novelraw Chapter 153 - 149: Burning Mirrors
Chapter 153 - 149: Burning Mirrors
This was a tale of two Outlanders.
Two men from very different worlds—
Even back on Earth.
And yet both had been brought into Requiem.
Both had been there for less than a year.
And in that short, brutal span of time, they had managed to carve names for themselves in a reality that snuffed out life as casually as most places wasted water.
One had entered this world through glitching out a video game.
He arrived carrying confusion, instability, and rage—then sharpened all of it into a path of destruction and death. He clawed his way upward through violence, ego, and sheer refusal to be ignored, making a name for himself fast enough to become a Ranker in only a few months.
The other had come into Requiem after saving his sister from death.
That alone said enough.
He had already been the kind of man who charged into fate headfirst without needing a second thought. And once he entered the realms, that instinct didn't leave him—it only evolved. He was handed an impossible burden, then forced to become the kind of person who could carry it. Through loss, pressure, failure, and the people who helped shape him along the way, he made himself whole.
And in under a year—
Though not a Ranker—
He had still achieved Ranker-level feats.
Still survived.
Still reached the end of one of the bloodiest tournaments of the year.
Two protagonists of their own stories.
One believed in Conquest.
The annihilation of everything in his path—
So that only he remained.
A philosophy that turned progress into erasure.
A path that led all roads to ruin.
The other believed in Dominance.
Not simple control.
Not hollow superiority.
But the right to remember.
To carry.
To decide what was worth preserving and what needed to be put down.
A path that elevated those striving alongside him—
And determined how to handle those who stood in the way.
With beliefs like that—
It was inevitable.
Each protagonist became the antagonist of the other's story.
Even though they had barely met.
Even though they had no real reason to clash.
On paper, they should have passed each other by.
But reality was rarely that clean.
Outside forces.
Pressure.
Timing.
Coincidence.
The way worlds fold around strong people and force collision where there should've been distance.
That was enough.
And in the brief moments they had crossed paths—
They had done something neither of them expected.
They shattered each other's illusion of power.
———
[11 minutes until the gold wave devours the land.]
Cawren looked at North.
Really looked at him.
The man standing across from him barely resembled anything human anymore. His dark attire hung in torn layers, the hooded black cape shredded and dragging behind him like a shadow that refused to die. Beneath it, patches of red-veined skin showed through.
The Blood Prince.
Cawren's eyes lingered on his face.
Red eyes.
Rotating black sigils turning slowly within them like a system rewriting itself in real time.
Two vertical red lines beneath each eye.
Long, matted black hair clinging to his face and neck.
And that grin—
That same grin.
Cawren smiled back.
Because he understood it.
This man had survived his [Unbreakable Malevolent Mudra].
His field of Conquest.
That alone meant something.
But Cawren hadn't been idle either.
He had followed THE FORGE OF ABSOLUTES questline.
Even with the golden wave disrupting most of it, he had still managed to secure two Essence of Worth.
That was enough.
More than enough.
All his buffers were still active.
Every enhancement layered over his body like armor:
[Blessing of the Black Star]
[Malefic Overdrive]
[Solar Consumption]
[Infernal Prayer]
[Draconic Veins]
[Starlit Devourer]
[Essence of Worth x2]
[Crown of the Fallen Flame]
His health—
22%.
Low.
But not empty.
And he still had Ryun left.
That was all that mattered.
Cawren raised his hand.
Fingers forming a triangle.
Slow.
Deliberate.
He would wipe them off the map.
This technique—
It didn't need perfection.
It only needed intent.
And time made it worse.
Stronger.
Like when he charged it for hours before the tournament.
Like when he used it—
To erase millions.
This version would be weaker.
But his opponents were weaker too.
Exhausted.
At their limit.
He smiled as a line echoed in his mind.
From the quest.
From the thing that had chosen him.
"When tales fail to end,
When heirs fracture and stars fall out of rhythm,
One not of bloodline—but of wrath—may rise."
His eyes locked onto North.
And beyond him—
To Destiny and Jamal.
———————————————————
Primary Objective:
Slay the Fractured Heir — a Jujisn destined to claim a King's title.
Steal their right.
Take their crown.
End their story.
Begin your legend.
———————————————————
Cawren exhaled slowly.
His aura began to rise.
He had already started his legend.
This—
Was just another achievement on it.
———
North chuckled.
He looked at Cawren and, for a brief second, something dumb crossed his mind.
