The Regressed Heir of Ravencrest

Chapter 56: The Hidden Flaw

The silence of the cave shattered in a heartbeat.

The Eternal Sovereign Blade moved like a strike of black lightning, silent and absolute, while the chimera’s round pupils stretched into thin vertical slits, contracting with unnatural speed as every hair along the beastly arm rose instinctively. The beast within him sensed the danger before the man ever could.

"W-Wha-"

Before the word could fully escape his mouth the black blade descended.

Slash!

Spurt!

Steel tore through flesh. A spray of blood erupted into the air as Vael twisted on instinct, narrowly avoiding a strike that should have pierced his heart. The Eternal Sovereign Blade carved diagonally across his shoulder and chest, splitting robes, flesh and muscle before emerging behind him.

The impact sent the chimera stumbling several steps across the ritual platform. Drops of blood splashed onto the glowing formation.

Every Eclipse member stared at the impossible scene unfolding before them.

Someone...

Had infiltrated their hideout — and even more unbelievable was that they had injured Lord Vael.

Ethan’s eyes swept across the chamber.

"Runeee."

Almost simultaneously, Rune descended upon the cultists.

A silver blur from the gloom along the edges of the chamber. Rune tore through the nearest mage with terrifying speed. The Eclipse member barely had time to widen his eyes before Rune’s jaws clamped around his throat.

Crunch!

Bone shattered beneath the cub’s bite. The body collapsed lifelessly onto the stone floor. Rune immediately moved to his next target — his hind legs exploded against the ground, launchiing him toward the next figure before the first corpse had even fallen completely.

Another mage hurriedly raised both hands. A pale blue magic circle flickered into existence for a fraction of a second.

"Ice spea-"

Rune slammed into him from the right. The unfinished spell shattered into countless motes of mana as the mage’s ribs caved inward beneath the beast’s weight. A heartbeat later, Rune’s claws ripped across another cultist’s chest sending him crashing into a nearby stone pillar.

Panic finally spread through the chamber.

"Enemyyyy." one of the cultists shouted.

"Protect Lord Vael."

"Kill them."

Several mages immediately began chanting, layers of mana gathering around their hands — and before they could complete the casting...

Ethan moved. His figure blurred through the dimly lit chamber, Northern Gale Steps carrying him between the scattered cultists like drifting snow.

Slash! Slash!

A head rolled across the floor. The black blade pierced a chanting mage through the throat before a fireball could fully form. Without slowing, Ethan twisted his wrist, tore the blade free and drove his elbow into another cultist’s jaw, staggering him long enough for a clean horizontal slash to sever his neck.

Bodies fell one after another. There was no hesitation in Ethan’s movement as he cleanly sliced through the Eclipse cultists. Behind him Rune tore another mage apart before disappearing beneath a barrage of wind blades cast by one of the Second Circle mages. The spell carved deep furrows into the stone floor where the cub had stood a second earlier.

Rune emerged from the dust like a phantom and sliced through the mage before he could cast another spell. Blood erupted from his throat as he pressed his fingers tightly against it. His body fell as life slowly bled out.

Without lowering his weapon, Ethan stepped toward the nearest group of trembling villagers. With two swift, precise flicks of his sword he severed the iron chains binding an elderly man and two sturdy young men.

"Free everyone else," Ethan commanded, his voice cold and flat, devoid of any hesitation. "Go. Now."

The elderly man opened his mouth, eyes wide with disbelief and a dozen burning questions, but Ethan didn’t give him the chance to speak. Rather than lingering for gratitude or explanation, Ethan turned his back on them completely, keeping his focus entirely on the surroundings. The freed villagers caught the urgency in his posture. Grabbing whatever blades lay beside the dead cultists, they began frantically cutting ropes and unlocking shackles, quietly ushering the rest of the prisoners back toward the passage to the surface.

Everything happened in the span of a few minutes. All the cultists lay lifelessly on the ground.

Only then did Ethan feel it — a pulse of mana gathering behind him. He turned in time to see Vael straighten slowly. Blood continued flowing from the deep wound across his chest, staining his robes crimson, yet there wasn’t even a trace of anger upon his face.

He didn’t spare the wound so much as a glance. The blood running down his chest seemed to interest him far less than the child standing before him.

His yellow, slit-pupiled eyes scanned Ethan from head to toe. A kid whose movements were refined beyond those of veterans. A blade that swallowed light. And beside him, a wolf whose presence flickered in and out of perception like a ghost. None of it fit his understanding of the world. The curiosity burning in Vael’s eyes was terrifyingly devoid of malice or hatred — it was the gaze of a man who valued knowledge and dissection far above human life.

"Fascinating..." Vael murmured, his voice raspy, yet genuinely awed. "To possess such precision...at your age?"

