I Ascend Alone-Chapter 130: The Birth of National Level Part IX

Leon coughed, spitting blood onto the stone as he propped himself up. His vision blurred, but he saw the aftermath clearly enough: Pyraethrax, skidding back across the battlefield like someone had yanked the mountain from beneath him.

He blinked.

"You.. you are finally showing up, huh?" he smirked.

-

Mirae froze mid-step, her dislocated arm was momentarily forgotten, and her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes locked onto me as the pressure still hanging in the air rolled across her skin like the aftershock of something not meant to be witnessed.

She swallowed hard.

"What is he" she whispered. "This guy's too strong.."

Her fingers tightened around her spear.

She'd seen gods weep. She'd walked through hell gates in Korea. But nothing—nothing—had ever moved like that.

She looked toward Leon. "Did you know he could do that?"

Leon looked at mirae and said, "That's the reason why I had to hide him from media.."

-

Orion had seen a lot of strong men fall. He'd been one of the strongest in more than one battle.

But right now?

He sat with his back against a rock, eyes wide, grinning like a lunatic.

"That man just slapped an ancient dragon in the jaw and made it move," he muttered. "Without a weapon. Without an incantation. Without a stance."

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His grin faltered.

"I don't know what that is. But it's scary to think anyone can do that."

-

Cain stared, half-hidden in shadow, his leg still numb, chest rising and falling like a bellows.

"That wasn't technique," he murmured. "That was... wrong."

He didn't mean evil. Or malicious. Just wrong in the way a thunderclap was wrong underwater.

He stared at my silhouette.

"He never said what rank he was," Cain whispered. "Because it never mattered."

-

Celestine, barely conscious, winced as healing magic stabilized her broken arm. But even in her daze, she could feel it—that shift in gravity, in presence. Her eyes fluttered open long enough to catch a glimpse of me standing at the epicenter.

"...I don't know what you are," she whispered, "but you're not ours."

And then she slipped into unconsciousness again.

-

Behind the barrier, President Vaughn didn't speak for a full five seconds.

He simply stared at the screens, at the battlefield, at me.

Everyone else around him was either whispering or paralyzed with confusion. But not him.

He was silent. Calculating.

Then, finally "There is no turning back now. Everything was recorded. Worldwide."

His voice was quiet. Cold.

"We have to announce this later on."

-

Agent Hale was clutching his headset like it might explain what he'd just witnessed. His mouth moved, but no words came.

he turned to Vaughn.

"Sir... what is he?"

Vaughn didn't look away from the battlefield.

"...A variable," he said. "One we never really accounted for."

-

Around them, the reporters were struggling to maintain composure, eyes darting between their cameras and the displays. News feeds stuttered between replay footage and analyst overlays, none of which could explain what just happened.

"There's... no classification for that," one whispered. "That's not even S-Rank."

"Is it a weapon?" another muttered. "Was it... a borrowed power?"

The oldest among them leaned forward slowly, voice distant.

"No," she said. "That was a person. And I think we've all been sleeping on a storm wearing a mask."

-

The force of the blow had carried Pyraethrax halfway across the battlefield, gouging a molten trench in the earth with each clawed limb as he fought to steady himself. His wings snapped wide, kicking up cyclones of ash and fury, but his footing was already broken.

Smoke curled from the side of his jaw where the strike had landed. Scaled plating, once impervious to even Celestine's divine edge, now fractured—fractured—from a barehanded strike. Emberlight seeped from the cracks like blood.

And worse, he felt fear.

Real, ancient fear. The kind that slithered up from the marrow and whispered in a tongue older than time: You are not the apex here.

"You... wretch," Pyraethrax snarled, voice trembling more from disbelief than rage. "You are no mere mortal!!"

I raised his head toward the smoke-wreathed silhouette ahead of Pyraethrax still standing in the clearing created by my arrival. The battlefield, once a storm of magic and carnage, now pulsed with a different rhythm.

The balance of power had shifted—and every creature present, from soldier to beast to goddamn satellite drone, felt it. Not in their minds. In their instincts.

Predator had become prey.

"I do not sense your mana," Pyraethrax growled, eyes narrowing. "Your essence—where is it?!"

Pyraethrax circled slowly now, no longer charging or roaring. Pyraethrax was hunting differently. Like a beast forced to reassess its prey.

But that wasn't fearlessness. It was wariness.

I stepped forward once, and Pyraethrax flinched. A twitch of his wings. The faintest curl of his tail.

I'd introduced a variable that not even Pyraethrax ancient arrogance could deny.

The battlefield, once a warzone, had become a ring.

The others—Leon, Mirae, Orion, Cain—had become spectators. Not because they chose to be. But because Pyraethrax wasn't looking at them anymore.

He was looking only at me.

And the world, in its stunned silence, held its breath.