SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything

Chapter 179: Heretic

"Let’s have fun, my Love," Julian’s smooth voice carried effortlessly across the silent valley, completely at odds with the terrifying, beast claw that had just replaced his left arm.

Claire’s response was immediate and violentl.

Her crimson aura exploded, painting the artificial sky of the stadium in a suffocating, blood-red hue. The presence of her mana slammed down onto the arena. The bedrock beneath her boots pulverized into dust, and all at once, seventy-five massive chunks of jagged stone and boulders ripped themselves free from the earth.

They defied gravity entirely, orbiting around Claire in a mesmerizing, high-speed hurricane. Her capacity had increased from 50 to controlling 75 objects at once since she broke the S-Rank barrier.

Claire raised her hand, her red eyes burning, she simply snapped her fingers.

BOOM!

All seventy-five boulders launched simultaneously as they tore across the gap like a relentless barrage of artillery shells.

Julian, meanwhile, didn’t even drop his unhinged smile. As the terrifying wave of telekinetic destruction closed in on him, he simply crouched and pressed his right palm flat against the dirt.

His first talent activated.

A blinding pulse of pale blue mana washed outward from his hand. It moved with the speed of a shockwave, instantly overtaking the entire colossal arena. The moment the blue light touched the ground, the jagged mountain range, the deep ravines, and the dry earth violently froze. The entire synthetic biome was converted into a sprawling, apocalyptic glacier. The temperature plummeted so fast the air itself began to crackle.

When the seventy-five telekinetic boulders entered his absolute domain, they were instantly encased in thick layers of dense, magical frost, their kinetic energy completely sapped. They fell harmlessly to the frozen earth, shattering like fragile glass ornaments.

"Is that all, Claire?" Julian mocked, slowly standing up on the frictionless ice. "You’ll have to try harder to impress me."

This happened so fast that the commentators could only look at each others faces in awe. They decided it was better if they did not interject the match.

Claire’s jaw locked. She thrust both hands forward. Her massive black greatsword, hovering beside her, violently warped the air as it shot forward. It became a blur of red and black, screaming across the ice field and striking Julian dead center in the chest.

SHHHHK!

The blade sheared cleanly through Julian’s torso, slicing him diagonally from his shoulder to his hip. His upper body detached, sliding off his lower half and crashing onto the ice.

But there was no blood.

Up in the spectating zones, the crowds shrieked in horror.

But down in the arena, no one bat an eye. Not even the judges, they knew it was impossible to kill Julian like that... Claire knew that as well, that is why she dared make the strike.

The two halves of Julian’s severed body simply crystallized. His entire physical form had been converted into pure, translucent blue ice. It was his second, highly abnormal ability. While turning one’s internal organs and flesh to ice would normally be a fatal disadvantage, inside his frozen domain, it made him practically immortal.

The frost in the environment rapidly surged toward his severed torso. Within a fraction of a second, the ice reconnected, flawlessly reconstructing his suit, his flesh, and his manic smile.

"I told you," Julian sighed, brushing a few flakes of frost off his lapel. "You can’t hurt me here. But we don’t have to fight, darling. It’s quite simple." He spread his arms, his frozen beast claw dripping with cold mist. "Just say yes. Say you’ll marry me, and I will gladly lay down my arms. I will let you take my flag and win this match without a single scratch."

Claire grit her teeth so hard her gums bled. Maybe she should have done what was out to be done.

"I would rather burn in hell," she spat.

Julian’s smile finally faltered. His bottomless eyes darkened, the manic amusement completely evaporating. "Then I suppose I will have to break your legs and carry you myself."

Julian blurred. He crossed the gap in a single, impossible stride, his ice claw raised to cleanly sever the tendons in Claire’s knees.

Claire was forced entirely onto the defensive. For the next ten minutes, the arena became a chaotic, world-ending nightmare. Julian commanded the frozen environment, summoning massive glaciers and avalanches of razor-sharp ice that crashed down from the mountain peaks. Claire danced on the razor’s edge, utilizing her orbiting debris as a radar to track Julian’s blindingly fast movements through the snowstorm, parrying his brutal physical strikes with her greatsword.

But she was losing ground. Every time she managed to cleave Julian’s body in half, he simply used the surrounding ice to regenerate his limbs instantly. He was a monster who couldn’t be killed.

Claire parried a devastating overhead strike from Julian’s beast claw, the impact dropping her to one knee. Her breathing was ragged, her aura flickering under the oppressive cold.

’I have no choice,’ Claire thought, her eyes flashing with a dangerous, desperate light. ’I have to use it.’

When she had evolved to an S-Rank, she had gained a new 4 star talent. It wasn’t just about moving objects anymore. She had unlocked Molecular Reconstruction. It was a terrifying, deeply draining ability that allowed her to completely deconstruct and reconstruct matter with her mind—but it possessed a strict, absolute limit: it only worked within a 50-meter diameter of her body.

