Chapter 48: Brutality of the Old King

CLANG!

The Old King’s head snapped back by a fraction of an inch as his off-hand, wrapped in a gauntlet of solidified, smoking void energy, caught the haft of the battle axe directly behind its glowing rear spike. The high-frequency, silvery-violet mana sizzled against his palm, but the eight-foot tyrant didn’t flinch.

With a brutal twist of his wrist, the Old King ripped the battle axe straight out of Raphael’s left grip and hurled it over his shoulder, sending the heavy weapon clattering uselessly across the stone floor fifty feet away.

"AMATEUR," the Old King’s distorted voice reverberated through the air, vibrating like grinding iron.

Before Raphael could reset his stance, the tyrant slammed his armored knee into Raphael’s stomach.

KABOOM!

The impact sounded like a cannon firing at point-blank range. Raphael’s Ashen-Vanguard cuirass cracked under the sheer kinetic force, his breath violently blasted from his lungs as he was launched backward, tumbling across the slick stone plateau. He slammed hard into the base of a ruined pillar, coughing up a mouthful of dark blood that splattered across his black hoodie.

Seeing her master brutalized, Vanessa’s violet eyes flashed with lethal intent. She raised her dark relic-staff, her face pale with desperation as she summoned every drop of dark gravitational force her vessel could muster.

"Get away from him!" Vanessa screamed, channeling a swirling vortex of pitch-black, space-tearing flames aimed directly at the Old King’s back.

The Old King didn’t even turn around, but slowly, he drove the pommel of his massive seven-foot crimson greatsword into the center of the stone plateau.

[DOMAIN SKILL ACTIVATED: SOVEREIGN’S IMPERIAL ISOLATION]

- Effect: Erects an absolute, unbreachable dimensional barrier that seals the challenger and the ruler within an isolated arena.

- Condition: External entities are completely barred from entry or direct mana intervention.

---

A pillar of suffocating, crimson-and-black energy erupted from the point of impact, shooting skyward before expanding into a massive, translucent dome that enveloped both Raphael and the Old King.

Vanessa’s dark spatial vortex slammed into the outer wall of the dome, shattering into harmless sparks of violet light upon contact. She struck the barrier again and again with her staff, her dark robes whipping wildly in the wind, but the crimson wall remained utterly impervious.

Because Raphael’s own mana capacity and core authority were still low, Vanessa, despite being a legendary A-Tier entity, was fundamentally constrained by her bond to him. The system strictly enforced a binding law: a summon could never wield more authority than its master possessed.

She was forced to stand outside the barrier, her knuckles white around her staff, forced to watch her Sovereign fight alone.

Inside the barrier, the air grew thick with ancient, oppressive bloodlust. This was not a mindless beast or an uncoordinated strike team. The Old King was a warlord who had conquered countless realms before falling to the void. His every swing carried decades of refined combat experience, flawless distance management, and lethal spatial control.

The Old King stepped forward, his heavy, void-armored boots shattering the stone below him.

Raphael pushed himself up, his eyes burning through his messy dark bangs with absolute, unyielding defiance. He gripped the broad hilt of his greatsword with both hands, channeling every drop of remaining mana into the blade until the steel vibrated with a high-pitched hum.

"Come on," Raphael growled, his deep voice rasping through the blood in his throat.

The Old King blurred forward.

What followed was a brutal, one-sided slaughter. Raphael fought with everything he had, his godlike neural processing speed analyzing every incoming swing, but his body couldn’t match the sheer speed and martial experience of the ancient tyrant.

SLASH!

The crimson greatsword carved through Raphael’s shoulder armor, tearing a deep, bloody furrow down his arm. Raphael didn’t retreat; he stepped into the pain, driving a counter-cleave toward the Old King’s neck, but the tyrant effortlessly parried the blow, using the flat of his blade to smash Raphael across the face.

BOOM!

Raphael was sent spinning, blood spraying from his lip, but he planted his heel and lunged again, executing a rapid, two-handed thrust. The Old King only tilted his torso by an inch, letting the greatsword glide harmlessly past his armor before driving his gauntleted fist straight into Raphael’s jaw.

CRACK!

Raphael’s head snapped back. He stumbled, his vision swimming, his body broken and covered in gaping lacerations. Yet every time he was brought down, he forced himself back up, his luminous silver eyes flaring brighter with a cold, terrifying rage.

The pain, the blood, and the crushing weight of superior experience were forcing his neural pathways to adapt at a catastrophic rate. He began to anticipate the angles, slipping past a decapitating swing by a hair’s breadth and leaving a shallow, smoking scar across the Old King’s chest plate.

The Old King’s crimson eyes narrowed behind his dark visor. The tyrant recognized the terrifying speed at which the young ruler was evolving, and he decided to end it instantly.

"ENOUGH," the Old King echoed softly.

The tyrant raised his massive crimson sword above his head, drawing in the ambient void energy until the blade swelled to twice its size, humming with an apocalyptic density, while Raphael raised his broad greatsword into a final, desperate guard, coating it in every single drop of the Sovereign’s Veil he had left in his depleted core.

The Old King brought the crimson blade down with the force of a collapsing star.

KABOOM!

The collision was absolute. The sheer force shattered the broad steel of Raphael’s greatsword into a thousand sharp fragments that scattered across the plateau. The kinetic shockwave blew through Raphael’s defenses, shattering his breastplate and snapping his collarbone.

Before Raphael could even fall, the Old King kicked him squarely in the chest.

THUN-BOOM!

The force of the kick was so monstrous that it sent Raphael flying through the air like a ragdoll. He shattered straight through the unbreachable crimson barrier, passed right over Vanessa’s head, and blasted through the massive, dark iron doors of the central castle.

He tore through three stone pillars inside the grand hallway, smashing through several interior arches before slamming violently into the pinnacle throne room at the top of the citadel.

His body hit the massive, crumbling obsidian throne, shattering the stone backrest before he collapsed face-down onto the cold, ruined dais.

Silence descended upon the dark castle.

Raphael lay completely motionless in the rubble of the throne, his black hoodie torn to shreds, his skin covered in blood and deep, smoking wounds. His broken weapons were gone, his armor was destroyed, and his breath came in faint, dying hitches.

His silver eyes flickered once, drowning in absolute darkness, before closing entirely as he fell unconscious upon the ruined throne.