SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 408: Chapter 408: The Fall of the Thal’zar [XXII]

The branch had barely stabilized beneath Kaedor’s landing when he moved again.

He did not allow distance to form.

His claws tore forward in a sweeping barrage, each strike heavy enough to fracture reinforced wood, forcing Elenara to shift rather than meet the blows head-on. He crossed the massive branch in long, predatory strides, momentum still carrying from the failed deception.

Elenara did not attempt to overpower him directly.

The battlefield responded instead.

From the central root, new branches erupted outward in sharp angles, extending into open air and reshaping the vertical space around them. They split and divided mid-growth, forming layered paths that did not exist a heartbeat earlier. She moved across them without hesitation, stepping and leaping between freshly formed extensions as if the structure had always been there.

Kaedor adjusted instantly.

Each new branch within reach was shattered by his claws before it could become stable terrain for her. Splinters scattered into the rain as he tore through her constructions, refusing to let her control spacing or height.

”Are you going to keep running, Elenara?”

She gave no answer.

The wood beneath the expanding network thickened. Roots surged up through the newer branches, reinforcing them with compressed mana until their density shifted from flexible growth to hardened structure. These were not the earlier constructs he had split apart with a single cross strike. Breaking them would require real force, sustained pressure, and time.

Kaedor felt the difference immediately.

He understood what she intended.

If he committed to destroying each path, he would bleed strength into the structure while she repositioned freely. If he ignored them, she would keep dictating elevation and rhythm.

He chose a third option.

He used them.

Rather than tearing the reinforced branches apart, he stepped onto them, testing their resilience with short bursts of pressure before pushing off again. The network became a shifting lattice beneath him. His speed and agility exceeded hers in raw physical terms, and across a layered environment that advantage began to show.

He moved from branch to branch with tightening precision, closing angles instead of chasing directly. The gap narrowed.

Between the reinforced branches, something new had taken root.

Flowers.

Small at first glance. Violet and deep purple, shaped like simple daisies, their petals almost delicate against the hardened wood. They grew only along the structures Elenara had created, scattered in uneven clusters across the newly formed lattice.

Kaedor noticed them as he shifted direction.

They had not been there before.

He did not slow down.

Using one of the reinforced branches as leverage, he compressed his legs and launched forward with explosive force, closing the remaining gap in a direct line. The movement was clean, calculated, timed to intersect her next landing point.

As his foot pushed off—

It brushed one of the flowers.

The reaction was immediate.

The blossom ignited in a violent burst of condensed energy, the explosion blooming outward from the petals in a flash of violet light. The blast tore through the branch surface and surged toward him at close range.

Kaedor twisted mid-air, crossing his claws before his torso. The explosion struck, forcing his trajectory off-line and pushing him sideways, but it failed to break through his guard. He landed heavily on a neighboring branch, wood splintering under the impact.

”Cheap tricks, Elenara?”

She did not answer.

She smiled.

It was subtle.

That expression unsettled him more than the explosion.

The battlefield felt different for a moment, as if something had shifted beyond what was visible.

Kaedor drew deeper.

He began channeling his vitality.

The change was immediate. His muscles tightened beneath his skin, veins darkening as power surged forward. The pressure around him thickened, the air itself reacting to the increase in force.

Elenara felt it at once.

His physical presence grew heavier, more oppressive. The branches beneath his steps cracked more violently with each landing.

He moved again.

This time with precision.

He adjusted his trajectory, selecting landing points carefully, weaving between the flowers rather than ignoring them. When one detonated beneath him, his acceleration now exceeded the explosion’s expansion. He cleared the blast radius before it fully unfolded.

His speed climbed.

So did his strength.

But the cost was internal.

He was burning his own vitality to sustain it.

At his level, his bloodline granted immense reserves. Longevity, resilience, raw life force beyond ordinary measure. Yet even that had limits. The more strength he dragged forward into the present moment, the more life he consumed to maintain it.

He felt the strain in his bones.

He accepted it.

If he did not use it now, he would never use it again.

If he lost here, he would die.

And if he died, House Thal’zar would collapse completely under the weight waiting to fall.

