Chương 70: Chapter 59 – Ashfall

Cade brought the newly formed club down with all the force he could muster, aiming for the seam where Brahm's front and back plates met. White fire exploded from the front opening of the tortoise's shell. The jet struck the ground at an angle, blasting against the earth and pushing against Brahm's own armored bulk. The massive shell skidded a fraction of an inch—but it was enough. Cade's strike glanced off target.

Instead of slamming into the vulnerable seam, the club smashed against the curve of the shell and rebounded violently. The impact jarred his arms and sent a shock through his shoulders. The wood held, but the blow had accomplished nothing. He reset his footing, preparing to strike again— Then he saw the flames shift. The white jet pivoted causing the large shell to begin to rotate slowly along its belly. Then the fire intensified, extending farther, pushing harder. The rotation quickened.

Cade backpedaled immediately as his eyes widened. Brahm was simultaneously hiding within his shell while attacking in every direction via his white flames to force Cade away from the vulnerable parts of his shell. The white flames blasted outward in a continuous stream, driving the tortoise's body into a faster and faster spin. The heavy shell scraped and ground against the earth, picking up speed as the flames roared from its front opening like the exhaust of some hellish engine.

Cade backpedaled even further back, giving the flaming rotating tortoise space. He wasn't eager to test whether his strange resistance would hold up inside a spinning inferno. The flames lashed outward in widening arcs as the rotation increased. Five meters, then ten, as the blazing white stream stretched farther and farther with every revolution. Cade was forced to retreat again and again, bare feet skidding across the scorched ground as the rotating shell transformed into a spinning top of desolation.

Vegetation vanished instantly. Root tendrils, patches of moss, stray growth—everything caught in the expanding radius was reduced to nothing but fine white ash. Then the flames abruptly cut off but the shell did not stop spinning. Freed from the counterforce of the fire, it rotated even faster for several seconds, inertia carrying it forward. The motion churned the newly created ash into the air, whipping it into a tightening spiral around the tortoise's body. The spinning shell became the eye of a growing storm.

Ash lifted from the ground in sheets. Loose particulates from the battlefield joined the vortex, spiraling higher and thicker with each passing second. Some of it funneled inward toward the tortoise's breathing holes—but most of it simply whirled outward in a violent cyclone. Cade squinted as visibility dropped. Within moments he was completely engulfed. White particulates filled the air, stinging his eyes and trying to invade his lungs. The world dissolved into a swirling whiteout as wind tore at his bare skin.

He swung his club blindly in front of him, hoping to connect with something solid—but he struck only air. From the heart of the ash storm, a deep, resonant laugh rolled outward.

"You have battled well," Brahm's voice boomed through the vortex, thick with pride and fury.

"But you are no match for my ultimate technique!" The winds intensified.

"Behold—and be consumed by my ASHEN VORTEX!" The gale roared. Ash slammed into Cade from every direction. It coated his bare skin and pressed against his face and arms like abrasive sandpaper. He felt it trying to bite. Trying to burrow into him. The club in his hand grew lighter. He looked down just in time to see the dark wood pale, then crumble. The swirling ash gnawed at it relentlessly, devouring the heartwood until it disintegrated into the same fine white powder whipping through the storm.

Cade staggered backward, shielding his face with his forearm as the vortex swallowed him whole. He kept backing up blindly, one hand shielding his eyes as the Ashen Vortex howled around him. The storm seemed anchored to Brahm at its center, yet wherever Cade moved, the whiteout followed. He couldn't see more than a meter in front of him. The world had become nothing but swirling particulate and screaming air. Then his back struck something solid.

He nearly stumbled from the sudden stop but caught himself, palm slapping against rough bark. A root pillar. Even through the ash storm he could feel its immense solidity at his back—the living foundation of the Great Tree rising upward beyond sight. Everything else was being stripped bare. He watched in grim disbelief as bark from the pillar began to flake away. Fine layers peeled off under the relentless assault, torn free and converted into more ash that joined the vortex.

The ground at his feet was already buried beneath a growing layer of white powder. The entire hollow was being reduced to fuel for Brahm's technique. Cade braced himself against the root, waiting for the ash to begin dissolving him too. The ash swarmed him. It coated his arms, his chest, his face. It crawled along his skin, pressing into his pores. He expected pain. Expected to feel it gnaw through him the way it had devoured his club. Instead— His skin prickled. That was it. A tingling irritation.