Cawren stood to the south.
And he was walking in from the north.
…yeah.
Stupid thing to think about right now.
But that's how it was when you were this exhausted—your brain grabbed onto anything it could before the next life-or-death moment hit.
He exhaled slowly.
His body screamed at him.
Everything hurt.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Everything was spent.
But he still stepped forward.
Because he had to.
This guy had been a problem since day one.
From the moment he nuked the starting area—
Buried North under all that destruction like he didn't matter.
Then again—
When he tried to kill him while he was frozen inside the Story battle dome.
And during the Herald fight?
Yeah.
This guy was a pest.
A real one.
And now—
It was time to deal with it.
Because it wasn't just about him anymore.
Sšurtinaui had lost her crew because of Cawren.
That alone was enough reason.
And North wasn't stupid.
If he lost here—
Cawren wouldn't stop.
He'd move on.
Kill the rest.
Jamal.
Destiny.
Anyone still breathing.
The only person he seemed to care about was the woman he brought with him.
Everyone else?
Disposable.
North's eyes narrowed slightly.
He felt it then.
The energy.
Cawren's aura rising.
Ugly.
Yellow.
Like a storm rotting from the inside.
Black motes drifting through it like ash.
North recognized it immediately.
…yeah.
That was it.
The same attack.
The one he used at the start.
The one that wiped out millions.
North smiled.
Then—
He lunged forward.
For every man, there is a cause he will gladly die for.
Something he will plant his feet for.
Something he will let his body break for.
Something he will refuse to step away from even when the outcome is obvious.
Because once a man finds the right cause—
Fear stops mattering the same way.
Pain changes shape.
And survival becomes secondary to what must be defended.
To defend the right to have a narrative one can belong to—
A story that is theirs.
A meaning that isn't authored by someone stronger.
A path that isn't stolen, edited, or rewritten by the will of another.
That kind of fight creates a different sort of person.
And the more dedicated ones—
The truly dangerous ones—
Will fight with their bare hands if they have to.
Will keep moving when weapons break.
Will keep swinging when their bodies don't want to.
Will shed their blood willingly if that's what it takes to stop a narrative invasion.
Because some things are worth dying for.
And some stories—
Cannot be allowed to be taken.
———
Flame gathered.
Symbols ignited around Cawren's wrists and forearms, burning brighter and brighter as they spun into alignment, folding into a perfect triangle between his palms. The air warped around it immediately. Space bent inward. Reality itself creased and pulled tight, like paper being forced along the edge of a blade.
Then—
The triangle collapsed.
The blast didn't travel.
It simply was.
An instantaneous vertical annihilation.
A thing that skipped motion and arrived directly at consequence.
But so was North.
The sigils in his eyes rotated once—
And he punched into it.
Not after it formed.
Not before it fired.
But in that impossible seam where it was both present and not yet fully returned to reality.
An absurd move.
One that should not have worked.
To most—
Impossible.
To strike what was and wasn't there.
But North did it anyway.
His fist collided with the unstable edge of the manifestation, and the blast warped violently around the impact point, shattering sideways instead of downward.
Cawren's red eyes widened.
His armor was mostly gone, burned and torn into hanging scraps. Beneath it, his skin was cracked through with glowing yellow-orange fissures, like his body had been overfilled with fire too many times and was now barely containing it. Black veins spread across his chest and shoulders like dried rot beneath light. His arms trembled from overuse, and one side of his torso was visibly caved in from earlier damage that had never fully healed. Blood ran from his mouth in a thin, steady line.
And still—
He moved.
Fast.
He dashed forward immediately and hurled a punch straight into North's face.
North took it.
Let his head snap to the side—
So he could drive a kick into Cawren's ribs at the same time.
The impact folded Cawren sideways and launched both of them apart just enough to stagger.
Then they rushed each other again.
No magic left.
No Ryun worth using.
No systems.
No hidden second phase.
Nothing left to give but skin and bone.
One had the unnatural resilience of a video game avatar built to keep moving past what should kill him.
The other had been blessed with the body of a Significant Being—made to carry force, endure collapse, and keep standing when ordinary flesh should have failed.
So they fought.
Like animals.
Punch.
Elbow.
Knee.
Headbutt.
Cawren caught North with a hook to the jaw that spun him—
North answered with a forearm to the throat and a knee to the stomach.
Cawren slammed his shoulder into him and drove them both through broken ground.
North bit down through blood and hit him with a short-range hammer fist to the temple.
