Chapter 130 _ Harmless Bubbles
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Elder Hestruin moved first.
Wind burst from his feet as he closed the distance in a single breath — silver sword driving straight at Socrates' chest, the blade carrying compressed wind energy along its edge that could split stone at this range.
Socrates dropped low — the blade passing over his head — and drove his fist upward into Hestruin's ribs with the Heavenly Toppling Art running through the strike. The impact was total. Hestruin left the ground.
He landed ten meters back. Composed immediately.
"Good." He said — and pulled a scroll from his storage pouch.
The Solar Flame Scroll — ancient, the formation inside it built around Yang energy, the specific counter to cold and Yin. He snapped it open and the corridor filled with heat immediately — a wall of solar flame rolling outward that evaporated the frost on the walls, the floor, everything Socrates had built with the cold element dissolving in a single wave.
Socrates felt his ice element pushed back.
He switched.
Earth halo flaring — Heavenly Toppling Art driving through his legs as he stamped the floor. The corridor stone erupted between them in a jagged ridge that the solar flame hit and climbed and Hestruin vaulted over — the wind carrying him above it, the silver sword already swinging as he descended.
CLANG.
Socrates caught it on a conjured ice blade — the cold fighting the Yang energy on the steel, frost and fire grinding against each other at the point of contact.
Hestruin pulled a second artifact.
A Sun Bead — small, golden, radiating Yang energy in concentrated pulses that pressed against the cold element the same way the Windless Seal had. He held it forward and the ice blade in Socrates' hand began melting from the base.
Socrates dropped it.
Raised his right hand — poison halo darkening — and drove a strike at Hestruin's throat.
Hestruin leaned back, the wind bending his body impossibly far, the strike passing his neck by an inch. He answered with a wind palm that caught Socrates across the chest and sent him into the wall.
The wall cracked.
Socrates pushed off it before the dust settled.
Meanwhile — invisible, odorless, patient — the white water was moving through the corridor air. Released from Socrates' left hand in small bubbles during the exchanges — harmless looking, dissipating on contact with surfaces, leaving no trace. Just small bursts of white water that Hestruin had noted and dismissed in the first minute of the fight.
Melting frost. Nothing more.
Hestruin pulled a third scroll — Wind Thousand Blades, the formations inside multiplying the output of his element into a dense storm of compressed wind blades that filled the corridor completely.
Socrates weaved his hand sign.
"Yin Energy Technique — Concentrate and Freeze."
Every blade froze mid-flight and shattered.
Hestruin was already inside the ice storm — moving through the shattering blades, the wind carrying him through the gaps, the silver sword driving forward at point blank range with the full weight of a fourth stage Master Realm cultivator behind it.
It hit.
Socrates took it across the left arm — the blade cutting deep, the wind energy in it tearing through the impact site — and answered with his right fist directly into Hestruin's face.
The Heavenly Toppling Art.
Full output.
Hestruin left the ground and hit the ceiling this time — the stone above them cracking from the impact — before dropping back down. He landed on his feet. Barely.
Both of them breathing hard now.
Hestruin looked at the blood running down Socrates' arm.
Then at Socrates' face.
Something in his expression shifted — the composed exterior recalibrating, the assessment updating. He raised the Sun Bead higher — its Yang energy output intensifying, the corridor warming further, the last traces of frost retreating from the walls.
"You're strong." Hestruin said. "Stronger than any newly broken Master I've encountered." He looked at the four halos behind Socrates. "Multiple elements. King Spartacus' art. A Heavenly Rank Physique." He pointed the silver sword forward. "But you're bleeding. And I'm not."
He came forward — the wind and the Sun Bead combined, the heat and the speed arriving simultaneously, the solar flame scroll releasing a second wave that merged with his sword energy as he drove it forward in a full commitment strike aimed at Socrates' chest.
This was the kill strike.
He could feel it — the fight's momentum, the accumulated damage on Socrates' left arm, the cold element still suppressed by the Sun Bead's Yang output. Everything aligned. Everything pointing toward the same conclusion.
He drove the blade home—
And felt something wrong.
In his chest.