Roots erupted toward him as he advanced, spearing upward from below and twisting in tight spirals meant to intercept his path. They did not rise randomly. They anticipated his angles, cutting across his projected trajectory rather than simply blocking his last position.

Kaedor adjusted without slowing.

With his vitality reinforcement active, his reaction speed sharpened. He twisted around the first surge, his body tilting mid-step to avoid the main constriction. A second root caught his forearm, and he shattered it instantly with brute force, splinters scattering as he drove through the resistance.

More followed.

He broke what he could not evade.

The distance collapsed.

He reached her.

His claws came down in a descending strike aimed to split both guard and structure in a single motion—

The branch beneath him exploded upward.

A massive root pillar surged from below, lifting him violently into the air. The sudden vertical displacement disrupted his footing and broke the alignment of his strike, forcing his center of gravity upward rather than forward.

They were higher now.

Above even the extended lattice of branches.

Elenara shifted backward and raised a defensive layer of hardened wood across her torso.

Kaedor twisted mid-ascent, adjusting despite the forced elevation. One claw extended just enough to graze her before full separation.

The fabric at her side tore.

It was only a surface cut.

But it proved the gap had narrowed.

Kaedor glanced at the strip of cloth caught on his claw, then let it fall into the rain without comment. The moment his boots made contact with the pillar’s surface, he moved again, driving upward along the vertical structure with rapid, controlled strides.

At that height, he was exposed.

Elenara changed tactics.

Leaves tore free from the surrounding branches and hovered momentarily in the air before compressing. Mana condensed along their edges, transforming them into hardened projectiles that no longer resembled foliage but thin blades shaped by nature.

They fired.

The impacts struck the pillar in rapid succession, embedding into reinforced wood and detonating in sharp bursts of force. Several connected with Kaedor, slicing across his arms and shoulders. Shallow cuts formed, lines of red quickly suppressed beneath the vitality surge coursing through him.

Most were superficial.

It was not enough to slow him.

Elenara felt it.

She required greater penetration.

Or time.

Kaedor used the vertical momentum to his advantage. He pushed off the pillar mid-run, launching into open air with explosive force. His claws flared with compressed energy as he activated Predator’s Rend, his body surging forward in a short-range burst of displacement faster than his prior movements.

He tore through the incoming leaves effortlessly, shredding them mid-flight. The reinforced fragments scattered uselessly around him as he closed the final distance.

Elenara reacted instantly, raising a wooden shield reinforced with layered density.

It shattered on impact.

The strike connected.

The force drove into her center, breaking through the defensive construct and sending shock through her frame. She would have been launched fully away if not for the roots that burst from nearby branches and anchored around her legs and waist mid-air, halting her displacement before she could be thrown clear.

She tore free of the anchor points and pulled backward, creating space again.

But now—

Kaedor had momentum and did not give her the distance she had just created.

The moment his feet found purchase against the pillar’s surface again, he rotated through the recoil of his previous strike and swung both claws outward in a wide crescent motion. The movement was not rushed; it was controlled and amplified by the vitality still burning through him.

The arc expanded.

The slash did not end at the length of his arms. Compressed force extended from the curve of his claws, forming a cutting wave that tore outward at short-to-mid range. It traveled across the vertical lattice of branches in a widening sweep, the air itself splitting under its passage.

Roots erupted to intercept it.

They were severed instantly.

Multiple reinforced strands were cut apart in the same motion, collapsing in heavy segments that fell through the rain. The wave did not simply carve a path; it destabilized the structure Elenara had built to control height and spacing. Branches splintered. Reinforced growth cracked along stress lines that had held moments earlier.

The shock rippled across the branch network, stripping away sections of her environmental advantage in a single, brutal release of force.

Fragments of wood and leaves scattered outward as the crescent traveled beyond its initial arc, fading only after clearing a wide span of space between them.

Elenara landed on a remaining extension, her footing steady but the battlefield around her altered.

The vertical network was no longer layered and dense.

It was fractured.

Kaedor lowered his claws slightly, breath heavier now but power still surging through his frame. The pressure around him remained elevated, unstable but undeniable.

The balance between them had shifted.

And the next exchange would not be about pursuit.