WebNovels

Chapter 18 - Tier 4: Limits

Tier 4: Dunespire

The sand wanted blood.

He could feel it humming under his boots, each grain carrying a thrum of Muti, waiting for a trigger.

Velhira wasn't just shaping the terrain. She'd turned the whole sector into a loaded weapon.

Rin's aura flickered in the corner of his vision, phantom glyphs spiraling, blade low.

He was already reading firing lines from the turrets before they appeared.

Kai didn't need to tell him where to move. Rin's style was pure instinct.

The cliff above bled shadow.

Glassbone Vanguard dropped like a stone statue, claws flashing.

Kai's staff moved before he thought, Emberlock Drive.

The impact shuddered up his arms, runes on the shaft igniting in a muted bloom.

Core shattered, construct imploded.

"Too slow," Kai muttered under his breath.

Velhira's voice slid down from her perch.

"That was the weakest one."

The second construct slithered into view, a serpent of charred bone and quartz veins.

Its scream shook the sandstone ribs of the tunnel. Kai saw the walls melt behind him before the heat reached his skin.

He planted the staff, vaulted sideways, letting Rin blur across the serpent's back.

A clean slice silenced one head. The rest thrashed.

Kai stepped in, Bodhi Bloom Release.

Controlled flame surged outward, petals of heat peeling the monster apart.

The ground shifted under him, Velhira's glyph already spread wider than he'd realized.

Six sand sentries rose from the walls, turrets locking on.

Rin moved to draw fire.

Kai spun his staff in a tight scatter pattern, detonating two in a spray of molten shards.

The Bastion followed, taller, heavier, humming with reflected aura.

When his staff hit it and nothing happened, Kai knew the fight just got interesting.

Velhira finally walked into the arena.

"This was what you called a massacre? No… it was art."

Her palm touched the floor. Kai felt it before the light flared, a conversion glyph big enough to rewrite the entire sector.

Rin's voice was cold. "She's going to glass the whole floor."

Kai tightened his grip on the staff.

"Then we end this before she draws breath again."

The next wave hit. Not sand, heat.

It came from the metal veins running beneath the floor, a pulse he knew wasn't from Velhira's sector alone.

From far beyond the tunnel, deep in Tier 4, another fight was happening.

Even here, Kai could feel the lightning flares from Aria's aura, the heavy distortions of Maverick's graviton shots, and the violent compression of a forge-born Muti colliding with them.

The walls shook, not from Velhira's constructs.

From her reacting to the storm building in the next sector over.

The Bastion lunged again. Kai shifted stance, not dodging, redirecting.

He let the hit glance off the staff, pivoted the energy, and slammed it back through the construct's chest.

It staggered, learning his rhythm even as it fell.

Velhira smiled like she'd already won.

"Every move you make teaches me something, Seeker."

Kai's eyes narrowed.

"Then learn this"

He stepped in. The sand burned under his feet. His aura coiled, ready to bloom in full.

The Bastion crumpled in on itself, shards evaporating into molten dust.

Velhira didn't flinch, she stepped over it like it had never been part of her plan.

Her glyph kept pulsing under the sand, spreading wider with every heartbeat.

Kai's lungs burned, not from exhaustion, but from range.

His senses, sharpened through Bodhi Muti meditation, were stretched beyond the immediate fight.

The sound came first.

Not sound, music.

Low, thrumming bass, threaded with sharp treble cuts that bent the air.

He knew that style.

Maximillian.

Through the haze of heat, Kai could see it in his mind:

Tier 4's far east side glowing in shifting colors, enemies staggering in rhythm, caught in the invisible grip of Backstage.

Max's voice carried like an executioner's drumbeat, every lyric a chain pulling opponents into his tempo.

The rhythm slammed into the sand, making it ripple beneath Kai's boots.

Velhira glanced toward the source, only for the vibration to stop abruptly.

The silence was worse.

It meant Max had switched tracks.

Before Kai could follow the thread, a new flare hit his senses, raw, cyclonic pressure.

Like a typhoon with a heartbeat.

Aria.

Her storm cut across the prison's layered air currents, a slicing wind that Kai could almost taste, electric and briny, like sea spray in a lightning storm.

Even without seeing her, he knew she'd dropped the restraint, fully merging her elemental Muti with spatial disruptions.

The sector she fought in was probably unrecognizable now.

The Bastion lunged again, snapping Kai back to the present.

He pivoted the staff, letting the construct's weight overcommit.

