Chapter 222: Falling Sky

Lord Vandiba stopped playing.

The theatrical arrogance was gone. So were the taunts and smug speeches. What remained was something much simpler and far more dangerous.

Rage.

Vandiba brought his hands together, long fingers locking as his palms pressed against each other. Rank 4 energy exploded from his body, spreading outward in a thick cloud of shadow-poison that poured through the streets like living smoke.

FWOOOSH.

The cloud moved like liquid, crawling across the ground and climbing the walls around him. Wherever it touched, stone dissolved and concrete bubbled. Windows didn’t even have time to shatter. The glass liquefied and streamed down the buildings in clear, hissing trails.

Tssss. Tssss. Tssss.

The cloud kept expanding.

Twenty feet. Forty. Sixty.

Rain made it worse. The poison mixed with the falling water and spread through the streets with every drop, turning the entire area into a deadly zone.

Holden’s processor tracked the movement.

The cloud was spreading at twelve feet per second, and its outer edge was already hundreds of feet from Vandiba. Cora and Sera were four blocks north. At this rate, the poison would reach them in less than a minute.

Holden couldn’t block it. A Rank 4 poison cloud wasn’t an attack he could parry or redirect. It was an entire environment being turned against him.

He couldn’t simply outrun it either. Not while the Twins were still recovering from being trapped by Vandiba’s domain.

And killing Vandiba quickly wasn’t an option. The Hellfire strikes had barely scratched his defensive aura. Even a full-power attack at close range would most likely hit the same barrier and scatter.

Every normal option failed.

Then the processor found one that didn’t.

It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t even close to safe.

But it could work.

Holden looked up at the tallest building in Oakhaven.

The skyscraper stood at the northern end of the city center, its steel frame still holding together despite decades of decay. A hundred stories of concrete and steel towered over the ruined city.

Forty thousand tons.

That was the estimated mass.

A Rank 4 aura could withstand his Hellfire. It could survive the earlier explosions and even endure a building collapse.

But forty thousand tons falling directly onto it?

Holden’s processor ran the numbers.

[Structural impact force: 392,000,000 newtons.]

[Estimated Rank 4 defensive aura capacity: 8,000,000 newtons sustained.]

[Impact ratio: 49:1.]

The result was clear.

The aura would break.

Holden didn’t waste time taunting Vandiba. His eyes moved across the skyscraper, searching for shadows.

The building was covered in them. Window frames, broken balconies, cracks in the concrete, exposed beams. Every dark patch could become a step.

He moved.

Shhp.

Seventh floor.

The shadow beneath a broken window frame carried him higher.

Shhp.

Fifteenth floor.

A damaged balcony railing gave him another foothold.

Shhp. Shhp. Shhp.

Twenty-third floor. Thirty-first. Thirty-ninth.

Holden climbed the outside of the skyscraper through Void-Step, jumping from shadow to shadow. The higher he went, the stronger the wind became, whipping around the exposed frame and tugging at the Void Mantle.

Shhp. Shhp. Shhp.

Fiftieth floor. Sixtieth. Seventieth.

Oakhaven grew smaller below him. The poison cloud had become a dark stain spreading through the streets, swallowing everything in its path.

The Twins were visible too.

Tiny figures running east through the ruins.

Holden checked the distance.

The cloud was closing in.

He kept climbing.

Shhp. Shhp. Shhp.

Eightieth floor. Ninetieth.

The building was already beginning to sway. Years of decay had weakened the lower supports, and the upper floors were placing more weight on the damaged frame. The entire structure leaned slightly to the east.

It was going to collapse eventually.

Holden was simply moving the date forward.

He reached the top.

The hundredth floor was almost completely open. The outer walls were gone, along with most of the roof. Only the main support structure remained, with four massive steel columns carrying the weight of the floors below.

The columns were rusted and heavily corroded. Decades of exposure had reduced their strength, but they were still holding.

Holden stepped onto what remained of the ninety-ninth floor.

Wind screamed through the open frame.

Below him, the entire city stretched out in grey and green. The poison cloud continued to spread while the Twins ran through the streets.

Twenty-three seconds.

Holden summoned the Solar-Forged Sword.

The blade appeared in his hands.

He poured his energy into it.

Every drop of Rank 3, 7-Star power he could safely draw was pushed into the blade, strengthened by his 10,000x processing and supported by the Star Core Elixir’s recovery.

The Solar-Forged Sword began to burn.

FWOOOOOSH!

Heat warped the air around the blade as the compressed Hellfire grew brighter and denser.

Holden didn’t aim at Vandiba.

The Rank 4 cultivator was too far below.

Instead, his eyes settled on the four steel columns.

They were the only things keeping forty thousand tons of concrete and steel from falling.

He swung.

FWOOOOOSH!

The first column disappeared beneath the Hellfire.

The steel melted through in an instant, spraying sparks as the upper floors shifted under the sudden loss of support.

BOOM!

The building groaned.

The remaining three columns took the extra weight, and the entire structure leaned farther to the east.

Holden struck the second.

FWOOOOOSH!

The frame lurched.

Concrete cracked. Floors shifted. The lean became more severe as the damaged supports struggled to carry the building.

Two columns remained.

The skyscraper was already beginning to fall.

Holden struck the third.

FWOOOOOSH!

The steel gave way.

The building twisted under the uneven weight. Its upper floors began sliding sideways as concrete broke loose and rebar snapped inside the walls.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

Only one column remained.

