Chapter 100: THE PANDORA’S CODEX ARC: Limit break

Chapter 100: Chapter 100: THE PANDORA’S CODEX ARC: Limit break

A huge wave of power burst from his body, radiating outward in all directions with the force of a collapsing star. The raw energy tore through the surrounding forest like an invisible hurricane, ripping leaves from branches and sending loose stones skittering across the ground. The force was so intense that it blasted Noel backward with brutal efficiency, knocking him completely off his feet and sending him skidding helplessly across the forest floor for nearly twenty meters. Dirt and debris exploded upward in his wake as his body carved a shallow trench through the earth.

Noel gasped sharply, eyes widening in pure disbelief as he struggled desperately to regain his footing. His hands clawed at the soft soil, fingers digging deep furrows while his legs scrambled for purchase. He had been ready to deliver a killing blow only moments earlier and had been absolutely certain of victory. Every calculation, every ounce of experience, every carefully measured strike had pointed toward the same inevitable conclusion: the wounded prince would fall, and Noel would claim the kill.

But now, in the span of a single heartbeat, everything has changed beyond recognition.

The atmosphere of the battlefield shifted instantly and irrevocably. The air itself grew heavier, charged with raw, untamed energy that pressed against the skin like a living thing. Each breath Noel took felt thicker, almost liquid, as if the very oxygen had become saturated with power. The barrier surrounding the combat zone shuddered once more under the weight of Theon’s presence, the translucent walls of magic flickering and warping as if struggling to contain the sudden surge. Distant trees groaned under the pressure. Birds that had been watching from high branches took flight in panicked flocks. Even the insects fell silent.

Theon stood at the absolute center of it all, his head bowed low, his breath steady and measured despite the storm raging around him. Sweat still clung to his skin from the earlier exhaustion, yet none of it seemed to matter anymore. When he finally looked up, his eyes had changed completely. The familiar blue irises had deepened into something darker, colder, and infinitely more dangerous. A faint crimson glow pulsed behind the pupils, like embers waiting to ignite into full flame.

Theon’s body transformed under the overwhelming effect of Limit Break. His power rose dramatically, surging through every vein and artery like a river that had finally broken its banks after centuries of restraint. Muscles he hadn’t known he possessed tensed and coiled beneath his skin, thickening and hardening until they felt carved from living steel. Senses he hadn’t realized were dulled sharpened to a razor’s edge. He could hear the frantic hammering of Noel’s heart from across the clearing. He could smell the metallic tang of blood and fear mixing in the air. He could feel the minute shifts in wind pressure caused by Noel’s slightest movements. The world itself seemed to slow, every detail standing out with crystalline clarity.

A second shadow blade manifested alongside the sword he was already holding. The new weapon was dark and jagged, its edge humming with lethal energy that made the surrounding air vibrate. It wasn’t an illusion. It wasn’t a trick of the light or a temporary construct. It was real, solid, and deadly, forged from pure concentrated power and the deepest recesses of Theon’s will. The dual blades crossed before him for a moment, one gleaming with residual light and the other swallowing it whole, before he settled into a ready stance that radiated pure lethality.

Theon stood with overwhelming power surrounding him like a living cloak, an aura of savagery and intimidation that made the very air feel heavier with every passing second. Dark tendrils of energy coiled and snapped around his form. The ground beneath his boots cracked in a spreading web of fractures. His presence alone was enough to make lesser warriors collapse under the pressure.

Noel realized with a sinking, cold certainty that something fundamental had changed. He could feel it in his bones, in the sudden dryness of his mouth, in the way his instincts screamed at him to run and never look back. The prey he had been hunting—the wounded, exhausted prince on the verge of collapse—was gone forever. And something far more terrifying had taken its place. This was no longer a dying royal fighting for survival. This was a predator that had just remembered what it was born to do.

Before Noel could properly react, before he could even raise his weapon into a proper guard, Theon disappeared.

His speed was far beyond anything Noel had been dealing with before, beyond anything he had ever witnessed in his long career as a assassin. One moment Theon was standing there in the center of the clearing, aura blazing like a dark sun, and the next he was simply gone, vanished like a ghost dissolving into morning mist. The space he had occupied still shimmered faintly with residual energy.

Noel’s eyes darted left, then right, searching frantically across the battlefield. His enhanced senses strained to track the movement. Leaves rustled. A branch snapped somewhere behind him. Too late. Far too late.

In an instant that felt both eternal and nonexistent, Theon reappeared directly behind him.

Noel barely had time to register the shift in air pressure, the sudden presence at his back.

BOOM!

Theon delivered a devastating kick, his leg moving so fast it was almost invisible even to Noel’s trained eyes. The heel of his boot connected with the small of Noel’s back with catastrophic force. The impact was cataclysmic, a pure transfer of overwhelming power that sent Noel flying across the battlefield like a stone launched from a siege catapult. His body became a missile, tearing through the air with a whistling shriek of displaced wind.