Every strike mattered now.
Because every strike hurt.
The golden wave raced closer in the distance.
And the next exchange—
Ended in three minutes.
———
Jamal lowered Destiny down as gently as he could.
She barely registered it.
Didn't even look at him.
Her eyes were locked on the fight.
Completely.
Like if she blinked, one of them would die in the gap.
So Jamal let her watch.
Then turned.
And started walking.
Toward Ria.
She was laid out on the ruined ground a short distance away, barely looking like the same woman anymore. Whatever Eirian had done to her had left almost nothing untouched. Her body looked burned to a crisp, skin blackened and split through with ugly glowing blue lines, pieces of her still slowly falling apart like her existence hadn't fully decided whether to stay or go.
She looked horrible.
And somehow—
Still alive.
Barely.
Jamal's jaw tightened as he approached.
His grip around the Glock switch hardened.
Metal creaked faintly in his hand.
Jamal stopped in front of her.
Looked down.
His shadow fell across what remained of her body.
The switch clicked softly as he adjusted it in his grip.
And for a second—
He just stared.
———
It stopped being a duel and turned into a dirty, hateful brawl almost immediately. No elegance. No clean exchanges. Just two exhausted monsters trying to rip the other one down before their bodies gave out first.
North swung.
A heavy right hand.
Cawren slipped just enough for it to graze, then crashed into him chest-to-chest and wrapped him up. The two of them slammed into the broken ground and rolled hard, fists, elbows, and knees flying in ugly bursts of violence.
North got on top for half a second—
Cawren drove an uppercut straight into his jaw.
North's head snapped back.
Cawren followed with another.
And another.
Then North grabbed him by the throat and started choking him.
Cawren's eyes bulged as his back hit the ground, fingers clawing at North's wrists while blood and dirt smeared between them.
Then he stopped trying to pry him off.
And jammed two fingers straight into North's eye.
North roared.
His grip broke instantly.
The fingers drove deep enough to matter—
But the second Cawren felt blood spill over his hand, something changed.
His expression twisted.
Because the blood from North's eye—
Started to eat him.
Cawren hissed as the crimson spread over his fingers like living hunger, chewing through flesh with a parasitic greed that made even him recoil.
North saw it.
And answered immediately.
He lunged forward and slammed his forehead into Cawren's face with a brutal headbutt.
Crunch.
Cawren's fingers snapped wrong in the impact.
The already-devoured flesh folded and broke under the force as his head whipped sideways and blood sprayed across the ruined ground.
Both of them staggered apart.
Panting.
Swaying.
Barely upright.
Cawren's health hovered at 19% now.
He saw it.
Felt it.
North wasn't much better.
And somehow—
That only pushed them harder.
Because once both men realized they were truly nearing the end—
The fight got worse.
North rushed in again and tackled Cawren around the waist, driving him backward into shattered stone. Cawren answered with a knee to the stomach and a hammering elbow to the spine.
North bit him.
Cawren snarled and drove his knuckles into North's temple until they both collapsed sideways again into the dirt.
North got both arms around him.
Turned.
And suplexed Cawren hard enough to crack the ground beneath them.
The impact blasted dust and broken stone outward as Cawren's body folded into the earth shoulder-first, the back of his head bouncing off shattered rock with a sickening thud.
North didn't give him a second.
He rolled through the motion, got up on one good leg and one barely-functioning one, and started kicking.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Brutal, stomping kicks straight to Cawren's head.
Just trying to cave his skull in before he could recover.
Cawren raised an arm for one—
Took the next to the cheek.
Then caught the third.
His hand locked around North's ankle with a desperate, ugly grip.
North's eye widened slightly—
Then Cawren yanked.
He pulled North off balance, twisted his trapped leg with both hands, and wrenched until something gave.
Crack.
North's leg broke.
The pain should've dropped him.
Instead—
North used it.
His face twisted, not away from the agony but through it, and as he stumbled he let his blood spray wide from reopened wounds and splattered it directly across Cawren's chest and arms.
Cawren hissed and jumped back immediately.
Heat flared weakly from his body—not enough for a real attack, just enough to try and burn some of it off before the corruption spread too far.
It helped.
A little.
Enough to keep moving.
Then he did something simple.
He scooped up a fistful of dirt and flung it upward.
North instinctively raised a hand to shield his good eye.
And because both of them were so weak now—
So drained—
Even something that basic mattered.
Aura reading was too expensive.