Like fine dust dragged across sunburned flesh. It tried to cling to him, tried to burrow into his body but it didn't take. The ash slid off him in thin sheets, unable to find purchase. Cade blinked through the whiteout, realization dawning slowly. The Ashen Baptism, the first part of his body tempering. When he had first stumbled through the Ashen Wastes, the Emperor's ash had eaten through him in seconds. Hollowed him out until he was a mere shell of his former self.

He could still remember the agony—skin blistering, flesh being consumed as if he were nothing more than dry tinder. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. That ash from the Ashen Emperor had nearly killed him—but it hadn't. Instead it had purged everything out from Cade's body and left him covered in a stinky, sticky black tar-like substance. Brahm's ash was nothing compared to that of the Ashen Emperor. Cade's skin easily resisted its corrosion.

The vortex raged for a full minute. A relentless cyclone of desolation meant to grind him down into nothing but white ash. Cade endured it, back pressed to the root pillar, eyes narrowed against the storm. His breathing grew labored—not from the ash invading his lungs, but from the sheer force of the wind and particulate battering him from all sides. Yet beneath the assault, he remained intact. No burning flesh or dissolution of his body.

Just that persistent prickling of the ash trying, but ultimately failing, to dig into him. Gradually, the winds weakened. The vortex thinned from a roaring cyclone to a heavy spiral. The ash lost cohesion, drifting downward in thick, exhausted waves. Through the fading storm, Cade heard it. Laughter. Deep gravelly laughter rang out in the hollow. Brahm was laughing but it wasn't triumphant. It was strained with the effort of the technique he had just released. But there was a certainty to it.

The ash settled further, visibility improving in slow increments. The swirling white curtain parted enough for Cade to make out the blurred silhouette of the tortoise at the storm's center. Brahm's heavy breathing was audible now, each inhale more laborious than the last. Cade straightened from the root pillar. Across the hollow, Brahm stood swaying slightly on his feet, chest heaving. The ground around him was scoured clean. The tortoise's laughter tapered off into a wheezing exhale.

Then his ember-like eyes focused fully on Cade. The certainty in them vanished as the tortoise's laughter cut off. Brahm's exhaustion remained and it was now joined by disbelief.

"How did you…" Brahm rasped. His legs trembled and then the massive tortoise collapsed forward onto the ash-covered ground with a heavy thud, unconscious. Cade didn't move at first. He stood there in the ash, chest rising and falling, eyes locked on Brahm's motionless form. The massive tortoise lay sprawled on his stomach, limbs half-extended, head turned to the side. He waited for the trick to play out. For the sudden snap of jaws when he least expected. An explosive counterattack as Cade approached.

But nothing came. The hollow was eerily quiet now. The roar of the vortex had faded into faint drifting ash settling across the ground like snowfall. The falling white particles were almost beautiful in their descent—soft, weightless, luminous in the filtered light—yet haunting in what they represented. Every delicate flake had once been life: bark, vine, moss, fragile growth within the hollow, all reduced to powder and carried on the wind. Slowly, carefully, Cade stepped forward.

Each step felt heavier than the last. His legs trembled from exhaustion. His head throbbed in a slow, punishing rhythm behind his eyes. When he was close enough to see the shallow rise and fall of Brahm's chest, he stopped. The tortoise was truly unconscious. This was it. This was his chance. He could end the Destroyer right here, right now. No risk of Brahm recovering and hunting him—or the frogs—later. No "Ashen Front" arriving at the village because he'd spared the first scout. Cade's jaw tightened.

With his intent sharpening in his mind, he reached inward for the rhizome. He willed it down his arm. Toward his palm. Nothing. He frowned and tried again, pushing harder this time. The stirring wasn't there. No gathering pressure from every part of his body. No subtle current threading through him. Just an emptiness inside.

"What?" he muttered under his breath. A few minutes ago, the Primordial Heartwood Rhizome had answered him instantly—forming clubs, spearing into Brahm's mouth, coming forth at his unconscious and conscious command. Now it felt dormant. Distant. Cade's stomach sank. He pulled up his status and glanced at his resources. His health was just over half, not great but he'd been through worse. His stamina and mana though were both nearly empty. Less than ten percent remained in each.

