Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 797: Divine Act

BOOM!!

A huge mushroom of dust kicked into the sky as two figures descended fast from above, colliding once more before either had fully cleared the clouds, momentum carrying them down together in a spiraling wreck that tore through open air, and the impact when they finally hit the ground sent a shockwave rippling outward across the scorched trench beneath them, flattening what little standing wreckage remained within a hundred meters.

One caught Lucy by the back of her neck before she could recover her footing, his fingers closing around her nape with a grip that felt less like flesh and more like something forged, and he drove her face-first into the earth with everything his arm had behind it, and she hit something worse than dirt.

Her face plunged straight into the mass burial ground, bone crunching beneath her cheek,her whole upper body plunging into a mass grave that had clearly been sitting undisturbed for months, skeletal remains and rotted fabric and rusted plating scattered across a wide, scorched furrow that ran for what looked like a full kilometer in either direction, the scar of some earlier catastrophe she had no name for yet.

"Sorry," One said, not sounding sorry at all, standing over her with his hands loose at his sides, watching her thrash against the debris with mild, detached interest. "This planet came pre-decorated. I only added to the collection."

Lucy ripped herself free, spitting grave dirt, her face streaked with someone else’s decayed remains, and for a moment the fury boiling up through her chest had no shape to it at all, just heat, just noise, and she came up swinging before she’d even fully found her footing, Valor already cutting a wide arc through the air.

One caught the flat of the blade on his forearm, and the impact rang out across the trench like a struck bell, and he didn’t even shift his stance to absorb it.

"Careful," he said. "You’ll chip something you actually value."

"You absolute animal," she said, already resetting for another swing, lightning building bright along the axe’s edge now, a continuous crackling stream that hadn’t been there in earlier exchanges.

"Animals don’t decorate," One said. "I’m particular about my battlefields. This one already had character before I ever arrived, I simply learned to appreciate what was already here."

She swung again, low this time, sweeping for his legs, and he stepped over it without effort, retaliating with a straight punch that she barely twisted away from, close enough that she felt the heat radiating off his knuckles even through the miss, and she used the twist to bring her elbow around into his ribs, connecting solid enough that he actually grunted.

"I’m done trying to reason with you," Lucy said, and her voice had dropped into something low and shaking, barely holding together. "I offered you a crown. I offered you a way out of everything your father built you to become. And you’d rather bury my brother’s teammates in the same hole you bury everyone else who ever stood against you."

"I’d rather be honest with you," One said, catching her next strike on his forearm again, the clank of it ringing out through the trench, "which is more than most people manage, in my experience."

Her eyes flared blue.

Lightning erupted around her in a full, uncontrolled burst, the ground beneath her boots cracking outward in jagged white lines that spread across the churned earth like frozen rivers, and the discharge caught One square in the chest and threw him thirty meters back down the length of the trench, his body carving a fresh furrow through bone and dirt and rusted plating alike before he finally skidded to a stop against the wreckage of something that might once have been a transport hull.

Lucy blasted after him without pause, and hit the ground where he’d landed just as he was rising, brushing dust off his shoulder with an expression that carried no anger at all, only mild, genuine amusement, like a man watching a storm he found interesting rather than threatening.

"There it is," he said. "I was wondering when the composed queen would give way to the actual person underneath all that ceremony. This is far more interesting than the version that offered me tea and a title."

"Shut up," Lucy said, and came at him again, spinning Valor into a reverse grip mid-stride, bringing the blunt end up in a rising strike aimed at his jaw. He tilted away from it, and she was already converting the momentum before he’d fully cleared, whipping the axe’s head around into a horizontal sweep that forced him to actually block this time instead of simply dodging.

Shadow solidified around his forearm with a sound like stone grinding against stone, and the axe’s edge met it dead on.

CLANK.

The impact rang out sharp and metallic through the trench, and Lucy didn’t let up, driving her boot into his exposed ribs while his arm was still occupied holding the block, and this time the hit landed clean, folding him half a step, real pain flickering across his face for the first time since the fight began.

"Better," he said, wheezing slightly, and struck back before she could press further, his fist scorching the air on its way toward her, close enough that she felt heat blooming along her cheek even as she twisted clear, and where his fist passed through empty space it left behind a faint shimmering afterimage, a mirage of movement that hadn’t fully caught up to where his body actually was.

She threw a strike at the afterimage on pure instinct, and his real knee caught her square across the nose.

The impact snapped her head back, blood erupting instantly, and she staggered two full steps before catching herself against a broken support beam jutting up from the wreckage, vision swimming, the strong taste of her own blood flooding her mouth.

