Chapter 419: The Endless Corridor

Chapter 419: The Endless Corridor

With a kick, Wang Yu launched forward—not along the ground, but through empty air. To him, space itself had become a highway. Every inch of the void was a foothold, every direction a path. He could step wherever he willed.

The first attack that greeted him did not come from the armored knight, but from Donatien Charlemagne himself. The throne beneath the king lent him formidable wizardry. His body bore the strength of a legend, yet the throne's power granted him the spellcraft of a grand wizard as well.

Space split apart into long, black fissures. Within them blinked countless eerie, alien eyes. The rifts trailed Wang Yu's advance like shadows, sealing his retreat even as they appeared along the routes ahead.

Wang Yu's only response was to raise a hand. His body, inside and out, was already sheathed in void energy channeled through the power of the Chariot. To him, those cutting, destructive fissures were meaningless.

He seized one, ripped it apart, raised his arm in a guard, and tore straight through the wall of cracks ahead with a sudden lunge. He smashed through the rifts with brute force.

By then, the knight in heavy armor was upon him. In his hand, a one-handed silver hammer glimmered faintly, its head quivering with vibrations at a terrifying frequency. The knight swung this legendary weapon, Silver Dawn, down toward Wang Yu.

The blow missed. The hammer struck the ground instead. In an instant, the earth convulsed. High-frequency shockwaves turned stone to powder. The ground itself detonated in a vast cloud of dust, leaving a crater behind.

Whereas the Earthvein Greatsword released energy in an explosion, Silver Dawn drove that energy into the enemy's very body in the form of high-energy vibrations, pulverizing bone and shattering all that was solid. The knight's strike could turn a mountain to dust.

But no matter how fearsome the weapon, if the hit could not land, it was useless. Wang Yu's speed surpassed all expectations. His initial charge had barely surpassed thirty percent of what he could muster.

The instant the hammer fell, he took sixteen steps through the air in a rapid blur. He flashed behind the armored knight.

His right leg came scything down. The sweep of flesh tore at the air as if it were the edge of a blade.

As Silver Dawn struck empty ground, Wang Yu's heel struck home, slamming into the knight's helm in a duet with the weapon.

The sturdy helm twisted and caved in. The blow's sheer force drove the knight's head, and then his whole body, into the crater he himself had made.

The reinforced metal of his multilayered runic armor held long enough to spare his skull from bursting—but not his neck. Amid the spray of rock fragments, the legendary knight's spine snapped like brittle wood.

Even before the dust settled, Wang Yu swung the starsteel blade behind him, intercepting a dagger thrust from the second foe, the lightly armored legendary ranger. The weapon was grotesque: though it was as tough as steel, it looked as if it were made of blood and flesh. Upon its blade gaped a single bloodshot eye.

The instant their weapons met, that eye locked with Wang Yu's gaze. A surge of psychic force erupted, a spear of mental energy that stabbed toward his brow.

This was the legendary weapon Eye of Despair, a fleshforged masterpiece. A despairing newly minted legendary magician had been bound alive into the blade, his spirit honed into its ultimate attack.

The mental shock it unleashed could cripple almost any legend in a heartbeat. On the battlefield, even a flicker of distraction meant death.

But against Wang Yu, who might not even possess a soul, such attacks were worthless. He spun and flicked the starsteel blade aside. Then, he extended two fingers like a sword and drove them toward the ranger's throat.

Wang Yu's speed was beyond absurd. Though this ranger was specialized as a bodyguard for Donatien Charlemagne and for stealth and assassination, rather than in direct combat, he was far from slow. Yet compared to Wang Yu, this so-called legend never even had the chance to react.

Wang Yu's fingers carried such force that, despite being flesh and bone, the strike was no different than a thrust from the starsteel blde itself. Wang Yu's fingers penetrated flesh. His power blasted within—the ranger's neck was certain to explode.

But at the moment of impact, the ranger's body blurred. His whole form wavered uncertainly, then snapped backward until his state returned to what it had been a few moments earlier.

His potential, State of Indeterminacy, left him in an "indeterminate" state for a few seconds after its activation. Any attack that would deal grievous harm was nullified, and his body would revert to its state before the strike.

At the legendary tier, the ability's cooldown was a mere five seconds. On the battlefield, it granted him countless chances to cheat death.

Wang Yu's first strike missed, but his movements did not falter. He lunged forward again, faster than the eye could follow, hurling the starsteel blade like a javelin. It screamed through the air as it shot toward the ranger's chest.

The ranger parried with his dagger, but Wang Yu's strength was monstrous. The blow drove through regardless, the redirected blade carving a deep, ragged wound across his flank.

The next moment, Wang Yu himself was right before the ranger. His fist, drawn back and coiled with power, came crashing down toward the ranger's skull.

The air tore apart with the force, which was like a thunderclap. His presence loomed like a storm. Nothing fancy, nothing delicate—just overwhelming speed, brute strength, and defense beyond reason. A monster of sheer numbers.

If that fist landed, the ranger's life would be gone a dozen times over. His latent ability had triggered half a second ago. It would not save him now.

