I am the Only Son of Nyx

Chester charged in for the Heart of Dragon.

He wasted no time and went in for the victory, which was the most important thing.

As long as he won, things would get complicated for Kai, and that’s what he wanted.

Below, Kai wasn’t worried about what Chester was doing. He didn’t need to. Chester was too occupied with the Heart of the Dragon that he didn’t realize the protective layer of compressed air shifted.

It was pulled from across the four-winged bird’s body and heading to its talon.

Kai deemed this a golden opportunity and moved.

He threw his body to the side with as much strength as he could and began running in a spiral up the reddish barrier. As he ran, his chest was heaving up and down as his stamina began to take a hit.

Since he couldn’t use the winged boots, he needed to rely on his physique more.

And since the battle took place high above, he needed to be constantly on the move.

Earlier, he had to keep leaping from one side to the other to make an attack. Now—he needed to keep running while keeping his weight on his right foot. Slowing down would mean losing momentum, and losing momentum meant surrendering to gravity, so he needed to keep his legs moving.

Volunteering to help seniors in the Second Sky had turned into a disaster.

He was almost killed by the seniors.

However, now that he had survived, he learned many valuable things from the experience.

One of them was the method to weaken a Star Beast, which was done by taking out its precious Null Gem from inside its body. Many assumed that harming the gem would kill the Star Beast outright, but that wasn’t true.

It would only weaken it, and that’s precisely what Kai was going for.

Swoosh—!

At a moment’s notice, the arena had turned into a storm of motion, and Kai was its edge.

He ran in a tightened spiral along the barrier; his boots skimmed the reddish wall as he stalked the four-winged bird with cold—hunter focus. His eyes tracked every beat of its wings, every twist of its tail, and every shift in the air around it.

Chester darted in first.

Making use of the opportunity he created on its own, his sickle shot forward in an attempt to hook the Heart of Dragon in the four-winged bird’s talon. The curved blade was inches from the prize when it stopped—blocked.

A sphere of compressed air shimmered around the Heart of Dragon.

It was invisible at first, but flickered to reality when it made contact with the sickle.

Only then did Chester realize the protective layer around the four-winged bird was flexible, able to be pulled from one body part to another. And this time, it had wrapped tightly around the Heart of Dragon, sacrificing the defense of other parts to reinforce it.

Chester clicked his tongue in displeasure, and then the tail came.

A whip of feather and bone that lashed out and struck him across his chest from below.

He swatted up and away like an afterthought.

Kai took this distraction as his golden opportunity and moved even faster.

As he moved closer, the four-winged bird’s focus was still on Chester. It was turning around slowly, and its guard was open. Kai sneaked from the side silently, rising like a shadow with predatory fangs.

In one fluid motion, he flipped the Blood-phantom Scimitar in his left hand into a reverse grip.

He stabbed it sideways with everything he had.

Splash—!

Kai watched as the scimitar pierced the four-winged bird’s forehead, shattering the thin layer of compressed air that had yet to be reinforced again. The blade sank through skin and flesh— driving deep until its tip found the green Null Gem seated at the front of its skull.

Sparks flew, followed by an energy discharge that seared his entire body.

And with the sound of glass cracking, the Null Gem cracked.

A few hairline fractures, but they were more than enough to do the deed.

Roar—!

Even though destroying the Null Gem wouldn’t kill the Star Beast outright, it was still really connected to its nerves. Pain stabbed through its skull when it cracked, forcing it to squeal in the air in agony.

Following that, the protective layer around its body weakened instantly.

Kai could see it flicker, becoming visible and invisible, before growing dimmer than before.

But the four-winged bird’s agony didn’t stop there.

Chester, still burning from the whipping tail’s insult, surged upward from below.

His sickle was charged with mana to the point of turning its sharp edge blue, and then carved a vicious arc across the four-winged bird’s upper right wing. This time, there was no layer of wind to stop it.

Blood sprayed, tracing brutal arcs in the air.

Another shriek escaped the four-winged bird’s beak as it wobbled in its flight.

A red line bloomed across its wing, and Chester didn’t pause.

He smashed his shield into the side of its skull—a brutal, concussive blow that sent the giant beast careening sideways through the air. The stadium erupted at the sight. The crowd roared with pure, unbridled excitement.

Seeing the two enemies work together to fight the four-winged bird was exciting.

Not to mention, the time for these two to hurt the beast was relatively fast.

