Chapter 315 - Storm Domain

Alonso narrowed his eyes, posture steady atop the wall, as he locked his full attention on the clash unfolding below.

General K’in moved like lightning made flesh—each step crackled with coiled energy, each swing of his twin blades trailed incandescent sparks. His mastery of Heart of Sparks was the best Alonso had ever witnessed, as it flowed perfectly through both armor and weapon alike.

But the Warden was a monster of a different kind.

Its four upper limbs carved through the snow and smoke with brutal precision. Its five tails whipped like living whips, some slashing, others firing projectiles mid-motion—never giving the General more than a breath between barrages. Even with K’in’s speed, its constant, coordinated offense made the creature’s defense nearly impenetrable. There were no wasted motions. Every twitch held intent.

Sparks burst like flares with each impact. Dozens of strikes traded in a fraction of a second. Metal against metal. The heat of their motion boiled the surface snow to steam, leaving blackened patches of earth and red-slick slush underfoot.

All around them, the battle raged.

The Ajnal front line had collapsed into chaos, a frenzy of blade, claw, and fang. Xok’al tore through defenders with savagery but order. Heads burst like fruit under the weight of their tails. Bodies twisted and broke, splashing blood onto the stones and frozen soil. Some of the fallen weren’t even whole—just ribs and limbs flung like discarded trash. The air stank of burning fat and copper.

Still, Alonso did not move.

He stood atop the wall, eyes fixed on the duel below. Full Overdrive had been running for moments now—barely enough to keep up with their speed.

Every twitch the Warden made, he logged.

Every turn of the General’s wrist, he tracked.

He wasn’t here to cheer. Or flinch.

He was here to learn.

As the battle reached new intensity, the Warden finally pulled back. Lightning danced around it like a corona of light, its body pulsing with energy. Two large shards detached from its back—spinning like fans in the air, encircled by flickering sparks—before launching toward the General.

That was when Alonso truly focused, pushing Dual-Overdrive to its limits as his senses flared, determined not to miss a single detail.

Because he knew.

The General would bring it out now.

The only way to match a berserk Warden.

The skill that made one worthy of the title General—the prime skill of the Ajnal.

The space around K’in shifted.

The fans whistled toward him, death slicing through the air—but he remained still. Calm. Yet there was a tension around him, too quiet, too still to be natural.

One shard aimed directly for his neck. He didn’t flinch.

And it missed.

As if an unseen force altered its path mid-flight, it curved away, grazing nothing but air.

Then K’in stepped forward.

The Warden hesitated for a breath before blurring into motion to meet him.

But even before blades clashed, its swords were pushed back—like cutting through water. Slowed. Warped. K’in’s own blades came down faster, one of them slicing cleanly across the Warden’s chest.

The five-tail roared and jerked away, avoiding a fatal blow.

Its second fan zipped in from the left.

And again, it curved off-course—repelled just before impact.

The Xok’al charged, adapting, this time bracing to counter the push.

But something pulled at it instead—like a thread inside its core tugged toward the General. Its footing broke, momentum sucked forward, just enough for K’in to slip past its guard and land another cut across its midsection.

Alonso watched from above, unmoving.

He’d never seen it in action before.

But Imani had spoken of it. So had Wang.

The second sacred skill of the Ajnal. A power wielded only by Generals, Grand Priest, and the Empress herself:

Storm Domain

A field of shifting magnetic polarity centered on the user. Generated through powerful internal capacitor nodes, polarized and resonating across the body, it bent space around them—pushing or pulling anything conductive enough that entered it.

A true domain-type skill.

And Alonso knew then—

It was worthy of its name. Equal in stature to the Beastmen’s Primal Flow.

Yet, just as the fight seemed on the verge of ending, Alonso felt it—and a pulse from K’in confirmed it.

“Engage.”

Without hesitation, already at the peak of Dual-Overdrive, Alonso leapt from the fortress wall and blurred across the snowy field.

