6kv Chapter 145 - 144 : A broken bond (1)
Chapter 145 - 144 : A broken bond (1)
[ Present ]
In front of Arthur, a girl with golden hair and ember eyes stood in the middle of the ruined clearing.
Her beauty drew the eye without trying. Soft golden hair, inherited from Sylvia Evan Imperius, fell in loose waves to her shoulders, catching the light slipping through the canopy. Her face was refined yet sharp—a straight nose, thin lips, and a stubborn jaw.
Even with dust on her cheeks and faint blood on her clothes from earlier fights, she looked like a noble painting that had wandered onto a battlefield.
In her right hand, she held a sword.
The blade glowed faintly along its edge, mana humming through the metal in a thin, controlled layer. It sat in her grip as naturally as if she had been born with it.
Arina Evan Imperius.
She stared straight at the black-haired boy in front of her.
"Tell me one thing before I broke every bone in your body" Arina said, her voice calm but edged. "Are you Arthur—the weakling I knew, the one who cried even over a bouquet of flowers?"
Her fingers tightened around the hilt.
"Because I cannot believe someone can change this much in just a few months."
Arthur met her gaze in silence for a few seconds.
The wind moved softly between them, carrying the faint smell of broken stone and burned mana.
Then his crimson eyes flared faintly.
"Is there anything I can do for you, miss?" Arthur said, his tone flat and cold. "It seems you’re mistaking me for someone else. I do not know you. So please go back before I kick your ass."
Arina’s eyebrow twitched.
"What did you just say to me?" she asked slowly.
A small smirk tugged at Arthur’s lips.
"Do you have a hearing problem too, miss... what was your name again?" he asked.
A short, humorless chuckle escaped Arina.
"You’ve grown a sharp tongue, haven’t you?" she said. "Do not worry. It will be the first thing I cut."
Her expression hardened, the playfulness gone.
"But answer one thing," she continued. "Why did you give up first place just now?"
Arthur shrugged lightly.
"Oh, that," he said. "Well, I don’t have Daddy’s money. Not that I have a father anymore."
His eyes cooled further.
"And my master, even though she’s rich, does not give me much pocket money. She already seized everything I had. So I have no interest in these worthless rankings."
He tilted his head, as if the whole thing bored him.
"To me, they only mean one thing—business."
Arthur spread his hands in a mock offer.
"If you want, I can sell points to you too. One point for twenty million dollars. What do you say?"
Arina’s answer was a shift in stance.
Her feet slid over the dirt, mana flaring around her. She raised her sword into a proper guard, her posture dropping into the kind of balanced, predatory readiness that only came from years of training.
"No thanks," she said coldly. "You answered my question."
Her ember eyes burned.
"You are still as worthless as ever. Nothing has changed. A little taste of strength has just made you arrogant."
Mana gathered more thickly around her sword, the glow along the edge sharpening.
"I will show you what real strength blessed by talent and bloodline looks like."
Inside Arthur’s mind, a calm mechanical voice spoke.
[ Host, if we’re fighting her anyway, why not absorb her blood later and create a superior version of her bloodline? ]
Arthur’s eyes narrowed slightly.
’Good idea,’ he thought.
His expression went completely cold when he looked back at Arina.
"Oh?" Arthur said. "Then please enlighten me."
The air tightened.
In the next instant, Arina vanished.
To an ordinary eye, she simply disappeared from where she had been standing. Dust scattered from the force of her takeoff, leaving a shallow crater where her boots had pressed into the ground.
Arthur’s right hand lifted.
Black metal spilled over his palm like liquid shadow, crawling across his fingers and hardening into shape. In less than a heartbeat, a sword had formed—a dark, organic blade that looked more grown than forged.
Its surface drank in light instead of reflecting it, with thin crimson lines pulsing beneath it like veins. The edge was so thin it almost hurt to look at directly.
The symbiotic weapon settled into his grip as if it had always belonged there.
Arthur’s vampiric vision flared.
The world slowed. Colors sharpened. Above him, he saw movement—a clean, lethal line of killing intent cutting down through the air.
Arina.
She had launched herself high the moment she moved, using mana and the trees as a springboard. Now she was dropping from above, her sword raised overhead, its edge wrapped in a dense sheath of power. The air tore apart around the blade as it fell.
One of the Imperius family’s signature techniques—Endless Blade. A brutal vertical slash meant to overwhelm defense with pure speed and weight.
’She’s faster than me,’ Arthur thought.
"Add three hundred attribute points to Agility," he said inside his mind.
[ Agility: 365 + 300 → 665 ]
His body responded instantly.
In the fractional moment before Arina’s sword reached him, Arthur twisted his torso with microsecond precision. His head shifted just enough for the blade to pass by the back of his neck instead of through it.
A few strands of his dark hair spun into the air, sliced cleanly.
Then the sword hit the ground.
The impact boomed through the clearing. The earth split in a jagged line from the point of contact, stone and dirt exploding outward. A nearby tree shuddered as the shockwave passed through its trunk.
Arina’s eyes widened as she landed.
She had felt his movement. The timing. The angle.
He had dodged that with a margin that should not have existed.
Arthur glanced at the drifting strands of hair with mild irritation.
"My precious hair," he muttered.
Before Arina could fully recover from her landing, he stepped in.
His black blade drew a tight arc toward her exposed neck. With her posture still low from the downward swing, it was a perfect counter.
For a heartbeat, the distance between his edge and her throat shrank to almost nothing.
Then a crushing force slammed into his side.
It was like being hit by an invisible battering ram.
Arthur’s attack was thrown off course as his entire body was launched sideways, dragged along an unseen trajectory. He crashed through a thick tree trunk, splintering it in half. A second tree cracked and bent under the impact before he finally slammed back-first into a stone wall.
The wall cracked with fractures.
The breath left his lungs. Pain flared through his ribs and shoulders.
Arthur slid down and hit the ground on one knee, teeth clenched, before forcing himself upright.
"Damn it," he hissed under his breath. "I got cocky again... forgot how her bloodline works."