The counterstrike wasn't brute force, it was placement. He knocked it into one of Velhira's own turret lines.

It shattered. The turret detonated.

Velhira's smirk faltered for the first time.

Kai pressed.

His movements quickened, not just striking, but flowing, threading between incoming shots and sand bursts.

But his mind stayed split, monitoring the threads that tied him to his team.

Rin's aura flickered on the edge of his awareness, fast, jagged, darting between blind spots like a shadow at war.

Aria's pressure zone kept surging, louder with every cycle.

Max's music had shifted again, slower, heavier, the kind of beat that made the air feel like it was dragging your limbs into the floor.

And then…

A fourth presence.

Slow. Immovable. Not part of their squad.

The moment Kai felt it, he knew everyone else in Tier 4 felt it too.

The air itself condensed.

Even Velhira's glyph stuttered.

Master Elric.

No visual yet. Just weight. Like the prison itself remembered who owned the ground.

Kai didn't stop moving, but the fight's center of gravity had shifted.

Somewhere deeper in the prison, the old man had started walking.

The Bastion crumpled in on itself, shards evaporating into molten dust.

Velhira didn't flinch, she stepped over it like it had never been part of her plan.

Her glyph kept pulsing under the sand, spreading wider with every heartbeat.

Kai's lungs burned, not from exhaustion, but from range.

His senses, sharpened through Bodhi Muti meditation, were stretched beyond the immediate fight.

The sound came first.

Not sound, music.

Low, thrumming bass, threaded with sharp treble cuts that bent the air.

He knew that style.

Maximillian.

Through the haze of heat, Kai could see it in his mind:

Tier 4's far east side glowing in shifting colors, enemies staggering in rhythm, caught in the invisible grip of Backstage.

Max's voice carried like an executioner's drumbeat, every lyric a chain pulling opponents into his tempo.

The rhythm slammed into the sand, making it ripple beneath Kai's boots.

Velhira glanced toward the source, only for the vibration to stop abruptly.

The silence was worse.

It meant Max had switched tracks.

Before Kai could follow the thread, a new flare hit his senses, raw, cyclonic pressure.

Like a typhoon with a heartbeat.

Aria.

Her storm cut across the prison's layered air currents, a slicing wind that Kai could almost taste, electric and briny, like sea spray in a lightning storm.

Even without seeing her, he knew she'd dropped the restraint, fully merging her elemental Muti with spatial disruptions.

The sector she fought in was probably unrecognizable now.

The Bastion lunged again, snapping Kai back to the present.

He pivoted the staff, letting the construct's weight overcommit.

The counterstrike wasn't brute force, it was placement. He knocked it into one of Velhira's own turret lines.

It shattered. The turret detonated.

Velhira's smirk faltered for the first time.

Kai pressed.

His movements quickened, not just striking, but flowing, threading between incoming shots and sand bursts.

But his mind stayed split, monitoring the threads that tied him to his team.

Rin's aura flickered on the edge of his awareness, fast, jagged, darting between blind spots like a shadow at war.

Aria's pressure zone kept surging, louder with every cycle.

Max's music had shifted again, slower, heavier, the kind of beat that made the air feel like it was dragging your limbs into the floor.

And then…

A fourth presence.

Slow. Immovable. Not part of their squad.

The moment Kai felt it, he knew everyone else in Tier 4 felt it too.

The air itself condensed.

Even Velhira's glyph stuttered.

Master Elric.

No visual yet. Just weight. Like the prison itself remembered who owned the ground.

Kai didn't stop moving, but the fight's center of gravity had shifted.

Somewhere deeper in the prison, the old man had started walking.

Velhira's sand wasn't just a weapon — it was an empire, and we were standing in the heart of it.

The ground moved like waves under her command, dunes slamming upward to block my flame-lotus bursts, turning every step into a trap. Sand hardened into blades mid-air, each strike meant to kill.

Rin kept pace, his Viatra Eye catching the subtlest shifts in her stance, but she was forcing him higher and higher — every rise in the ground another push toward a dead end. Then the dune beneath him surged like a beast, launching him upward as lances of sand rose to impale him in mid-air.

Velhira's hand closed in a final command.

Velhira: "End of the line."

The sand didn't just move.

It obeyed.

Velhira's stare locked on us, her smirk razor-sharp as the floor cracked under her bare feet. The air grew heavier, like gravity had doubled, and then she spoke, low and sure, like someone about to make good on a threat.