That explained the tremor in his muscles. The creeping headache pressing against his skull. The faint weakness in his limbs. He hadn't truly felt it during the fight. Between the adrenaline and his [Hyperfocused Meditation], he was focused on surviving the fight and not necessarily on the resources he was spending to keep up with the ash tortoise. But the cost had accumulated. He swallowed and tried once more, forcing his will against the rhizome. Grow. But nothing happened.

The tendrils remained silent, dormant inside of his body. After several attempts, he sagged slightly, breath coming heavier. He couldn't make another weapon. Cade stared down at Brahm's unconscious form and tried to imagine what came next. He had nothing left. He couldn't make another weapon which meant he had no clean way to finish the tortoise. Killing Brahm now would be slow and ugly. Just Cade—exhausted and empty—trying to beat an unconscious opponent to death with his bare hands.

The thought sat wrong in his gut. Did he really need to kill him? The battle was over and Brahm wasn't moving. Pearl had said the tortoises were part of the Cycle. That destruction fed creation. That without desolation, life would overrun everything and become monstrous. Brahm hadn't attacked the Great Tree out of random cruelty. He believed he was fulfilling some purpose greater than himself. Cade had stood at a choice like this once before.

In the swamp, the System had offered him power for the life of something that could not fight back. A Core and a rare class. All he had to do was crush an egg. It would have been the smart choice. The kind the System had clearly wanted him to make. But he hadn't done it then. Not because he was soft or naïve. But because there was a difference between surviving a fight and killing something helpless. This felt too close to that line. Sure, Brahm had tried to kill him. Brahm would have killed him if he had won.

But the fight was over now. The ash tortoise lay broken and unconscious at his feet. Killing him now would be an execution. A slow, bloody, and painful execution And, if Cade were completely honest with himself, part of him enjoyed the fight. The realization unsettled him. He didn't want to become the kind of person who craved life-and-death struggles just to feel alive. And yet, when he examined it honestly, he understood why. It wasn't the violence that had thrilled him. It wasn't the thought of killing Brahm.

It had been the exchange—the constant calculation, the reading of movement and intent, the split-second adjustments that turned certain defeat into narrow survival. Every feint, every counter, every opening found under pressure had felt like solving a living equation where the variables were muscle, timing, and will. The adrenaline, the razor-thin focus, the clarity of purpose in each heartbeat—it had stripped away doubt and noise until there was only the problem in front of him and his response to it.

He hadn't enjoyed the idea of death. He had enjoyed rising to meet something overwhelming and not breaking. Finishing an unconscious opponent felt different. It wasn't a contest. There was no puzzle left to solve, no exchange of will and strength—just a defenseless body and a final, irreversible choice. Cade exhaled slowly, the last of the battle's tension draining from his shoulders.

"No," he said under his breath. He wouldn't execute him. Cade dismissed his status screen and deactivated [Hyperfocused Meditation]. The backlash hit instantly. Pain flooded his body in full force. Every impact he'd absorbed, every strained muscle, every micro-tear screamed for attention at once. His head throbbed violently, vision swimming for a moment as emotion rushed back in alongside sensation. He nearly doubled over—but forced himself upright. So that's the downside, he thought grimly.

Using his [Hyperfocused Meditation] skill in a real fight had consequences he now had to deal with. He turned away from Brahm, intent on leaving the Destroyer behind. And froze midstep. Several meters away stood another ash tortoise. But this one— This one was enormous. Nearly eight feet tall when fully upright. Broader, heavier, and obviously older than Brahm. Its shell wasn't the dull charcoal grey of Brahm's. It was pearlescent white. Light shimmered across its surface like polished marble catching the sun.

The shell almost sparkled, faint iridescent hues dancing across its smooth, immaculate plates. It was beautiful and utterly terrifying at the same time. Cade tried to square his shoulders, tried to raise his guard but exhaustion crashed over him in a heavy wave. His head pounded so hard his vision blurred at the edges. He exhaled slowly, attempting to steady himself. He didn't have much left in him but he would fight as hard as he could to survive the new threat before him.