Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner

”STOP!!!”

Sophie ran between One and Lucy, King’s Gaze already glowing at her side, chest heaving from the sprint across the churned field.

One turned to look at her, unhurried, like a man interrupted mid-thought rather than mid-slaughter.

”This is madness,” she said. ”I’ve seen it. All of it. You don’t walk away from here alive if you don’t stop right now.”

”And how would you know that,” One said, something curling amused at the edge of his voice. ”You’re threatening a god.”

”Then look around you.” Sophie gestured wide at the ruin behind him, the Sek and Vel’kai dead scattered across the scorched ground, fires still climbing from the wreckage of the fleet above. ”Look at the lives you’ve thrown away for a cause that doesn’t even make sense outside your own head.”

One studied her for a long moment.

”I sense no fear from you,” he said. ”That’s unusual. What makes you so sure of yourself. You’ve seen what I did to the Greys.”

Sophie smirked, blood already dry along one side of her jaw.

”Boy,” she said. ”I’ve faced worse things than you.”

He took a step toward her.

”Stop,” she said.

Her eyes went blue. King’s Gaze flared the same color in her hand, its eye snapping fully open, and One stopped mid-stride, frozen, one foot still lifted off the ground.

His eyes went wide.

”You should know,” Sophie said, watching him strain against nothing at all. ”Even a god can’t overcome fate.”

His whole body shook, muscles straining against a hold that had no visible source, and for one long second it looked like he might actually break it.

Then he sank into his own shadow.

He appeared behind her instantly, hand closing around her throat, lifting her clean off the ground.

”How did you do that,” he said, and there was real surprise in it now, something raw underneath the composure.

Sophie thrashed, kicking, clawing at his wrist.

”Kneel,” she said.

He dropped.

His knees hit the ground hard, his grip on her throat loosening just enough that she tore free and hit the dirt in a crouch, King’s Gaze already swinging up into a ready position.

She held the strike.

”I’ll only ask this once,” she said, breathing hard. ”How do I fix him. My friend. Lucas. Fix him.”

One looked up at her from his knees, and something in his expression curdled into contempt.

”Since you know everything,” he said, ”fix him yourself.”

He laughed.

”Answer me,” Sophie said.

He broke free.

It happened too fast for her to track, his hand catching her wrist and wrenching, King’s Gaze torn loose from her grip and flung and his other hand caught her across the ribs with a strike that she felt crack something deep.

”Arhhhh!!”

She hit the ground, curling around the pain, gasping.

One approached her slowly, unhurried again now, all trace of surprise gone.

”Stop,” Sophie managed, one hand out, palm up. ”Please. Stop.”

”Oh,” he said, looking past her at the mace lying in the dirt. ”It’s this, isn’t it. The weapon. That’s what controls me.”

He walked over and bent to pick it up.

KROOOOOOOMMM!!!

A single concussive force hit him from nowhere, no warning, no windup, and the shockwave rippled outward in visible rings across the churned battlefield, throwing dust and loose rubble in every direction as he was hurled through the air, gone from where he’d stood in less than a heartbeat.

Where he’d been, a deep fissure tore straight into the ground, twenty clean feet before it stopped, and beside it, a smaller crack marked where someone had planted their feet.

A man stood there. Black armor head to toe, a sealed helmet, twin narrow slits for eyes catching the pale light.

”Supreme General,” Sophie mouthed, staring up at him.

He didn’t answer right away. He looked at his own hands first, turning them over, studying the black plating, and then his eyes tracked out along the fissure he’d just made, the shallow crater where One had first landed before skidding further out of sight.

He hadn’t meant to hit him that hard.

He pushed the thought away and crouched briefly beside her.

”Young lady,” he said, voice even despite everything around them. ”Gather your people. Leave this place now. I will take it from here.”

Sophie stared up at him and managed a small nod.

He stood.

BOOM!

He crossed the distance in a single motion, the ground behind him cratering from the launch, and arrived at the point where One had come to rest just in time to see him rising.

One was already standing, or nearly there, one knee still bent, and the gash across his ribs that Lucy’s axe had opened earlier was closing even as the General watched, torn flesh knitting back together in slow, visible threads, skin sealing itself seam by seam like something rewinding.

’That speed,’ the General thought, watching the wound seal itself closed in real time. ’That’s SS rank healing at an absolute minimum. Nothing lower produces regeneration that clean, that fast, on a wound that severe.’

He looked at One properly now, taking in the whole of him, the stance already resetting, the breathing already leveling out despite what should have been a crippling injury.

’Could this boy actually be SSS.’

One straightened fully, breathing hard, wiping blood from his split lip with the back of his hand, and looked at the General with something wary now, something calculating replacing the earlier certainty.

”Who are you,” he said, and this time there was no theater in it, just a genuine question.

”My name,” the General said, ”is Hiro Shima.”

He let that sit a moment.

”On Earth,” he said, ”my people call me the Supreme General.”

One considered that, wiping more blood from his mouth, something almost amused creeping back into his expression despite the injury.

”Is that so,” he said. ”Well, Hiro Shima.” He straightened fully, rolling his shoulder. ”You may call me God.”

He moved instead.

BOOM!

His fist connected with One’s guard before One had fully reset his stance, the impact driving him backward through loose rubble, boots carving twin furrows, and the General followed immediately, closing the gap before One could recover, driving a second strike into his exposed side.