Velhira: "Close your eyes… if you value them."

The steel under my boots hissed, seams splitting.

And in the next blink, Tier 4 was gone.

We stood in a dead desert under a black sun, the horizon bending like an hourglass tipped on its side. Dunes shifted in spirals, moving against the wind. Sandstorms churned far away, yet the air here was still.

Kai: "…Where the hell are we?"

Rin: "Her Ryōiki."

No shock in his voice, just calculation.

Velhira's voice came from everywhere at once.

Velhira: "The Hourglass Expanse. Here, every grain moves as I will… and they are infinite."

The dunes rose like living beasts, snapping into serrated waves. Spears, chains, fangs, sand became all of them, each strike hitting with steel-breaking force.

I dodged a spear the size of a ship's mast, heat blooming off my Bodhi Flame.

Kai: "She's not even moving her hands!"

Rin: "Inside a Ryōiki, the law changes. If she says the sand crushes steel, it does. If she says it moves faster than you can react"

A whip grazed my cheek.

Rin: "then it does."

A shadow passed overhead. I looked up, and my gut dropped.

The dunes had risen into a colossal titan of sand, six arms, each gripping a weapon: scythe, flail, spear, shield, sword, and a war hammer big enough to crush a Seeker ship.

Kai: "…That's new."

Rin: "Not for her."

Then his eyes changed.

Black sclera, crimson rings swirling like a storm. The Viatra.

Velhira's smirk wavered. "A Black God Eye…"

Rin: "Stay behind me."

The titan's hammer fell. Rin didn't dodge—he rewrote its timing.

Rin: "Yume Sabaki."

Her swing lagged a fraction. The hammer smashed into empty desert while we slipped past. She clicked her tongue, grip tightening.

The Ryōiki shifted again. The black sun climbed higher, heat blistering the dunes into molten glass. My boots stuck with each step.

Kai: "It's changing."

Rin: "Some Ryōiki evolve mid-battle. Means she's dangerous enough to adapt."

The titan's spear lunged, Rin mirrored it exactly, phantoms rippling around him.

Rin: "Shin'en Kage Buyō."

Strike for strike, he dismantled the titan, each limb collapsing into sand. Blood welled from his left eye now, tracing his jaw.

Then he whispered the kill call.

Rin: "Tsukiyo no Kurobara."

The desert dimmed. The black sun froze. A hundred phantom Rins surrounded her, each one moving in perfect silence.

Velhira lashed out, every strike met nothing. The ground cracked under her, black fissures racing outward until the sky itself split

And the Ryōiki shattered.

Tier 4 rushed back in: cracked walls, scorched steel, Velhira slumped against a cell, chest heaving.

I caught Rin before he fell.

Kai: "You good?"

Rin: "Still standing. Next time you see a Ryōiki… don't blink."

Then the air changed.

Not louder. Not colder. Just… absolute.

Master Elric stepped into the corridor. Same gold-trim coat as the day he'd handed us our Seeker ranks barely two months ago. He looked us over, calm as ever.

Elric: "Kai Xander. Rin Kairo. Looks like you're earning your pay."

Kai: "Cleaning up loose ends."

Elric: "Good. Keep at it."

Even the prisoners shrank back in their cells. No one wanted to be near him.

Rin: "…And they call me dangerous."

Kai: "Come on. Tier 5's waiting."

We cuffed Velhira, locked her down, and started toward the lower levels, riot noise rolling up from below like a storm.

The moment we cleared the last stairwell, the world became noise.

Tier 5 wasn't a battlefield, it was a storm cage.

Lightning lit the steel walkways. Riot klaxons screamed over the crack of Muti discharges. Boots hammered the metal grating above and below as guards swarmed in, pushing the tide back inch by bloody inch.

Maverick was at the center of it, coat flaring with every MK-2 Prototype Revolver shot. Each pull of the trigger was a cannon blast in close quarters, aura-condensed rounds streaking into the mob, blowing chunks of wall free and shattering weapons mid-swing. Prisoners staggered from the shockwave alone.

Bang. A shield split in two.

Bang. A steel doorframe caved, burying three escapees under it.

Bang. A burst round detonated mid-air, scattering glowing shards through a corridor choke point.

But the real current came from Aria.

She moved through the chaos like the storm had chosen her as its anchor. Storm Vein Ignition flared across her skin, lightning running down her arms in snapping threads. Prisoners who touched her aura froze mid-strike, spasms locking their bodies before the guards slammed them down in cuffs.

