Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 801: The General Arrives

BOOM!!

BOOM!!

BOOM!!

A series of wide spread shockwaves tore through the sky as blue lightning spread out like a blanket, cracking across the clouds in jagged arterial lines, and Lucy came down out of the light already moving, Valor cutting a burning arc through the air as she brought it around in a full overhead swing.

One caught it on his forearm.

The shockwave that followed flattened cloud cover in a hundred meter radius, and Lucy didn’t wait for the ringing to fade, twisting the axe out of the block and driving the blunt end straight into his ribs. He grunted, staggering half a step, and she chained it immediately into a spinning back kick that caught him across the jaw.

His head snapped sideways.

She pressed the advantage without pause, dropping low and sweeping his legs, and when he hopped the low sweep she was already rising into it, driving her shoulder into his stomach and using her whole body’s momentum to carry bo1th of them into a wide, tumbling roll through open air.

They separated mid-fall, both catching themselves a few meters apart, and Lucy came up already throwing, a rapid three-punch combination that forced him to actually give ground, to all 0retreating step by step through the sky as she pressed forward.

"You’re better at this than your brother," One said, blocking the third punch on his forearm. "More technical."

"He hits harder," Lucy said, and drove her knee up into his ribs while his guard was still occupied. "I just don’t miss as often."

The knee connected clean, and this time he actually doubled over, and Lucy used the opening to grab a fistful of his collar and drive her forehead into his nose.

Blood sprayed.

"There," she said, breathing hard, releasing him and stepping back into a ready stance. "That’s for Lucas."

One straightened slowly, wiping blood from his upper lip, and looked at his own hand with something that wasn’t quite anger, more like recalibration.

"Careful," he said. "Anger makes people sloppy."

"I’m not angry," Lucy said. "I’m efficient."

She came at him again, and this time when he swung back, she didn’t try to block it outright. She let it graze her shoulder, taking the glancing damage on purpose to close the distance faster, and drove Valor’s flat side into his sternum at point-blank range, lightning discharging directly into the contact point.

The blast sent him tumbling backward through the sky, trailing smoke.

Lucy didn’t chase immediately. She held position, chest heaving, watching him catch himself and right his fall a hundred meters out.

"That’s twice now," she called out. "Twice you’ve had to actually recover from something I did. Keep telling yourself you’re undisputed."

One’s expression had gone flat.

He crossed the distance fast this time, faster than before, and Lucy barely got her guard up before the first strike landed, a straight punch that cracked through her block and caught her across the cheek. She spun with it instead of fighting it, using the rotation to bring Valor around in a wide arc that he ducked, and she immediately reversed the swing, catching him across the shoulder blade as he came back up.

He grabbed her wrist mid-recovery and yanked, hard, pulling her off balance, and drove his knee into her stomach.

The air left her in one violent burst.

She folded around it, but her free hand was already moving, driving two fingers into the fresh wound on his back that she’d opened earlier, lightning arcing directly into exposed muscle, and he roared, releasing her wrist on reflex.

Lucy staggered back, gasping, and used the distance to reset.

"Different tactics," she said, wiping blood from her split lip. "That’s the trick, isn’t it. You’ve fought Lucas. You’ve fought me for however long now. You’re used to reading momentum, reading swing patterns, reading what a lightning-user’s next move looks like before it happens." She circled, slower now, more deliberate. "So I stop giving you patterns."

She threw a strike that looked, for all the world, like the start of another overhead swing, and at the last possible instant collapsed it into a short jab instead, catching him across the ribs before he’d finished committing to the block he’d already started.

"Clever," he said, though there was less amusement in it now.

"I was taught by people who fought smarter than they hit," Lucy said. "You should try it sometime."

He came at her again, and this exchange ran longer than any before it, both of them trading strikes in overlapping bursts, no clean rhythm to any of it, fists and lightning and shadow colliding across the open sky in flashes bright enough to be visible from the ground. Lucy caught one strike on Valor’s haft and pivoted into an elbow that connected with his temple. He answered with a backhand that clipped her jaw hard enough to snap her head sideways, and she rode the momentum into a spinning heel kick that caught him across the same spot she’d already hurt twice.

He staggered, actually staggered, boots skidding through open air.

"I am Lucy Grey," she said, pressing forward, voice raw now, blood running down her chin. "King of Raiju. You will yield to me."

One straightened slowly, rolling his shoulder, wiping more blood from his lip, and looked at her with something that had gone cold underneath whatever amusement had been there before.

"I bow to no one," he said.

He hit her three times in rapid succession before she could fully reset, fist, fist, elbow, and the third one connected clean across her jaw, sending her tumbling backward through open air. She caught herself on a burst of lightning beneath her boots and came right back around, and this time when Valor swung, she didn’t aim for his body at all.

She threw it.

Full force, spinning end over end, aimed low and wide, curving past his shoulder in an arc that made no obvious sense as an attack, and while his attention split trying to track the axe’s trajectory, Lucy was already closing, driving a straight punch into his exposed ribs, chi-laced, everything she had behind it.

He grunted, doubling slightly.

Valor completed its arc and swung back in behind him.

He caught it a half second too late, and the blunt end connected across the back of his skull hard enough to actually drop him a few feet through the air before he caught himself.

