The air in the Royal Knights' training hall was thick with tension and the sharp scent of ozone. It was no longer filled with the casual grunts and clatter of practice; it was charged, electric, as if a storm had been bottled within the stone walls. In the center, two figures moved at a speed that strained the eyes of the onlookers—seasoned knights and wide-eyed aspirants alike.
Ragnar and Sir Lancelot were a blur of motion. The practice swords in their hands were no longer wooden sticks but extensions of their will, clashing with a force that sent visible sparks cascading to the floor. This was not a test. This was a duel. A conversation of violence between two forces who understood power on a fundamental level.
Sir Lancelot, the venerable Knight Commander, was a master of form and discipline. His holy light power, a radiant energy that had purged demons and held back darkness for decades, infused his every move, making his sword gleam with an inner fire. His footwork was impeccable, his parries a testament to a lifetime of combat. Yet, for the first time in years, he felt a bead of sweat trace a path down his temple. He was being pressed.
Ragnar's style was a revelation. It was not the rigid, honor-bound swordsmanship of the kingdom. It was a wild, chaotic, and brutally efficient dance. It was fierce, meant to shatter and destroy, yet it held an undeniable, lethal elegance. Each swing was a lightning strike, each dodge a gust of wind. It was a style forged not in training yards, but in the crucible of cosmic warfare, against enemies that dwarfed dragons and threats that could unmake stars.
Their blades met in a shriek of protesting wood and energy. Lancelot disengaged, his chest heaving slightly, his eyes wide with a astonishment he could no longer conceal.
"Who are you?" Lancelot's voice cut through the din, not with anger, but with a profound, searching intensity. "This is not the skill of a mercenary or a hermit. This... this speaks of battlefields I cannot fathom." He took a step closer, his gaze piercing. "You are too young to carry the weight I see in your eyes. What have you experienced, boy?"
Ragnar stood his ground, his breathing controlled, his crimson eyes glowing faintly. He offered no answer. The secrets of the Power Spheres, of TAPOPS, of a universe he was sworn to protect, were chains to his past life. He was Ragnar now.
Seeing the wall of silence, Lancelot did not press. Instead, a slow, fierce smile spread across his face. It was the smile of a warrior who had found a true challenge. "You wish to see my strength?" he boomed, his voice echoing in the hall. "You wish to see the power that carved my name into the annals of this kingdom? Then witness it!"
He fell back into a stance the onlookers had only heard of in ballads. He pointed his sword behind him, the tip aimed at the floor. A deep thrum of power filled the air, and the practice sword began to glow, not with its usual holy light, but with a concentrated, terrifying brilliance. A cross-shaped halo of pure energy materialized around the blade, humming with apocalyptic promise.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Several senior knights paled. "The Holy Cross Smite... By the gods, he's serious..."
Ragnar's analytical mind, the part of him that was once Voltra, calculated the incoming attack in milliseconds. The energy signature was immense, focused, and divine in nature. The wooden practice sword in his hand would be vaporized upon contact. He could not block it. He could only evade, but the attack's area of effect was likely immense. A cold dread, unfamiliar to him, began to creep in. He was cornered.
And in that moment of supreme pressure, as death loomed in the form of holy light, a crack opened in the dam of his present consciousness. A torrent of old memories, vivid and overwhelming, rushed in.
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The air at the old military base was a foul cocktail of rot, gunpowder, and ozone. The endless tide of zombies was the true enemy here—a force that knew no fear, felt no pain, and possessed a bottomless hunger. Noctus and Artemis were the eye of this storm, two whirlwinds of destruction moving with an almost preternatural synchronicity.
Noctus fought with bare hands, his Tempest power turning his limbs into bludgeons of compressed air. A flick of his wrist sent a zombie's head snapping back with the force of a cannonball. A sweep of his leg unleashed a scythe of wind that cleaved through three others. Beside him, Artemis was a dancer of death, her katana movements fluid and precise. She used the wind not for brute force, but for finesse—guiding her strikes, enhancing her leaps, and creating invisible blades that decapitated foes with silent efficiency.
They fought, they pushed back, they supported their teammates, creating pockets of safety in the sea of undead. But the situation was a grinding war of attrition they were destined to lose.
The shift came with the arrival of two new figures. They emerged from the horde, their skin a dark, mottled grey, their eyes glowing with a sickly yellow intelligence. They moved with a purpose the other zombies lacked.
"Watch out!" a man from Artemis's group screamed, his voice cracking with panic. "There are two high-level ones here!"
Noctus and Artemis didn't need to be told twice. They broke from their current engagements and shot towards the new threats like arrows. But the mutant zombies were ready. As they closed in, the creatures' jaws unhinged, and from their throats, a swarm of slick, black tentacles erupted, lashing out with whip-crack speed.
