Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 776: An obsession

Kruel came in and Noah caught the fist with both hands, no stagger, no give.

"That’s it?" he said, grinning through blood already drying on his lip. "That’s the thing that took Lucas’s collarbone?"

He shoved back hard enough to knock Kruel off balance and drove a punch straight into the crack already running along his jaw. The fracture spread, purple light bleeding through the seam like something underneath wanted out.

A widow came at him from the side. He’d already caught her tell, the half beat where her tail pulled back before committing, and he blinked three feet clear before her claws arrived. She swept through empty air. He reappeared behind her and opened a line across her back with Rend, shoulder to spine.

"I know what you’re capable of," he said, before she could turn on him. "I’ve seen the real thing."

He caught Kruel’s next swing on his forearm, redirected most of it, and hit him twice in the ribs before he’d finished resetting his stance. Void Barrage caught the Widow mid-turn, three shots punching through the meat of her shoulder. She staggered. He was already past her.

He blinked again, low this time, and swept Kruel’s legs out from under him with a strike that carried real weight behind it. Kruel hit the ground hard enough to crack the stone beneath the grass, and Noah was on him before he’d finished falling, driving a knee into his chest.

"You’re supposed to be terrifying," Noah said, breathing hard now, still grinning. "Where’s that?"

He rolled off before Kruel’s arms could close around him and came up already turning toward the Widow, who was circling wide, testing angles that weren’t finding anything. He let her come. Caught the strike on his forearm, absorbed the shock, and used the contact to grab her wrist and yank her forward into a headbutt that staggered her worse than anything he’d landed yet.

She stumbled back. He pressed the advantage, three quick strikes to the same shoulder he’d already opened, and felt the joint underneath give a little more each time.

’This is easy,’ he thought, and something about how easy it felt sat wrong in his chest even as his hands kept moving. ’This isn’t what it should feel like.’

He hit Kruel again as the bigger construct came back to his feet, the crack in his jaw widening another inch, purple light spilling through it now in a thin steady stream.

"Come on," Noah said. "Where’s the version that put a hole through my back? Where’s the version that killed Jayden?"

Nothing changed in either construct’s eyes, because nothing lived behind them to change. But the air around both of them shifted, a pressure Noah felt settle against his skin before he understood what it meant.

’They’re capped,’ he thought, stepping back and wiping blood off his chin with the back of his wrist. ’Sitting below whatever they actually are. Being polite.’

"Don’t hold back," he said. "Whatever’s keeping you soft on me, cut it. All the way. I want the real thing."

Kruel’s stance shifted lower. The Widow’s claws flexed once, slow, deliberate.

Something in Noah’s chest went tight with anticipation instead of dread.

’Good,’ he thought. ’Give it to me. Because if you take it easy, I may never get to his level,’

---

The first sign it had changed wasn’t a hit. It was the miss.

Noah threw the same combination he’d landed twice already, straight into the crack along Kruel’s jaw, and Kruel simply wasn’t there when the punch arrived. He’d moved, actually moved, not the telegraphed shift from before but something faster, and Noah’s fist found empty air where a jaw used to be.

He barely got his guard up in time for the return.

The fist that caught him wasn’t the one from thirty seconds ago. It landed clean across his ribs and drove the air out of him in a single ugly cough, and he staggered two steps before he caught his footing.

’There it is,’ he thought.

The Widow closed the gap while he was still recovering, and this time there was no tail-pull warning, nothing to read, just her already inside his reach with claws coming up fast. He twisted, took the strike across his shoulder instead of his throat, and felt it open skin even through the twist.

He answered anyway. Backhand across her jaw, enough to snap her head sideways, and he didn’t wait to see the result before blinking clear of Kruel’s next swing.

The exchange that followed had a different rhythm than anything before it. Noah landed a hit. Took one back. Landed another. Took two. The math wasn’t clean anymore, wasn’t tilted entirely his way, and something in him that had been coasting on the early advantage sat up and paid attention.

He caught Kruel’s fist again, both hands this time, and held the line, boots skidding but not folding.

"There we go," he said, teeth gritted. "That’s more like it."

He shoved off and swung back, connected with the same crack, and this time the fracture didn’t just widen, it split, a visible gap opening along the bone-line with light pouring through steady now instead of leaking.

The Widow came in low, feinting toward his legs, and he read it correctly and stepped into her instead of away, closing the distance before she could redirect. His elbow found her collarbone. It buckled under the impact. She swung her head into his jaw before he could pull back and his vision went white for a full second.

He staggered. Caught himself. Spat blood into the grass.

Kruel was already there.

The punch caught him across the shoulder, glancing, and still threw him ten feet through the air. He hit the ground rolling, came up moving because stopping wasn’t an option anymore, and blocked the Widow’s follow-up with his forearm hard enough that something in the bone protested.

He hit her back. Twice. Felt the second one connect solid.

They traded like that for a long stretch, neither side pulling ahead cleanly, Noah landing real damage every few exchanges but taking real damage in return every time he did. His breathing had gone ragged. Blood ran from his lip, his eyebrow, a shallow line across his forearm where claws had caught him twice now.

He was still grinning. Smaller now, but there.

’This is what I wanted,’ he thought, catching Kruel’s next strike on his forearm and feeling the impact all the way to his shoulder. ’A real fight. Something that actually costs.’