"That’s the third time," Lucy said, breathing hard, catching Valor as it returned to her hand. "You said me bleeding doesn’t matter. Let’s see how many more times you have to catch yourself before it starts mattering to you too."

One turned to face her, and something had shifted in his expression, the flat certainty from before replaced by something sharper, more focused, like he’d stopped treating this as an inevitability and started treating it as an actual problem to solve.

"You want a real fight," he said. "Fine."

He came at her differently this time, lower, faster, no telegraphed windup at all, and Lucy barely tracked the first strike before it connected, catching her across the ribs hard enough to crack something. She gasped, staggered, and he was already following with a second, aimed at her jaw, and she managed to get her forearm up in time to deflect most of it, the graze still hard enough to spin her half around.

She used the spin.

Rather than fighting the momentum, she let it carry her into a full rotation, bringing Valor around in a wide horizontal sweep that caught him across the chest as he closed for the third strike, lightning discharging on contact in a bright burst that lit the sky around them.

He staggered back, actually breathing hard now himself, blood running from multiple points along his torso.

"You’re bleeding a lot," Lucy said, "for a god."

"So are you," he said, "for a queen."

They came at each other one more time, both throwing everything they had left, and the collision that followed tore through the sky in a series of overlapping shockwaves, BOOM after BOOM rolling out across the battlefield below, visible even through smoke and cloud cover as flashes of blue and violet light strobing against the darkening sky.

Lucy landed two more strikes clean, one across his jaw, one into the ribs she’d already cracked, chi and lightning both burning through the contact points, and for one suspended moment it looked, genuinely looked, like the tide might actually be turning.

Then he caught her wrist mid-swing.

She felt it before she understood it, his grip closing iron-tight around bone, and he wrenched her forward instead of pushing her back, pulling her directly into a knee that connected with her stomach hard enough to lift her briefly off the ground she hadn’t even realized she’d drifted close to.

The air left her in one violent burst, and she folded around it completely this time, and he didn’t let her recover, following with an elbow to the back of her neck that drove her face-first into the churned earth below.

She hit hard. Rolled. Came up on one knee, Valor somehow still in her grip, blood running from too many places to count now, her armor cracked along one whole side.

One landed a few feet away, chest heaving for the first time all fight, blood streaked across his ribs and jaw and back, watching her fight to stay upright with something that had lost all its earlier detachment.

"Get up," he said. Not cruel this time. Almost genuinely curious. "I want to see how many more times you can."

"Then come find out," Lucy said, and forced herself back to her feet, swaying badly, Valor dragging in the dirt because her arm no longer had the strength to lift it properly.

He hit her four more times before she finally went down for real, a combination too fast for her battered body to track anymore, fist to the ribs, elbow to the jaw, knee to the chest, and a final open-palm strike that drove her flat onto her back in the churned dirt, Valor finally slipping from her fingers and landing somewhere just out of reach.

Each impact had a percussive rhythm behind it.

She didn’t get up.

Her chest heaved, blood running freely, and she stared up at the sky, at him standing over her now, backlit by pale light filtering through smoke and dust.

"Still don’t yield," she managed, barely above a whisper.

"I know," One said, crouching slightly, studying her with something that might have been respect if it hadn’t been so cold. "You made me bleed more today than anyone since my father. That’s not nothing."

He straightened, looking past her, out toward the horizon where the sounds of battle still carried, distant and unresolved.

"Rest," he said. "You’ve earned that much, at least."

Lucy didn’t move, didn’t have the strength left to move, and after a moment he crouched again, closer this time, close enough that she could see the blood still running from his own jaw, his own ribs, real damage she’d actually put there.

"You keep asking me to yield," he said. "I never will. That’s not something you’re going to accomplish today, or any day after this one. I want you to be certain of that before we’re finished. Absolutely certain. No corner of doubt left anywhere in you."

"Why," she said, the word barely making it out. "So you let me mark you?"

"No, you did this all by yourself. Rejoice, you made me bleed. Which only means I’m not quite there yet," he said, taking a breath in. "As for why, it’s pretty simple. A god who demands faith from everyone but tests it in no one isn’t a god at all," he said. "He’s a rumor. I don’t want rumors following me. I want conviction. Real conviction, the type of conviction that survives being broken and comes out the other side still true." He tilted his head, studying her the way someone studied a piece they’d already decided to keep. "You fought me harder than anyone alive today. That means something. It means you’re exactly the kind of person whose faith, once it finally settles, actually matters."

"I’ll never—"

"You will," he said, without malice, without heat, just certainty laid flat and simple. "Not today. Maybe not for a long while yet. But I have special plans for you, Lucy Grey, and I’m not in any particular hurry about them." He stood, looking down at her one last time. "Rest. Heal. I’ll find you again when I’m ready."

He turned and walked away across the scorched field, unhurried, leaving her there in the dirt among the smoke and the ruin, and didn’t look back.

---

Far above the churning surface of Vel’kai, space folded and reformed as a ship dropped out of warp, its hull dark and unmarked, cutting through the debris field left behind by the earlier orbital massacre without slowing.

At the forward viewport, hands folded behind his back, the Supreme General looked out at the wreckage of the Sterling fleet still drifting in slow, silent arcs against the black, and at the planet turning beneath it, smoke visible even from orbit, rising in thin gray columns from a battlefield he hadn’t yet seen up close.

He said nothing for a long moment.

Then he reached up and began the sequence to seal his helmet.