Noctus and Artemis were forced on the defensive, a frantic dance of evasion. Noctus used bursts of wind to alter his trajectory mid-air, twisting and turning to avoid the grasping tendrils. He saw an opening and poured on the speed, the Tempest power surging within him, aiming to close the distance and deliver a decisive blow.
But one of the mutants let out a shrill, piercing shriek. The sound was a physical weapon, a wave of disorienting psychic energy that slammed into Noctus's mind. His focus shattered. For a split second, his movements faltered.
It was all the opening the tentacles needed. They seized him, wrapping around his arms, his legs, his torso with the strength of industrial hydraulics. The air was crushed from his lungs. He felt his ribs groan in protest. He struggled, summoning gusts of wind to try and tear them away, but they only constricted tighter, squeezing the very life from him.
As black spots danced at the edge of his vision, as the pressure became unbearable, his mind, seeking an anchor, fractured. A memory, long buried under the weight of his new existence, surged to the surface with the force of a hurricane.
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The stern of the AW-03 was a chaotic mess of swinging fists and pained grunts. The fight was simple in its nature, yet maddeningly difficult due to the sheer, overwhelming numbers. Edward's subordinates, while lacking in individual skill, were endless.
Gaiard and Tiama fought back-to-back, a fortress of two. His movements were brutally efficient—Muay Thai knees that shattered jaws, Silat elbows that crumpled body armor. Hers were a display of powerful, linear strikes—Taekwondo kicks that sent men flying, Karate punches that broke bones. They moved as one, a perfectly synchronized machine of combat, their similar Crystal power giving their blows an unbreakable solidity.
But for every one they knocked down, two more took his place. They were being slowly, inexorably cornered against the stern railing, the churning, polluted ocean waiting below.
A sharp crack cut through the noise of the brawl. Gaiard grunted, stumbling back as a searing pain erupted in his elbow. A trickle of blood bloomed on his sleeve. One of Edward's men, hanging back, held a smoking pistol, a coward's weapon on a ship where brawls were meant to be settled with fists.
Edward himself, his face a bloody, swollen mess from Gaiard's earlier punch, pushed his way to the front, a triumphant, ugly sneer on his face.
"See that, you lower-deck scum?" he spat, pointing at Gaiard. "That's what happens when you defy your betters!" His gaze then slid to Tiama, a possessive gleam in his eyes. "It's not too late, darling. Agree to be my wife, and I'll tell my men to spare your... pet. He can keep his life, as a wedding gift."
Tiama's response was a single, venomous word. "Disgusting."
Gaiard was silent. He stood tall, ignoring the pain, focusing his Crystal power inward. He could feel the bullet lodged in his joint, could feel his body already working to encapsulate it, to mend the torn flesh and bone. It was a slow, agonizing process, but it was working. He was healing.
As he stood there, a rock of defiance amidst the swirling chaos, the pressure of the moment, the threat to this new, fragile alliance, triggered something deep within his psyche. The world seemed to slow down. The shouts of Edward's men became a distant roar. And in that suspended silence, a memory, foundational and powerful, erupted from the depths of his being.
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The battle hall of the Space Exploring Officer Academy was an inferno. Two figures, wreathed in roaring orange and red flames, clashed at its center, their conflict a spectacle of terrifying beauty.
Ignis and Flamme were a perfect, violent equilibrium. His fighting style was direct and overwhelming—fiery fists that exploded on impact, arcing kicks that left trails of superheated air. Hers was more nuanced, a display of control and creativity—a fire whip that snapped and curled, seeking openings with a life of its own.
A fist met the whip, and a wave of heat washed over the first few rows of spectators, forcing them back. Ignis followed with a spinning kick, but Flamme was already gone, her form dissolving into a shimmer of heat haze. Her whip retaliated, scoring a long, black burn on the arena floor where he had just been standing.
The stands were a cacophony of thoughts. Some watched Ignis with awe, seeing the raw, untamed power of a natural. Others looked down their noses, his slum origins a stain they could not overlook. Many more watched Flamme with a mixture of pride and concern—their genius teacher, their "noble flower," was being pushed to her limits by a commoner.
Back in the arena, Ignis dodged another lash of the whip. But Flamme was done playing. With a sharp cry, she poured more power into her weapon. The orange flames wrapping the whip intensified, coalescing, twisting. The tip of the whip swelled and formed a distinct, serpent-like head, its maw open and hissing with tongues of fire. It was no longer a tool; it was a familiar, a Flaming Serpent, and it shot towards Ignis with malevolent intent.
Ignis, for a moment, stood his ground. He watched the serpent of fire rush towards him, its form so vivid, so alive. The sight was strangely familiar, a mirror to a conflict buried deep within his soul. The heat, the aggression, the primal struggle of fire... it unlocked a door. Staring into the maw of the flaming serpent, his mind was suddenly not in the academy, but elsewhere, locked in a different battle, a fundamental conflict against an opposite, yet familiar, force.
