Chapter 10: First Clash

“All set, Hero.” Manstein looked up at him, respect held like a steady flame.

Eli turned, his gaze a cold moon over still water, then nodded. “Mm. Head back. The continent can’t go leaderless.”

“Uh…” Their eyes bounced like startled sparrows. “You don’t need us to stay and help?”

“No.” He smiled, a calm ripple across ice. “And even if you stayed—what would you do here?”

“We can maintain the barrier and the arrays…” Manstein started, but the Giant Squid tugged his sleeve, a quiet tide pulling him back. The shake of that tentacled head said enough.

If the Hero told them to leave, arguing was just walking into a storm.

Manstein frowned at the Giant Squid, words clenched and unsaid.

The Elf Race elder, Waynes, bowed to the Hero, his smile like sun through ancient leaves. “Five centuries pass like drifting snow. We still need your hand to skirt this calamity. I can’t decide whether to laugh or weep.”

Seeing him, the others followed and bowed—a forest of trunks bending in the wind.

Eli’s mouth lifted, a helpless crescent. He shook his head. “Don’t. I’m not stepping out for your sake alone. Dragging you out here means I owe you instead. Go. He’s about to arrive.”

He snapped his fingers. A vast rainbow bridge unfurled in the void, an arc of rain after storm, spanning the dark sea of stars.

“Then we take our leave.” Waynes nodded, spun on his heel like a turning leaf, and led the way. Only when he set foot on the rainbow bridge did the gathered leaders follow, one by one, like lanterns crossing a night river.

Manstein cast one last look at Eli, sighed like wind through iron, and turned away.

Eli chuckled, planted his long sword, and stared up into the river of stars without end.

Time had washed many shores. Bloodline and signs aligned; he’d pieced it together—the little girl was Alice, truly his daughter, a bud blooming in winter light.

Her birth drew power from the age of ancients, from the divine might shed when the Jade Seal Sword had first been forged—thunder bottled in jade.

That thread pointed back to Zero’s handiwork; otherwise, the knots refused to loosen.

But half the girl’s blood belonged to Liqianyu. That left a small stone of guilt in his heart.

Miss Li, broad-hearted as a summer sky, hadn’t minded at all. She got along with the little one like two birds sharing one branch.

With Liqianyu and Yiyi in the sword-world keeping her company, Eli could let his breath settle, like dust after rain.

Bored, he drew Thias and weighed it in his hands, a moonlit blade on his palm.

Letting Yiyi become a living sword-spirit had raised her tide and mended Thias’s wounds. But Yiyi still felt too green—or maybe this sword was too outrageous.

It fused a Transcender’s entire power, and fed for a century on a peak sovereign’s strength. Even so, only seven-tenths of it had healed.

Eli couldn’t help a low sigh—no wonder it was a child of the Origin Tree, roots sunk into the first dawn.

“Looks like you’ve been waiting a long time.” The voice behind him was a familiar bell in a deep valley.

“Of course. With who you are now, I figured you’d rush me head-on.” Eli slid Thias back onto his shoulder, then turned.

“Heh. Old rivals since hundreds of millions of years ago—however it goes, I should come prepared.” Zero wore a white human mage’s robe, a clean quill of a man, like a gifted young scholar in winter light.

Eli kept his old style, hair draped across his chest like a dark river. His armor wasn’t heavy, yet a mysterious glow haloed him like dawn on frost.

They studied each other, two mountains appraising the other’s snowline.

At length, Zero smiled. “Not bad. You really climbed here on your own. I am surprised.”

“Live long enough and you learn to breathe thin air.” Eli shrugged, a laugh like a spark in the wind.

“A pity. We might’ve been friends.” Zero tipped his head, his pupils deepening like wells at night.

“We were. Once.” Eli pulled the Jade Seal Sword from the soil. They stood on a lone, bare world; he let the barrier fall, and hard wind scythed around them like invisible blades.

“Were we? Perhaps.” Zero’s head swayed a fraction, a willow in a light rain.

“Hundreds of millions of years ago, you forged this sword for me. You made me the body of the cosmos and let me witness you birthing worlds.” Eli’s small face held steady, words like stones placed on a grave. “I thought you my friend.”

“Heh.” Zero smiled and nodded, neither denying nor embracing, like a mask turned sideways. “That much is true.”

“But you personally led outsiders from beyond into this universe.” Eli’s smile thinned, an ember going dark. “I once thought they found us by accident. After digging, I learned every weak point in the cosmos wasn’t born—it was broken.”

“The Celestial God slept. The Abyss was sealed. The Netherworld never had that reach. Who else could slip my net?” Eli’s tone was level, a still lake reflecting thunderheads.

