Rebirth: Necromancer's Ascenscion-Chapter 131: Death vs Fang

Ian’s blade screamed through the air—a flurry of controlled fury: strike, parry, lightning-quick riposte, a deceptive thrust, a subtle feint.

Every movement engineered to kill. Every blow laced with death-born power.

But Fang—his crimson rods a blur—met each one.

Even the impossible ones.

His defense was fluid, precise, almost serene in its inhuman grace.

Then, with a sweeping turn—less a maneuver than a dance—Fang deflected a neck-bound slash and, in the same breath, drove both rods into Ian’s chest.

The impact landed like a meteor.

Ian flew—breath ripped from his lungs, body a ragdoll of shadow and steel.

He slammed into the base of a shattered monolith.

Stone cracked and screamed.

Dust exploded around him.

He sagged there, half-buried in rubble, smoke coiling from torn fabric and charred flesh. Violet wisps curled from his wounds.

His breath was broken glass.

And then—he rose.

Slow. Agonizing. But unbroken.

He peeled off the pillar, swaying, blood-slick, eyes still burning.

"Not bad," Ian rasped, wiping a smear of dark blood from his mouth. "You’re not just any bastard huh. Not just some noble dog with a but of power."

Fang stood still across the blasted field, crimson robes torn at the shoulder.

His breath deeper now, but measured.

A flicker of something old burned in his eyes.

"I was a priest," he said. "I stopped praying when the gods stopped answering. Or maybe they did answer—just not in ways we were taught to understand."

Ian’s eyes sharpened. Something cold, something hungry, stirred within.

"Good," he said, voice like a blade unsheathing.

He vanished.

A quick step—

—a flicker, a distortion—

—and he reappeared behind Fang, Judgement already descending, a guillotine of death.

Fang didn’t turn.

He didn’t need to.

As if the air whispered to him, he spun both rods backward, catching the lethal arc mid-swing with a bone-jarring clang.

One rod hooked Ian’s ankle, jerking him off balance. The other struck his temple—fast, brutal.

White.

The world exploded behind Ian’s eyes. Sound became a distant roar. Stars swam across his vision.

He stumbled back, reeling, the ground tilting beneath his feet.

Fang pressed forward.

The tide turned—

—the predator awakened.

His rods became a storm. Crimson and shadow. Every strike a lesson in destruction.

Every movement lethal efficiency.

Neck. Heart. Spine. Temple.

Ian blocked what he could. Judgement became a desperate shield. But he was slowing.

Bleeding. Breaking.

Black blood sprayed into the air, sharp and gleaming.

With a strangled grunt, Ian dropped to a knee.

Judgement scraped stone, more crutch than weapon now. His breath came in shreds.

Fang stopped, just feet away. He raised a hand.

The rods flew to him, slamming into his grasp. They twisted, melded, their inscribed runes igniting.

Light met shadow. Power met scripture.

They became a single, seething javelin of condensed energy—crimson-tipped and deadly.

"Fall," Fang whispered.

He hurled it.

A ruby spear of divine judgment, aimed at Ian’s heart.

Ian flinched.

He raised a hand—shaking, bloodied. Not in surrender.

In summons.

From the pit of his shadow, something monstrous surged forth.

Ashvaleth.

The spectral wolf-beast burst into existence—smoke, bone, void-born terror. It howled as it lunged, intercepting the javelin mid-air.

Detonation.

A crimson-black sun bloomed.

The shockwave annihilated all it touched. Caelen and Lyra screamed behind their failing cover as fire and force rolled over them.

And then—

—silence.

Ashvaleth was gone. Dissolved into smoke and echo.

Ian stood at the heart of a crater. His coat half-gone, bones cracked, skin blistered and raw.

Bleeding from a dozen wounds.

But he smiled.

A terrible, wounded, radiant smile.

"Good," he rasped, voice torn and trembling. "You’re worthy."

Fang landed opposite. Robes tattered. Blood traced down his cheek. His chest rose and fell in deep, steady draws.

They stood in silence.

The battlefield—shattered, still—held its breath.

No more words.

Just two men. Two monsters. Staring across a graveyard of dust and ruin.

For now—

—they were equals.

Balanced on a knife’s edge.

Not gods. Not mortals.

Something else.

Waiting for the other to blink.

Ian’s grin twisted, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

"You’re worthy," he said again, voice a rasp of steel on bone. His fingers flexed around the hilt of Judgement, the sigils along the blade flaring to life in pulses of sickly amethyst.

"Worthy... to see the extent of what I am."

The wind shifted.

A tremor passed through the earth.

Fang’s brow furrowed, just a hair.

Something ancient shifted in the air between them, a pressure that hadn’t been there before.

It rolled from Ian’s frame in quiet waves—power, not spoken, but promised.

Ian raised his left hand.

All across the battlefield, the corpses shivered.

Men. Mages. Monstrosities.

Broken soulbound constructs. Their bodies twitched, then arched unnaturally—mouths agape, eyes rolling back—as something was ripped from within.

The air grew heavy.

From each corpse, a fragment of light and shadow spiraled upward like smoke drawn into a storm.

Hundreds of souls—each with a life, a name, a story—now fuel.

They rushed toward Ian like a hurricane of whispers.

[Soul Absorption in Progress...]

[Corruption: 50%]

The ground around him blackened.

Flesh cracked and reknit.

His eyes deepened from storm-gray to void-black. Tendrils of mist coiled around his limbs, thick with the weight of the dead.

[Corruption: 65%] frёewebnoѵēl.com

The air turned cold.

Dead cold.

Fang’s rods pulsed with defensive light, reacting instinctively to the unnatural shift.

He took a step back, not from fear—but from understanding.

This was no spell.

This was transcendence.

[Corruption: 78%]

Ian’s spine arched, his mouth opened wide—not in a scream, but in a soundless exhale. Darkness poured from it, a stream of anti-light that snuffed out the torches of the world.

[Corruption: 91%]

His body was no longer just flesh.

It was something else.

[Flesh of suffering]

The shadow of a king who reigned over graveyards. A sovereign not of land or blood—but of silence, of rot, of truth beneath all things.

[Corruption: 100%]

[State: Property of Death]

When the final soul vanished into him, Ian stood still.

The wind had died.

No birds.

No insects.

Even the broken trees hundreds of miles away seemed to lean away from him.