Her Valkyrie Dashes cracked the air, one blink she was in front of a charging brute, the next she was behind him, his legs buckling as a shock burned up his spine. Sparks clung to her hair as it floated, gravity fighting to keep hold.

Two guards near me ducked behind a barricade, one yelling over the roar:

Guard: "KEEP PRESSURE! DON'T LET THEM BREACH THE ARMORY!"

From the upper gantry, a squad with riot halberds forced the crowd into narrow lanes. Above them, a prisoner's elemental blast tore free, but Rin's Viatra shimmer flared, bending the strike away into a harmless burst of light.

Aria's eyes locked with mine for the first time in what felt like hours.

No grin, no banter, just a split second of recognition. A silent you're here.

I gave the faintest nod before forcing my gaze back to the mob.

Kai: "Status?"

Aria: "We're holding, but barely."

Maverick snapped the cylinder shut, the MK-2 humming as it drew more of his aura into the cartridges.

Maverick: "Four shots left before she cooks me alive."

The guards pressed forward again, shields and Muti barriers locking into a wall. Prisoners slammed against it, snarling, their aura flaring in panic and rage.

Rin's blade shimmered with starfire. Aria's halo of lightning widened, wrapping around the front line. My Bodhi Flame pulsed to life, steady and warm.

This wasn't a defense anymore.

This was the moment Tier 5 turned.

The prison was tilting back toward control.

Guards poured in from every entry, locking cells, dragging groaning inmates across reinforced catwalks. Muti barriers hummed and shimmered, sealing off sectors one by one.

Maverick's MK 2 prototype revolver cracked like thunder, each aura-bullet sending violent shockwaves through the air.

Aria moved beside me in a streak of stormlight, scattering escapees with whip-fast strikes. My Bodhi Flame cut through the chaos in short bursts, clearing space for the guards to secure the last of Tier 5.

For the first time since the breach began, the tier started to breathe again.

Then Aria spotted them.

Aria: "Hold up, there."

Through the smoke and flashing alarms, two silhouettes moved along a maintenance bridge. They weren't fleeing toward the lower tiers like everyone else, they were climbing the narrow steel stairs toward Tier 4.

They didn't run like prey. They advanced like they owned the place.

Rin froze. Shoulders locked. Breath sharp.

Rin: "…It's him."

Kai: "Him—?"

But Rin didn't answer. His body moved on instinct, legs carrying him up the grated steps faster than I'd ever seen.

Aria's storm halo flared, trailing wind in her wake as she followed.

Aria: "He knows them."

We emerged onto the Tier 4 access platform, and they were waiting.

Seizen stood in the center of the catwalk, arms at his sides, unmoving.

The alarms, the shouting guards, the prison itself seemed to fade under his presence. His eyes locked on Rin with quiet finality.

Vonn leaned against the railing beside him, all relaxed confidence, but the way his gaze flicked between me and Aria said he was already sizing us up.

Rin: "Seizen…"

The name broke from him like a crack in stone.

Seizen: "Rin. You've grown."

His tone was level, but it carried a weight that landed in my chest.

Seizen: "And you've finally learned to stand without me."

Rin: "I had to." His fists clenched. "You left me."

A pause.

Seizen: "And you still don't understand why."

Rin: "Then explain it."

Seizen's gaze sharpened, not with anger, but with something colder. Judgment.

Seizen: "If you want answers, earn them."

Vonn stepped forward, casual but deliberate.

Vonn: "If he's yours, then they're mine."

Aria's lightning cracked along the railing.

Aria: "Bad call."

Kai: "We're not letting you take the first swing."

Vonn's smirk widened.

Vonn: "You think you'll get the chance?"

The tension split the air. Rin and Seizen's silent agreement to fight hung heavy, while Vonn's presence pushed me and Aria into our own battle line.

Rin: "Kai. Aria. Stay out of this."

Kai: "Rin—"

Rin: "I said, this is mine."

Seizen closed the last steps between them, the space tightening like the walls themselves were holding their breath.

Seizen: "Show me you're worth the truth."

Rin: "You'll regret not telling me now."

The Viatra light in Rin's eyes burned brighter, aura rising like heat off a forge. This wasn't training. This was a reckoning.

And as Seizen's presence began to swell, slow and inevitable, I realized… this would be my first time seeing Rin fight like his life depended on it.

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