Revenge: A Path of Destruction
Chapter 98: Alex vs The Earth Patriarch (18)

Chapter 98: Alex vs The Earth Patriarch (18)

The battlefield was no longer a ground for clashing—it had become a pressure cooker. The evolved stone warriors moved with brutal intelligence, their coordination too refined, too surgical to be random. And Khepri, floating above the chaos like a puppeteer cloaked in stillness, never once blinked. He didn’t need to.

He had become the Law here.

Alex grunted as a spinning flail grazed his shoulder, tearing through the nano suit and flinging blood across the broken ground. He pivoted, parried a downward cleave from a glaive-wielding warrior, and barely ducked as a serrated disc whistled past his ear.

Too close.

His katana sparked violently with each collision, the weapon screeching under the sustained punishment. Mana flared from his feet as he leapt backward, only for another warrior to meet him mid-air with a shield-bash that sent him tumbling down again like a ragdoll.

He crashed into the side of a shattered column, bones rattling from the force. Smoke and dust surged up around him as rubble rained down. But he didn’t have a second to breathe—another stone titan had already launched forward, blade overhead, prepared to split him in two.

"Suit integrity at 35%," Nova warned, her voice sharp in his mind. "Power drain accelerating. If you don’t find a way out, you’ll be buried. Khepri isn’t letting up."

Alex’s chest heaved, blood running down his chin. His vision blurred around the edges, and even his inner mana was flickering like a candle in a storm.

Still, he said nothing.

He knew.

He knew she was right.

Limit Break... He clenched his fists. He wanted to activate it badly. But the moment he tried to channel it, he needed a few seconds to complete the art. A few seconds might as well be an eternity against this kind of assault. Right now, a single breath too long already felt fatal.

And then—

A giant stone warrior surged forward from the rear flank. Unlike the others, it wielded a massive greatsword—easily taller than a grown man—wreathed in spiraling brown-gold mana. It cleaved forward with the full force of Khepri’s will behind it, aiming to bisect Alex down the middle.

Now.

Alex didn’t try to block.

He twisted with the strike at the last second—his body skimming just outside the sword’s arc. The wind pressure was brutal, and his armor screeched in protest as he used the blade’s momentum to spin mid-air. Mana surged into his legs.

Then he kicked off the flat of the greatsword.

BOOM!

The redirected momentum launched him high and wide, clearing several dozen meters in a single arc. Debris and shockwaves scattered below as Alex flipped backward through the air, tumbling like a comet across the battlefield until he crashed into a jagged ridge of broken earth.

He slammed into the slope, rolled, and skidded to a halt behind the cover of a crumbled outcropping. Dust choked the air.

"Now or never, sir!" Nova barked.

Alex gritted his teeth and pressed one hand to his chest. Blood smeared across the glowing glyphs of his armor as he growled through his breath.

"...Activate the full capabilities of the suit."

The runes on his suit flared to life, burning white-hot as condensed mana surged through his limbs like fire through copper wire. His body tensed, straining under the explosive pressure about to be unleashed.

Seconds.

Alex stood still.

His face, battered and bloodied, was unreadable—serene, even. Like the eye of a storm.

He exhaled once... and everything vanished.

The roar of crashing stone, the thunder of shifting mana, even the pounding of his own heart—all of it was silenced. He cut the world out. Every distraction. Every sound. Gone.

His fingers wrapped around the hilt of his katana, and with slow, deliberate precision, he slid it into the sheath across his back. The motion was smooth, final. It was not a retreat—it was preparation.

Above the hill of wreckage, the stone warriors surged forward like a tide of death. Blades gleamed, spears flew, mana hummed violently through their runes. They were only seconds away from overwhelming him.

But Alex didn’t flinch.

The suit pulsed once beneath his skin, heat rushing through its circuits as the nano suit synced with his mana core. The surge settled in his limbs like coiled lightning.

It’s ready.

Alex raised his gaze one last time to the battlefield.

A spear—honed from earth and crackling with Khepri’s will was already upon him. Barely a hand’s length away. Close enough to end everything.

And then—

His voice rang out.

It wasn’t a shout, nor a whisper. It was a command. And it echoed not just across the field, but through the very bones of the earth.

Even Khepri, hovering in his mantle of calm destruction, snapped his gaze toward Alex as the words cut through space like a blade.

"Thunder Control. Katana Form—Final Art: Limit Break."

BOOM.

Mana surged from Alex’s core like a dam shattering immediately after the words left his lips.

The ground beneath him exploded in a dome of lightning—raw, untamed, divine. Thunder cracked across the battlefield as bolts of energy arced outward in violent spirals, vaporizing the closest stone warriors instantly. Weapons melted mid-flight, the runes etched into their surfaces shattering like glass under divine pressure.

It felt as if the God of Thunder himself had descended.

From the swirling epicenter of that electric storm, Alex stood unchanged—until he wasn’t.

The black nanosuit rippled, its surface fracturing into radiant seams as golden energy coursed through every fiber. Piece by piece, it transformed—not with noise but with purpose. The deep matte black gave way to resplendent gold, glowing faintly as threads of lightning coiled around his arms and legs like serpents.

The hood retracted, folding into the back of the suit with a hiss, revealing a cascade of yellow-golden hair now untouched by shadow. His face remained hidden behind a sleek, plated mask—but it wasn’t concealment. It was war paint.

This wasn’t just a change in form.

It was evolution.

Inside his body, the transformation was even more brutal.

Thunder mana—raging, precise—raced up his spine, targeting one of humanity’s greatest internal limiters: the amygdala. In a single instant, it was partially paralyzed, disrupting fear, suppressing emotional hesitation, and obliterating doubt. A machine couldn’t panic. Neither could Alex now.

The current surged again, targeting the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. Electricity threaded through it like liquid fire, supercharging reflex arcs—cutting the delay between thought and motion by fractions of a second that now meant survival.

Then came the ligaments. The knees. The tendons. The capsules. Thunder wrapped around them like armor, not to protect, but to optimize. Every joint was stabilized, every movement refined. His muscle fibers pulsed as thunder danced through them—empowered beyond mortal limits, fed by mana and sheer defiance.

And yet, through it all, Alex didn’t scream.

He breathed.

One, clean breath—shallow, sharp, controlled.

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[A/N: I want to apologize for the Chapters I posted yesterday; there were many mistakes because I rushed to meet the deadline and didn’t have enough time to edit properly.

I also want to explain that, due to the time difference, the deadline for NovelFire is 5 PM on my side, which makes it feel like the day is still ongoing for me. Please keep in mind that I am also a student, so balancing school and novel writing can be quite challenging. However, I realize this is just an excuse, and I sincerely apologize again for the mistakes..

Additionally, I corrected the errors in the previous Chapter. It remains the same but has better grammar and explanations.]