CLEAVER OF SIN Chapter 640: Cloud

With serene poise, Great Elder Morgana Wargrave hovered while fixing her opponent with a steady smile; she ranked as the second among the three Great Elders. Regrettably, however, she fell outside the Wargrave family's top three powerhouses; that was because her elder brother Morthen Wargrave proved a utter monster, her nephew Azaron Wargrave had overtaken her in strength, and finally Malrik Wargrave, not yet half a century old, loomed among these horrifying giants.

Even surpassed by those three freakish figures, she securely occupied the fourth position and stood as the mightiest woman in that dominantly powerful bloodline.

Her elemental affinity wasn't the usual fire or water type; instead, it was Cloud, granting her command over clouds themselves. Seeming straightforward and pathetically underwhelming beside destructive forces, it nonetheless prompted her to demonstrate to enemies her Wargrave roots, where even plain or apparently worthless powers turned into disastrously lethal weapons in their grasp, mastery converting plainness to ruin.

Her soul-bound weapon flashed into her hand amid a blur—a sword unlike any standard one; rigid it was not like typical blades, but writhing serpent-like, pliant and murderous, dubbed the Ribbon Blade, embodying capricious deadliness and able to lash from inconceivable angles with chilling accuracy.

Calmly she stood, smile unwavering, amid encircling havoc as she eyed her foe, Ozzie of the Royal Family Cabinet, their auras making the air shudder, the battlefield already ravaged by their presence alone before true combat ignited.

Gripping twin keen daggers, Ozzie gazed at Morgana with cool detachment, appearing fearless, yet in truth he merely scorned women for being women, certain no female could surpass a male—a belief destined for harsh trial against a Wargrave.

No words passed between them; they erased themselves from the skies with spectral swiftness, outrunning echoes. Cataclysmically they smashed together, flickered away, rematerialized elsewhere to collide anew, then vanished repeatedly. Each bout spawned crumbling voids, craters, proliferating sonic booms and tremors, warping the field beneath their ferocious speed.

Morgana's smile endured through her actions, motions blending speed, deadliness, subtlety, pinpoint exactness; her blade echoed its serpentine form—slippery, venomous, delivering graceful fatality with poised menace.

Serpent-fierce in deadliness, she stabbed at Ozzie's eyes, her sword-tip boring a rift through space outright. Detecting the rush, Ozzie hoisted his daggers into crossed guard; moments from impact, her blade snaked above them fluidly, veering from eyes to brow as if to drill into his mind.

Ozzie's blank mask cracked into a frown as the threat loomed; thoughtless and instant, his reflexes exploded into action. His shadow beneath twisted sharply, swallowing him whole as he dove into it, ground seemingly vanishing.

Her thrust sliced only emptiness, blade erupting savage blast torrents that flung everything in a ninety-kilometer span rearward via raw might, hurling debris, trees, earth, boulders backward only to atomize them utterly in the cataclysmic release.

From her rear shadow, Ozzie materialized as flawless slayer, daggers plunging at Morgana's throat with flawless precision and venom; nauseatingly smooth, they carved twin paths across her neck, lightning-quick and conclusive.

Ozzie's countenance altered once more; flesh yielded not to his blades, scant resistance absent as expected, nor spilled the vital heat that ought to follow such a cut.

By morphing into cloud effortlessly, Morgana evaded the strike with tranquil grace, ambushing Ozzie's expectations with the basic ploy she'd predicted he wouldn't foresee, flipping his smugness into fleeting exposure.

Her arm whipped back fiercely, her body contorting as her elbow launched outward like a missile, crashing into Ozzie’s temple like a battering ram with a brain-rattling force. Ozzie’s form was instantly flung sideways, gripped by inertia and momentum from the attack’s immense power, propelling him through the air across the battlefield.

Yet as soon as he traveled just one kilometer, Ozzie effortlessly regained command of his body, twisting gracefully to land perfectly on the ground. His gaze snapped up toward Morgana’s spot, only to find a serpent-like blade already thrusting toward his throat, deadly and accurate.

Ozzie reacted without delay, his Astra energy erupting from him as shadows erupted from the earth like spikes, numbering in the tens. Faced with this counterstrike, Morgana was forced to drop her assault, since her cloud form could only pass through solid matter, not these energy and shadow manifestations.

In the blink of an eye, she disappeared from her position, but she didn’t simply flee; instead, she left behind thick, foreboding shrouds of black clouds. Ozzie eyed the clouds, pondering Morgana’s scheme, but right then, he merged into his own shadow and vanished, reappearing farther away while spewing blood from his mouth—the delayed strike from her secret attack finally taking hold.

Those clouds Morgana abandoned weren’t ordinary; they were toxic mists she commanded with expertise, designed to erode the body internally. Via her affinity, she could deploy all sorts of clouds, each infused with a unique and fatal trait.

However, just as Ozzie emerged into view and began coughing up blood, the overhead clouds sparked with brilliant white lightning, the electric buildup surging higher every instant. Moments later, a colossal bolt of thunder energy plummeted from above, as if the skies themselves had unleashed the strike.

Ozzie’s eyes shot skyward at the sight; he tsked in irritation, shadows beneath him morphing into a huge black barrier that ascended to shield him. With a devastating explosion of crackling chaos and ruinous power, the white lightning obliterated everything in a four-hundred-kilometer radius with its furious electric might.

While Morgana couldn’t wield lightning directly, her Cloud affinity let her mimic it by accumulating charges in the clouds; amassing them allowed her to summon a full-blown lightning storm at will, turning the heavens into a tool of total destruction.

Yet these were merely the fundamentals of her powers; her Cloud affinity also granted control over water and wind, and blending them together had pushed it halfway toward a Storm-type affinity... though regrettably, it remained incomplete, brimming with vast untapped promise.

Indeed, advancing a talent or affinity was no simple feat, not even for the absurd Wargraves, whose very being defied the laws of power progression and natural limits.

Nevertheless, her rank as the fourth mightiest in that clan stood firm, a status alone that positioned her among the universe’s most horrifying entities, her serene smile veiling a strength capable of laying waste to vast terrains.