He didn’t know yet how much it was going to cost.

---

The shift happened somewhere in the middle of an exchange he didn’t fully register until it was already too late to change course.

Kruel hit him and Noah’s guard folded completely, no partial absorption this time, and he left the ground and hit the meadow floor fifteen feet back, tumbling twice before he stopped.

He lay there a second.

’Okay,’ he thought. ’There it is.’

He got up. The Widow was already coming, no tail-pull, nothing to read, and he barely blinked clear of her claws, close enough to feel the wind of them against his cheek.

BOOM.

Kruel’s fist hit the ground where Noah had been a half second earlier. The crater swallowed a third of the meadow. Dirt rained down for ten seconds after.

He caught the next swing wrong, a glancing block that spun him half around, ears ringing. The Widow used the opening. Her tail caught him across the back and he tumbled again, further this time, until he stopped against the rock outcrop he’d already cratered twice this same hour.

He didn’t get up right away.

’Get up,’ he thought. ’You wanted this.’

He got up.

Kruel was already moving, no reset between hits now, one strike bleeding into the next, and Noah understood he was one person trying to survive alone what had taken multiple people hours the first time.

He caught the next punch on his forearm. It drove him back six feet, boots tearing furrows through the grass, and he shoved off it and swung back.

His knuckles connected with something that gave.

"There," he said, more heat in it than he meant. "You’re not invincible. You never were. You just had more than I did."

The Widow’s tail caught him mid-sentence and the rest of what he was saying went nowhere.

He hit the ground hard. Rolled through it. Came up with blood in his eyes now, not just his mouth, something above his eyebrow finally splitting open, his right hand hanging wrong at his side.

He wiped the blood off with his wrist and looked at both of them.

’The General wouldn’t be bleeding right now,’ he thought. ’He’d just be standing there. Taking it. Getting stronger off it somehow.’

’And I already killed both of these things once. With help. With a domain I made the rules for. With a form I only found because I was seconds from dying anyway.’

’What does that make me without any of it.’

He didn’t like where that question went. He kept fighting instead of answering it.

Kruel came again and Noah met him head on, no blink, no retreat, planted his feet because some furious part of him needed to know if he could stand in front of it without running.

He couldn’t.

The fist caught him square and he was airborne again, tumbling, until he slammed into the same outcrop and stayed there, chest heaving.

Past the ringing in his ears he heard the hatchlings. Distressed sounds carrying across the meadow. He wanted to tell them it was fine. He didn’t have the breath for it.

The Widow was closing again, and a white line stretched ahead of her path, marking exactly where this one would end him if he let it land.

He threw himself sideways. Felt claws graze his ribs instead of open them. Hit the ground rolling.

’This is what it cost,’ he thought. ’Everyone. Everything they had. Hours of it. And I keep acting like the last punch was the whole story. Like I showed up and finished him myself.’

’I didn’t. They did the work. I just closed it out.’

’There’s a difference. I’ve been lying to myself about which one I actually am.’

Kruel arrived again, fists together, the same overhead strike that had erased a stretch of coastline once already, and Noah had nowhere left to put himself that wasn’t in its path.

He caught it.

Both hands, full grip, and the impact drove him to his knees, tendons pulling wrong, and he held it through refusal alone, jaw clenched so hard it ached separate from everything else.

The Widow’s tail was already coming from behind. He felt the air change before he heard it.

He didn’t have a free hand. He didn’t have the distance.

It hit him.

BOOM.

The impact took him off his feet and he lost count of how many times sky and ground traded places before he stopped, face down, breathing dirt.

He didn’t get up.

He checked his void energy instead, because some cold part of his brain had kept counting the whole time even while the rest of him had been busy being furious.

[Void Energy: 22,600/398,000]

He stared at the number a second before it landed.

[WARNING: SUSTAINED COMBAT REGENERATION DRAW ACTIVE]

[Enhanced Regeneration continuing to draw from Void Energy reserves to offset ongoing trauma]

’It’s been paying for all of this,’ he thought. ’Every hit. Every crack. Healing me through the whole fight and I never felt it happening because I was too busy being angry to notice what it cost.’

Kruel and the Widow were both closing again, unhurried now.

He wanted to keep going. Everything in him that had needed this fight in the first place screamed at him to take one more exchange, push the number lower, find out exactly how close to the edge he could stand.

He looked at the number again.

’You got your answer,’ he thought, forcing himself onto one knee despite everything in him wanting to stay down. ’You wanted to know if you could’ve beaten them clean. No domain. No soul form. Nothing.’

’You couldn’t.’

’Not yet.’

He raised his good hand.

"Dismiss," he said, voice cracked. "Both."

[Reaper’s Harvest constructs dismissed]

[Remaining Void Energy: 22,600/398,000]

Kruel and the Widow came apart mid-stride, purple light scattering into nothing, and the meadow went quiet except for his own ragged breathing and, behind him, the frantic calls of Gail’s hatchlings finally allowed to come close again.

He knelt there in torn grass and his own blood for a long time.

’The General wouldn’t have needed to dismiss anything,’ he thought. ’He’d have just kept standing there. And it would’ve made him stronger instead of breaking him down.’

’I’m not there.’

’But I’m going to be.’