SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant-Chapter 415: The Fall of the Thal’zar [XXIX]

Chapter 415: Chapter 415: The Fall of the Thal’zar [XXIX]

Moonlight filtered through the jagged opening in the ceiling, pale and steady now that the storm had been split apart. The chamber felt different without the swarm. Only broken stone, cooling debris, and two figures standing within a space that had narrowed into something deliberate and contained.

The remaining rifts shuddered and collapsed one after another, their edges folding inward like wounds finally forced shut. The sound of their closure echoed briefly through the fractured hall before fading into stillness.

Above Valttair, the ten swords of [Absolute Sword Dominion] shifted.

They no longer orbited loosely. They rose and settled into a vertical semicircle behind and around him, staggered at different heights, each blade angled along a distinct vector of approach. Their edges reflected moonlight in thin, cold lines.

The ground beneath them still bore the subtle sheen of [Plague Dominion]. To the eye, it appeared unchanged. Yet the mana in the air thinned with each step taken across it, drawn downward into unseen currents.

Icarus remained within the infected field, his core still radiating the deeper violet hue of [Apex Contagion]. The light beneath his chest pulsed faintly, steady and controlled, doubling the potency of every active corruption that lingered in the chamber.

Valttair stepped forward.

The first two swords descended from above without warning, slicing down in clean, vertical lines meant to bisect. Simultaneously, two more cut inward from opposite flanks, crossing angles that left no straight retreat. Another pair hovered behind Icarus, their tips adjusting in anticipation of any backward displacement.

Icarus did not panic.

[Septic Mirage] bled into the air around him, not as visible illusion but as subtle displacement. The chamber’s geometry seemed to tilt by fractions. Distances lengthened. Angles skewed. The descending blades appeared a hair to the left of where they truly fell.

He moved in increments, economical and exact. A half-step forward instead of back. A pivot that let one blade pass within a finger’s width of his shoulder. Another that skimmed cloth but failed to draw blood. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Valttair spoke while the pattern continued.

"Icarus di Valtaron, of the once-powerful House Valtaron," Valttair said evenly. "Or what remains of it. Since your return, that name is all that survives. Soon even that will fall back into obscurity. The next generations will know your house only through the record of its extermination."

A blade skimmed across Icarus’ shoulder, slicing through fabric and drawing a narrow line of red before he shifted aside, the wound shallow but real.

"Why speak of my house now?" Icarus answered, his tone composed despite the tightening pattern of steel around him. "You know well it never interested me."

Valttair did not slow.

He activated [Morgain’s Requiem].

His body turned with controlled fluidity, and six cuts followed in precise succession. Each swing left behind a curved black arc that expanded outward like a shadow given edge. The waves overlapped in widening rings, filling the chamber with layered trajectories that left almost no unclaimed space.

Icarus responded with [Miasma Collapse] cast defensively. Compressed spheres formed along the incoming arcs and imploded inward before bursting outward in grey pressure. The black crescents fractured under the collisions, their paths splintered and redirected, though not entirely erased.

Valttair’s voice continued, steady beneath the clash of pressure and blade.

"One of the SSS talents. Your very birth was once a major blow to the stability of the families. Your family could have entered the Great Eight Families any moment one collapsed. But you ran away a decade ago when your family went to war... and that was its downfall."

The contrast between them became clearer with each exchange.

Valttair controlled space. Every step narrowed options. Every blade dictated movement.

Icarus controlled deterioration. Every breath thickened the air. Every pulse sought to erode from within.

Icarus’ posture shifted by a fraction.

He stopped reacting and chose to act.

The center of the chamber remained visually unchanged, yet the pressure beneath their feet deepened as he reinforced [Mana Rot Field]. The stone did not darken, the air did not thicken, but the ambient mana grew faint, like a heartbeat losing strength. Valttair’s aura dimmed by a subtle degree, a reduction measurable only to someone who understood cores at the highest tier.

Icarus stepped within that invisible saturation and allowed proximity to do the work.

[Plague Mark: Carrier’s Sigil].

There was no immediate manifestation. The mark settled beneath the surface of Valttair’s mana flow, dormant and patient.

At the same time, [Vector Spread] awakened across every previous exchange. Microfractures in the air where blades had passed, residual turbulence where mana had collided, all became conduits. The battlefield itself turned into a network of thin, invasive lines.

Then Icarus focused.

[Organ Decay Pulse].

The attack did not travel outward. It struck inward. A compressed impact targeted Valttair’s torso directly, aimed at organs rather than flesh. His body tightened for a fraction of a second as pressure attempted to rupture from within.

Faint lines darkened under his skin, spreading like cracks in polished glass.

Valttair lifted his blade.

[Morgain’s Coreguard].

A flat sheet of condensed dark mana manifested before his sword and folded inward, meeting the internal pulse at its origin point. The directed decay dispersed along its surface and fractured apart, redirected into harmless turbulence before it could bloom.

One of the floating swords adjusted by a precise angle and cut through the space in front of Valttair’s chest.

The embedded sigil destabilized mid-expansion. The dark lines beneath his skin halted and receded, leaving only a faint residue that refused to grow.

Valttair stepped beyond the densest zone with [Morgain’s Riftstep]. His form blurred and reappeared several meters away, the air compressing softly where he had stood.

He resumed pressure without pause.

[Morgain’s Pressure Fang].

Three clean cuts landed in swift succession. Shoulder. Lower flank. Side seam. Each line exact, controlled, designed to weaken structure rather than display force.

"Now you reappear because you were curious about the Void Creatures," Valttair said evenly as two blades descended from above and another swept low across Icarus’ path. "I wonder why. I wonder what calls to you so strongly. I fail to find the logic each time I consider it, Icarus."

Icarus shifted between descending edges with minimal motion, his coat brushing dangerously close to one passing blade.

"So before you die," Valttair continued, his voice as steady as the blades surrounding him, "tell me. What passes through the mind of a madman?"

"My mad mind?" Icarus replied, slipping past a near-fatal trajectory by a narrow margin. "I am more sane than you assume, Valttair. Everything was prepared. Everything accounted for. I sought the Void because it was because of them that my house vanished. I wanted to understand why. What drives them."

As he spoke, [Hemocurse Bloom] activated.

The shallow wounds along Valttair’s side reacted. Dark vapor attempted to rise from exposed blood, seeking to reopen lines that had already closed.

The curse faltered.

Valttair’s cuts had been surgical, edges sealed through precision rather than brute impact. There was too little instability for the infection to anchor properly. The vapor thinned and dispersed before it could spread.

Icarus registered it.

His expression tightened slightly as the perimeter of floating blades continued to contract around him.