The Author's Extra: My SSS Skill Turns Souls into Anything!

Chapter 86: Dark flames [1]

’He’s too fast.’ Nicholas’s chest heaved as he reset his stance. ’And every time we clash, he’s stronger than the last exchange.’

Augustus charged.

His blade came down like a bolt of red lightning, and Nicholas brought his sword up horizontal to catch it.

BOOM.

The impact rattled through Nicholas’s bones and drove him to one knee. Augustus leaned into the lock, put his full weight onto the blade, and looked down at him.

"Where did all that posturing go, Ashford?" His glowing eyes narrowed. "Is this the absolute limit of the academy’s golden boy?"

"SHUT UP!"

Nicholas twisted his blade at an angle, forced Augustus’s sword to slide off the steel, and swept inside the guard. The Eternal Dragon erupted in a burst of blinding light around his blade.

"TAKE THIS—"

He drove a rising uppercut straight at Augustus’s jaw. Augustus got his forearm up in time but the kinetic blast launched him several meters backward through the air. He hit and dug his boots deep into the snow to stop himself.

Before he could fully balance, Nicholas was already moving.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

Each strike came faster, heavier, more desperate than the last. The golden dragon burned continuously with every arc. Nicholas drove forward with no strategy left except pressure, because if he stopped pressing, Augustus would reset, and if Augustus reset they were done.

Augustus’s arrogant expression finally curdled.

"You’re getting genuinely annoying."

Instead of meeting the next strike with force, he released all resistance from his blade.

Nicholas’s sword slipped past the intended block, momentum carrying him too far forward.

’What—?’

Augustus hooked his hilt around Nicholas’s guard. One violent practiced jerk—

CLANG.

Both blades drove into the frozen earth. Nicholas’s weapon was trapped.

He yanked hard, but it wouldn’t budge.

’No—’

Augustus stepped smoothly past the locked blades. His left hand pulled back, dense crimson mana concentrating around his fist into a tight vortex of unnatural energy.

"Too slow."

BOOM.

The fist hit Nicholas square in the waist. The force folded him in half, lifted him clean off the ground, and hurled him sideways across the clearing. He bounced off the frozen earth, tumbled into a snowdrift, and came to a stop clutching his side with blood on his lips.

He tried to breathe. Couldn’t fully. Something inside his ribs had made a decision he hadn’t consented to.

Augustus yanked his sword from the dirt and rested it on his shoulder.

Behind the clash, Seris hadn’t stopped.

While Nicholas absorbed everything Augustus had, she had been gathering. Every drop of mana her depleted body could still produce, channeled between her trembling palms into a dense, unstable sphere of dark crimson light. The air warped around it. Her hands shook with the effort.

’Just a few more seconds.’

A flicker of crimson caught Augustus’s eye.

He turned and saw the sphere in her hands.

His face went from satisfaction to irritation in the space of a breath.

BOOM.

The snow under his boots exploded and he was across the distance before her spell could release.

"NO—" Nicholas lunged from the snowdrift, reached out with one desperate hand. His body betrayed him. He couldn’t close the gap.

Seris looked up. "Hu—!"

BOOM.

Augustus’s knee drove into her abdomen with full force. The sheer impact folded her body around it and the shockwave tore outward behind her back. The concentrated spell shattered into useless fragments of fading light.

Blood left her lips.

Augustus reached out before she could fall and closed his fist in her silver hair. Her body hung suspended, head lolling, blood running from her chin.

The battlefield went quiet in the immediate area.

Leon turned from his fight and his face drained. "NO—" He threw himself at the vampires surrounding him. "SENIOR SERIS—"

Roselle’s stomach dropped. She hurled arc spell after arc spell, blasting vampires into the air, screaming for the gap to open. "GET OUT OF MY WAY! GET OUT—"

BOOM.

She cleared a wave. Five more surged into the space it left.

Tears of pure helpless rage pressed at her eyes as she swung her hands with spell into the bodies in front of her. "Damn it! just LET ME THROUGH—"

The horde didn’t give an inch.

Augustus looked down at Seris’s unconscious face with the dead satisfaction of something finished.

"That’s what happens when you forget your place, bloodsucker."

Nicholas stared.

His lungs wouldn’t fill properly. His waist was a problem he’d have to deal with later if there was a later. He pressed his hand against it and tried to make his legs work.

’Get up.’

His knees shook.

’Come on. GET UP.’

He forced himself upright. His vision blurred at the edges. His grip on his hilt tore the skin of his palm.

One staggering step toward Augustus.

’You promised. You said you’d protect her.’

Another step.

’I’m the only top cadet here. I’m supposed to be the shield.’

Another step, and his leg nearly buckled, and he caught himself.

A tear cut through the dirt on his cheek.

’I’m not strong enough.’ He looked at Seris hanging there, at Augustus’s hand in her hair, at the gap between where he was and where he needed to be. ’I’m not strong enough to do this alone. Please... someone... anyone... I can’t... I need help—’

SHHHK.

A line of pitch-black flames tore across the battlefield.

It moved so fast that neither human nor vampire eye could track its point of origin. Just a streak of absolute black fire cutting through the vanguard like a blade made of night.

A single second of complete silence hung in the air before it shattered into screams.

"AAAGHHH—"

"WHAT IS THIS?!"

"MY ARM! IT’S BURNING—"

"GET IT OFF ME—"

Six vampires collapsed simultaneously, the black flames consuming them far faster than any natural fire should have managed.

SHHHK.

Streak after streak of black fire tore through the crowd, dropping vampire after vampire. The flames wove through the chaos with predatory precision, finding gaps between allies, finding armor seams, finding every place that would hurt most.

A high-ranking vampire raised a reinforced steel shield to block an incoming streak.

The moment the black fire touched the metal—

CRACK.

The shield shattered like old glass.