At the last instant, ripples of void flared around him. A massive hand clamped around Wang Yu's waist from behind, halting his charge. The fatal punch passed harmlessly through empty air as the ranger stumbled back in desperate retreat.

Donatien Charlemagne, who had been carefully observing the battle, had grimly torn open space itself. Barely in the nick of time, he had teleported the wounded heavily armored knight to Wang Yu's back, giving him a chance to restrain the latter.

The king's eyes blazed with fury. Even with his legendary body, tracking Wang Yu's movements was all he could do. Only when Wang Yu had committed to a strike could Donatien barely counter it.

The legendary knight in heavy armor clamped down on Wang Yu with all his might, bellowing hoarsely as he did so. He knew that to restrain the man before him required strength beyond his very limits, not just to save the wounded ranger, but also to buy his king a chance to strike.

"..."

Wang Yu said nothing. He had already discerned what potential this knight possessed. The man he had kicked hard enough to snap his spine a moment ago had recovered at an unnatural speed.

Vigorous Renewal was a potential that conferred legendary regeneration. In a way, it was not so different from Wang Yu's own resilience. So long as more than half his body remained whole, this knight could restore himself in mere moments.

That was why he alone dared to bind Wang Yu. Anyone else struck by a killing blow would be finished instantly. He, at least, could still—

Wang Yu's sudden eruption of strength surpassed anything the three had anticipated. Fighting spirit flared to its utmost, his body straining at its peak. He caught one of the knight's arms and tore it free, armor and all.

With the knight's hold broken, Wang Yu turned, seized the knight's remaining arm, and swung him up bodily. With brutal precision, he hurled the armored man at the legendary ranger rushing in with his dagger drawn.

A legendary knight clad in heavy armor made for a fine bludgeon. Blood sprayed in torrents from the stump of his arm as his body crashed into the ranger. The poor man had no chance to dodge. He was smashed into the ground beneath his own comrade's bulk.

The sheer force crushed him utterly. For all that he was a legend, his body was far more fragile than the knight's. In just an instant, he was pulped between the ground and the armored back that pinned him down.

His State of Indeterminacy did not trigger again. Barely a second and a half had passed since its last activation. Five seconds was far too long.

As for the knight used as a weapon, he fared no better. Agony wracked his body; blood spewed uncontrollably from his mouth. Then, Wang Yu's blade came down.

The starsteel blade pierced his chestplate from above, driving straight through his heart. Wang Yu did not so much as spare him a second glance. His cold eyes turned instead toward the final foe.

"You damned... monster!"

The knight's death-cry mingled with Donatien Charlemagne's curse, their voices overlapping as if to affirm one another.

The knight was dying. His latent power could not save him now. A pierced heart meant little to Vigorous Renewal. Even a shattered skull would not have finished him off.

Wang Yu, for all his strength, was no god. Even with the power of the Chariot's Void Engine, he lacked the means to obliterate half a man and his armor in one blow. So instead, he had poured his own blood into the knight's wounds.

The power of Vigorous Renewal was wholly consumed with battling that invasive corruption. None remained to mend the severed arm, nor his gaping heart.

His pulse slowed. With Wang Yu's starsteel blade still lodged in his chest, the knight who should have been unkillable, an enemy as stubborn as a cockroach, was slowly being betrayed by his own body.

Only one final foe remained: Donatien Charlemagne, King of Aleisterre.

Wang Yu stamped down hard on the ground and launched himself forward, his speed soaring to a peak. Dolan hurled volley after volley of wizardry at him, but Wang Yu cut through them as if they were mist. He caught destructive streams of energy in one hand, dissipated summoned voidspawn with his shoulder, and slipped past even the spatial snares designed to trap him.

Against the raging storm of void energy, Wang Yu advanced like a phantom swimming upstream. Donatien strained to pour out ever more power, yet before he realized it, Wang Yu was already atop the ward woven by the throne itself.

Donatien shivered as those cold eyes met his through the shimmering barrier. When had this obscure nobody grown so powerful? Killing him today was beyond his reach.

"Wang Yu, so long as I remain on this throne, I shall rule over this kingdom! This is the very foundation of Aleisterre!"

Stripped of trusted retainers, bereft of all his legendary champions, left with only the royal guards who had long since fled the palace, Donatien nevertheless continued to bluster. He still clung to the belief that the throne's barrier could not be breached.

What happened next betrayed his confidence. Wang Yu's right hand, blazing with golden light, forced its way into the barrier. The glow shattered as his fingers pierced deep. With the Chariot's power roaring in his veins, he tore the indomitable wall apart.

Under Donatien's horrified gaze, Wang Yu vaulted inside and drove a fist straight toward his skull.

"...We were never meant to be enemies."

A sigh came at that instant. It was a voice familiar to Wang Yu—the Royal Astrologer Selene's.

The words carried no clear meaning, yet the world shifted at once. Magic flared in a storm. The moment Wang Yu crossed into the throne's dominion, the air thickened with spells.

Space rippled in tandem. It was as though he had thrown himself headlong into a trap.

"So... I've been played."

A murmur left his lips as the distortion crystallized. The chaos around him resolved into a vast, impossible domain: the Endless Corridor.