“Correct. It was me.” Zero shrugged, breeze over bone. “So, friend, my last warning: submit, and you live.”

“Why did you raise me then? Why shatter what was fated?” Eli’s voice was quiet rain under stone.

“You should know: you can’t win. I thought my future self had gone mad and made you. But I’m clear now. I know every soft place you hide. You can’t win.”

“You don’t know till we try.”

“So you’ll rebel to the last?”

“For those I love—and those who already love me.” Eli’s aura climbed like a tide under a full moon. He drew in every wandering thought and fixed his eyes on Zero.

This was the universe’s founder, one of the first sparks. Also the darkest shadow on his path.

Clang!

Zero didn’t move, yet Eli’s blade jumped to guard in a lightning blink. The next instant he shot away, slammed through a mountain chain like a meteor, then rose, battered and hanging in the air.

No pause. He drew both swords and streaked back, twin comets cutting for Zero.

Power flooded his hands. His strikes fell like rain on a drum.

“You still don’t grasp real combat.” Zero sighed and pressed his palms together, a temple closing its doors.

The air around Eli cinched in, a vise made of sky.

He swept both blades. His body arrowed upward, a hawk fighting a gale.

“Will it help?” Zero’s voice was flat as an iron bell.

A meteor dropped from beyond the sky and met Eli mid-flight, stone against steel.

High above, Eli stood, a red thread sliding from his brow. He touched it, then tugged a crooked smile. “You are absurdly strong.”

“I am the will of the cosmos. How do you beat the weather?” Zero smiled, dawn on ice.

“By killing the storm.” Eli gritted his teeth. In a blink he was at Zero’s throat, both swords a blur, carving at the monster before him.

Zero sprouted extra arms like a god from old murals, parrying with lazy grace.

Eli bit down, hands a thunderclap, his power crashing at Zero like surf against a cliff.

“Next, if you can take it, you qualify to face me.” Zero’s fist snapped forward, a comet into Eli’s face. Eli flew again, a broken spear across the sky, while Zero drifted upward like a feather.

Eli used that unnamable speed, reappearing at Zero’s chest. Chains flitted from his sleeves, wrapped his wrists like iron serpents.

He swept both swords, a scissor for fate. This time, when the Jade Seal Sword bit at Zero’s neck, it rang like a temple bell. Thias was flicked aside by Zero’s arm with casual contempt.

Zero drove his heel into Eli’s gut, a battering ram into a gate, and kicked him deep into the earth.

Then he rose into space, slow as smoke.

He raised his right hand; it became a claw, as if he could pinch a planet between fingers.

“Be erased,” he said, soft as ash.

His claw closed into a fist.

Power bloomed in the void, too vast for numbers. Below, the planet buckled inward like a lung crushed by stone.

A heartbeat later, the world went off like a powder keg, an ocean of fire shredding rock and light.

Zero hung where he was, unmoved, a mountain in a breaking wave. The blast couldn’t nudge him a finger’s width.

After a while, he clapped, and the scattering energies vanished like sparks swallowed by night. He waited a bit longer. No Eli surfaced. He shook his head. “As I thought. You only reach this far.”

A touch of disappointment colored his voice. He turned to leave.

His body swelled as he went, growing and growing, until he matched a star and then stopped. “I’ll stroll a bit. This place is about to end.”

Zero looked around with a rare sigh, a god tired of his own sky.

Then, from the broken planet’s heart, a purple beam stabbed up, a spear of lightning through cloud. It expanded a thousandfold, punched a hole through Zero’s body, and faded. Before him, a blue-lit figure took shape, like a ghost cut from the sea.

“Not dead?” Zero chuckled low.

His palm swept for the blue phantom.

Eli lifted the Jade Seal Sword and cut at Zero’s hand in a single, clean arc.

…

“Demonic Lord? Trouble sleeping?” A maid stepped forward, finding Edlyn rolling like a storm in a small room.

“Mm… I’m irritable.” Brow furrowed, Edlyn sat up, a night flower blooming in the dark.

“Shall I prepare something to drink?” The maid’s voice bent like a bow, careful and soft.

“No. I just… Forget it. Go back to bed. I’ll meditate awhile.”

“This…”

“Hmm?”

“By your command.” The maid dipped away like a shadow.

Barefoot, Edlyn folded her legs on the bed, lifted her face to the ceiling. Her thoughts were birds beating at a cage.

Unease swelled in her chest, a cold tide creeping higher.

Then she felt it—outside the Inferno, a rainbow bridge arched across the sky and landed where the last battle had scarred the ground.

She bit her lip. The dread in her heart surged like stormwater. With a tight frown she breathed, “Please… let nothing happen.”