SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 421: Chapter 421: The Fall of the Thal’zar [XXXV]

Something about the battlefield felt wrong.

It was not the blood, nor the broken stone, nor even the endless shrieks echoing across the ruined corridors of Thal’zar’s inner defenses. Trafalgar had long since grown accustomed to those. It was the density. The pressure. The way the air itself seemed thicker with presence.

There were too many void creatures.

Far beyond any reasonable threshold.

His blade carved through another twisted torso, the strike clean, economical, followed by a short pivot that split a second one across the collarbone. Thousands had already fallen to him today. The number had stopped mattering somewhere in the first hour. Counting had become pointless.

And yet he did not feel tired.

There was unease, yes — a tight awareness coiled beneath his ribs — but there was something else woven into it. A sharp, electric exhilaration. The kind that only surfaced when the scale of danger grew large enough to sharpen every instinct he possessed.

More were coming.

From the left corridor. From the fractured stairwell. From cracks in the walls where rifts pulsed open like wounds forced apart.

His eyes tracked the pattern even as his body continued its rhythm. Step. Cut. Turn. Sever. Advance. The sword moved with him as if it understood before he did, void flesh collapsing in disciplined arcs.

But his mind was elsewhere.

Earlier, when they had been holding the outer perimeter, rifts had been opening without pause. Void creatures spilling out in waves that threatened to swallow the formation whole. Then, gradually, the pressure had eased. Not vanished — but slowed.

Enough for them to breathe.

Enough for them to reorganize.

He cut down another creature mid-lunge and slid beneath a clawed arm, slicing upward through the ribcage. The corpse dissolved before it hit the ground.

The timeline aligned.

Lysandra. Aubrelle’s father. The report had been clear: Valttair was engaged in a two-against-one confrontation against the intelligent void creature and Icarus.

And at that exact period, the rifts had begun decreasing.

’It needed focus.’

The intelligent void creature could not maintain full battlefield pressure while overwhelming Valttair. Dividing attention meant reduced rift generation. That was the only explanation that made sense.

Another rift tore open ahead of him, wider than the previous ones. Three void creatures spilled out at once.

Now something had changed.

Either Valttair had forced it to alter its plan.

Or the intelligent void creature had disengaged.

A fresh surge of rifts bloomed across the inner castle walls like dark flowers opening all at once.

Which meant—

’It’s free.’

He understood it before the thought fully settled.

Trafalgar pivoted sharply, cutting down one last creature before lifting his voice above the chaos.

”Be careful! The intelligent void creature is loose in the castle! It must have slipped away from Valttair! Stay sharp, we’re close!”

The squad reacted instantly. Formations compressed with practiced discipline as another wave advanced toward them.

They reached the inner wing of the castle without slowing, the architecture gradually shifting from reinforced battlements to carved stone corridors meant for nobility rather than soldiers. Even here, the pressure of the battlefield pressed against the walls like a distant tide, yet the atmosphere felt contained, unnaturally insulated from the chaos unfolding beyond.

Everyone understood the risk before crossing that threshold. The Thal’zar heirs had been infected by something engineered by Icarus, and whatever he had created was not a simple illness. Physical contact could be dangerous. Contamination methods remained unclear. None of them could afford recklessness.

Lysandra’s eyes locked onto a reinforced door. Were the familiar of Aubrelle’s father’s did not hesitate. It surged forward and smashed into the door with brutal force, iron hinges snapping and wood splintering inward as the barrier collapsed in a single impact.

The chamber beyond stood intact.

Several heirs lay unconscious in their beds, pale and unmoving but visibly breathing. The room showed no overturned furniture, no signs of struggle, no visible corruption spreading along the walls. Most importantly, no rifts pulsed open within the space. Not even a residual fracture.

Trafalgar moved the moment the interior became visible.

[Severance Step]

The world seemed to distort around him as he advanced. His movement did not simply accelerate; it curved. The air bent aside, his silhouette warping for an instant as if space itself yielded to his trajectory. In less than a heartbeat he crossed the room’s entrance and materialized within the chamber.

His boots touched stone.

And his eyes registered the threat.

Humanoid void creatures were perched over the beds, elongated limbs folded unnaturally as they leaned toward the unconscious heirs. Their claws hovered inches from exposed throats. They had not yet struck, but the timing was measured in breaths.

Trafalgar did not waste one.

[Morgain’s Final Crescent]

He drew the rhythm of combat inward, gathering the accumulated force of every prior exchange into a single controlled focus. Energy compressed along the blade, shaping itself into an inverted crescent that shimmered faintly along the edge. The strike began without spectacle, his arm cutting through the air in one clean horizontal motion. For an instant there was no sound at all.

Then the crescent released.

The compressed force unfolded across the chamber in a single sweeping arc. It passed through the void creatures as though their existence lacked permission to persist. Flesh separated cleanly. Forms collapsed. The bodies fell to the stone and began dissolving into residue before the echo of the strike had fully faded.

Silence settled across the room.

Beyond the doorway, his squad maintained the corridor, steel clashing and summons roaring as they held the advancing horde in disciplined formation. Despite the surge elsewhere in the castle, despite the overwhelming pressure they had just endured, not a single rift opened within this chamber.

That absence was not random.

Trafalgar remained still for a fraction longer than necessary, eyes scanning the walls, the ceiling, the air itself, understanding that what did not happen here might be more important than what had, silence pressing against his senses as instinct searched for the missing danger.