Even the previous Dragon Ring tournament’s finalists needed more than ten minutes to hurt the chosen Star Beast, and yet it only took less than five minutes this time. It was clear that the finalists this year were better than the last.

But as it fell, the four-winged bird still fought back.

Its eight tails whipped around in a blinding, savage arc, cutting through the air with a shriek.

Chester was struck across his ribs and was sent crashing down to the ground like a comet.

Kai was trying to grab the Heart of Dragon, but also got slapped away.

Both of them were hurled downward, carved from the sky by the four-winged bird’s fury.

Crash—!

Chester hit the arena floor like a meteor.

He had curled his body behind his shield, which was blowing wind to lessen the momentum of his fall until the last possible moment, and yet the impact was still devastating. The arena floor cracked beneath him, a spiderweb of fractures that erupted outward.

And it was so deep that he was embedded in the stone.

A choked sound escaped his throat, and his face twisted into a clear mask of pain as he moved to lie on his back. Veins bulged and crawled along his neck as the shockwave from the landing rippled through his entire body, crushing the air from his lungs and making his left side feel as though it had been caved in by the God of Fire, Hephaestus’ hammer.

Not too far away, Kai struck the ground like a lightning strike without a shield.

His body smashed into the stone, bounced once, and then tumbled like a broken marionette.

He stopped only when his body struck the arena wall with a sickening thud.

For a long moment, he lay still, sprawled against the stone. And then the pain came like a tide sweeping across every nerve, every fiber, and every inch of his broken body. He coughed, and blood sprayed from his lips.

It was bright red against the rough stone.

Something inside him was broken. Several somethings.

He could feel the wrongness in his chest, the sharp, splintered complaint of fractured ribs, and the deep throb of something worse. The Reckless Hardening had made his body more durable than any Awakened Supernal, had reinforced his bones and thickened his skin—but even that was not enough to deny the sheer brutality of the fall.

Seeing the brutal fall from the sky, the crowd erupted, flinching at the devastating impact.

Among the crowd, Bree’s hands flew to her mouth, and her eyes widened.

She snapped her face away before impact, uncomfortable to see the impact of the fall.

Matilda watched Kai hit the ground and felt the impact in her own bones.

Even the sound of it—the wet, crunching slam—sent a shiver down her spine.

Beside her, Dorian shot to his feet, hands flying to his head as the colour drained from his face. "By the fucking Gods..." The words came out as a whisper, trembling with secondhand pain. He could feel it—that plunge from the arena’s center with no mana to break the fall and no shield to take the impact would be devastating. "Don’t die on me, Kai. You can survive that fall. If anyone can, it’s you."

As if hearing his voice, Kai’s eyes shot open.

He gasped, a ragged, choking sound, and immediately tasted iron.

Slowly, he rolled onto his side and spat the blood out of his mouth, and then lay there, chest heaving up and down while he stared at the sky through the blur of pain. It was then that his mind clicked back to reality again.

Did... Did I pass out?

Kai had passed out for a few seconds the moment his body landed on the ground.

But considering that he fell from an extreme height without breaking the momentum, he was lucky that he had only passed out. Even though he had anticipated this, he thought he would be able to at least slow down the momentum.

After all, he was always close to the barrier, but then this happened.

He blinked and saw the four-winged bird was still flying.

It was faltering, but still in the sky.

He forced his gaze to move—searching the wreckage until he found Chester. The High Angel was still down, clawing at the edges of the crater his own body had made. The sight brought Kai a cold kind of comfort.

At least he wasn’t the only one broken in the dust.

Neither of them was okay.

Both had taken the fall and were shown no mercy by the ground.

As the seconds dragged, Kai’s Reckless Ruin Ending Fragment was already working. He could feel it—a cold, living darkness slithering through his veins. It stitched torn muscle, bound all broken bones, and kept his body functional even as the pain screamed through him.

However, it didn’t do anything for the pain.

Nothing for the fire in his chest or the grinding wrongness in his limbs.

But still, it held him together.

It made him able to keep going when any other would still be lying in a heap on the stone.

Most likely dead.

Kai waited, forcing himself still. His breath came in short, ragged bursts, and the pain from the fall clawed at him, demanding a scream he couldn’t give. Not yet. Not while his lungs still burned.

He’d been too greedy with the four-winged bird, and now his body was paying the price.

Had he waited for a few seconds and observed, he might’ve anticipated the lashing tail.

A Scourge-class Star Beast is too much, no?

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