It bent under the weight of the entire structure, rusted steel bowing inward as forty thousand tons pushed against it.

Holden raised the Solar-Forged Sword.

Then he brought it down.

FWOOOOOSH!

The final support vanished.

The building broke.

Not at the base.

Around the seventieth floor, the upper thirty stories tore away from the structure beneath them and began to fall toward the ruined square.

Groaaaaan!

CRACK!

BOOOOOOOM!

Vandiba looked up.

For the first time since the battle began, the Rank 4 cultivator lost his composure completely.

His eyes widened.

The color drained from his face as thirty stories of concrete and steel came crashing toward him.

Vandiba threw both hands upward.

Shadow-poison exploded around his body as his Rank 4 aura expanded to its maximum strength, forming a dense defensive sphere.

He knew exactly what was coming.

There was nowhere to run.

Vandiba braced himself.

Holden didn’t stay to watch.

Shhp.

Ninetieth floor.

The building shook violently around him as cracks raced through the remaining structure.

Shhp.

Eightieth floor.

Concrete fragments flew past while the steel frame twisted beneath his feet.

Shhp.

Sixtieth floor.

The skyscraper was falling apart around him. Floors collapsed into one another, beams snapped, and the entire structure twisted as gravity pulled it toward the ground.

Holden kept moving.

Shhp.

Fortieth floor.

The shadows were changing too quickly now. Every jump had to be recalculated because the building was twisting as it fell.

Shhp.

Twentieth floor.

The ground was visible below.

So was Vandiba.

The Rank 4 cultivator’s defensive sphere was still glowing at maximum power beneath the falling structure.

Holden didn’t aim for the ground.

He aimed away from it.

A falling slab passed through the open frame, casting a brief shadow across the sky.

That was enough.

Shhp.

Holden appeared outside the building.

He was falling through open air while the skyscraper dropped beside him.

The Abyssal-Bone Wings spread from his back.

The dark wings caught the air and slowed his fall.

The building had no such protection.

The upper thirty stories slammed into the lower structure, crushing floors, folding steel, and driving the entire mass toward the ground.

BOOOOOOOOM!

The impact was enormous.

Forty thousand tons of concrete and steel smashed into the earth.

The shockwave tore through the surrounding streets, flattening everything nearby. The poison cloud was blown apart by the force, scattering the corrosive mist in every direction.

The ground split.

A huge crater opened beneath the wreckage, and a wall of dust rose hundreds of feet into the sky.

Holden was thrown sideways by the pressure.

His Abyssal-Bone Wings fought against the violent wind, stabilizing his body as the shockwave carried him across the sky.

Below, the square was gone.

So was the skyscraper.

All that remained was a massive mountain of rubble rising above the ruined streets.

Then Holden’s processor found Vandiba.

His energy signature was still there.

Faint.

Unstable.

But alive.

The defensive sphere had survived the first impact, then cracked beneath the crushing weight that followed.

It was breaking apart now.

But Vandiba wasn’t dead.

A Rank 4 cultivator could survive being buried.

Holden had expected that.

What mattered was that the poison cloud was gone.

His processor located the Twins.

Three blocks east.

Cora and Sera were still running through the dust, alive and unharmed. The shockwave had scattered the poison, but the collapse had created another problem. A massive dust cloud was rolling through the streets, reducing visibility to almost nothing.

Holden folded his wings slightly and dropped toward them.

The wind pushed against him as he descended through the dust. Concrete powder filled the air, and tiny pieces of debris struck his body. The Blood-Amber Ring pulsed, protecting him from the worst of it.

Then he spotted the Twins.

Their armor was covered in grey dust as they ran through the street.

Holden swooped lower.

The wings spread wide, slowing his descent before he landed behind them.

Cora spun immediately, her sword already in her hand.

Then she saw who it was.

"Master Voss."

"Get on."

Cora blinked. "What?"

There was no time to explain.

Holden grabbed Cora with one hand and Sera with the other, pulling them close as the Abyssal-Bone Wings spread to their full twelve-foot span.

The wings beat once.

Then again.

The three of them rose above the street.

The Twins were light enough for Holden to carry easily with his strength. Within seconds, they were above the rooftops, looking down at the dust-covered ruins.

Behind them, the remains of the skyscraper sat in the center of a massive crater, dust still rising from the rubble.

Holden flew them away from Oakhaven.

The trees passed beneath them as the ruined city slowly disappeared behind the forest. From the air, the destruction looked almost unreal, reduced to a grey smear beneath a fading column of dust.

Three miles from the city, Holden landed on a grassy hill.

He lowered the Twins onto the wet ground.

For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

Cora stared back toward Oakhaven, then at Holden, as if trying to put together what she had just witnessed.

"Master Voss," she finally said. "Did you just..."

She stopped, clearly unsure how to phrase it.

"Yes," Holden replied.

Cora looked toward the ruined city again.

"You dropped a skyscraper on him."

"Yes."

Sera stared at Holden with wide eyes. Her expression carried a mixture of shock and disbelief, as if everything she thought she understood about fighting had just been rewritten.

"Is he dead?"

"No."

Both Twins looked at him.

The awe on their faces changed immediately.

"His aura held," Holden said. "Barely. It’s breaking, and he’s buried under the rubble, but he’s still alive."

Holden turned toward the distant column of dust.

"I need to go back and finish it."