I Copy the Authorities of the Four Calamities-Chapter 193: The Usurper’s Resonance

Vane opened his eyes to a world painted in bruised purple and deep shadows.

The pain in his chest was no longer a jagged spike of shattered bone. It was a cold and rigid ache. Isole had not simply healed him with a gentle prayer. She had used her heavy dark mana to forge a lattice of necrotic iron inside his chest cavity. It forced his ribs together and sealed his lung with brutal efficiency. He tasted copper and old dust on his tongue. He reached blindly into the shallow water. His fingers closed around the star-steel shaft of the Silver Fang.

He used the weapon as a crutch and hauled himself to his feet. His left leg trembled, but the necrotic patch held firm.

He looked at the shattered doorway.

Isole stood in the center of the frame. The pristine, golden aura of the perfect Saintess was gone, but she had not abandoned the light. Instead, she had finally stopped filtering her soul. A heavy, roiling fog of dark emerald energy sank to the floor, while brilliant ribbons of pure white holy mana spiraled around her arms. They wove together in a chaotic and beautiful helix of life and death. The Bone Hounds she had usurped stood in a perfect vanguard ahead of her. Their empty eye sockets faced the flooded darkness of the corridor.

"Can you stand?" Isole asked. She did not look back at him. Her mismatched eyes were locked on the black water ahead.

"The bones are set," Vane rasped. He gripped his spear and funneled a trickle of silver mana into the blade. "The healing was efficient."

A tremor ran through the black water at their feet.

It was a rhythmic and heavy displacement of mass. Kavor had reached the lower levels.

From the shadows at the far end of the flooded corridor, the Grave Warden emerged. The massive construct did not look rushed. The blue, vertical slit of its iron mask simply stared through the dark to identify the anomaly in its crypt. It carried the rusted iron shovel in one hand and dragged the flat of the blade against the stone wall. The grating shriek of metal on stone set Vane’s teeth on edge.

Isole did not wait for the creature to close the distance.

She raised her left hand. The dark emerald mana flared fiercely.

"Tear it down," she commanded.

The vanguard of usurped Bone Hounds launched themselves forward. They vaulted over the black water. Their sharpened femurs aimed directly at Kavor’s rusted chainmail.

The Grave Warden did not break its stride. It simply raised its free hand and backhanded the skeletal constructs with the force of a falling anvil. Ribcages exploded into calcium dust. Skulls snapped into fragments that rained down into the stagnant water.

Isole did not flinch. As the Hounds shattered, she raised her right hand. The holy light erupted. She did not cast a blinding flash or a soft healing wave. She forged the light into a solid, blinding lance of pure kinetic heat and hurled it down the corridor.

The holy lance struck Kavor square in the chest. The rusted iron hissed as the light boiled the necrotic sludge protecting the heavy joints. Kavor stumbled back half a step.

Isole immediately capitalized on the opening. She slammed both hands against the floor. The dark mana flooded the stagnant water. Skeletal hands and shattered spines erupted from the muck beneath Kavor. The dead bones wrapped around the Grave Warden’s heavy iron boots and froze the Mid-Justiciar in place.

She was fighting a true war of attrition. She bound the beast with the dark and burned it with the light.

But Kavor was a Rank 5 entity. Tactics and dual affinities meant little against absolute, overwhelming mass.

The Warden gripped the shovel with both hands. It ignored the holy fire searing its chest plate. It ignored the skeletal hands clawing at its boots. It planted its feet, shattering the dead bones holding it captive, and drew the massive iron spade back.

It swung the shovel in a brutal and horizontal arc.

The physical force of the swing ripped the stagnant water from the floor and sent a shockwave of compressed air screaming down the corridor. Isole threw up a barrier of woven light and dark mana, but the shovel shattered it like brittle glass. The shockwave hit her square in the chest.

Isole was thrown backward. She crashed hard against the splintered frame of the embalming chamber door and slumped to the ground. Her dual aura flickered violently and died.

Kavor did not pause. It stepped over the threshold. It raised the shovel high above its head. The rusted iron cast a long and terrible shadow over Isole’s trembling form. The blue light locked onto her. The executioner was ready.

Vane watched the shovel rise.

Time dilated and stretched the agonizing milliseconds into an eternity. He saw Isole trying to raise her hands. Her fingers were slick with her own blood. She had broken the strict laws of her family. She had embraced her dual nature to save his life. And now she was going to be crushed into the mud because he was not strong enough to pierce a rusted plate of iron.

A dark and violent frustration boiled in Vane’s chest. It was a familiar and suffocating poison.

He was right in Zenith Academy. He remembered Senna collapsing in her wheelchair. He remembered touching her during a violent seizure and feeling his authority steal the ghost of her muscle memory. He had stolen her reflexes before he ever shared a bed with her to earn her true power. He had taken the foundation of the General because he was too desperate to build his own.

He had watched her die because he was weak. He had sworn he would never be the one who needed a shield again.

He reached deep into his soul. He bypassed the stolen dagger skills and the minor utility spells. He reached into the locked vault where the true legacy of the Western Front rested.

He did not need to adapt a new trick. He already possessed the ultimate weapon. He just had to be willing to pay the price to wield it.

Skill Activated: Perfect Copy Grade S.

The silver mana in his core did not just hum. It erupted. It poured out of his skin and formed a dense and translucent mist. The mist crystallized into a jagged, spectral armor around his shoulders.

Behind Vane, the silver light gathered and cohered. It formed a tall and regal silhouette. A woman with raven black hair and eyes that held the weight of a hundred slaughters materialized in the dark room. The ghost of Senna Valerius manifested behind him. Her spectral hands overlapped Vane’s grip on the spear shaft.

The physical toll was instantaneous. Forcing the combat logic of a Rank 6 Expert into a Rank 4 body was like funneling a raging river through a straw. Vane felt his muscle fibers tear. He felt his capillaries burst under the sheer frequency of the synchronization. Blood leaked from his nose and eyes.

He did not care.

Vane utilized Flash Step. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

He bypassed the concept of acceleration entirely. He simply appeared in the space between Kavor and Isole.

He did not raise the spear to block. He initiated the Lunar Deflection. But it was not his clumsy, student approximation. It was the absolute and terrifying perfection of the General.

The rusted shovel slammed down. Vane caught the iron shaft with the spinning vortex of the Silver Fang. The frictionless sleeve guided the catastrophic kinetic energy away from his body. With a perfectly angled twist of his wrists, guided by Senna’s ghostly hands, he drove the force of the Grave Warden’s own strike directly into the floor.

The flagstones beneath his boots pulverized into fine dust. The shockwave blew the remaining water out of the room.

Vane’s left arm fractured under the immense pressure. A sharp and stinging hairline crack ran up his bone. But he did not break. He held the Grave Warden’s weapon at bay.

Kavor’s iron mask tilted down. The blue slit flickered as it processed an impossible mathematical error. The fragile human had suddenly become an immovable object.

Vane looked up at the towering construct. His eyes were cold and distant. He was no longer a student fighting for his life. He was a vessel for the woman who had held the line against the abyss.

"You hit the wall," Vane whispered. His voice was a low and terrifying rasp that echoed through the dark chamber.

He twisted his left arm to lock the shovel’s shaft under his armpit. He trapped the Grave Warden’s weapon against his side. He drew the heavy star-steel spear back with his right hand. The ghost of Senna moved in perfect unison with him.

"Now," Vane said. "Meet the sword."