MTLNOVEL Chapter 143: [143] Let Me Show You What Kind of Star I Am
The silence following the execution was absolute. The wind died. All that remained was the sound of Ashley's ragged breathing and the faint crackle of unstable golden energy convulsing around her.
Xavier stared at the frozen statues that had been his companions moments before. Gareth's weathered face, caught mid-shout. Dalen's outstretched hand, reaching for a weapon he'd never grasp. Marta's crossbow, suspended in ice halfway through its fall.
He'd chosen this path. He'd led them here.
These weren't faceless enemies or marks from his past life—these were people who'd trusted him. Who'd followed his lead into this nightmare.
"Xavier." Naomi's voice cut through his spiraling thoughts. "Look."
She was pointing at the Bonemarch Knight's throne. Behind the massive seat of black ice, reality seemed... wrong. The air shimmered like heat distortion, but cold. Shadows moved independently of their sources, writhing and coiling into patterns that felt like they were trying to unwrite his vision.
"It's a tear," Naomi whispered, her purple eyes wide with recognition. "A dimensional breach. I can feel it calling to my Essentia."
The Knight's burning gaze shifted between them. Around the plaza's perimeter, armored skeletons clicked and rattled as they adjusted their grips on corroded weapons.
"Can you get us through?" Xavier kept his voice low, his hand tightening on his dagger's grip.
"Maybe. Shadow stepping through dimensional rifts isn't exactly covered in the textbooks." Naomi's voice carried forced bravado, but he could see her hands shaking. "I need time to establish a connection. Five minutes, minimum."
Five minutes. Against a creature that had just executed an entire caravan with a thought.
Xavier looked down at Ashley. The golden fractures across her skin were spreading, and he could see her teeth were chattering despite the searing heat radiating from her body. Whatever psychic feedback she was experiencing from her failed protection attempts, it was killing her slowly.
"Do it," he said.
Naomi's eyebrows shot up. "Xavier, that thing will—"
"I'll handle it."
The words came out harder than he'd intended. Cold. Final. Like the old Xavier, the one who'd killed for money and felt nothing afterward.
But this wasn't nothing. This was everything.
Naomi stared at him for a long moment, then nodded once. She dropped into a crouch, her hands weaving complex patterns as shadow-stuff began to coalesce around her fingers.
"Give me five minutes," she said without looking back.
The Bonemarch Knight rose from its throne.
The sound was like glaciers breaking—a deep, resonant crack that seemed to come from the earth itself. Its massive form unfolded with deliberate precision, each movement calculated and inevitable.
Xavier stepped forward, placing himself between the Knight and his companions. His Input Buffer pulsed weakly at 5/250, the pink energy barely visible around his hands.
"You would face a servant of winter alone?" The Knight's voice carried amusement. "With toy weapons and borrowed power?"
"I've had worse odds."
The armored skeletons began their advance, forming a semicircle around the plaza. Their eye sockets burned with the same blue fire as their master, and their weapons—corroded but still deadly—gleamed with frost.
"Let the trial commence," the Knight intoned. "Show me the depth of your defiance."
The first skeleton lunged.
Xavier's body moved on instinct, the dagger coming up to deflect a rusted sword strike. The impact sent shockwaves up his arm, but his blade held. Ironwinter steel against corroded iron—a fair match.
[Basic Combo: +5]
[Counter Strike: +15]
The numbers flashed across his vision as muscle memory took over. Duck under a spear thrust. Pivot left to avoid a mace. Drive the dagger up through a skeleton's jaw and into its skull.
The undead warrior collapsed into bone fragments and rusty metal.
[Basic Combo: +5]
Xavier's vision sharpened. He could see the patterns in their attacks, the slight delays as ancient reflexes translated through undead nervous systems.
A skeleton with a war hammer overextended its swing. Xavier slipped inside its guard and opened its throat—if skeletons could be said to have throats. Another collapse.
[Counter Strike: +15]
[Perfect Dodge: +10]
Behind him, he could hear Naomi's muttered incantations growing more intense. Shadow-stuff was beginning to coalesce at the rift's edge, but slowly. Too slowly.
