CLEAVER OF SIN Chapter 604: MAGNIFICENT

Asher watched Debro soar into the sky. His lightning flickered and faded, his plan to incinerate the man having failed just as his previous attempt at decapitation had. Above, Debro hovered, staring down with eyes brimming with rage and malice. The air between them grew heavy, saturated with a suffocating killing intent and silent resolve.

As a Radiant Wavestar Life Ranker, Debro possessed a pride tempered by countless victories. That a mere Dust Swiftstar Life Ranker would wound him was unthinkable—a violation of every natural law regarding power and hierarchy that he held dear.

His mastery over Friction Manipulation made him essentially untouchable. Indeed, his precision and timing, honed through years of brutal combat, meant he could recall every instance of injury on one hand. To be caught off guard by a youth who had only awakened a year ago was a stinging insult to his ego. Even as a Wargrave, such a feat should have been beyond reach. He stood two Major Life Ranks and four sub-Life Ranks above Asher, yet the impossible had occurred.

The frustration simmered within him, a dormant eruption restrained by sheer will. He dared not let his fury dictate his actions, knowing that emotional volatility would be his undoing in a struggle of this caliber.

Asher grasped the turmoil in his opponent; the sensation was familiar. If a lowly Faintstar Life Ranker had drawn blood from him, he too would have been struck by profound shock. In his view of the world, such an event was strictly impossible.

Debro reached up to his bleeding neck and cheek. Activating his Friction Manipulation, he ratcheted up the air resistance and heat until the scorched flesh sealed shut, cutting off the blood flow as if the wound had never existed.

While true healing remained beyond his reach, this crude method allowed him to maintain stability mid-fight. He had failed in previous attempts to bind blood cells for full regeneration, but such musings were secondary—assuming he even survived the night.

His dark gaze drifted to Asher as he growled, "I sought to make you love me, yet you rebuff me time and again." His eyes burned with an obsessive, unfiltered intensity. "If I cannot claim you, you shall perish by my blade, Asher Wargrave. In death, you will wait for me to arrive a thousand years hence." He spoke with a chilling conviction, fully anticipating his own ascension to the Crownstar Life Rank and the millennium of longevity that would follow.

With those words, Debro sheathed his katana in a single, fluid motion. An instantaneous change rippled through his presence; the air transformed, becoming sharp, biting, and pregnant with an untold, unseen terror. It felt as if a final reckoning had arrived.

Asher shivered, his senses pushed to their absolute zenith, every instinct screaming in alert. He had barely a minute remaining to hold his Star Form, yet he refused to act with haste. He kept in mind his ability to teleport back to the Wargrave estate or the Star Academy as a final contingency.

However, that escape would be a last resort. Since concluding his month of intensive training, he had craved a life-or-death confrontation that would shatter his perceived limits.

He refused to retreat now. His battle aura flared, his Star Energy buzzing as his purple Lightning Armour crackled with chaotic potential. He looked less like a youth and more like a demonic entity forged for nothing but destruction.

Prepared to adapt to whatever strike came next, he felt the river beneath him ripple while the air around Debro distorted, heralds of a power beyond mortals.

With a voice that cut like frosted glass, Debro drew his katana once more, the sound echoing through the stillness.

Asher froze, his body locking into place. The icy shiver and the river’s vibrations vanished. His purple eyes remained locked upon the sky with absolute focus.

Above, the churning air abruptly calmed, as if the impending strike had stalled. Then, the sky underwent a metamorphosis. The familiar blue was erased, replaced by an unnatural, shimmering silver sheet.

From this silver expanse, a line emerged, then another, multiplying until they numbered in the quadrillions—a celestial tapestry of blades that blotted out the heavens.

When Debro had christened this strike the 'Fall Of The Sky,' it was no empty boast. At this moment, it appeared that the heavens themselves had surrendered to the mastery of a man, brought low by supreme, overwhelming power.

Asher watched, masked in a stoic expression, absorbing the sheer scale of the terror and beauty. These silver lines were not the simple waves of energy he had seen earlier; they were the embodiment of everything Debro knew of the blade—every principle, every subtlety, and his profound obsession with the steel.

Debro had ceased to be a simple wielder; he had become the blade itself, a living manifestation of its lethal essence. This technique served as the ultimate testament to his mastery. Looking upon a true Technique, far surpassing the inferior arts he had encountered before, only one word resonated in Asher's mind, a testament to its terrifying grace... MAGNIFICENT.