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The arena of the International Ranker Association was a winter landscape, a stark contrast to the sterile, climate-controlled building that housed it. The air was frigid, and the ground was covered in a thick layer of pristine white snow, broken only by the impact craters of their conflict.
Friz and Friya were twin blizzards, their movements a graceful, deadly ballet. He fought with a calm, internalized power—icy palm strikes that flash-froze the air on contact, conjured snowballs that hit with the force of cannonballs. She was more external, more aggressive—manifesting spears of ice that she hurled with pinpoint accuracy, creating walls of frost to block his attacks.
High-rankers watched from the observation deck, their expressions grim. The power on display was not that of ordinary rookies. The auras emanating from the two combatants were ancient, profound, and carried a weight that made their own hard-won abilities feel insignificant.
At the center, Friya was accumulating energy. While Friz deftly dodged another volley of ice spears, she held her ground, her hands cupped as a sphere of swirling, concentrated cold grew between them. The air around her dropped to absolute zero, and the moisture crystallized, forming the shape of a massive, gatling-style barrel made entirely of shimmering frost.
She unleashed it. A wave of frost bullets, hundreds of them, sprayed towards Friz in a wide, inescapable arc. Each bullet carried the power to freeze a man solid instantly.
Friz watched the barrage come, a wall of certain death. There was no time to dodge, no space to create a barrier large enough. In that fraction of a second, facing an attack of such scale and coldness, his mind did not seek a solution from his new life. It reached back, far back, to the most fundamental conflict of his existence. The memory that surfaced was not of this world, but of a timeless struggle against his absolute opposite.
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The forest clearing was a whirlwind of primal violence. Heim and Flora were a tempest of green against the tide of barbarian fury. They dodged stone axes and crude spears, their own vines lashing out to entangle limbs and disarm their attackers. But the numbers were relentless. For every barbarian they subdued, two more surged forward, their guttural roars a constant, mindless soundtrack to the struggle.
Communication was impossible. Every attempt Heim or Flora made to reason, to gesture for peace, was met with snarls and renewed aggression. These were not men to be reasoned with; they were forces of nature, like a wildfire that had to be contained.
In the chaos, Heim failed to notice the group that had flanked them, moving with a hunter's stealth through the dense undergrowth. Thick, braided ropes, weighted with stones, shot out from the bushes. They wrapped around his wrists and ankles with practiced accuracy. Before he could react, a dozen barbarians on the other end pulled, their combined strength yanking him off his feet and stretching his limbs taut.
He was completely vulnerable, pulled in four different directions, his Jungle power momentarily neutralized by the sudden, overwhelming physical force. As he strained against the ropes, feeling his joints scream in protest, his mind, seeking a way out, reached for its most profound memory of power and unity. It wasn't a memory of solitude or separation, but of his first, miraculous convergence with another.
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The canyon spring was a scene of coordinated chaos. Alstar and Alexandrite had fallen into a perfect rhythm. He was the blade, dancing in and out of the python's reach, his military knife leaving deep, bleeding gashes along its scaled body. She was the gun, her rifle shots cracking out with surgical precision, aiming for the creature's eyes and the inside of its mouth whenever it struck.
The giant python, for all its size and strength, was being outmaneuvered. It was slow, predictable, and the two humans were a whirlwind of coordinated aggression. Victory was within grasp.
They never saw the ambush coming.
A canister arced through the air from the canyon ridge behind them, landing with a soft thump between Alstar and Alexandrite. It emitted no explosion, only a blinding flash of light and a deafening sonic pulse.
The world dissolved into white noise and disorientation. Alstar's enhanced senses, both his Soldier-class attributes and his innate Gamma power, were overloaded. He stumbled, his knife clattering from his numb fingers.
Through the ringing in his ears, he heard shouts. A group of players, five of them, emerged from their hiding spots. They weren't here for the python; they were here for the players. They saw a weakened boss and two disoriented competitors—a perfect opportunity for an easy kill and loot.
As they rushed forward, weapons drawn, the python, enraged and injured, also saw its chance. It ignored its own pain and lunged towards the stunned Alstar, its massive maw gaping wide, ready to swallow him whole.
Caught between the hostile players and the charging monster, disoriented and vulnerable, Alstar's logical mind raced through scenarios, each one ending in termination. In this moment of absolute crisis, his consciousness, seeking a solution beyond mere physical combat, accessed its deepest archive. It bypassed a thousand battles and went straight to the origin of his expanded capabilities. He remembered the first time his light had learned to intertwine with another element, creating something entirely new and far greater than the sum of its parts.