Power of Runes-Chapter 81: Twin Calamity Subjugation (11)

"Brother... the injuries that brat inflicted upon me... they are not healing," Miraak said, his voice low and dripping with a frustrated anger that seemed to simmer beneath his skin.

Zerak narrowed his eyes, and looked at his arms, "It is true," he replied in a grim tone.

"The injury left by that bug named Ray refuses to heal as well. And more than that... I feel tired. It is exhaustion that should not even be possible for a demon like me."

He was feeling frustrated over it, but then , Miraak's lips twisted into a cruel smile as his gaze swept across the scene.

Everywhere he looked, the bodies of unconscious children lay scattered, their stillness unbroken.

His eyes then shifted to Ash, who seemed to be weeping over a girl. A dark, twisted satisfaction curled in Miraak's chest as he observed the destruction.

"Even so," he murmured, a dark glint in his eyes, "seeing the ruin we've caused... it brings a strange pleasure to my heart."

"That is true, now let's kill all of them together and leave—" Zerak began to respond, but he never managed to finish his sentence.

In the next moment, an invisible force suddenly swept across the air.

And a cold, chill raced down their spines, making their bodies stiffen and their breath hitch inside their throats.

It was as if the world itself had paused to listen.

A presence — one so ancient and heavy that it seemed to predate even the oldest memories of their race — began to press down on the surroundings.

The very air groaned under its weight, and the shadows trembled.

The ground cracked under an unseen pressure.

They looked towards the place the Aura was coming from. Then they saw, it was the same boy they were laughing at few moments ago.

From the very core of his being, waves of aura were pouring out — powerful, violent, endless waves that grew heavier and heavier with every heartbeat.

What the hell is this...?

What is happening...?

Both Miraak and Zerak found themselves trapped inside the same terrifying thought, their eyes locked helplessly onto Ash.

Their hearts, blackened and calloused by centuries of cruelty, began to beat faster, each thump pounding against their ribs with growing terror.

Their bodies began to tremble uncontrollably.

For the first time in their cursed lives, they felt an emotion that demons were never supposed to feel.

They felt fear.

A pure, instinctive fear, a fear that spoke of inevitable death.

"H-how...?" Miraak stammered, his voice cracking in disbelief. His hands shook as he tried to hold himself together.

"W-wasn't he supposed to be weak...? How is this happening...?"

Ash, who had been crouching slightly, slowly rose to his feet.

His movements were sluggish, almost as if he was dragging not just his body, but the very weight of the world itself.

He turned around to face them, and for a moment, the world seemed to fall utterly silent.

Ash shouted with a voice that tore through the silence like a blade through flesh:

"YOU MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A BITCH!!"

His scream echoed across the shattered landscape, shaking the very earth beneath their feet.

At that moment, Miraak and Zerak felt the very ground beneath their feet vanished. Their bodies froze stiff, and it became hard to even breathe because of the heavy pressure filling the air.

A cold shiver ran down their backs, and deep inside, they felt like they were about to die. Their breathing, once calm and steady, fractured into shallow gasps.

What....kind of....monster is this guy?

The same scary thought echoed inside both their heads at the same time.

And the reason for that was simple — it was Ash's face.

It was distorted, twisted into a nightmarish collage of emotions that should never coexist. His lips curled into a hollow, broken smile, tears of blood streamed endlessly from wide, soul-burning eyes that reflected a thousand storms.

Anger.

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Guilt.

Sadness.

Joy.

Excitement.

Grief.

Depression.

Longing.

Shame

Resentment

Loneliness

Hatred

Every raw, violent, messy emotion a living being could feel — all of them were carved into his face at once,

It looked so wrong and so scary that it was hard to even look at him.

He didn't look like a boy pretending to be a monster.

He looked like a monster pretending to be a boy.

Then, suddenly, a golden-white Aura wrapped around Ash's body. His skin started to crack apart, golden light spilling from open wounds only to knit itself back together, a cycle of death and rebirth repeating with every agonizing heartbeat.

It was a brutal, merciless cycle:

Crack.

Bleed.

Heal.

Crack.

Bleed.

Heal.

The cracking sound of his bones echoed quietly in the air. His body kept breaking and healing again and again, without stopping for even a second.

Miraak and Zerak, even though they were demons, took a step back without even thinking.

"W-what is that thing...?" Miraak whispered, but nobody answered.

Ash never stopped trying to learn more about his own powers. He always believed — if you want to beat others, you have to understand yourself better first.

That's when he was studying his core, he got an idea. He remembered the skill Ray used — Overclock.

Its mechanism was explained in the novel. The idea was simple: push a huge amount of mana into your core, way more than it can handle, and compress it inside.

Normally, if someone tried this and messed up, their core would break forever, and they would become a cripple.

But Ash was different.

His Primordial Core could fix itself, even if it got completely broken.

The first time he tried, he failed.

The core cracked. Pain unlike anything he had ever known tore through his body, a cold, searing agony that left him broken and gasping.

Ray could do it easily because he had a system to help him. For Ray, it was automatic.

But Ash had to do everything by himself, step by step, feeling every second of pain.

But the damage was minor, and the core repaired itself within a day. Again and again he attempted it, feeling the core splinter, feeling his body betray him, until at last he succeeded.

He achieved a perfect Overclock —But it came at a horrifying price.

Because every time he used it — every single time — Ash could feel a piece of his potential being carved away.

Each overload eroded the future he could have had.

Each success shaved off a fraction of the strength he might one day wield.

It wasn't obvious after the first use.

It wasn't obvious after the second.

But after the third... he felt it.

His potential was already low — only around Grandmaster level (A Rank).

That's why Ash decided to only use this power when he had no other choice.

Yet even that understanding did not erase the question burning in his heart.

Why could Ray use Overclock without consequence?

The answer was clear when he thought about it.

Ray had a system — a divine scaffold that granted him limitless potential. Ash had no such gift. He was alone, fighting against destiny with bloodstained hands and a broken future.

And even now he was burning that future with his own hands.

Overloading a single core was already devastating, but what if he forced two cores to do it at once?

The answer was plain to see. His body would tear itself apart under the unbearable strain, like now.

The power was so crazy that his body couldn't handle it. His skin cracked. His bones shattered. His blood poured out. But he didn't fall.

Because Rune of Life was healing his body faster than the injuries could destroy it, Ash remained standing.

The Primordial Core inside him was too powerful — something no normal core could ever compare to.

Soon, the aura around him compressed violently, pulling tighter until it snapped into brilliant golden lightning that cracked off his skin in wild arcs.

It tore into the surrounding hall, carving burns into stone and splintering the floor — yet, somehow, not a single bolt touched the unconscious children, and Elysia lying nearby.

Ash's blue irises shifted, glowing gold as if molten light had replaced them. His already torn shirt was consumed by the rising heat, revealing a body lean and hard, every muscle tightly wound as if forged under endless pressure.

His hair rose and whipped around him, no longer obeying gravity, moving like strands of living flame.

In the next instant, all the emotions that had been flooding his eyes vanished completely.

Only a hollow, frozen coldness was left behind in his eyes.

Yet, his expression grew more distorted, as if all the emotions reflecting in his eyes went to his face.

I had no choice but to activate Omni Thought...the pain would have broken me otherwise.

But that didn't mean he would forgive what had been done. His gaze, cold and hollow, locked onto Miraak and Zerak with a quiet, lethal promise.

You made her suffer this much. I will kill you even more painfully.

He took out his sword from his space ring, his blood stained hands pressed against the blade's surface, and this time, instead of rejecting him, the sword absorbed the blood eagerly, like a starving creature finally fed.

The sword gleamed briefly in his hand, as if acknowledging him, before its light faded, and it returned to its normal form.

Finally...

Ash thought as he unsheathed the blade completely.

The sword's surface was oddly clear like a mirror, reflecting his own face back at him — a face barely recognizable as human.

He stared at the twisted reflection — the wild golden eyes, the savage lines cut into his face, the feral hair rising around him — and let out a small, broken thought.

I don't look human anymore. I look like a monster... It's good no one's awake to see me like this.

Without wasting another breath, Ash stepped forward.

The moment his foot touched the ground, his body blurred, dissolving into a storm of golden-white lightning.

THRUMMMM!!!

A thunderclap exploded through the hall, loud enough to rattle the very walls, and the ground beneath him cracked from the force of his movement.

The true battle had begun.

***

"What did you say?" Elva asked, her voice sharp with urgency as she turned to face Melissia.

"There's something they used to set up that barrier," Melissia said quickly, her words tumbling out. "If we find it and destroy it, the barrier will collapse."

Elva's eyes narrowed. "And how do you know that?"

"I... I overheard someone," Melissia stammered, gripping her sleeves tightly. "Back then, I didn't think much of it, but seeing the barrier now... it has to be the same thing."

She clutched at her chest, almost as if steadying her heart. "This must be it."

Elva studied her, suspicion flickering in her gaze, but in the end, she said nothing.

"This academy is huge," Elva said, glancing up at the sky where the black barrier loomed like a suffocating shadow. "How exactly do you expect us to find it?"

"It should be near where the barrier is, and the source of the barrier could be anything that is touching the ground," Melissia said, her voice steadier now. "If we check the places near the barrier carefully... we'll find the source."

"I see," Elva murmured, her eyes still sharp. "And you just happened to hear this also, right?"

"Y-yes," Melissia said, nodding quickly, "I was trying to find you, Instructor Elva, but the guards wouldn't let me near. That's why... that's why I fired the flare into the sky."

She stumbled over her words, guilt flashing across her face. Before she could say more, Elva reached out and gently placed her hand atop Melissia's head.

"You did well," Elva said, her voice softer. "Smart thinking. If we can save the children, you will be rewarded."

She dropped her hand and straightened up. "Stay here. It's going to get dangerous."

"No!" Melissia cried out before she could stop herself. "I want to help find the source!"

Elva looked at her, at the fear and courage tangled together in her eyes, and after a long breath, she relented.

"Alright," she said.

Placing her hand on Melissia's shoulder, Elva activated her spell, and the two of them vanished.

Meanwhile, in her heart, Melissia clutched onto a single thought,

I did what you asked me to do, Ash. Please... be safe. Be safe with all of them.

***

A/N: If you feel like I did you dirty by not showing the fight scene... SO WHAT??? 😂😂 Next Chapter's where the real chaos begins—hehehehe! Stay tuned, you beauti-fools! ❤️