I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1214: Battle Genius [part 2]

The Patriarch’s face twisted. Rage. Humiliation. Fear.

All three at once, actually. An interesting combination.

Darkness exploded from his body.

The domain responded. Shadows crawled across the ground like living things, reaching for Northern’s feet with grasping tendrils. The air thickened, became heavy, oppressive—pressing down on his shoulders like invisible weights.

The Patriarch’s swords began to drip with black energy. It bore a gentle resemblance to void essence, but it wasn’t. This one seemed corrupted and twisted, more engineered than naturally born. Like someone had tried to forge darkness itself and ended up with something wrong.

He came again. This time faster, his swords swinging with a heavy ambience of death itself.

”Murder Formation.”

His body blurred. Afterimages appeared—ten, twenty, fifty copies all attacking simultaneously from different angles. Each one looked real. Each one carried killing intent that made the air itself recoil.

Northern’s Omnisphere saw through it instantly.

’One is real. The rest are shadow echoes layered with intent.’

Clever. But not clever enough.

[You’re using Shingan - Causality Fracture]

Three possible futures branched before him:

Future 1: Block the real attack—six afterimages converge and pin him.

Future 2: Dodge left—real attack adjusts mid-swing, takes his arm.

Future 3: Attack the afterimages—real attack goes for his throat.

’None of those are acceptable.’

Northern chose the fourth option.

[You’re using One’s True Self - True Clone]

Five perfect copies of Northern materialized instantly. Each one holding shadow blades. Each one moving with identical precision. Each one real in every way that mattered.

The Patriarch’s Murder Formation crashed into Northern’s clones like waves hitting rocks.

Steel met shadow. Death energy met living essence. Afterimages met actual duplicates, and the world dissolved into a chaos of clashing blades and dissolving forms.

The Patriarch’s real body emerged from the chaos, both swords aimed at what he thought was the real Northern.

His eyes widened as his blade cut through the clone—

—and it instantly vanished.

The real Northern stood behind him. Both blades already moving.

The Patriarch’s shadow hands reformed in a desperate surge—catching Northern’s strikes an inch from his spine.

But Northern’s right blade—the one formed from Supreme Shadow—moved on its own. It sensed the opening before Northern consciously registered it, twisted like a living thing, and slashed toward an exposed flank.

The Patriarch threw himself sideways.

Not fast enough.

The blade cut through his dark robes and drew blood. A thin red line appeared on pale skin, and the scent of copper filled the air.

The Patriarch landed in a crouch, one hand pressed to his bleeding side. His breathing was ragged now. Sweat beaded on his pale skin despite the domain’s cold.

”What... are you?” His voice cracked slightly.

Northern dismissed his clones with a thought. They dissolved into shadow and returned to him—bringing their experiences with them. He winced.

’That technique is useful, but the sensory feedback is always annoying.’

”Really, I’m getting tired of people asking me the same question.” He rolled his shoulders, adjusting his stance. ”Get up. Show me more.”

The Patriarch’s hand trembled. But he straightened, fixing Northern with a dark and now—wary—glare.

Good. Fear was more useful than arrogance.

Northern adjusted his grip on both swords. The right one, he now held in the same inverted style the Patriarch favored. The left, he gripped normally—but his stance was a perfect mirror of Feather Step, refined and optimized.

”Show me what forty-nine generations of masters created.” Northern said, a refined smile curving his lips.

The Patriarch’s face went pale. Then red with fury.

”You dare—”

He stopped mid-word, closed his eyes then took a breath.

When they opened again, his red eyes were different. Layered, as if forty-nine pairs of eyes were looking out from behind his own. Ancient and cold and absolutely focused.

[Danger observed]

Northern narrowed his eyes.

’That guy mentioned that this domain has been refined for forty-nine generations. Aoi, what are the chances that their spectral forms, at least memories of their abilities, still live on and can be perpetrated through the domain?’

[Correct]

[I suggest caution. You’re about to enter battle with not one, but thirty-seven Paragons, three Ascendants, six Sages, and four Luminaries]

’What?’

’Oh.’

’Well. This just became significantly more complicated.’

The Patriarch’s posture changed. His swords rose into a stance Northern hadn’t seen yet—ancient, predatory, absolute. The kind of stance that spoke of countless battlefields and a body count stretching into legend.

”Parliament’s Judgment.”

The Patriarch’s voice layered into several overlapping voices, each one distinct yet harmonious.

”This is the accumulated killing intent of every Patriarch who came before. You wanted to see our art?”

The Patriarch moved.

Not like before. Not like a man wielding swords.

Like death itself, given form and purpose.

Forty-nine phantom strikes came simultaneously. Each one a perfect killing technique passed down through generations. Each one aimed at a different vital point. Each one carrying the weight of mastery that couldn’t be learned—only inherited through blood and bone.

Northern’s eyes widened slightly.

Then a twisted, wrong, enjoying grin spread across his face.

’Interesting.’

This was what he’d come for. This was worth the trouble.

