Revenge: A Path of Destruction
Chapter 76: Alex vs The Earth Patriarch (2)

Chapter 76: Alex vs The Earth Patriarch (2)

A Few Minutes Before Nyxara Released Her Mana

Three weeks.

Khepri stood at the edge of the observation deck, fingers curled loosely around the cold steel railing as the ship hovered above the mist-wrapped mountains of Tanzania. The low engine hum beneath his boots did little to settle the quiet storm brewing in his chest. Three weeks of scanning, searching, waiting—and still, nothing.

---

The crew moved like ghosts in a steel tomb, their movements mechanica and drained of spirit. Every footstep was muted, and every breath carried the weight of growing despair. The hum of the ship’s systems echoed like a distant heartbeat, too faint to soothe the tension gripped the air. The once crisp uniforms now hung wrinkled and sweat-stained on weary shoulders.

Flickering lights bathed the control room in intermittent pulses of sterile blue, casting long, shifting shadows that made the corners seem alive. The silence wasn’t peaceful—it was heavy and oppressive, like the ship itself holding its breath in anticipation of something that refused to come.

Technicians slouched at their stations, their faces pale, their eyes red and glassy from days without sleep. Fingers danced across holographic controls and touchscreen panels with the sluggish desperation of routine that had lost meaning. They were chasing ghosts—spectral signals, theoretical energy traces, myths that had already frayed their sanity. Some whispered to themselves, recalculating for the hundredth time, unwilling to accept the void on their screens. across dozens of miles—remained stubbornly silent. Not even a blip.

It didn’t make sense.

Legend-rank beasts weren’t subtle. They were walking catastrophes, nature’s fury given form. When they moved, the land trembled. Mana swelled. The skies reacted. The world remembered. But here? Nothing. No residual mana. No seismic disruption. Not even a whisper on the wind.

Khepri clenched his jaw. Time was slipping through his fingers like dry sand. He couldn’t afford to stay much longer—not without raising suspicion. The other Highers would notice his absence. Questions would follow. Doubts. And all his careful maneuvering would begin to unravel.

Just silence. And the weight of expectation pressed down on him and his crew like gravity with no escape.

He stared into the dense fog beyond the reinforced glass, daring the world to *show* him something. Anything.

"We’re missing something," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "We’re looking—but we’re not *seeing*."

Still, the mountain fog remained unchanged. No answers came—just the tired hum of restless machines, and the growing edge of desperation scratching beneath the surface of discipline.

Khepri’s knuckles tapped against the cold railing as he turned, sweeping a sharp gaze over the bridge. The crew’s murmurs were low but laced with fatigue, their frustrations simmering beneath the surface. They were trained and disciplined—but even the most loyal soldiers had limits.

"Maintain current altitude," he commanded, his voice steady and firm, slicing through the haze of weariness like a blade. "Extend mana sweep to the northeast. Set scanners to a tighter pulse interval. No breaks, no blind spots."

A technician opened his mouth to object, but caught the look in Khepri’s eyes—and shut it again. The room quieted under his presence, not because they agreed, but because they feared him. Respected him. Khepri wasn’t just a patrician of Earth. He was the Earth Patrician—stone-willed and iron-blooded—the only thing keeping mutiny at bay.

Still, the tension was palpable. Shoulders sagged under invisible weights. Discontent flickered in glances exchanged behind consoles. They were exhausted and emotionally threadbare, clinging to duty because Khepri made it necessary to.

Khepri exhaled through his nose, saying nothing more. He turned on his heel, boots echoing against the metal floor as he approached his quarters. A few more days, he told himself. He would pull back just a few more, and if they still found nothing. Recalculate.

But then—the alarms blared.

The ship shuddered slightly, not from an impactbut from the sudden surge of energy pulsing through the radar systems. The bridge burst to life in an instant—technicians scrambling to their stations, eyes wide, hands flying over touchscreens and analog keys alike. Sirens howled, and red lights strobbed like heartbeat warnings in the gloom.

"Mana spike detected!" one technician yelled, panic cracking in his voice. "It’s a legend-class* resonance! Confirming location now—sector... sector 41C, coordinates stabilizing!"

But Khepri was no longer listening.

He had stopped mid-stride, his breath caught, not out of shock, but certainty.

He didn’t need a screen to tell him. He felt it.