And—

CLANG!

His Miadao blades slammed into the new Warden’s limbs just before it reached K’in.

The impact threw him back.

It was strong—stronger than anything he’d clashed with until now.

He felt the Warden’s EM field trying to anchor his swords mid-motion, tugging to lock them down—but they didn’t budge. Alonso had trained with Darius to counter this, mastering a technique that used nano-level blade vibrations in sync with a shifting EM shield. The result: his blades became untouchable, slipping through any EM grip as if invisible to them.

After the first collision, the Warden’s upper limbs came crashing down—but Alonso was already a half-step back, narrowly out of reach, only to step in again with a precise thrust.

The Warden twitched, reacting, but it was a feint.

Alonso pivoted on his right foot, slashing down with his left blade in a diagonal arc toward the thigh. It connected—shallow, but it drew blood—before the Warden shifted back.

Three of its tails fired immediately.

But Alonso had already moved, his feet slipping out of the line of fire. The projectiles flew narrowly past him.

He felt the pulse in his neck. The burn in his muscles. The tremor in his blood.

And still—he stayed calm.

A single mistake meant death.

His physical stats weren’t as high as the Warden’s—or Ayu’s under Fury.

So he had to compensate.

With technique alone.

Every movement… had to be the right one.

The Warden lunged.

Alonso barely caught the shift in its stance—the right rear blade dragging an instant longer than the others—and moved. A short slide-step, boots skimming the uneven ground, as a bladed limb cleaved past his cheek.

He didn’t blink.

Another limb swept horizontal from the left.

He disengaged, weight sinking low into a compressed recoil stance, knees folding, blades rising to deflect—not block. The edge caught just under the angle of the incoming slash, skimming it off-course in a glide-parry that rolled the force past his shoulder.

Before it landed, he was moving again.

He twisted under a vertical strike, shoulder nearly brushing the Warden’s torso as he stepped inside its guard, slashing upward for the joint.

Metal screeched.

Too shallow.

Another blade came down—he skidded out, drawing both swords back across his body in a mirrored sweep to keep space, sparks trailing.

Five tails snapped down like guillotines.

He twisted between them, ducking one, feeling the heat of another burn past his ribs. His feet shifted out in a reverse lunge, clearing all five by millimetres.

He exhaled, let the tension go.

Then moved again.

—

The Warden’s limbs blurred, crisscrossing in a downward X-strike.

Alonso dropped his center of gravity and turned—not away, but into the dead angle—inside the arc, rotating off the inside leg in a shallow spin. One blade came up under the Warden’s lowest arm, forcing it high. The other stabbed for the abdomen.

It jerked its core aside.

He adjusted mid-thrust, dragging the tip back, changing to a diagonal draw-cut along the exposed underplate.

The blade sparked. A groove formed.

Tails whipped from behind.

He didn’t look.

Instead, he threw his momentum forward, sliding under the Warden’s left limb like a skater ducking a clothesline, both swords crossing behind him to knock aside a projectile.

CLANG!

They hit steel—hard—but deflected clean.

Another limb swept in from the flank.

Alonso dropped into a controlled fall, shoulder-first, rolling into a side-break over the scorched snow.

The tails struck where he’d just been.

He came out of the roll with his right knee bent, torso upright, left blade extended low. The second sword tucked near his hip, reverse grip.

—

It adapted fast.

The next flurry came tighter—angles more chaotic. Two limbs striking on offset timings, baiting a parry while the third circled low.

Alonso read it.

He stepped into the first strike, clashing blade-on-blade, sparks shearing off. The second he caught with a slip-riposte, right arm snapping back to redirect. The third—the real attack—came for his left ankle.

He launched a micro-hop, frame compressing as both feet left the ground for half a second.

The blade slid under.

He landed light.

Then stepped forward—not back.

That caught the Warden off-guard.