[You’re using Shingan - All Layers]

Time seemed to slow. Not actually—just Northern’s perception accelerating to process the incoming data. The world became a tapestry of moving lines and converging points.

He saw every strike. Every trajectory. Every point of no return where blade would meet flesh.

And he saw the spaces between them. The microsecond gaps where phantom blade became phantom blade. The rhythm underlying the chaos.

’It’s a sequence. A specific order disguised as simultaneity.’

’They’re trying to overwhelm through complexity, but there’s always a pattern. There has to be—the human mind can’t operate without one.’

Northern’s blades moved.

Not to block all forty-nine strikes—impossible, even for him.

To disrupt the sequence.

His left sword intercepted strike number seven. The one that was the lynchpin. The strike that, if stopped, would cause strikes eight through fifteen to arrive out of sync.

His right sword, guided by Supreme Shadow’s autonomous sense, caught strike number twenty-three—the recovery point where the sequence would reset if disrupted early.

Steel rang against steel. The sound echoed strangely in the domain.

The Parliament’s Judgment shattered.

Phantom blades arrived out of order, collided with each other, dissolved into confusion like a formation breaking under pressure. The Patriarch’s real strikes—hidden within the phantoms—were suddenly exposed, naked and vulnerable.

Northern saw them. Both of them.

He twisted. One blade passed within an inch of his throat, close enough that he felt the cold kiss of its edge. He shifted his weight. The other blade missed his heart by a hair’s breadth.

And in that moment—when the Patriarch was fully committed, when all forty-nine ghosts had failed—Northern struck.

[You’re using Phantom Strike - Phase Strike]

His blades phased through the Patriarch’s guard. Through the shadow hands that materialized desperately to block. Through the death energy trying to corrode the steel.

They struck flesh.

The strike was not deep. Northern didn’t need it to be. Depth wasn’t the point.

Precision was.

One blade cut the tendon in the Patriarch’s left wrist. The other sliced through muscle in his right shoulder, severing the connections that allowed proper sword control.

Both swords fell from nerveless fingers. They clattered against stone, the sound oddly final.

The Patriarch staggered back. His shadow hands caught his real hands, held them up. But the damage was done. Those hands wouldn’t grip a sword properly for weeks, if ever.

He stared at Northern. At this... thing... that had just dismantled forty-nine generations of accumulated mastery in a single exchange.

His voice trembled.

”No. It can’t be... dismantling it like that. Copying can’t do it.”

His brows drew together in disbelief as he seemed to connect the dots.

”You... are you understanding...”

He swallowed hard.

”Y—you see the technique once and you understand it better than the people who spent lifetimes perfecting it.”

Northern said nothing.

But his eyes confirmed it.

After all, what was there to say? The truth was self-evident.

The Patriarch was silent for a few seconds, his gaze growing distant. He suddenly looked down, then returned his gaze to Northern and laughed.

The laugh sounded broken. Hysterical. Like something fundamental had cracked inside him.

”I trained my entire life. Inherited the memories of forty-nine masters. Perfected the heritage of killing until I could execute any technique in my sleep.”

His voice rose and fell in uneven waves.

”I became the domain. I was the accumulated wisdom of centuries.”

He looked at his useless hands.

”And you learned it all in five minutes.”

Northern shrugged.

”Practically, I wouldn’t say all. But with the techniques you used, there’s an easy thread that connects them all that my eyes can peer into. This makes it easier to not only read them but also analyze their form, separating their weaknesses from their strengths.”

He paused, then added with clinical detachment:

”Be it as it may, your heritage is actually full of flaws.”

’Fundamental ones, at that. The foundation is solid, but the successive generations added complications without understanding the underlying principles. Each one trying to leave their mark, not realizing they were diluting the original intent.’

”Silence!”

The domain trembled. Shadows writhed across the walls like wounded serpents.

”You dare to ridicule me and my ancestors. How dare you? Who fathered you and gave you such guts?”

Northern released a wry smile.

”The Emperor of Reimgard. You should take it up with him.”

”You insolent wretch.”

The Patriarch’s essence flared wildly once again, unstable and desperate. The shadows around him twisted wrongly, becoming jagged and sharp.

”If technique won’t work...” His body began to shift. Bones cracked with wet, organic sounds. ”Then I’ll stop being human. It has always limited me anyway.”

Feathers burst from his skin. Black. Glossy. Each one edged with red like dried blood. They sprouted in clusters, tearing through flesh in a grotesque transformation.

His bones cracked, reformed. Arms became wings—massive, sweeping things that seemed to drink in light. Legs became talons, each one as long as a sword and wickedly curved. His face elongated into a beak designed for tearing flesh, sharp enough to pierce steel.

The Obsidian Crow emerged.

Fifty feet of wingspan. Eyes like burning coals set in a skull too large to be natural. Claws that could rend stone like parchment. A shriek that made the domain itself shudder, the very walls seeming to recoil from the sound.

’Well...’

’That’s unfortunate.’

The crow’s eyes locked onto Northern. Burning with rage and wounded pride and the fury of something that had just watched its entire world crumble.

And it attacked with all the desperation of a creature that had nothing left to lose.