OP Absorption
Chapter 61: Final Battle

Chapter 61: Final Battle

Fin walked.

His steps were silent on the floor, each movement fluid, economical. Mechanical. He moved towards the throne, the humming blade held loosely at his side.

The Queen watched him approach, the analytical curiosity returning briefly to her eyes, warring with the simmering rage. She saw the power contained within him, the effortless destruction he had just wrought.

A faint smile touched her lips, cold and possessive. "Magnificent," she murmured again, almost admiringly.

Then her expression hardened. Amusement fled. Dominance asserted itself.

She waved a dismissive hand.

An invisible force slammed into Fin, lifting him off his feet and sending him tumbling backward through the air. He crashed into the far wall with bone-jarring force.

He slid down, landing in a heap amidst shattered stone.

"But you should know your place," she stated, her voice resonating with absolute authority. She stood slowly, gracefully unfolding from her throne, her spider legs supporting her weight. The picture of effortless power.

She raised a hand toward the crumpled figure across the hall, palm open, fingers slightly curled. She expected him to be dragged back, helpless, pulled by the bindings she thought she’d placed.

Nothing happened.

Fin didn’t move, pinned by her will. Or so she assumed.

A low chuckle echoed faintly from the rubble. Wet, ragged.

Fin pushed himself up slowly. Blood stained his teeth, smeared across his lips. The glowing green symbol on his hand pulsed faintly. The blankness in his eyes remained, but the corners of his mouth quirked upwards.

A smirk. Cold. Mocking.

"For a Queen," his monotone voice rasped, carrying easily across the vast chamber, "you sure are dumb."

The Queen’s eyes narrowed dangerously. The air around her crackled. "Insolence."

"Is it?" He tilted his head, that same unsettling, bird-like gesture. "You found a Mana Cell. Power you couldn’t handle yourself."

He took a step forward, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his unmarked hand. "You found someone with a Silver Core. Rare, yes. Stronger vessel."

Another step. "Then you revived him. Shoved that same uncontrollable power source directly into him."

He stopped, locking eyes with her, the smirk widening fractionally. "Into someone whose entire ability... his very nature... is Absorption."

The Queen stared, the implications hitting her with the force of a physical blow. Absorption. The Mana Cell. Her revival process. She hadn’t just healed him; she’d jump-started the fusion.

"You didn’t give me power," he stated, the monotone flat, chilling. "You fed me."

Rage unlike anything she had felt in centuries flooded the her being. The sheer arrogance! The humiliation! To be lectured by this... insect, empowered by her own actions!

"Silence!" she roared, her voice losing its melodic quality, replaced by pure venom. She threw both hands forward, channeling her fury.

A thick beam of pure, concentrated toxic energy erupted from her palms. It screamed across the room, the air sizzling around it, leaving trails of corrosive green-black smoke. It struck him dead center.

He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t even raise a hand.

The venom beam washed over him, enveloping him completely. For a second, his form was obscured by the churning toxic cloud.

Then, it dissipated.

He stood exactly where he had been, untouched. The glowing green symbol on his hand pulsed once, brightly, before settling back to its steady rhythm. The venom... it had done nothing. Less than nothing.

It felt like he’d absorbed it.

The Queen stared, her hands still outstretched, frozen in disbelief. Her attack. Her most potent venom, refined over millennia, capable of melting adamantium.

It hadn’t even singed his clothes.

Her mind raced. The binding failed. Her physical assertion was ignored. Her venom was useless. Why? How could a mere human, even one augmented by the Mana Cell, resist her so completely?

"Why," she whispered, the word escaping unconsciously, laced with baffled fury, "isn’t my power working on you?"

He chuckled again. A dry, humorless sound that scraped against the silence.

"Working on me?" His monotone voice dripped with newfound sarcasm. "Why would it?"

He took another step forward, his eyes seemed to sharpen, focusing on the Queen’s bewildered fury.