His left blade darted in, not to strike but to mislead. The Warden turned slightly, readying a block.

He rotated past it, body aligned like a corkscrew, right-hand sword spearing straight for the armpit.

Contact.

Blood.

Metal cracked—then the limb twisted violently, wrenching his sword free from the wound. He barely kept hold of it, the torque nearly snapping his wrist.

Alonso hissed through his teeth, readjusting grip mid-motion.

Too risky to press there again.

The Warden jumped back two paces.

And then—it started.

Alonso tightened his grip as a corona of electricity began to build around—

Before either of them could react, a flash tore through the air. So fast, sound lagged behind it.

BOOM!

Alonso’s eyes widened as a hole was punched straight through the Warden’s left shoulder mid-skill activation. The creature barely twisted in time to keep the shot from piercing its heart.

The hesitation lasted less than a microsecond.

Alonso gritted his teeth and surged forward, both blades raised.

The severely wounded Xok’al still reacted—its pair of right limbs flashing toward him in a desperate blur—

But Alonso’s breath slowed, waves of control flowing through every microcapacitor in his body. Nerves lit up across every filament of muscle, all firing in absolute sync.

A strike that demanded everything.

He stepped in, force coiled into a perfect thread of motion.

And then—

No-Strike

The Warden attacked. Tried to guard.

But failed.

Its limbs lashed at an afterimage, a flicker of movement it thought was real.

It never saw the blade that ended it.

Alonso stood behind the Warden, still. His sword clean—moved so fast, the friction had burned the blood away mid-arc.

Behind him, as he finally exhaled the breath he’d been holding—

The Warden’s skull hit the snow with a soft thud.

No-Strike – 13.238%

Alonso didn’t delay. He turned, pierced the skull, and split it open with a swift slash of his other blade, flipping the orb out through the brain matter as it flickered toward him.

Stage 1 – 19.021%

He felt the surge of strength and clarity as the orb merged with him seamlessly.

Yet, as he stood victorious, he reflected on the fight. This Warden—compared to the one Ayu fought—had been a better fighter. Not necessarily stronger or faster, just… its technique, its reactions, the way it fought.

While he learned from them, their swarm neural network—especially at the Warden level—meant they shared and improved one another. He knew that from the Xayen records, but seeing it in action was another thing entirely.

This… could be a serious problem.

He turned toward K’in’s battle—but it was practically over. The General’s Storm Domain made the Warden’s movements collapse, as he tuned both intensity and polarity to disrupt its stance, momentum, and attacks again and again.

The Warden had lost half its limbs, blood dripping from dozens of slashes, and the sparks running across its frame were fading.

Alonso exhaled. The task seemed done. Arjun’s shot had landed perfectly.

The value of ranged combat in open fields couldn’t be overstated.

He kept tracking as K’in closed in for the finishing blow. The Warden’s limbs slowed, and the General’s blades blurred forward, trailing sparks that crackled through the air and—

The air shifted.

Alonso’s eyes almost missed it—he wouldn’t have noticed at all if not for the vibration traveling up through the ground into his feet.

His jaw loosened. His gut twisted. His hands clenched as the aftermath of the shot registered.

A projectile had been fired—much faster than even Arjun’s. He didn’t know from where or how, but in front of him, right before his eyes…

A hole had been punched cleanly through General K’in’s skull.

The body jolted.

Then dropped into the melted snow below.

The Great Ajnal General… was dead.

Alonso reacted immediately. From the speed of that projectile, it was clear… he had no way to block it—or maybe even react in time. He barely computed the shot’s direction from the entry wound, just enough for a rough estimate, before dashing back for cover, ignoring the half-dead Warden K’in hadn’t managed to finish.

“Mei, Arjun… quickly find cover and prepare to retreat!”

But as he dashed back, he felt a pulse.

“They found me.”

Alonso’s heart skipped a beat.

“It’s coming.”

It was from Arjun.