Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 487: Lightning And Thunder [IV]

“Sammy, okay, wait—!” Alice started, but Samael was already moving.

Maybe it was because he wasn’t accustomed to his new speed, or maybe Alice was just that good— but, to his surprise, she managed to dodge his first slash.

She hopped back a few meters and drew the sword on her hip, swinging it up to catch the dark claw speeding toward her face in a shower of orange sparks.

No matter how much he disliked the Central Princess, Samael couldn’t stop his eyebrows from arching in mild appreciation.

So she dodged his slash and parried his thrust.

But this wasn’t a fair matchup at all.

Her hands were quivering and her legs felt weak from the feedback of his strike. Her stance still remained surprisingly clean. Her technique was refined to near perfection as well.

Yet, in the face of overwhelming strength, there was not much she could do to bridge the gap.

Samael came in fast and swiped low. Alice hastily tried to block his claw with her sword, but the golden-haired boy immediately sprang up and grabbed both her hands by the wrists.

“Gaaah!” Alice shrieked as Samael whipped her arms over her head, leaving the entire torso exposed. The Crowned Princess writhed in struggle, but Tyrant of Apex merely pressed the head of his vajra against the side of her ribs.

“I yield! I yield—!” She tried, but Samael cut her pleas short by discharging stinging jolts of electricity.

Alice’s eyes went wide as she spasmed, something between a scream and a gasp locking in her throat. Her muscles seized up, and her knees just buckled.

The moment Samael released her wrists, she crumpled onto the muddy ground, shivering and panting for air as the residual shocks danced across her skin.

Thalia caught his attention right then. She was going to do something. But Samael wasn’t going to give her a chance.

He snapped his shoulder around and threw the vajra up toward the cliff with all the power his new A-rank body could muster.

The ritual scepter broke the sound barrier as soon as it left his grasp, surging upward with a sonic boom and leaving behind a trail of sputtering lightning.

Thalia barely had time to widen her eyes even as she raised her sword to block the incoming vajra with the flat of her blade.

BANG!

When the scepter collided with the flat of Thalia’s cruciform blade, the impact was like trying to block a cannon shell with a twig. It blew her off her feet entirely, flinging her back.

Thalia skipped across the dirt for several meters, rolling and tumbling until she crashed into the base of a rock formation, coughing painfully as her sword vibrated out of her hands. Its blade was shattered, tendrils of electricity dancing across what remained.

Down below, Samael didn’t even bother watching her fall.

He turned his gaze back to Alice, who was still pulling herself together, her chest heaving as residual current twitched through her muscles. Without a word, he stomped his foot onto the back of her skull, pressing just hard enough to pin her face to the dirt.

“This feels like a déjà vu, doesn’t it, Princess?” He laughed before stomping harder. The next moment, she wasn’t there anymore.

The Draken Princess was eliminated as well.

With one nuisance dealt with, Samael took three long steps back, lowered his stance a little, and sprinted toward the cliff face.

BOOM—!

The spatial distortion beneath his boots imploded. The raw pressure blast launched him upward like a fired bullet, the air tearing open behind his silhouette as he soared straight for the cliff edge.

Up on the ledge, Moria’s breath hitched at the sight of the golden-haired demon leaping toward her. Dark panic formed a lump in her throat, her eyes wide behind her thick glasses.

She forced herself to stand her ground. Forced herself to fight the instincts screaming at her to run far, far away from this monster.

Samael’s right hand was outstretched, open and waiting. The vajra, having bounced off Thalia’s guard, had hit its apex in the sky and was now hurtling back toward its master’s grip.

Barely five seconds left.

One minute was almost up. If Samael landed on this ledge, the Mock War was lost for the Ivory Sector.

I can… drop him — that was the silent thought that flashed through her mind amidst the panic, both crazy and terrifying.

Maybe she was out of her mind. But maybe there was still a way to win.

Perhaps because Samael had just ascended, he was still unaccustomed to using Spirit Force. So, his jump wasn’t as controlled as he’d have wanted.

He was mid-air. He had no footing.