"Petulant," she managed, wiping blood from her lip with the back of her hand, glaring at him through watering eyes. "That’s what you are. A spoiled, petulant child throwing a tantrum across an entire planet because his father never once taught him what actual restraint looked like."

"Restraint," One repeated, tasting the word like it amused him, circling now, unhurried. "Restraint is what weak things call the absence of ability. I simply have no reason to practice something I’ve never needed."

"Weakness runs in my blood," Lucy said, driving forward again, Valor’s edge trailing lightning in a continuous stream now, brighter than before. "That’s what you think, isn’t it. That’s what you thought you saw in Lucas. That’s what you think you’re seeing in me right now."

"I think," One said, catching her wrist mid-swing and using it to redirect her whole body past him, sending her stumbling into a stretch of loose rubble, "that your family has spent generations building an empire on the assumption that strength is inherited rather than earned properly. Your brother fights well. You fight well. But well isn’t the same as enough, and I don’t believe either of you has ever truly had to confront what enough actually costs a person."

She caught herself against the rubble and spun with the momentum instead of fighting it, using it to bring her elbow around into the side of his skull as he closed the distance again, and connected hard enough that he actually stumbled sideways, boots skidding through loose bone and ash.

"I destroyed your brother today," he continued, straightening, entirely unbothered by the blow, "and you’re not even here for vengeance. You’re here for peace. Isn’t that almost funny? You’d let me live, let me keep everything I’ve already built, if I simply agreed to undo one small thing I did to one person you happen to love." He shook his head slowly, almost pitying. "That’s not strength, Lucy Grey. That’s desperation wearing a crown it hasn’t actually earned."

"Reverse it," she said, teeth gritted, driving Valor into another swing he caught on his forearm, the clank of shadow against metal ringing out again through the churned trench. "Whatever you did to him. Undo it. Right now, while we’re both still standing here."

One actually laughed.

It wasn’t cruel exactly, just genuine, surprised amusement bubbling up out of him like the request had been the funniest thing he’d heard in a long while, and he let it run its course fully before answering, still circling, still unhurried.

"I tell no lies," he said, once the laugh faded completely. "What I did to your brother, I can only do once. It isn’t a technique I can simply reverse on command the way you seem to imagine it works, some switch I flip back the moment it’s inconvenient for me. If reversing it were possible, if I could simply undo it whenever I chose to, don’t you think I’d have already done exactly that to myself first? Spared myself whatever cost this particular power actually carries, whatever price it demands from me in return for what it takes from someone else?"

Lucy froze mid-swing, Valor still raised, her chest heaving.

"There’s a cost," she said slowly. "To you. Using it costs you something."

"Everything has a cost," One said. "I’ve simply decided the ones I pay are worth exactly what they buy me." He came at her again before she could press the advantage of that admission any further, fast, both fists trailing shadow now instead of the burning heat from earlier, and the exchange that followed had no clean structure to it at all, both of them throwing everything they had in overlapping bursts, lightning and shadow colliding in visible flashes that lit the trench in strobing pulses of white and violet.

Lucy caught one strike on Valor’s haft and used the block to pivot into a spinning kick that connected with his temple, hard enough that his head snapped sideways, and she pressed immediately, driving the axe forward in a straight thrust aimed at his exposed chest.

Shadow rose to meet it.

CLANK.

The blade stopped dead against the solidified dark, and One’s free hand found her throat before she could recover her stance, lifting her half off the ground, and for one suspended second she hung there, boots kicking against open air, lightning sparking uselessly around her fingers where they clawed at his wrist, trying to force a discharge that wouldn’t quite come.

"You could have had a seat," she rasped, voice strangled. "A crown. Everything you already claim to have, you could have had it with a name attached, instead of just fear."

"Names are for things that need to be remembered by someone else’s permission," One said, and released her.

She hit the ground hard, rolled, came up already swinging despite the ringing in her skull, and this time landed two clean strikes in quick succession, Valor’s edge biting into his shoulder deep enough to draw actual blood, dark and slow, before he caught her wrist again and drove his knee into her stomach with enough force to fold her entirely.

The air left her in one violent burst, and she staggered, and he didn’t let her recover, following with a backhand that sent her tumbling sideways through a section of collapsed wreckage, metal shrieking as her body tore through it, and she came to rest against the base of a rusted support strut, coughing, one hand pressed flat against her ribs where something had definitely cracked.

She forced herself back up.

Her legs shook under her. Blood ran freely from her nose, her lip, a fresh gash opened somewhere above her eyebrow that she hadn’t even felt happen, and she raised Valor anyway, the axe trembling in her grip, and came at him one more time.

He let her get close before he moved.

She swung, and he caught the axe by its haft with one hand, effortless now, and with the other he struck her clean across the jaw, and this time she didn’t get back up right away, her body crumpling into the churned dirt among the bones and rusted plating, Valor slipping from her fingers and landing somewhere just out of reach.

