(IC) Chapter 325 - Path of Shards

He felt it as his boots pressed into the ground, the smell of iron, dirt, and smoke burning in his nostrils. Despite the strain, despite the pain, he felt it.

The space around him shifted—trailing along the field he created. His body had become a finely tuned magnetic source, not merely influencing but commanding the space itself. Everything conductive bent to his will. Which meant…

They no longer had the means to counter him.

He pressed forward, accelerating in an uneven, shifting pattern, his form blurring through the narrow underground corridor as the Wardens retreated, unleashing streams of bullets.

The projectiles warped as they neared him, their casings groaning under magnetic stress. They bent aside, harmless, while his blades stayed steady.

He sensed the incoming vectors before they fully formed. Estimated their arcs. Pivoted sideways, boots scraping stone as two rounds slammed into the ground, supersonic shockwaves rattling the tunnel.

But Alonso was already gone.

A Warden lunged from a side passage, instincts flaring as it swept a bladed limb wide. Yet the current betrayed it—the arc bent, dragged off-course as if cutting through heavy water. Before it could adjust, a sword carved clean through its neck.

Blood sprayed in a hot arc, after Alonso was already above. He anchored on the corridor ceiling, weightless, as debris from shattered impacts hung in mid-air, too slow for his accelerated pace. It was as though gravity itself lagged behind him.

Three more left.

One Warden stepped forward to block his path, while the other two slipped out of the underground passage. Alonso gauged the snipers’ probable lines of fire and found no way around.

He cursed under his breath. They had left this one as a scapegoat.

He flared his field, anchoring to the wall. An axe-shaped limb scythed toward him—he slipped past by a hair and drove his blade into its throat. The creature convulsed, ichor spilling dark against the stone.

Alonso wrenched free, took two sharp steps back, and went still. His chest heaved, steam rising from his lips in the cold air. The remaining Wardens were far gone already.

He couldn’t risk open ground. Not with at least three snipers waiting. Out there, in the open, even his new state would mean little against rounds that fast and heavy.

He exhaled slowly, gaze settling on the corpses that bled across the tunnel floor.

Seven Wardens had ambushed him. Five now lay dead by his hand—six, counting the one from before.

A new daily record. Not bad.

Without waiting longer, and wary of the sniper's fire, he surged forward. Waves dragged in his wake, sweeping the fallen corpses through their conductive limbs behind him, as though pulled by an unseen tide.

Mid-air, he twisted, blades carving wide arcs. The skulls of the five Wardens lined up, split clean by the sweeping cuts.

He landed hard, boots scraping stone, momentum carrying him across the tunnel floor. One by one, the orbs struck his chest, sinking through what remained of his torn hide vest. His bare muscles were streaked with dried blood and fresh wounds, but the orbs vanished into him all the same.

Stage 1 – 22.104%

Stage 1 – 22.200%

Stage 1 – 22.288%

Stage 1 – 22.370%

Stage 1 – 22.445%

Clarity sharpened. Strength rose. He felt the boost as SP climbed—but the gains from the Wardens were now paltry, barely enough to justify the toll. At this pace, even pushing past 23% would demand more than a dozen more kills.

He had hit the soft limit.

Yet more than Stage Progress itself, it was the other prompt that caught his attention.

Path of Shards – 7.351%

The Tower had recognised his new technique as a formal skill. Its mastery had surged mid-fight, climbing from barely 7% to over 7.3% in a single battle—proof of how much room remained for quick growth.

The name lingered in his mind. Path of Shards. It echoed the magnetic trails he carved through the battlefield. But shards? Did it refer to the microscopic capacitors inside his body, the foundation of this state?

He caught a break, leaning against the rock face, sweat pouring down his brow. Most of his cuts were already closing when a voice stirred in his head.

“That went surprisingly well. Maybe… too well.”

Alonso nodded. His thoughts mirrored Houston’s. Back then, he had been prepared to die—simple as that. The odds were against him, and they hadn’t fully mapped the consequences of such a reckless move, even if it was in the cards. To reach equilibrium like that was either a miracle or…

“Do you think the Tower helped?”

Houston sighed. “Hard to say. It could have been pure luck, but such a balanced state from blasting EM through the internal network feels… off. The radiating field shouldn’t be that strong, nor should it linger in such a way. I believe there’s more to it than we’re seeing. The prompt appearing, the line between what the Tower considers a skill and what it doesn’t… I think there’s something crucial in the mechanics we’ve been dismissing.”

Alonso stayed still, heart slowing as the state ebbed away. Pain lingered—sharp, insistent—but now it was only the edge of his body stitching itself back together.

“Then it saved me? Why?”

“If it did, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” Houston replied. “I think The Tower may be more involved than we assumed. It clearly rewards risks, and it avoids challenges without at least one path to victory.”

“You mean like Chiara’s theory? A scripted stage? As long as we stay above the curve, we survive?”

“Could be… but I wouldn’t trust it entirely. Would you have lived if you hadn’t taken that risk? How? Makoh suddenly saving you? I doubt it. More likely, you found a path, you gambled it, and it lent you a hand. It could also be tied to skills—that it assists Climbers with them, maybe even more with you, since you carve your own way. Perhaps one step further… maybe it values your path itself. Maybe it wants to see where it leads. Maybe it values you. Hard to say. We could sit here talking like Greek philosophers, or like two unemployed guys on a random Tuesday afternoon, but it won’t take us anywhere, right?”