If she could kill his momentum right now — right before he landed — he would plummet down the several-hundred-foot drop.

From this height, without his innate ability to save him, the fall impact could force an automatic elimination. Especially since, like Moria noted, he was still unaccustomed to using his Spirit Force.

Even if it didn’t eliminate him, this was the best shot to seriously hurt him. To keep him busy here as long as possible as their real plan took effect.

And if he tried to use the lasso to catch the ledge while falling? Well, Moria already had a plan for that scenario.

So she didn’t hesitate to rush toward the edge of the cliff and threw herself off it.

Samael frowned in slight surprise as he saw the pigtailed girl jump headfirst into his flight path.

For a second, he thought she had gone insane. That tends to happen to people who spend a lot of time with his sister.

But after a moment, realization clicked. He realized what her plan was.

The very second Samael entered her five-meter radius, Moria threw her wooden staff upward and screamed out a war cry.

The clouds directly above them split open.

The absolute largest, most violent bolt of lightning she could wring from the artificial tempest surged downward for probably the last time tonight, aimed straight for the top of Samael’s skull.

Time seemed to stretch thin, slowing down as if in a movie.

Moria’s lips curved into a manic grin, sure of her triumph. She was doing it. She was actually stopping the Tyrant of Apex. She was going to prove every single doubt wrong—

Then her grin died.

In the agonizing slow-motion of a second, Samael raised his dark claw toward the thunderstorm above, while extending his left index finger out— pointing it directly at Moria’s chest.

Essentially, with one hand, he was pointing at the heavens, and with the other, he was pointing ahead at her.

—KABOOM!

The majestic column of lightning crashed into the Tyrant’s raised claw.

Pain flared through Samael’s nerve endings, white-hot and blinding, but his newly ascended A-rank physique held.

Using the flow of his Essence Circulation, he manipulated his body’s natural resistance to create a perfect electrical pathway. The raw charge completed the circuit instantly as he channeled the lightning tide through his shoulders, down his left arm, and even lower to his core, before focusing the entire atmospheric voltage into a needle-thin point out of his left hand’s fingertip.

A silver ribbon of redirected electricity erupted from his pointed finger.

It wasn’t nearly as massive as Thalia’s full-scale strikes, but at point-blank range, it didn’t need to be.

The bolt raked through the air and struck Moria squarely in the center of her chest.

Her triumphant expression broke down into shock as the current seized her body, instantly turning her vision black before she, too… was eliminated.

•••

Thalia rolled onto her side, using her elbow to push herself upright. She felt dizzy, lightheaded like there was barely any blood left in her brain to function.

She spat out a mouthful of copper-tasting phlegm, blinking away the white spot in her vision. She had hit her head too hard.

Her fingers twitched as she reached out to grab the hilt of her broken sword. The blade was all but gone, shattered into countless shards scattered all around.

For some reason, she felt relieved at the sight of her broken sword. Well, she knew the reason. She just did not want to accept it.

This sword was a family relic. It possessed no special enchantments, but almost every Theosbane heir had owned it at one point in their lives.

This sword… was supposed to belong to Samael. He was supposed to inherit it all those years ago, at least until she was named as the heiress to the High Seat of Luxara instead of him.

So, she felt relieved. She felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She felt bitter, too. She also felt happy. And sad. And guilty and empty and tired.

But above all… she felt angry. So, so, so angry!

The rage came from somewhere deep within her chest, dark and seething, coiling around her lungs and boiling up to her throat until every breath she took felt like breathing fire.

How dare he stand against her?

How dare he muster this courage when he didn’t do so back then?!

Where was this conviction before?!

Forcing her shaking legs to still, Thalia used the remnant of her family’s broken sword as a crutch. Dirt and dried blood caked her face.

She glared ahead toward the cliff’s edge to see a hand rising over the ledge and gripping the ground there for purchase.

Then came the golden hair, slightly singed at the tips, followed by a pair of bright golden eyes.

Samael pulled himself onto the ledge with such ease that he might as well have just spat in the face of the brutal battle they had just fought.

His dark clawed arm was still smoking from routing Moria’s lightning, wisps of black vapor rising off the cracked, obsidian-like skin.