Not the impact of a counter strike. Not pain from injury. Something internal — a wrongness that arrived quietly and then rapidly, the way poison arrives when it has been patient long enough and decides to stop being patient.
He stopped moving.
Looked down.
His hand — the one holding the Sun Bead — was purple.
Not the deep vivid purple of a fresh application. The faded working purple of something that had been spreading slowly through a system for several minutes without being noticed.
His sword arm.
Purple at the wrist. Traveling upward.
He coughed.
The blood that came out was dark — darker than injury blood, carrying something in its color that had no business being in blood.
He coughed again. Harder. His knees wanted to go down and he refused them.
"What—" He looked at Socrates. "When—"
Socrates was leaning against the wall. Arms crossed. The cut on his left arm still bleeding. His expression carrying nothing that resembled urgency.
"The white water." Socrates said.
Hestruin's eyes went to the floor. To the dry patches where the small bubbles had dissipated throughout the fight. The ones he had noted. Dismissed. Melting frost — he had read them as melting frost because that was what they looked like.
"You breathed it." Socrates said. "Every exchange we had — I was putting it in the air between us. Not on you. Not at you. In the air. By the time the third exchange was done it was in your lungs." He looked at the purple spreading up Hestruin's sword arm. "The white water carries the poison element dissolved into it. Undetectable because the water looks clean. Because the poison is part of the water — not on top of it."
Hestruin's other hand came up — reaching for his storage pouch, for an antidote, for something—
"The Sun Bead counters Yin energy." Socrates said. "The poison element isn't Yin. It's its own nature." He watched Hestruin's hand slow as it reached the pouch. "Whatever antidote you have in there — it's for poison. This is an element living inside your cells. An antidote treats poison. It can't treat an element any more than water can treat fire."
Hestruin's hand stopped at the pouch.
He understood.
His body understood before his mind finished the sentence — the cellular dissolution beginning its work, the same process Vrath had described in the chamber under the Frost Castle. Thorough. Without preference for what it consumed.
He looked at Socrates.
For the first time since Socrates had known him — since the day he had been shoved into the underworld, since the day Hestruin had stood in a room and watched the Northern Gladiator assess him — the composed expression was gone.
What was underneath it was just a man.
An old man who had spent his entire life accumulating power and had just been outmaneuvered by someone he had sent to die.
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
His body went down — not falling, going down, the strength leaving it in a controlled descent that had the quality of something that had made a decision. He hit the frost covered floor on his knees. Then forward.
The purple had reached his neck.
His storage ring — still on his finger, the items inside it carrying the weight of a Master Realm cultivator's life of accumulation — caught the dim light of the Frost Castle corridor as his hand went still.
Socrates straightened off the wall.
Walked to where Hestruin lay.
Crouched beside him. Removed the storage ring from his finger with the same hands then pocketed it.
He stood.
Looked at what remained of the corridor — the frost, the blast marks, the clean lines wind had scored into the walls, the patches where the solar flame scroll had burned the cold away. The evidence of a fight between a first stage Master and a fourth stage Master that had ended one way.
Then a smile formed on his face....
"I'm more than powerful now...."
'I don't think you should be happy now.... '
"Huh..."
'Something dangerous is coming... Something that could kill you in a strike... RUN... ' Lady Achillia cried out as Socrates fled his location immediately...
Suddenly the ground where he stood bursted out of fire as the fire destroyed everything there towering towards the heaven ...
It was a white freezing flame that covered everywhere causing an explosion that shook the very foundation of the Frost Palace...
Socrates got jumped and was sent flying away uncontrollably... By the time he regained control of his body ...
Someone was standing in front of him...
A Towering Giant of about 12 feet tall with a curved large horn as weapon and body exuding flame as he stared down at Socrates...
"Here I thought I'll get a perfect challenger this time... It turns out to be a pathetic Master realm cultivator..." The Giant said to Socrates who was looking lost and terrified at the same time....
This was no Master Realm Cultivator....
This was a Grandmaster.... Not a Human but an Asura clan member....
The Lord of this dungeon.... The Number I ranker .., The End Boss...
"BOY.. HOW DID YOU WANT TO DIE?"