The deep vibration in his bones. The mana curled through the air was like an old, familiar scent. It was chaos mana—unrefined, massive, and furious.

His eyes narrowed, turning slowly toward the viewing pane again.

"The mana," he said, barely above a whisper, "It’s coming from Geb Fortress..."

His gaze hardened, voice like gravel scraping steel as he completed the sentence:

"...*from the Earth Estate*."

Without waiting for any response he moved

----

Khepri’s flight was nothing short of a divine spectacle—an elemental force ripping through the sky.

The moment he ascended, the earth itself responded to his call. Jagged shards of stone tore free from the ground, whirling around him before reshaping into sleek, obsidian armor plating and aerodynamic wings that fused seamlessly with the enchanted plating already covering his body. Spiraling bands of compressed earth spun beneath his feet, forming a floating launchpad that shattered into dust the instant he took off.

He became a thunderbolt-no-no, something worse. A wrathful god cloaked in earthen power, tearing through the air with such velocity that even the atmosphere bent around him. The clouds screamed and split in his wake. Pressure waves rippled out like sonic explosions. Birds and mana-sensitive creatures scattered in panic. Anything too slow to flee was caught in his path, shredded to pulpy mist by the sheer gravitational drag of his speed.

Tiny mana beasts, some even mid-tier, were obliterated just by being too close. Their bodies detonated into sprays of blood and bone, unrecognizable. Trees bent and snapped beneath the force of his passage, entire stretches of forest carved into trenches from the aftershock alone.

And yet—he was careful.

Every twist, every sharp cut through the air was intentional. Khepri’s mind worked with his surroundings, calculating paths with machine-like precision. Though he flew at breakneck speeds, he made sure to arc wide around towns and settlements. He didn’t slow—but he diverted, shifted, rerouted without hesitation, threading through mountain ranges and ravines like a spear thrown by the gods.

The land had expanded—mana warping the world so thoroughly that the once two-thousand-mile journey from Tanzania to Egypt was now over six thousand miles. But it didn’t matter.

He reached the outskirts of Egypt in *under five minutes*.

The Earth Estate was calling.

---

It started with a stillness.

For a brief, breathless moment, time itself seemed to hesitate—then the room exploded with mana.

A deep, guttural hum reverberated through the stone walls, vibrating the marble floor beneath everyone’s feet. The chandeliers above flickered violently before bursting, raining crystal shards as Nyxara’s mana erupted outward in a thick pulse that warped the air like heat off sun-scorched metal.

From her compact, feline form—graceful and unassuming—Nyxara began to grow. Her white fur, sleek and elegant, shimmered like starlight, catching the threads of ambient mana in the room. Bones cracked with power, not in grotesque contortion, but in divine metamorphosis. Each muscle that formed beneath her fur was sculpted like armor by a god’s hand. Her paws, once dainty and silent, spread wide as dinner plates, cracking tiles beneath them as claws like obsidian sabers sprouted.

Black lightning , alive and feral, coiled around her, lashing the air in violent arcs. It spiraled up her legs, across her shoulders, and around her now-massive fangs. The energy painted the walls with dancing shadows and seared black scorch marks into the floor. Sparks flew like angry hornets, each one sizzling with barely-contained destruction.

The hall was no longer a hall—it was a battlefield.

Screams erupted as warriors outside fled for their lives, shoving past one another like frightened prey. Armor clanged, furniture was overturned, and mana shields were hastily thrown up to keep the crackling chaos at bay. The walls bowed outward, groaning beneath the weight of Nyxara’s ascension. Pillars shattered, chunks of the high ceiling fell, yet even the debris curved away from her massive form, as though the mana refused to touch her

And atop her back stood Alex.

A golden figure against the storm—his yellow hair whipped wildly in the storm winds, his eyes glowing with the same fierce hue as the sun . He didn’t waver. He didn’t flinch. The black lightning danced around him, threading between his limbs and curling up the hem of his cloak, but it did not harm him. It bowed to him. In that moment, he and Nyxara were a singular force—beast and rider, power and will.

She lost a roar that shattered glass across the mountain’s slope, a sound so primal and vast it silenced the world for a heartbeat. Birds took flight miles away, mana-beasts went silent, and the mountain seemed to exhale.

Nyxara no longer simply stood in the hall.

She *owned* it.

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