The Divine Vajra was firmly secured in his grasp. One minute was up. But he didn’t seem to be in any mood to summon his Origin Card.

Fine then.

Thalia coughed, wiped the side of her lips, and threw her broken sword aside. Then she took her stance — sliding one foot forward and raising her guard like that of a boxer.

Swoosh—

The very next moment, Samael was in her face, driving his vajra toward her skull.

Thalia, however, had anticipated this. She tilted her head away in time—

—THWACK!

Something hit her. Hard. She didn’t even understand what it was until her head snapped to the side.

It was his elbow. Samael had stepped diagonally into her guard to create an off-center attacking angle, then rotated his upper body to slam his elbow back into her temple.

He was holding back. She knew that strike could’ve packed enough punch to crack open her skull.

Disoriented for a second, Thalia lashed out, blindly swinging around a hook. But it only connected empty air.

Samael was gone from in front of her.

KACH—!!

She barely started looking for him when the back of her right knee was gashed open by what felt like half a dozen sharp razors.

Her right leg gave out. She let out a sharp gasp, but before the sound could even finish echoing across the rocky plateau, a heavy palm clamped around the back of her neck.

Samael’s grip was absolute.

And he didn’t just hold her there. As if the humiliation wasn’t already enough, he drove her forward, smashing her forehead down into the ground.

Then the closed prongs of his vajra pressed into the small of Thalia’s back, its metal cold for a heartbeat before the voltage hit.

The current ripped through her spine, lighting every nerve in her body on fire. Thalia shuddered and jerked uncontrollably, her mouth opening to choke out a shrill scream as her brother mercilessly electrocuted her…

But the sound died instantly as Samael shoved her face deeper into ground, quite literally making her eat dirt.

“You think you’re so damn clever, don’t you?” Samael’s voice boomed right over her ear, stripped of its usual mock-playfulness. “How dare you use my friend against me? How dare you?!”

He pressed the scepter down harder, ramping up the voltage.

Thalia couldn’t speak. She could barely think. Her vision was turning completely white from the blinding pain, the lightning forcing her limbs to twitch uselessly against the dirt.

But right then…

KA-BAAAAM—!!

The world shook as if hit by an earthquake.

The low, subterranean rumble was so loud it vibrated through the bedrock and rattled the teeth in Samael’s jaw. It sounded like an entire mountain was collapsing in on itself.

“What the hell?” Startled by the scale of the noise, Samael paused the electrical discharge and moved his attention toward the horizon ahead.

Far in the distance, past all the dense flora, he could see the top of the Ebony Tower crumbling into dust, shearing off in massive chunks of concrete.

Thalia’s shoulders began to heave. At first, Samael thought she was choking on the dirt, but then a wet sound broke through the chaos. It was coming from right under him.

She was laughing. Well, half-coughing and half-giggling, to be exact. Tears were streaming down her dirt-caked bloody cheeks.

Samael’s expression darkened at the sight. He grabbed a handful of her dark hair, yanking her head backward so her face was lifted out of the mud.

Her eyes were bloodshot, her lips stained red and brown, but there was a wide smile on her face.

“You… you think you won… don’t you?” she wheezed, sounding nothing short of a lunatic. “You… beat all of us… but the Crown… is already—”

“Shut up,” Samael hissed.

He pressed the vajra back down against her shoulder blade this time. But he didn’t blast her with a burst that would trigger her immediate elimination.

No, no. Instead, he steadily ramped up the charge, letting her taste the pain slowly, right up until the very end… until her eyes went blank and she stopped screaming.

At last, she was whisked away. Eliminated.

The ledge went quiet all of a sudden.

Samael stood alone on the cliff face, the cold wind whipping through his singed golden hair. The ambient Spiritual Pressure surrounding him made the air warp around his bare chest.

Drawing a deep breath, he activated his Origin Card for the first time in the last minute.

Almost immediately, a pillar of earth and rock erupted from beneath his feet, launching the Tyrant of Apex up high in the air toward the direction of the collapsing Ebony Tower.