“Indeed.” Alonso clenched his fist as his sword floated beside it. “This power… I suppose we just take the gift—if it really was one, and not just us winning the lottery.”

Houston chuckled.

As Alonso relaxed, a signal pulsed in from afar.

“General, we are in place.”

“Alright, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll start studying the skill. See you later in the virtual space,” Houston said before disconnecting.

Alonso nodded and sent to his men, “Share visuals.”

Feeds streamed in from multiple points of view. He triangulated sniper positions from the shot vectors during the fight, narrowing down their possible nests, in case they were still there.

“Keep visuals active. Three squads of six—advance to this location. Six cannons, target these three coordinates. Synchronized fire. Two shots each. Now.”

Less than a second later, the ground trembled as explosions thundered in the distance.

The visuals refreshed in constant feed, confirmations flashing back through the link.

Moments later, a subtle vibration shivered down from the snow above—his men arriving. No shots followed. Either the Warden snipers had already fled, or they were waiting for him to surface. But deep in his chest, instinct whispered it was the former.

“General.” The middle-aged Sun Bearer bowed his head as he dropped into the tunnel. The others followed in silence.

Yet, as their gazes fell upon the blood and corpses scattered across the ground, their steps faltered. Eyes widened. Faces drained of colour. The silence thickened with disbelief.

The Sun Bearer in charge of the first squad raised his head, slowly. He looked from Alonso’s blood-smeared figure to the slaughtered Wardens, then back again, his throat working without sound.

“This… General, did you…” The words fractured before they left his mouth. To face and kill so many Wardens, alone—this was not the realm of men. It belonged to the myths, to the epics of their history—the likes of the son of the Serpent Sun, or the daughter of Light and Fire. Could flesh and bone truly reach such power?

His hand trembled. The weight of the moment pressed down upon his chest until he could scarcely draw breath. Before thought could anchor him, his knees buckled, striking the stone, his body folding into full reverence.

“K’in Ajnaal…” he whispered—the Sun’s Chosen.

The others froze only for a heartbeat before the truth settled over them like thunder. One by one, they fell to their knees, foreheads pressed against the rocky ground. The cavern filled with the sound of armour scraping stone, voices rising together in solemn unison.

“K’in Ajnaal.”

Their chant carried through the underground tunnel, echoing from wall to wall as though the earth itself bore witness.

Alonso stood amidst the bowing figures, the copper taste of blood still in his mouth, his arms heavy, his body screaming with exhaustion. Not feeling very divine, to be honest.

He shifted uneasily. Respect—even reverence—he had grown somewhat accustomed to over the last week at his post. But this… this was not loyalty to a general, nor merely the acknowledgment of a warrior’s strength. This was adoration. Religious devotion.

A sigh slipped from him, silent and weary, his gaze drifting to the headless corpses at his feet.

The Sun’s Chosen, huh.

Before the thought could settle, the low hum of a pulse reached him, faint and broken by distance. A field transmission, battered by more than a hundred miles of snow, rock, and shifting ley currents. He closed his eyes, letting the fragments align into words.

“General, the Xok’al are retreating from Point C5 and D1.”

His brow rose. That was fast.

Another signal cut through.

“General, confirmation—the Xok’al are pulling back. They’re abandoning the warrens along the Ahk-Tul ridge. Scouts report mass movement northeast, towards the Yaal Cradle.”

Alonso straightened as more reports flooded in one after another.

“Point E3—withdrawal confirmed.”

“Point B7—discovered nests abandoned.”

“Frontline near the K’an-Tej pass—Xok’al pulling back in mass.”

As the thoughts came, Houston updated a three-dimensional map in his mind, a vast sweep of red lines receding—collapsing like a tide dragged back to sea. This was no skirmish, no clever feint. This was truly a full-scale withdrawal across the entire Western Front.

Among the dozens of broken transmissions came one steadier, marked by a distinct signature. A long-distance signal, relayed through the few transmission pyramids still functioning.

“Alonso, this is Noh. For some reason the Xok’al are retreating north across the entire Eastern Front. What about the West?”

So even on Noh’s side…

It seemed the Xok’al had fully abandoned the invasion of the Ajnal. All of it, because of what happened here. Because of… me.

Alonso’s gaze lingered on the dark tunnel mouth, beyond which the snow still fell.

After today’s ambush, with his pulse finally slowing and his mind clear enough to think, he understood what had shifted. Outsmarting the Xok’al was no longer possible. A hive-mind that vast, with its lattice of shared intelligence and uncanny capacity for growth, learned too quickly. Every ruse, every trap, every stratagem—they would adapt after the first encounter. Common tactics, even intricate ones, would fail. To break them, each strike would need to come from the unknown or… from overwhelming strength.

That they had chosen to retreat proved as much. The invasion of the Ajnal had ceased to be practical. They had weighed the cost, and the swarm had decided to flow elsewhere. Which probably meant one thing: the beastmen or the Azcoyatl would feel it next.

He should send a transmission to Lukas and the others.

This also meant… the war would cease for a time on his front. Calmer days were coming—and for once, that came as a blessing.

He needed time to master Path of Shards, to ground this new strength until it became something he could wield to its fullest. Because he knew… the next time the Xok’al came at him, the one bearing their banner would carry more than five tails.

His gaze shifted to the Sun Bearers and the Lords of Sparks still bowed to the stone.

“Rise,” Alonso said, his voice steady. “Gather the corpses. We return to base.”