Bab 428: Fall of the Paragon
Magnus exhaled, each breath rattling as if the weight of the world pressed against his lungs. His body, a monument of unyielding strength for decades, now trembled under the strain. The Martial King—the Paragon of humanity—was crumbling.
No more.
The words echoed in his mind, cold and final. His vision blurred, and for a moment, the battlefield disappeared. Instead, he stood before towering platinum gates shimmering with an ethereal glow.
The Gates of Transcendence.
He reached out, his hand trembling as it neared the threshold. But the gates rejected him. The force was not cruel, but it was absolute. He was not worthy—not now, perhaps not ever.
And just like that, reality snapped back into place. The roar of Caladros's night-forged astral energy filled the air, shoving Magnus back with brutal force. He staggered, his knees buckling beneath him. Caladros, the Vampire Monarch, stood opposite him, barely holding himself together. The once-proud figure of immortal dominance now seemed ragged, but even in his exhaustion, he exuded an aura of inevitability.
For over a year, they had fought. Blow for blow, retreat and advance, heal and clash again. But Magnus was only human. And Caladros, though drained, still held the monstrous vitality of his kind.
"You were… strong, human," Caladros rasped, his voice like gravel dragged across stone. Magnus fell to his knees, his weapon slipping from his grasp. The legendary Nyxthar, dull and lifeless, clattered to the ground.
Magnus clutched his chest, panting. Every ounce of mana, every reserve of strength, every shred of will had been spent. He was hollow, the indomitable power that once defined him now an empty echo.
'What has my entire life amounted to?' The question rose unbidden, bitter and biting. He had been the Paragon of humanity, the first and only of his generation to achieve mid Radiant-rank. He had slain a Radiant-rank Shadow Seeker, a feat that solidified his place as Rank 1 among mortals.
And yet, what did it mean?
No one would mourn Magnus Draykar. He had no family, no friends, no connections that tethered him to the world. His disciple, Arthur Nightingale, might remember him fondly, but even then, Magnus had been an imperfect mentor.
'I failed him. I failed everyone.'
The thought coiled around him as tightly as the despair in his chest. Caladros's spear gleamed, the tip aimed at his heart. No, not just his heart—his soul. The strike would end him utterly, leaving no chance for regeneration, no trace of Magnus Draykar.
'So this is how it ends.'
The spear shot forward.
Crimson threads erupted from nowhere, snaring the spear mid-flight. The weapon stopped inches from Magnus's chest, vibrating with impotent fury. The threads tightened, shimmering with an unsettling beauty as they wound around the weapon and its wielder.
Caladros's roar split the air. "Alyssara!"
He recognized her before Magnus could even process what was happening. Astral energy burst from Caladros in an attempt to break free, but the threads absorbed it, nullifying his power. They cocooned him, layer upon layer, until the Vampire Monarch was nothing more than a crimson chrysalis.
Then, with a sharp contraction, the threads closed in. The cocoon shrank to nothingness, and so too did Caladros's presence.
Magnus's heart stuttered. Caladros, the terror at the peak of mid Radiant-rank, was gone. True, he had been weakened after their prolonged battle, but to see him eradicated so effortlessly?
The air twisted, shimmering with the faint hum of spatial magic. A figure landed before Magnus, her descent graceful and deliberate. Moonlight glinted off her pink hair, cascading like a silken river, and her jade-green eyes sparkled with amusement.
"Alyssara Velcroix," Magnus rasped, recognizing her immediately.
But she was not the Alyssara he remembered.
The last time he had seen her, she had been a fellow mid Radiant-ranker, formidable but still within the realm of mortals. Now, the aura she exuded was otherworldly, transcendent. She had surpassed the limits of mortality, stepping into a domain Magnus had only glimpsed at the Gates of Transcendence.
She smiled, a gesture as sharp as it was serene. "I'm not here to save you," she said, her tone light but laced with finality.
Magnus, still kneeling, felt a bitter laugh rise in his throat but swallowed it. He hadn't expected rescue, nor did he deserve it. But the words stung nonetheless.
His knees buckled further, and he collapsed fully to the ground, his head bowed. For the first time in years, Magnus Draykar felt utterly, irredeemably powerless.
Alyssara twirled her fingers, and Magnus's battered body rose into the air as if it weighed nothing. She hummed a lilting tune, her steps light as she meandered through the canyon scarred by the clash between him and Caladros. The ground bore the marks of their monumental battle: jagged fissures, scorched craters, and shattered stones that whispered of their ferocity.
"Tell me, Martial King," she began, her jade eyes glinting with mischief and menace, "what shall I do with you?" Her voice was silk over steel, a predator's purr. "Should I kill you outright? Deliver your head to the Slatemark Palace as a warning? Or perhaps I should leave your broken body at your disciple's feet? Oh, the poetic irony of it!"
Magnus, dangling like a marionette in her threads, looked at her with the calm resignation of a man who had lived too long with the inevitability of death. "Do what you will," he said simply, his voice hoarse but steady.
Alyssara's grin widened. "How delightfully dull. No defiance? No curses? Not even a half-hearted attempt at bargaining for your life?"
He met her gaze, unflinching. "What's the point? Even at my peak, I couldn't defeat you. Now? It's over."
For the first time, her expression flickered, her grin faltering into something unreadable. "You're quite the realist, aren't you?" she murmured. "I should admire it, but somehow, it's just so… boring." She flicked her fingers, and the threads tightened around him, a subtle reminder of her absolute control.
Magnus's thoughts drifted, not to himself but to the world he was leaving behind. He worried for humanity, for the chaos Alyssara's power would bring. He thought of Arthur, his reckless, brilliant disciple. 'Would he ever be ready to face a force like this?'
But he was powerless to act. The Martial King, the Paragon of humanity, was about to meet his end.
Alyssara sighed theatrically. "So anticlimactic. You don't even beg. Goodbye, Paragon."
Magnus closed his eyes as her threads closed in. They wrapped tighter and tighter, crushing the remnants of his mana and strength into nothing. For a brief moment, he felt the weight of his failures, the ache of dreams unfulfilled. Then, there was only silence.
Magnus Draykar was gone.
Alyssara stood over the spot where his body had been, her playful smirk gone, replaced by an expression of mild dissatisfaction. "How boring," she muttered, her tone more disappointed than triumphant. Her gaze flicked to the ground, where Nyxthar, the Martial King's Legendary-grade sword, lay abandoned.
She crouched, plucking the weapon from the earth. It shimmered faintly in protest, its inherent power resisting her touch, but she held it easily. "A pretty little trophy," she mused, turning it in her hand. Her eyes then caught the glint of Caladros's spear, another Legendary-grade artifact left behind in the aftermath. She retrieved it with a flick of her wrist, her threads carrying it to her side.
"This will do nicely," she said, her voice laced with satisfaction. The air around her shimmered and twisted, space bending to her will as she disappeared without a trace.
The news of Magnus Draykar's death spread like wildfire across the continents. By the next day, the world was in uproar.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone