The shockwaves from the collision of the two skills hurled Narvel off his feet. It wasn't entirely unexpected as he had intended to borrow the momentum, using the force to fling himself backward and gain some much-needed distance from the statue.
At the same time, the statue found itself in a defensive bind of its own. The tendrils of darkness hadn't just blocked its attack, they lingered, surging forward with renewed aggression. Their movements were fluid and unpredictable, whipping through the air toward the statue and forcing it to retreat.
But retreat alone wasn't enough.
These tendrils moved with purpose as though they were guided by invisible eyes. They pursued the statue relentlessly, changing their trajectories to follow its every motion. They had been born from Ebonveil, which meant they carried the same eerie properties that made the weapon deadly to Specters. The statue felt this instinctively, it knew that contact with them as they were on offense would do more than scratch its stone body.
Recognizing that it couldn't simply evade them, the statue made a decision. A trade-off.
It raised its limbs, allowing the tendrils to strike them. They tore through stone, snapping, shattering, or cleanly severing the parts they touched, but not once did it allow its head to be touched. Its movements were measured, defensive, and deliberate.
The pursuit lasted mere seconds before the tendrils dissipated entirely. They didn't break apart; they vanished, sucked into the same nothingness from which they'd emerged. Their source was gone, and so was its wielder.
Narvel had already fled into the dark passage, dragging his battered and exhausted body along the floor. His breathing came in ragged bursts. Each step sent tremors up his legs and his eyelids drooped under the weight of fatigue, but he forced them open. Something had clicked within him, though he wasn't sure what it was, but it felt important. He wouldn't allow himself to lose it by falling unconscious. Even his [Deep Thought] was still active.
Back in the chamber, the statue remained where it had been left, its limbs gone and much of its torso damaged. Fragments of stone crumbled from its body and the floor around it scattered with shards. It turned its gaze to the path Narvel had taken. Slowly, the damage began to repair itself. Stone regrew, and severed parts were back into place.
Yet the statue did not pursue. Even once its body was whole again, it remained seated, motionless. As if reflecting.
Though it could not speak, it held intelligence behind those unmoving eyes. If it could have formed words, it might've spoken of the anomaly it had just encountered. It had fought countless intruders, but none as strange as Narvel. There was a flicker of hesitation, a subtle recognition that the person—this Nova, didn't belong in the same category as the rest.
And for a long moment, it silently questioned whether it had just clashed with someone who was still only at the Awakened level.
Meanwhile, Narvel had stopped running.
He sat on the cold floor and pressed his back against the stone wall, trying to steady his breathing. The air felt heavy in his lungs, thick with the lingering tension of battle. With a slow exhale, he let Ebonveil drop beside him. His mind, however, refused to rest.
Thoughts churned beneath the surface, attempting to make sense of everything that had just occurred.
While he was deep in thought, Voidscale slithered up beside the weapon and extended a claw toward it, trying to draw more Spectral essence from within. But it was met with nothing as every trace of Spectral essence that Ebonveil held had already been drained during the clash with the statue.
It was that very essence, that reserve of power that had allowed and fueled Narvel to survive for as long as he did against the statue.
He didn't notice any of this. His eyes were fixed ahead, unfocused, locked onto a jagged crack in the wall across from him. He wasn't blinking and his body, despite its pain, had already begun to heal. The swollen muscles had shrunk back to normal, though his skin was still red and every inch of flesh still ached, throbbing with dull fire.
His [Deep Thought] talent was still active, allowing his mind to retrace each step of the battle with the clarity of a sharp memory. He studied the statue's movements, its patterns, and especially the final attack that had left him no choice but to unleash that unnamed skill. Time slipped by unnoticed, until finally, the mental clarity faded and the [Deep Thought] deactivated.
He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there and it didn't matter to him at the moment. The moment he felt his strength return to its peak, he rose to his feet in a blur of motion and drew back a fist.
Voidscale jerked away in alarm, startled by the sudden movement.
Narvel threw a slow, deliberate punch. It wasn't meant to strike anything. He focused on the sensation in his arms and how the muscles tensed before it was released. How his joints responded, how the power transferred from his shoulders to his knuckles. He switched to his left, then back to his right, rotating between hands with a methodical rhythm.
As time passed, the punches became sharper and quicker. The sound of displaced air sliced through the corridor, wheezing with each strike. His fists lunged forward and snapped back, faster and faster, until the motions blurred. At one point, it almost felt as if his arms stretched beyond their limits and his joints temporarily loose only to snap back into place with an eeriness that he couldn't explain.
He didn't stop. For hours, he trained like this, only halting when his lungs begged for air and his stamina ran dry. The tendons in his legs screamed, and the ligaments in his arms throbbed with a tension that bordered on tearing. Even though the movements were simple punches, they'd worn down his body more than he thought it would.