The Bonemarch Knight watched from beside its throne, making no move to intervene. This was a test, not a battle. It wanted to see what Xavier was capable of.
Good. He'd show it.
A skeleton with twin daggers came at him in a flurry of strikes. Xavier's world narrowed to the dance of steel on steel. Each successful counter, each perfect dodge, fed energy back into his system.
[115/250 Input Buffer]
He thought of Gareth teaching him to read winter beast tracks. Dalen sharing stories around the fire. Marta's terrible jokes during the long wagon rides.
All dead because of him.
[Perfect Dodge: +10]
[Basic Combo: +5]
[Counter Strike: +15]
The skeletons were falling faster now. Xavier moved between them like water, his dagger finding joints and weak points with surgical precision. But for every one that fell, the Knight's burning gaze grew more interested.
"Adequate," it rumbled. "But borrowed power has limits."
The Knight raised one massive hand.
The temperature plummeted another twenty degrees. Frost began forming on Xavier's clothes, his breath coming out in sharp puffs as the cold bit through his defenses.
The remaining skeletons moved faster now, their master's power flowing through them. Xavier found himself giving ground, his perfect rhythm disrupted as supernatural cold made his muscles sluggish.
[170/250 Input Buffer]
A skeleton's spear scraped across his ribs, tearing through cloth and skin.
"You feel it now," the Knight observed. "The weight of mortal attachment. In your other incarnations, these deaths would have meant nothing."
Other incarnations? Xavier's dagger took another skeleton's head off at the jaw. "Yeah, well. People change."
"Do they? Or do they simply reveal what was always hidden beneath?"
The philosophical discussion was interrupted by a skeleton with a massive two-handed sword. Xavier barely got his dagger up in time to deflect the blow, and the impact drove him to one knee.
He rolled sideways, came up behind the skeleton, and drove his blade through its spine. The undead warrior crumbled.
[185/250 Input Buffer]
Only three skeletons remained, but Xavier could feel his stamina flagging. The cold was sapping his strength, and the Knight's psychic presence pressed against his mind.
Behind him, Naomi's voice rose in urgency. "Almost there! Thirty more seconds!"
Thirty seconds. He could do thirty seconds.
The last three skeletons attacked in unison—a coordinated assault designed to overwhelm his defenses.
[Perfect Dodge: +10 Input Buffer]
[Counter Strike: +15 Input Buffer]
[Counter Strike: +15 Input Buffer]
One skeleton fell. Then another.
The last one—a massive warrior in once-ornate plate armor—caught Xavier's dagger on its sword's crossguard and twisted. The ironwinter blade flew from his grip, clattering across the frozen stones.
Xavier stared at his empty hand. His Input Buffer read 235/250—close, but not enough. The skeleton raised its sword for a killing blow.
Then Ashley screamed.
Not with pain or fear, but with pure, undiluted rage. The golden fractures across her skin flared like miniature suns. A torrent of raw, furious energy—the focused agony of a dozen stolen deaths—lashed out from her and slammed into the Bonemarch Knight.
The Bonemarch Knight staggered.
Xavier didn't waste the opening. He dove for his fallen dagger, rolled, and came up in a perfect throwing stance.
"Hey, asshole!"
The Knight's burning gaze fixed on him.
Xavier's fury crystallized into something focused. Every death. Every failure. Every moment of helplessness since arriving in this frozen hell.
He threw his dagger with everything he had.
[Counter Strike: +15 Input Buffer]
[250/250 Input Buffer - MAXIMUM CAPACITY REACHED]
Xavier's vision went white as his Input Buffer maxed out, every point of accumulated energy suddenly available at once. Pink-purple energy erupted around him like a miniature nebula, crackling with barely contained power.
[FEVER MODE ACTIVATED]
Xavier looked down at his hands. They burned with stellar fire.
"Impossible," the Knight breathed.
Xavier smiled, and it was not a kind expression.
"You wanted to see what kind of star I am?" The power coursed through him. "Let me show you."