Noel crashed through branches that shattered like brittle glass, tore through undergrowth that offered no resistance, and smashed through everything in his path. Leaves and twigs exploded outward in a chaotic cloud. He slammed into the trunk of a massive ancient tree with enough force to make the entire giant shudder from roots to canopy. Wood splintered in a deafening crack. Bark exploded outward. A shower of leaves and dust filled the air, turning the immediate area into a choking haze.

He tried to recover, tried to push himself up on trembling arms to prepare any kind of defense. Blood already trickled from the corner of his mouth. His vision swam. But Theon was already on him, moving with the same impossible speed that had closed the distance in the first place.

Theon continued pursuing Noel without the slightest hesitation or mercy. He closed the gap in the space between heartbeats and delivered another strike—a precise, bone-crushing punch that connected with Noel’s jaw and sent him reeling sideways. Teeth rattled. Stars exploded behind Noel’s eyes.

Then another attack followed immediately—a rising knee driven hard into the gut that knocked every last breath from Noel’s lungs and doubled him over in agony. The impact lifted him slightly off the ground before gravity reclaimed him.

Then another—an elbow smashed downward into the back of his neck and shoulders that drove him face-first into the dirt with enough force to leave an imprint. The ground itself seemed to reject him.

The attacks came one after another at incredible, relentless speed, a continuous barrage of violence that gave Noel no time to breathe, no time to think, no time to recover, and certainly no time to form a coherent counter. Each strike flowed into the next with perfect, brutal economy of motion. Fists. Knees. Elbows. The flats of the blades used as blunt instruments. The edges reserved for later. There was almost no pause between the impacts. The forest filled with the wet, heavy sounds of flesh meeting overwhelming force and the sharp cracks of bone stressing under pressure.

Noel was completely unable to regain control of the fight. He was barely able to raise his arms in any meaningful defense. Every attempt to counter was met with overwhelming, superior force that brushed his efforts aside like they were the flailings of a child. Every attempt to retreat, every desperate scramble to create distance, was cut off instantly by Theon’s impossible speed. The prince was simply everywhere at once, a dark blur of motion and power that never allowed Noel a single moment of respite.

Theon continued beating him relentlessly, systematically, without emotion or hesitation. There was almost no pause between the attacks. The rhythm was merciless and absolute. Theon was no longer fighting defensively. He was no longer holding anything back. He no longer cared about his own survival or the cost of the power he was burning through. All that existed was the need to dominate, to break, to end the threat that had pushed him to the edge of death only moments before.

He was completely dominating Noel in every measurable way—speed, strength, precision, and sheer overwhelming presence. The balance of the fight had not merely shifted. It had been annihilated and rewritten.

Theon continued the assault until Noel was thoroughly overwhelmed and broken. Blood painted the ground in growing dark pools. Bruises blossomed across Noel’s body in angry purples and blacks. Bones that had never failed him before now protested with sharp, grinding pain. Noel had taken damage he had never imagined receiving in his worst nightmares, especially not from someone who had been on the absolute verge of death just moments before this transformation. Ribs ached with every shallow breath. One arm hung at an unnatural angle. His vision kept tunneling and expanding in sickening waves.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of uninterrupted violence, Theon stood over him. Both shadow blades were raised high, their dark edges gleaming with cold purpose. His eyes were cold and absolute, empty of pity or hesitation. The aura around him still burned, though it had settled into a tighter, more focused intensity.

He prepared the final strike with deliberate care. The dual blades angled downward, ready to descend in a single, decisive motion that would end everything. He was ready to deliver the blow that could kill Noel cleanly and permanently. The air around the weapons hummed with lethal promise.

Noel was completely at Theon’s mercy, lying broken on the ground, too damaged to move more than a weak twitch of fingers, too exhausted to form any kind of meaningful resistance. His chest rose and fell in shallow, labored gasps. Blood ran freely from multiple wounds. The proud hunter who had entered this forest certain of victory now looked up at his former prey with the hollow eyes of a man who understood he had lost everything.

Theon prepared to finish the fight once and for all. The dual blades began their downward arc.

The air was silent and the forest was still.

Even the barrier surrounding them seemed to hold its breath.

The battle appeared to be mere moments away from its absolute ending, the final Chapter of a clash that had already rewritten the rules of what was possible.

Before Theon could complete the final blow against Noel, before the blades could taste their intended target, something sudden and massive interrupted him with the force of an act of god.

A colossal magical force blasted Theon away from his fallen opponent with the crushing weight of a collapsing mountain. The energy hit him square in the chest and side before he had any chance to react, any chance to raise a defense, any chance to even process the new threat.

The raw power was unlike anything he had faced in the fight so far—vast, controlled, and utterly overwhelming. Theon was thrown across the battlefield like a ragdoll caught in a hurricane, his body tumbling end over end through the air.

Trees and undergrowth exploded in his path as the invisible force carried him farther and farther from the broken form of Noel. The dual shadow blades spun away from his hands, dissolving into dark mist before they could even hit the ground. The sudden reversal left the clearing in stunned silence once more, the only sounds the fading echoes of impact and the soft, pained breathing of the man still lying in the dirt.