Before the silence could fully settle — without a word of warning — three crimson mage circles bloomed effortlessly around him in mid-air, each carrying the element of fire, bursting into beams of superheated mana. Ethan’s instincts screamed. He swiftly used the Northern Gale Steps, leaping aside as the stone where he’d stood melted into slag.

Ethan closed the distance in a breath, driving a lethal thrust toward Vael’s throat. But the moment the dark blade reached striking distance, Vael vanished.

He closed the gap with monstrous, inhuman speed. His enlarged right arm swelled, dark scales rippling as he reinforced the flesh with dense, explosive power and swung.

BOOOM!

The shockwave detonated across the cavern, shattering the floor. Ethan parried the claw with the flat of his blade, but the sheer kinetic force rattled his teeth and threw him thirty feet backward, his boots carving deep grooves in the rock.

A trickle of blood leaked from the corner of Ethan’s lips.

Mana surged through the cavern.

Fire.

Wind.

Earth.

Three different spells condensed simultaneously as Vael’s smile deepened.

An amused look etched into his face.

"Now then..."

He took a slow step forward.

"Shall we continue?"

The fire lance screamed through the cavern, its searing heat illuminating the blood-soaked chamber in brilliant crimson. Ethan pushed off the ground an instant before it reached him, the blazing projectile exploding against the stone wall behind him with enough force to shower the cave in molten fragments. Before the debris had even begun to fall, razor-sharp wind blades swept toward him from the opposite direction while jagged pillars of earth erupted beneath his feet, each spell perfectly timed to deny every avenue of escape.

Ethan’s figure blurred across the battlefield...

Northern Gale Steps carried him through the deadly barrage with astonishing fluidity. His movements precise, not wasting a single step as he twisted between the converging attacks. A wind blade grazed his sleeve, tearing through the fabric and drawing a thin line of blood across his forearm — but he paid no attention as his focus remained entirely on Vael.

Something nagged at the edge of his awareness.

Every time Vael transitioned from a spell into a physical strike there was something — a fraction too brief to name, gone before he could hold it. He filed it away and kept moving.

Before Ethan could fully settle, Vael descended with terrifying force, crimson Primal Force erupting in a dense, raw pulse around the twisted limb like a living predator.

Clang!

The Eternal Sovereign Blade intercepted the strike just before it reached Ethan’s skull.

A violent shockwave erupted outward as debris flew across the cave.

The impact numbed Ethan’s arms as his boots slid several meters across the bloodstained floor, carving deep footprints into the ancient stone before he finally regained his footing.

Heavy...

The strength behind that single blow was incomparable to seasoned Great Knights. It was approaching the realm of Knight Commanders.

Vael smiled faintly.

"Your instincts are extraordinary..."

He didn’t pause as another claw strike immediately descended, sweeping horizontally toward Ethan’s waist while three emerald magic circles appeared behind the chimera’s shoulder.

The circles flashed in less than a fraction of a second.

Ethan lowered his body beneath the claw, allowing the savage strike to pass by a hair’s breadth above his head before kicking off the ground. He spun through the narrow gap between two incoming wind blades, but the third clipped his side.

A sharp pain spread across his ribs as warm blood soaked through his tunic. Ignoring the wound, Ethan lunged forward instead of retreating.

The black blade thrust toward Vael’s throat. The chimera tilted his head just enough for the blade to graze his cheek, leaving behind a thin crimson line.

His smile widened.

"Excellent..."

Without warning, a ring of fire erupted around Ethan. The flames surged upward, forming a prison of blazing heat that blocked every direction.

Vael’s claw pierced through the inferno.

Ethan met it head-on.

Steel screamed against the claw once again as sparks scattered across the cavern.

This time Ethan didn’t disengage. Instead, he deliberately remained within striking distance as one exchange followed another. The black blade met claw repeatedly, each impact reverberating through the chamber.

Neither side yielded. To the few villagers who remained at the edge of the cave the battle had become impossible to follow. Rune stayed behind, watching for any opening.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

BOOOOOM!

For the next several minutes magic circles opened above — brutal physical strikes followed below. Long range spells and short range carnage blended together so seamlessly that it felt oppressive, almost absurd.

Vael’s movements remained flawless, but not effortless. Every rapid transition between spellcasting and physical reinforcement left behind the faintest hesitation — so small it bordered on invisible.

Ethan’s focus was entirely consumed by reading Vael’s claws and dodging by fractions of an inch. His body was already protesting — lungs burning, ribs aching, shallow cuts weeping blood across his arms and cheeks.

Then, during a violent parry where black steel bit into Vael’s scaled forearm, Ethan felt it.

It lasted less than a microsecond. Beneath the surge of Primal Force driving the chimera’s arm, another energy flickered beneath his skin — a harsh, unnatural current that ground against his mana pathways like sand in a gear.

