others stared at each other, confused. Then they looked at him.

  Keilan smiled. “Cool right?”

  There comes a time in most beings' lives when they're backed into a corner and left with no recourse other than to fight back. Keilan had shown that he could take them down before they could escape, and so had Huiron. One could attack with immeasurable speed and the other could pop up anywhere, regardless of distance.

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  Clearly left with no choice, the Aveanii arraigned against Keilan did what any prey caught in a bind would do; they fought back.

  The air exploded as multiple Astral images were unleashed, their illusory forms rising into the clouds above with multiple thunderous roars.

  Keilan smiled, even though he wasn't feeling all too confident inside. Taking a couple of Spirit lords by himself was easy cake. Taking a couple of Spirit lords WITH their Astral images called? Now that was where the diabetes began.

  He left his Astral image uncalled as he engaged them. He danced across the sky like a bird as their battle turned into a cat and mouse chase. Wind energy encased him in a form of armor, growing until he'd taken his aerial bird form.

  Wings outstretched, he weaved between the attacks thrown at him, dodging with adept swiftness as powerful techniques were sent his way.

  The battle shifted as he went on the defensive, strained as he fought to avoid the striking techniques that tore through the skies towards his location.

  Bird form he might have taken. Adept flier, he might have been. But Keilan was no true bird. He was only good in the skies because he was aligned with the wind.

  The Aveanii, on the other hand, were the true masters of the sky.

  The shell of energy around him cracked as multiple techniques slammed into it. He tucked into a role, dodging the, no doubt, master tier technique that shook the skies as if sped towards him.

  His wings snapped up, slapping aside an Aveanii that had just popped with the equivalent force of a two ton giant Boulder with no wind resistance. Bones cracked and blood stained his emerald cover as the bird man was rocketed backwards with a howl of displaced wind.

  Within his armored shell, Keilan chuckled as he turned around to dive back in with the others. Behind him, the Aveanii that had just taken the hit from him suddenly paused in mid air, and like the previous one, it dropped out of the sky again, dead.

  “Yo, Keilann! You've gotta tell me what trick that is!” Huiron called from the other side. "Can't believe there's a technique this cool and I don't have it."

  Keilan chuckled but sent no response. A shadow fell over him just as something thumped into him, sending him rolling through the air. Keilan stared up, catching sight of an equally giant bird, black with trails of fiery energy. Both of them tumbled through the skies, talons clawing at each other as they rolled uncontrollably.

  That wasn't all. Keilan grunted as multiple potshots landed on him, and even a master technique that tore off a good part of one of his wings.

  He tried to free himself, but no matter how much effort he put in, the large bird clinging to him wouldn't let go. It was like it'd been glued shut to him.

  Keilan growled when after the thirtieth second, he still couldn't set himself free. He'd tried everything short of a master technique, and the Aveanii—an obvious discovery—refused to let him go. Its surface, just like his, was cracked and leaking energy, but the creature kept digging in, loud screeches echoing out as its talons dug into his frame.

  “Fine,” Keilan muttered under his breath, “if you don't want to let go, then you'll simply have to die in my arms.”

  Clouds gathered, the sky darkened, and a tornado formed right above their heads.

  To make it as dangerous as he could, he poured in more energy than normal, grimacing as he felt his soul well drain by a considerable amount. Coupled with the construct he was keeping at the moment, he'd soon be running on fumes.

  As the tornado grew angrier and powerful, spiced with the participation of the wind itself—whom Keilan had persuaded to his aid—the other Aveaniis, including the one hugging him, soon noticed.

  This was no ordinary powerful storm, they could tell, considering how they were all beginning to scramble to flee its emergence, flapping backwards with powerful beats. Keilan laughed as the one attached to him tried to detach.

  “Oh no you don't,” he said as he gripped it tighter, wrapping his wings around it

  The bird scratched and pecked, sending deep jarring vibrations deep into the shell where his real body lay.

  Everywhere darkened as the clouds turned deep gray. A deep rumble rang through its depths just as an eerie howl echoed out.

  He hoped Huiron was no longer in its path, but he couldn't call to the man with all the interference happening.

  Keilan grimaced deep within his shell, “Here goes something.” And then he brought the tornado down on his head.

  ***

  From an outside observation, the onset of the storm had been unexpected. It came in a blink. One moment, all had been calm, the sky a normal, turmoiled mess shaking from the thunderous explosions of multiple duels.

  The last storm that had wrecked this place, half an hour ago, hadn't killed as many Aveanii as had been expected. It had killed tons and grievously wounded many, even paralyzed a good number, but most of those fatal casualties had been those too late to flee its landing point… one couldn't blame the Spirit Kings that were responsible.

  Generally, it was bad etiquette to attack down a realm, more so when one was from an entirely different power class. Spirit Kings should have no business with Lords on the battlefield, unless it was to issue out commands. And while it was not enforced, many of those settling into newer layers of power tended to follow it. Of course, there were some who didn't care one bit for that unwritten rule.

  The fiery storm brought about by the Lese warders had been huge and deadly, that was expected of them. But this new one quickly drew attention, why? They could sense it belonged to a Spirit lord. A mere Spirit lord.

  When the hurricane touched ground, a groan rippled across the earth, sending people who thought something was rising from the earth, scattering.

  The tornado picked up, sucking in everything like a hungry black hole. What people noticed instantly was that warriors of Lese were left untouched, the great wind passing them by like they didn't exist, or they had the backing of someone.

  The Aveanii, on the other hand, suffered greatly. Not only were they sucked in, visibly fighting against the wind to futilely escape its grip, but the horror turned deeper when Aveanii suddenly started dropping from the skies, shocking everyone who hadn't seen what had attacked them.

  Those with Astral images were the first to go. Their Images were torn to shreds when their mental strength proved incapable of sustaining them. They dropped like flies, beaks squawking in deathly throes.

  The storm carried on for a few minutes, snatching Aveanii left and right like it had a will of its own. And when it finally cleared, the ground was littered with a small mound of corpses—Aveanii corpses. What shocked people the most was that amongst those Spirit lord corpses, there was a single other… an insignificant detail, one would have thought, if the body hadn't been that of a Spirit King.

  A Spirit King.

  A Spirit lord had just killed a Spirit King.

  In the center of the storm, a figure revealed himself, a man with blond hair and blue eyes. Everybody watched as the last of some Technique cracked and finally disappeared, vanishing into the wind.

  His breathing was ragged and his eyes wild. From him, their eyes turned to the giant black bird that tumbled into the earth, apparently dead.

  “You're dead,” a voice said. And it wasn't a human’s.

  Across the skies, the air exploded as multiple Spirit Kings made their appearance—Aveanii Spirit Kings. They hovered above the ragged human, who stared at them with tired but defiant eyes, seemingly prepared to die on his feet.

  The Spirit Kings of Lese were hot on the trails of the Aveanii, but everyone knew they wouldn't get there fast enough to prevent what was about to happen.

  Lese had birthed a threat, a monster capable of killing a whole power class above. And no matter what, the Aveanii was going to crush the threat in its crib.