Revenge: A Path of Destruction
Chapter 115: When Legends Break

Chapter 115: When Legends Break

Smoke rose like spirits from the scorched earth.

A single breeze dared cross the battlefield, carrying ash, silence, and the copper sting of blood.

And amid the ruin—

Alex stood.

Katana low. Head bowed. Motionless.

Steam curled from his battered form in lazy wisps, trailing off bruised skin and torn armor. Blood pooled beneath his boots, dark and glistening, mixing with the remnants of shattered stone. The katana in his grip still smoked, a quiet testament to the force it had just unleashed—an attack that defied logic, cost, and consequence.

He hadn’t moved.

Not since the strike.

Because even for him—especially for him—that blow had been a double-edged sword. It hadn’t just torn through earth and mana. It had carved through him. Flesh, bone, and will.

And yet... he remained.

Across the battlefield, Khepri knelt, half-buried in the rubble of his masterpiece. His greatest creation. His last hope.

Gone.

His eyes, wide with disbelief, locked onto Alex. His hands trembled. Blood streaked across cracked armor that once gleamed with pride. The composed mask he’d worn for decades was gone. Shattered. What stared back now was no leader, no tactician.

Just a man.

A man who could not understand what had just happened.

He glanced between the boy and the ruin of his construct, struggling to make sense of it. But the battlefield offered no answers. Only silence. Only smoke.

It wasn’t possible.

It shouldn’t have been possible.

Khepri’s chest rose and fell in labored rhythm. His lip curled. A snarl formed beneath clenched teeth, veins pulsing at his temple. And then, from the haze, his voice tore loose—jagged, broken, raw. Not regal. Not calculated.

But furious.

"HOW DID YOU DO IT?!"

"I CAN’T UNDERSTAND HOW A BOY LIKE YOU—LIKE YOU—WAS ABLE TO CREATE SUCH AN ATTACK!!"

These weren’t questions.

They were accusations.

Spat like venom. Screamed like curses. Ripped from the throat of a man whose reality had just betrayed him.

Khepri had made a gamble. He’d spent nearly every last drop of mana stabilizing the fusion of five cores—his final gamble. A construct born of precision and life.

That the construct would buy time—time enough for Khepri to recover, rise, and retake control, as he was sure Alex was already on his last leg, as if he survived and destroyed the his creation by then, he would have been ready.

But there had been no time.

The construct fell too fast. Too easily. Too completely.

Now, Khepri was a legend in name only—mana drained, ribs fractured, bones aching under divine strain. His trump card shattered. His vision was failing.

Reflex and will were the only reasons he still breathed.

But even he knew the truth: in this state, he wouldn’t survive an encirclement of five Grandmasters.

Let alone face Alex.

And as that truth—bitter, undeniable—pressed deeper into his mind...

He couldn’t accept it.

A legend rank.

Brought low.

By a Grandmaster.

By a boy.

----

Alex barely heard Khepri’s scream.

His world had narrowed to the sharp, searing pain radiating from his hands.

The flesh had split. Veins burst. Blood streamed down his wrist in a steady drip, pooling at his feet.

Stop the bleeding, he told himself.

That was all he could think about.

Not Khepri.

Not the ruined battlefield.

Not even the satisfaction of watching his enemy fall.

Just the pain. Just the damage. Just the sheer effort it took to stay standing after channeling something his body had not been ready to endure.

He clenched his jaw and tried to move. His knees nearly gave out.

The katana in his hand—Torphos—was still humming with faint residual energy, the blade glowing dimly like the ember of a dying star.

His body wouldn’t listen.

His mind screamed to end it—finish Khepri while he still could—but his muscles had other plans. That one strike had emptied him.

But that had always been the gamble.

His mind drifted back, moments before the slash, to when he invoked the divine art.

He’d known, even then, that he couldn’t absorb the thunderbolt-not completely, with the current state of his body. That kind of divine lightning, summoned from the fabric of the world itself, was not just raw power. It had intent. A will.

To absorb means to be consumed by it and become it.

The divine art demanded total absorption—no exceptions, no shortcuts. Ninety percent wasn’t enough. It had to be all... or nothing.

So he chose nothing.

Instead of empowering himself, he offered it to his weapon.

Torphos.

A blade forged for thunder—but incomplete. Its full abilities are still locked away. Even so, it had one trait that made the impossible merely improbable:

It could absorb thunder.

So Alex did the unthinkable.

He didn’t just redirect the thunderbolt. He bent it.

The moment the sky split open and divine judgment roared toward him, he forced most of its wrath away from himself, toward the blade.

It wasn’t easy.

The bolt wasn’t just lightning—it was from the world, so it would have a will of its own. Ancient and primal. It sought him, aimed for him, recognized him as its target.

Redirecting it meant clashing with that will.

And when Alex saw he was losing that battle

He deployed his domain.

The pressure of two competing wills—the world’s and his own—created a singular, shuddering moment where time nearly froze. Every nerve in his body screamed as he stood in defiance of something older and greater than himself.

But he won.

Not by strength, but by resolve.

He diverted the lightning, fed it to Torphos—not to charge it, but to weaponize it in a single, devastating slash. A gambit meant not to empower himself, but to end the battle.

It worked.

But the price had been brutal.

His hand was barely functional.

His breath came in ragged bursts, each inhale like swallowing fire.

But he was still standing.

Barely.

Across from him, Khepri was broken—spirit cracking, body faltering.

Alex lifted his eyes, pain dulling his vision, and met the gaze of a god brought low.

He had no words for him.

No explanations. No gloating. No fury.

Just a single truth:

This is the cost of revenge.