Julian raised his claw for the finishing blow.

Claire’s crimson aura violently compressed. She pushed her mind to its absolute limit, targeting the frozen bedrock beneath Julian’s feet. Within her 50-meter radius, the laws of physics shattered. The ice and stone violently deconstructed into pure atomic dust, instantly reconstructing into two towering, fifteen-foot-tall stone and ice golems. Before Julian could even register the transmutation, the massive golems grabbed his arms, and pulled him back.

Julian’s eyes widened in genuine shock.

Claire didn’t stop. With a sharp flick of her wrist, her black greatsword—currently embedded in the ice ten feet away—violently deconstructed. The dark steel fragmented into glowing red particles and instantly reformed in mid-air as a massive, elongated, barbed spear.

The spear shot forward like lightning, piercing cleanly through Julian’s chest and pinning him brutally against the side of a glacier.

"Argh!" Julian coughed, his icy body fracturing around the spear. He struggled against the golems, his eyes burning with absolute madness.

But Claire wasn’t aiming to kill him. She had calculated the distance perfectly. The fierce melee had dragged them across the arena floor, placing them exactly fifty meters away from the towering cliff where Julian’s red flag fluttered in the synthetic wind.

Claire turned her back on the pinned bastard. She extended her trembling, blood-stained hand toward the distant cliff. The base of the towering pillar, sitting precisely on the edge of her 50-meter range, violently deconstructed. The stone pulverized. The massive metal pole lost its foundation, tilting dangerously before plunging down the side of the mountain.

As the pole plummeted into her absolute domain, Claire used the last dregs of her mental stamina. She reconstructed the falling steel into a massive, metallic hand, which gracefully plucked the red flag from the air and dropped it directly into Claire’s waiting palm.

The stadium went absolutely dead silent. She had the flag. She had won.

Behind her, the temperature dropped to a level that defied reality.

"You..." Julian’s voice wasn’t smooth anymore. It was a guttural, demonic rasp of pure humiliation and wrath. He had been pinned. He had been outsmarted. She had rejected his proposal, defied his power, and stolen his flag.

The stone golems holding him suddenly shattered into fine powder. The metal spear embedded in his chest completely disintegrated.

Claire spun around, her red eyes widening in terror.

Julian wasn’t just radiating cold anymore. He unleashed his third, and most terrifying,5-star ability. He didn’t just freeze the environment. He froze the very concept of energy.

Julian stepped forward, completely ignoring the distance. The absolute zero mana washed over Claire like a tidal wave. She tried to raise her hand to reconstruct a shield, but nothing happened. The crimson aura surrounding her body violently flickered, turning a sickly pale blue before shattering entirely like broken glass.

"Ah...!" Claire gasped, falling heavily to her knees. She dropped the red flag, clutching her chest as a blinding, unimaginable agony ripped through her veins.

Julian’s icy mana had bypassed her physical defenses completely. It was seeping directly into her cells, forcibly freezing her internal mana pathways, and terrifyingly, wrapping its zero-degree grip directly around her Core.

"If you will not be mine," Julian whispered, his face twisting into a mask of pure, murderous psychosis as he loomed over her trembling body, "then you will be a frozen statue in my collection."

Claire screamed, a raw, horrific sound as the ice began to physically crack her core from the inside out. Her vision went completely white. She was dying. He was actually going to kill her!

"ENOUGH!"

A voice booming with the authority of a god shattered the frozen atmosphere.

The unbreakable stasis barrier hovering over the arena violently exploded. Four figures descended from above like falling meteors. Valerius, his white coat billowing, landed directly between Julian and the screaming Claire. The Chief Judge didn’t even draw a weapon; he simply backhanded the air.

A colossal wave of pure kinetic force slammed into Julian, throwing him a hundred yards across the ice and embedding him deep into the side of a mountain. Three other S-Rank tournament officials landed simultaneously, surrounding Claire and instantly deploying massive, high-tier thermal arrays to counteract the mana ravaging her core.

The stadium was in pandemonium.

Valerius stood tall, his handsome face dark with absolute fury as he pointed a finger at the crater where Julian was pulling himself out of the ice.

"Participant Julian!" Valerius’s voice roared through the emergency amplifiers, echoing across the globe. "You have actively utilized lethal core-destruction techniques against an opponent! You are officially disqualified from the 23rd World Exterminator Ranking Tournament!"

Down on the ice, Claire’s eyes rolled into the back of her head. The agonizing, freezing pressure finally pushed her past the brink, and she collapsed completely unconscious onto the frost.

"Medical teams, now!" An old man bellowed. Heavily armored paramedics rushed the field, loading Claire’s limp, shivering body onto a hovering stasis-stretcher.

As the medical team rushed her into the emergency tunnels, the massive holographic screens above the arena flickered one final time.

WINNER BY DISQUALIFICATION AND FLAG CAPTURE: CLAIRE V. BRONN