It vanished before Ethan could seize it, leaving him to leap back, heart hammering against his ribs.

What was that?

Is it...

Ethan reset his stance, breathing through his nose, and accepted the cold truth.

If this remained a battle of output, his young body would break long before Vael ran out of mana. From this moment on, the fight ceased to be a contest of pure strength. It became an exercise in pure, ruthless observation.

Every strike he took, every dodge that left a cut on his skin, was traded for clues.

Vael dominated the floor. Ethan took hit after hit — a jagged spell-shard slicing his shoulder, a backhand sending him crashing through a wooden worktable, dark blood trickling into his left eye.

Rune instantly leaped from the entrance. Knowing he couldn’t take this beast-human head on, Rune became a shadow of harassment. He never committed to an attack but nipped at Vael’s heels, snapped at his blind spots the moment a spell circle formed, and forced the monster to constantly split his attention.

Vael only grew more delighted...

"The wolf responds to your intent without a word." Vael purred, casually sweeping a claw that blew apart a stone pillar behind Ethan. "Is it a divine beast? A spirit bond? Ah, I cannot wait to open both of your bodies and see how your mana pathways are laid out."

"HAHAHAHAHA."

Every word carried the chilled composure of a man discussing a specimen on an operating table.

Ethan ignored the voice and the mad laugh. He was watching the arm.

There.

The strange current hadn’t been an accident. It appeared only when Vael rapidly reinforced his physical frame immediately after casting a spell.

The first time he had a suspicion. The second time a pattern emerged... now it was certain. The strange energy mixed in — it was Aura. Unstable, but unmistakably Aura.

This bastard had implanted a Warrior Core and Beast Core through his forbidden experiments to draw on both Primal Force and Aura.

Both Mana and Aura belong to humans while Primal Force belongs to beasts. The two energies are fundamentally incompatible — the Warrior Core of another should dissolve within minutes and disperse into the atmosphere. The one he had implanted forcefully... was rejecting him.

Vael hadn’t created a masterpiece. He had forcibly stitched incompatible energies inside his body, holding the tear apart through dark magic and beast flesh.

The insight immediately became Ethan’s weapon.

Ethan stopped trying to dodge away. Instead he dove into close range, deliberately forcing Vael into continuous, rapid transitions — casting a shield, reinforcing a fist, throwing a spell, bracing a leg. Rune caught the rhythm, flushing Vael back toward Ethan every time the chimera tried to reset the distance.

They weren’t trying to defeat him. They were forcing the unstable mana pathways to destroy themselves.

The strain built invisibly until, finally, the friction snapped.

Vael lunged with a lethal claw strike, his arm swelling with physical power — and halfway through the movement, his body violently twitched.

For a hundredth of a second, the conflicting energies inside his chest ground against one another. The reinforcement failed. The transition stuttered. His guard dropped by half an inch.

An opening so small most veterans would have missed it.

Ethan capitalized on it immediately.

There was no grand shout, no aura explosion, no named technique. Only absolute, terrifying precision.

The Eternal Sovereign Blade glided through the microscopic gap, slipping beneath Vael’s scaled shoulder and driving straight through his heart.

Vael froze.

The light in his eyes flickered, the chaotic mana around him evaporating into mist. He didn’t scream. He didn’t curse. As his knees gave out, he slumped forward onto Ethan’s shoulder, staring at the boy with the same quiet, insatiable curiosity that had driven him his entire life.

"How...did you..." Vael whispered, the question dying in his throat as his breath ran out.

Ethan pulled the blade free, and the chimera collapsed onto the stone, motionless.

Silence descended upon the cavern.

Ethan immediately collapsed onto one knee, breathing hard. He looked at Vael lying dead on the ground and wiped the blood from the corner of his lips.

Huh...

Rune was at his side before he’d finished falling to his knee, blue eyes scanning him quickly.

"It’s over now...you did well." Ethan gave a small pat on Rune’s head before pushing himself upright, driving the sword into the ground for support.

He collected all the records that hadn’t been damaged, research materials, storage rings and any valuables from the cavern and stored them in his inventory.

"Let’s take him too..." Ethan stored the body of Vael in his inventory.

Then he brought a healing pill from the inventory and took it. The pill immediately dissolved in his mouth, spreading a warm sensation across his body as the Heavenly Sovereign Physique began its work, rapidly healing the wounds spread across his arms and chest.

Out near the entrance tunnel, the last of the freed captives looked back, a collective breath of sheer relief washing over them.

The freed villagers had almost reached the entrance when the ground trembled beneath their feet.

RUMBLE...

Deep beneath the bedrock, far beneath the blood-stained altar, something terrible reacted to the death of the man who had been holding its cage shut. Dust rained down from the cavern ceiling and suddenly the mana fluctuations inside the cave became intense...

The dungeon was waking up.