Once he recovered enough to move again, Narvel continued, driven by feeling more than reason.
Eventually, he came to a halt, his chest heaving and a faint smile tugged at his lips.
He had begun to understand.
During one of his last movements, he had thrown two punches, but three distinct images of fists had cut through the air, each one releasing a wheeze of pressure as if they were real strikes, and they were. He was replicating the statue's technique—an ability that had first seemed rooted purely in speed. He had even tried it once before, using his [True Double] to enhance his speed, but the result hadn't matched what he'd just accomplished.
Back then, his fists had moved fast—fast enough to blur and seem numerous—but the attacks lacked the layered rhythm and impact of the statue's strikes.
Now, he was beginning to uncover the secret.
The key wasn't just speed.
It was in the movement itself, a precise, mid-attack shift in his joints, paired with a subtle but forceful twist from his torso. When he reached the peak of a punch's path, he would slightly readjust his form in a way that allowed the limb to extend further or pivot unexpectedly. The result doubled the power behind the blow and created the illusion of another fist forming in the air.
And it wasn't merely an illusion. That shift—the extra torque, the abrupt redirection—was what birthed the additional fist image. A phantom strike formed from pure momentum and timing.
Narvel clenched his fist and stared at it.
He was getting closer.
With this small breakthrough in hand, he kept punching, over and over, until each blow began to leave behind an extra image, a faint afterimage of a fist etched in the air from the speed and force behind the strike. Though the phantom fists didn't carry full weight, they echoed the real ones in pressure and form.
At this point, Narvel felt a rising urgency. If he didn't return to the chamber and test this new ability against the statue, the sensation might slip through his fingers. He feared the window of comprehension might close, leaving him stuck at the cusp of understanding.
With that thought locked in place, he picked up Ebonveil. Its surface pulsed faintly in his hand before he absorbed it into his body once more. Then, without wasting time, he turned and began the trek back toward the chamber.
Voidscale trailed behind him, watching with visible concern.
It tilted its head, its tiny body twitching from side to side as if trying to make sense of Narvel's behavior. From the outside, it was clear: Narvel was willingly throwing himself back into a fight he had just barely escaped from.
The serpent couldn't help but conclude that he was a little unhinged. Still, it followed.
In its own way, Voidscale had been learning too. Merely observing the battle and drawing on the residual Spectral essence it had previously absorbed had sharpened its awareness. It wasn't the same creature it had been before the fight.
When Narvel stepped back into the chamber, it was as though time itself had been waiting.
The air still held the heavy residue of their previous clash, the statue was there, kneeling in the same spot Narvel had left it, motionless but intact. The limbs it had lost had already regrown as though the damage had never occurred.
The moment Narvel's boots touched the chamber floor again, something in the room stirred. The sound of his footsteps echoed, drawing the statue out of its dormant state. Its head lifted slightly. Then, with a fluid motion, it rose to its feet.
It was quiet, but the atmosphere sharpened. It stared at Narvel the same way it had the first time, as though acknowledging the return of an adversary.
Narvel took slow, deliberate steps forward, and with each step, his body had changed—bulking up and his blood boiling and leaving his skin faint with a red hue. He had activated his [True Double] attribute, layering power into every muscle fiber of his being.
The statue noticed something. Just like at the beginning of their first battle, Narvel didn't visibly carry Ebonveil. But that was where the repetition ended.
When Narvel reached what could only be called striking distance, the statue made the first move again. It lunged forward, intending to start the fight the same way it had before, with an overwhelming burst.
Only this time, it stumbled back almost instantly.
Four clean dents appeared across its chest, forming a hollow arc that cut through its previously unblemished surface. Cracks webbed out from each point of impact. The force had come not from one punch, but four, launched so rapidly that they landed almost simultaneously. The room rang with the subtle echo of those phantom blows.
If one looked closely enough into the statue's otherwise blank eyes, there was something buried in the depths—a faint glimmer of surprise.
Narvel had used its technique against it.
…
Name: Narvel Naver Anderson
Age: 19
Race: Human
Gene Fragment: 2 (Sundered)
Level: Awakened (22%)
Class: —
Gene Class: ???
Title: —
Strength: 27
Speed: 25
Stamina: 60/60
Dexterity: 29
Intelligence: 19
Mental: 14
Wisdom: 13
Charisma: 12
Will: 30/30
Attributes: ??? [Mind's Eye] [True Double]
Constitution: ??? [Realmrender]
Talents: [Telekinesis (weakened)] [Deep Thought]
Skills: [Unnamed] [Maddened Fist]
Comprehensions: —
Pet: Voidscale