One stood over her in the settling dust, unhurried, watching her struggle to draw breath, one hand pressed flat against her own ribs, blood and dirt streaked across every visible inch of her face.

"You’d be a great addition to my cages," he said, almost gentle about it, crouching slightly to look at her properly. "Someone with your bloodline, your discipline, your absolute refusal to stop even after everything I’ve already shown you today. I could draw on that for a very long time."

Lucy didn’t answer. She was still fighting just to breathe, chest hitching, fingers digging into the dirt beneath her like she was trying to hold onto the ground itself.

One straightened, turning his head to look out past the ruined trench toward the horizon, where the sounds of ongoing battle still carried faint on the wind, Sek and Vel’kai forces still locked in combat with whatever remained of the ground assault, distant flashes of lightning and blasters marking the edges of a fight that hadn’t finished deciding itself yet, the sky above it still churning with smoke and dust and the last dying echoes of everything Lucy had thrown at him.

"Plenty of time," he said, mostly to himself, unbothered, patient in the way something patient became when it had already decided the outcome of everything happening around it. "This isn’t going anywhere before I’m ready for it to."

Lucy’s fingers found Valor’s haft in the dirt, and she dragged herself up onto one knee, then the other, the axe trembling in her grip, blood running freely down her chin.

Lucy’s fingers found Valor’s haft in the dirt, and she dragged herself up onto one knee, then the other, the axe trembling in her grip, blood running freely down her chin.

"No need to rush," One said, watching her rise with mild curiosity, no urgency in his own posture at all. "Your brother’s cells don’t care whether you’re standing or lying in this dirt. He’ll age regardless. Days, maybe less. It’s already happening whether you’re here to witness it or not."

Lucy forced herself fully upright, swaying, and looked at him with something that had burned past fury into something flatter, colder.

"Then why me," she said. "Why are you still down here fighting me instead of finishing this and moving on to whatever’s next on your list. Sources have informed me of what you’re capable of. An entire alien race bends to you now. You’ve got armies, you’ve got everything you need to end this in a single motion. So why the long haul with me specifically. Why not just do to me what you did to him and be done with it."

"Because I can’t," One said simply. "Not today. Not to you, not to anyone else, not if I wanted to. Whatever that power costs me, I’ve already paid it once today, and it doesn’t come cheap enough to spend twice before the sun sets on the same battle."

"So it’s just a fight, then," Lucy said. "An ordinary one."

"There’s nothing ordinary about it," One said, "but yes. You get my hands and my patience today. Nothing more exotic than that."

He looked at her for a long moment before he continued, and when he spoke again something in his voice had shifted, slower now, deliberate, like he was reciting something he’d turned over in his own head so many times it had worn smooth.

"The last time I stood with my father," he said, "I asked him a question he never answered properly. I asked him what made him a god, when everything he claimed to be could still bleed, could still lose, could still be locked away by seven men for forty seven years and simply wait out the sentence like anyone else would have. He told me power was the answer. That enough of it, stacked high enough, was divinity itself." He paused. "I believed him, once. I believed it right up until I watched him kneel in front of me with a spear through his stomach, still trying to explain the difference between losing and being weak."

He crouched slightly beside her, unhurried, patient the way something patient became once it had already decided everything about how this ended.

"He was wrong," he said. "Power was never the proof. Certainty was. A god doesn’t get to be occasionally undefeated. A god doesn’t get to lose once and call it a lesson. The moment something exists that could, even in theory, eventually stand against you and win, you were never a god at all. You were simply the strongest thing in the room that day." His eyes held hers, steady, absolute. "I watched your brother fight my father once, from a distance, alongside a boy who was equally dangerous. I kept that memory and never once forgot it, because I understood, even then, exactly what it meant"

"Lucas Grey was never going to stay small. Given enough years, enough purpose, enough people worth bleeding for, he was going to become something capable of disputing me eventually. Maybe not today. Maybe not for a decade. But eventually."

He straightened, looking down at her, something almost gentle in the cruelty of it.

"So I removed the possibility," he said. "The same way I removed my father, the same way I removed every sibling he built in his own image the moment I understood what they might one day become if I let them grow into it. And now the universe has done me the courtesy of delivering your brother straight to my doorstep, at the exact moment I needed to prove that I meant what I said. This is not coincidence, Lucy Grey. This is the world confirming what I already know about myself." He tilted his head slightly. "I don’t think of it as vengeance. I think of it as an act of divine intervention. Mine,"

He turned, looking at her fully now, something final settling into his expression.

"To put it simply, Grey," he said. "Like I’ve always said. There can only be one."