One caught it on his forearm at the last instant, lightning flaring bright along the block, and used the contact to redirect, spinning inside the General’s reach and driving an elbow into his ribs.

The General took it without moving.

One’s eyes widened slightly.

’This old man,’ he thought, feeling the impact travel back up his own arm instead of forward into anything soft. ’He is without a doubt stronger than the Greys.’

He pressed anyway, throwing a rapid combination, fist, fist, knee, each strike landing somewhere on the General’s frame, and the light along the black armor flared brighter with every contact, absorbing rather than deflecting, the plating humming with a low resonant note climbing in pitch.

The General answered with a single strike.

It caught One square in the chest, and the sound of it cracked across the open air like something splitting, and One left the ground entirely, hurled backward through a standing rock formation that had clearly stood since before either of them existed, the ancient stone shattering into a spray of fragments as he tore straight through it.

He came to a stop against a second formation, half-embedded in the rock, and didn’t move for a moment.

The General walked toward him.

Unhurried. No wasted motion.

’So it’s true,’ he thought, watching One’s chest heave, watching the wounds already beginning to close again. ’There is an eighth family. This boy is Arthur’s offspring, the very man Noah Eclipse’s original squad claimed to have chased across the stars, and we punished them for daring to say something that size existed at all.’

’Team Seven,’ he thought, the memory arriving cold and unwelcome. ’They came back from the Grey original world with a story nobody wanted to believe, and the institution I represent decided disbelief was easier than reckoning with what they’d actually seen. We called it insubordination. We called it delusion.’

’They were right the entire time.’

One tore himself free of the rock, staggering upright, blood still running from a dozen places, and looked at the General with open hatred now.

”You hit like something that’s been doing this for longer than my father,” he said.

”I have,” the General said.

He struck again.

One caught this one, both hands wrapping around the General’s forearm, digging in, lightning discharging directly into the contact point, and the General felt it travel up through the armor, the plating along his arm lighting bright white in response, absorbing the charge and converting it into something that pulsed back down into his own strike.

He drove his other fist into One’s stomach.

One doubled over the impact, gasping, and the General followed with a knee that connected clean across his jaw, snapping his head back, and this time when One hit the ground he stayed down for a full two seconds before forcing himself back up.

”You’re not deflecting my hits,” One said, breathing hard, wiping blood from his mouth. ”You’re eating them. Storing them.”

”Yes,” the General said.

”That has a limit.”

”Everything does,” the General said. ”You’re welcome to find mine.”

One came at him with everything then, no more testing, no more amusement, both fists trailing shadow now, dense and viscous, and the exchange that followed had no clean rhythm to it at all, both of them throwing strikes in overlapping bursts, the General’s fists cracking against One’s guard, One’s shadow-wrapped hands finding gaps in the General’s defense that shouldn’t have existed against something moving this fast.

One caught the General across the jaw.

The General’s head barely moved.

One’s eyes widened again, and the General used the half second of shock to drive both fists into his chest at once, and the impact sent One skidding backward through the dirt, tearing a long scar across the scorched earth before he finally stopped.

He came up spitting blood, and something in his stance had changed, lower now, more coiled, more desperate.

He blinked out of sight.

Yes, he moved so fast it looked like a blink.

The General turned a half second before One reappeared behind him, catching the strike aimed for his spine on his own forearm without needing to see it coming, the plating flaring white at the contact.

”You anticipated that,” One said, genuine surprise cracking through his voice for the first time.

”I’ve fought fast things,” the General said, ”in darker rooms than this one.”

He drove an elbow back into One’s ribs, and this time the crack of bone was audible even through the shadow wrapped around him, and One staggered away, clutching his side, the wound already beginning to knit but slower now, the regeneration working harder to keep pace.

’It’s not instant,’ the General thought, watching. ’It costs him something too. Everything he does costs him something. But why the surprised look on his face, I wonder. Perhaps he’s simply never had to go against one opponent to notice the cost of his own abilities before now.’

One straightened, breathing hard, and looked at the General with something that had finally, fully replaced the earlier arrogance.

Real calculation.

”I’ve never had to actually try before,” he said, mostly to himself.

”Then start,” the General said.

He struck again.

This time the impact when their fists met didn’t stop at the ground. The shockwave rolled outward and kept going, the air itself fracturing visibly around the point of contact, a rippling dome tearing through the atmosphere and lifting both of them clean off the surface, the scorched battlefield falling away beneath their boots as the collision carried them skyward.

One recovered first mid-air, twisting to drive a kick into the General’s chest, and the General absorbed it, plating flaring, and answered with a strike that sent One tumbling higher, past the point where the atmosphere began to thin.

They kept climbing.

The battlefield below shrank to a smear of scorched terrain, then to a curve, then to the full visible arc of the planet, and neither of them slowed, the exchange continuing through air growing colder and thinner with every passing second, until there was no air left to carry sound at all.

Open space swallowed them whole.

One hung there for a moment, breathing hard despite the vacuum, blood drifting off his knuckles in slow, floating beads that caught the distant starlight.

The General faced him, armor light pulsing steady and bright along every seam now, building toward something it hadn’t reached yet.

”Let’s continue this properly,” the General said mostly to himself, ”somewhere nobody else has to watch what’s left of the ground beneath us.”

One grinned, blood on his teeth, something wild finally breaking through the composure he’d carried through everything up to this point.

”Finally,” he said, ”Someone worth the trouble.”