Bloodbound Codex: I Grow Stronger in Secret

The Spirit Energy surrounding Velmira became denser as she tightened her grip around Marvilas. Azarion’s golden eyes narrowed as he watched her, because the increase in Spirit Energy was obvious, yet he couldn’t see any of it gathering around the sword itself.

Velmira remained completely calm as she raised the thin white blade, and there was no visible change in her expression despite the amount of power beginning to gather within her body.

”Soul Eruption—Multi Soul Slash.”

The moment those words left her mouth, Velmira swung Marvilas downward in a single motion. There was no visible Spirit Energy coating the blade, nor did any condensed force gather around its edge, yet the air surrounding the sword bent as it moved downward, and even the space in its path distorted slightly from the force carried by the attack.

Azarion noticed the distortion and immediately realized that something was wrong, but he didn’t have enough time to determine what the attack was targeting before it reached him.

The moment the sword completed its movement, Azarion felt a sharp force pass through his body, but there was no wound on his physical form. Instead, the sensation appeared somewhere much deeper, directly inside his soul. It felt as though something had cut through a portion of his soul without touching his body at all, and before he could understand what had happened, another invisible slash passed through him from a different direction and tore into another part of his soul.

Azarion’s golden eyes widened.

This was the first time since his transformation that genuine fear appeared within them. He immediately raised one hand and clenched his palm, attempting to activate his evolved Unique Ability, Event Rewriting, but nothing happened. No Spirit Energy responded to his command, and the surrounding space remained unchanged. Azarion stared at his clenched hand for a moment before looking toward Velmira with a deep frown.

’What is happening?’ Before he could investigate the failure, another invisible slash passed through his soul. This time, the damage was considerably more severe, and the pain reached a level that even Azarion could no longer suppress.

”KUUAAAHHHHH!”

His head snapped upward as the pain spread through his soul, and his body trembled uncontrollably for several moments. He couldn’t understand how Velmira’s attack was affecting him because he had prepared for precisely this kind of weakness when creating Project X. He had inserted multiple countermeasures into the experiment, including a high-grade Relic ability specifically designed to defend against attacks targeting the soul.

Yet none of those preparations had stopped the attack.

’No... This shouldn’t be possible!’

Another slash suddenly struck the same region of his soul where the first attack had landed, corresponding to the lower portion of his physical body. The repeated damage caused Azarion’s body to convulse as another scream escaped from him.

”GAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

His mouth was not visible because the organic armor had completely covered his body like a second skin, but the armor didn’t prevent the sound from escaping. His voice still passed through the organic material as his soul continued to suffer damage that his physical defenses could not stop.

Azarion had expected Velmira to attack his body. He had prepared for physical attacks, Elemental attacks, and even attacks targeting his soul, but what he had not expected was for her to possess a technique that could directly introduce her own Soul Force into his soul and disrupt it from within. The technique wasn’t simply producing multiple slashes against his soul. The word Eruption in its name described the actual mechanism behind it.

Velmira’s Soul Force had entered his soul at the moment Marvilas completed its swing, and instead of remaining there as a permanent foreign energy, it immediately began causing disorder throughout the structure of his soul. The Soul Force couldn’t remain inside another person’s soul indefinitely, but that wasn’t necessary. The damage caused during the brief period it remained there was already enough to corrode a considerable portion of Azarion’s soul.

That temporary disruption was what allowed the invisible slashes to continue damaging him one after another. Velmira didn’t need to maintain a constant attack against his physical body because the technique had already created the opening she needed, and as long as Azarion’s soul remained unstable, each successive slash could reach him directly.

Azarion finally understood that something was interfering with his ability, and his expression became even more serious as he clenched his hand again. The ability he had evolved after integrating with Project X should have allowed him to alter the events surrounding him, including the damage he had just suffered.

Yet Event Rewriting had failed.

That failure confused him more than the pain itself. He knew the ability required Spirit Energy, and he had enough Spirit Energy within his transformed body to activate it, so there should have been no reason for the ability to simply produce no result.

’Why isn’t it responding?’ Azarion’s thoughts moved rapidly as he tried to identify the cause, but another pulse of pain spread through his soul before he could reach a conclusion. He gritted his teeth as the damage continued accumulating, while Velmira remained several dozen meters away and watched him without saying anything.

She had expected Soul Eruption—Multi Soul Slash to weaken Azarion enough that he wouldn’t have the opportunity to understand the technique before she could finish him. However, she hadn’t expected his Event Rewriting to fail completely either. Her plan had been to create a temporary opening, use his weakened state to prevent him from responding, and then end the battle with her next attack.

Now she had that opening.

Velmira’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Azarion’s unstable aura and realized that his condition had deteriorated much faster than expected. She didn’t waste the opportunity by waiting for him to recover or attempting to understand why his ability had failed. Her hand remained firmly around Marvilas as she prepared to move again, because whatever had caused his ability to fail, she only needed those few seconds to deliver the attack that would finish him.