"You poured raw, primal mana energy into a being designed to absorb. You tried to poison something that neutralized your child’s toxins like water."

He tapped his own chest, right over where the Mana Cell had fused. "This power... it didn’t just heal me. It rewrote me."

He spread his arms slightly, a gesture of mock presentation. "The Silver Core stabilized it. My Absorption integrated it. Your venom...?" He scoffed. "Just more fuel."

His smirk widened into a cold, predatory grin. "My eyes are open now, Queen."

He looked around the vast, empty throne room, gesturing at the faint traces of dissolved ichor. "I see things clearly. Your power, your control... it’s meaningless against what you’ve accidentally created."

He locked his gaze back onto her, the cube pupils unnervingly flat. "You didn’t revive a pawn. You forged your own executioner."

The Queen trembled, not with fear, but with incandescent rage. Her knuckles were white on phantom grips, her breath coming in short, sharp hisses. "You dare..."

"I dare because you were foolish," he cut her off, the monotone voice slicing through her fury. "Blinded by arrogance. You thought you could control anything, own anything."

He shook his head slowly, mockingly. "You should have left me dead."

Her fury solidified into cold resolve.

She raised a hand, not to attack, but to summon. Shadows coalesced around her outstretched fingers, drawn from the corners of the vast hall, swirling like black smoke.

From the darkness, a weapon emerged.

It was a scythe. Massive, wicked-looking, crafted entirely from fused, bone-white material. Vertebrae formed the shaft, a sharpened rib cage curved into the deadly blade, and a horned skull leered from the junction point. It pulsed with an aura of ancient death, radiating power far exceeding anything Fin had felt from her before.

His mocking smirk faltered. Just slightly.

That weapon... it felt wrong. Dangerous on a fundamental level. The Mana Cell energy humming within him recoiled instinctively.

His arrogance cooled, replaced by sharp, focused caution. Things were about to get nasty.

The Queen gripped the bone scythe, its haft settling into her grasp as if it were an extension of her own limb. "I admit," she said, her voice regaining its cold composure, laced now with deadly intent, "empowering you was... an error."

Her eyes, burning with hatred, locked onto him. "But do not mistake my miscalculation for your superiority. You are still just an insect, granted temporary strength."

He raised an eyebrow, the smirk returning, though his stance shifted subtly, readying himself. "Oh? Are you sure about that, Queenie?"

She didn’t reply with words.

She vanished.

One moment she stood by the throne, the next she was gone. Not a blur of speed, but an instantaneous disappearance.

Fin’s enhanced senses screamed. He felt the displacement of air, heard the faintest whisper of movement... behind him.

WHISTLE—

The bone scythe sliced down, aimed directly at the back of his neck.

He reacted purely on instinct, his blade flashing upward to intercept.

CLANG!

The impact was immense. Not just force, but a chilling energy that resonated through the mana blade, jarring his entire arm to the shoulder socket. He was driven forward a step, staggering.

He spun, leaping back several yards, putting distance between them. His arm thrummed, the vibration lingering, unsettling. His blade felt... lessened, somehow, where it had contacted the bone scythe.

"Wow," he breathed, the arrogance momentarily replaced by genuine surprise. He eyed the weapon warily. "What a toy you have there."

She stood where he had been moments before, the scythe held easily in a two-handed grip. She smiled, a terrifying expression devoid of warmth. "This is no toy, insect."

She ran a loving finger along the scythe’s razor edge. "This is Requiem. Forged from the spine and ribs of the previous Queen, my predecessor... after I devoured her essence."

Her smile widened. "It carries the weight of her stolen life, the echo of her dying scream. It does not merely cut flesh; it severs existence."

She tilted her head, regarding the scythe almost fondly. "Anything it slices... dies. Irrevocably. At least," she added, her gaze snapping back to Fin, sharp and hungry, "it hasn’t met anything it can’t kill. Yet."

Then she moved.