Instinct was slower.
The dust blinded North harder than even he expected.
And Cawren capitalized instantly.
He lunged.
Dove on top of him.
And started beating him.
Mercilessly.
Punch after punch slammed into North's face and body, Cawren driving his fists down with raw desperation and ugly purpose. He ignored the pain in his broken fingers. Ignored the blood on him. Ignored the fact that every swing hurt him too.
His system flashed at the edge of his vision.
14%
He didn't care.
He was close.
So close.
He was about to do it.
About to usurp the title beneath him.
About to take the crown that mattered.
His Conquest would not be foiled again.
It couldn't be.
He raised his fist—
North bit through half his own tongue.
Hard enough to fill his mouth with blood instantly.
And spat.
A pressurized burst of crimson straight into Cawren's face.
Cawren jerked backward just in time, most of it missing his eyes by inches as he recoiled in disgust and instinctive fear.
That was all North needed.
He surged forward.
Broken leg and all.
Ignored it completely.
And tackled Cawren back to the ground.
Cawren shoved hard with his left hand, trying to force North off him.
But North had already pinned the other arm.
His knee came down on Cawren's right wrist, blood soaking into the pressure point and adding a horrible kind of weight to it—less physical mass and more authority, like the blood itself wanted that limb to stay right where it was.
Cawren strained.
Couldn't move it.
Then North bit him.
Straight into the arm.
Deep.
His teeth sank into flesh with animal force as his right hand clamped higher up the limb. For half a second it looked like he was just mauling him—
Then he pulled.
Hard.
Something tore.
Cawren's left arm ripped free.
It came off in a wet, ugly tear of blood, tendon, and fractured resistance.
North laughed.
Red-mouthed and wild.
Cawren didn't scream.
His health flashed in the corner of his vision.
9%
He saw it.
Accepted it.
And moved anyway.
With the detached arm still close between them, Cawren used the exposed bone and drove it upward like a spear, aiming straight for North's neck.
North caught it with his left arm forearm at the last second.
The jagged bone punched through anyway.
Straight through muscle.
Out the other side, barely touching his neck.
North snarled through gritted teeth as his body jerked from the impact.
Then—
He started punching.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Straight into Cawren's face.
Cawren summoned his demonic mask from his UI on pure reflex, the fractured black-red construct snapping into place over his features just in time to absorb the first few blows.
It helped.
Barely.
Because North didn't stop.
He hit harder.
And harder.
And harder.
His fists slammed into the mask with relentless, ugly fury, each strike cracking through his own knuckles and splitting the skin across his hands. Bone shifted wrong in his fingers. Flesh peeled. But the blood coating his fists helped.
It seeped into the mask between each impact, corroding the construct from the outside while the force of his blows broke it from the inside.
Crack.
Crack.
CRACK.
North smiled.
Wide.
Because he could feel it now.
Cawren was losing options.
————
Destiny watched.
She looked horrified.
Her golden-black aura dimmed slightly as she took in what was happening between North and Cawren. This wasn't a duel anymore. It wasn't even a fight in the way she understood it.
It was—
Something else.
Something ugly.
Jamal had been right.
She didn't understand this.
Not fully.
Not this kind of violence.
Not the kind that abandoned form, abandoned control, abandoned even the idea of winning cleanly.
It felt unnecessary.
Excessive.
Wrong.
And yet—
She felt the why of it hanging in the air.
Because underneath all the brutality—
All the blood and broken bone and teeth and torn flesh—
There was a truth she couldn't ignore.
When someone chooses to kill with everything they are—
When they pour themselves into it completely—
The process is never clean.
Never elegant.
Never noble.
It's horrifying.
Because it's honest.
She swallowed hard and looked away for a second—
Then over to Jamal, who was walking back toward her from where he'd gone.
She exhaled slowly.
The golden wave was closer now.
Way too close.
Close enough that the air itself felt like it was tightening around them.
But even that—
Even something that massive—
Didn't matter right now.
Because this fight—
This ending—
Would come first.
Destiny looked back.
At North.
At what he had become in this moment.
And something in her chest tightened.
Because the thought came naturally.
She hoped he won.
And she knew what that meant.
She hoped—
Her monster made it.
————
5%
Cawren made the decision.
He pulled what little Malefic heat he had left into his throat, forcing it to condense there as North's fist kept crashing into his face. Each hit rattled him, each impact threatening to end it—but he held the charge anyway.
He hadn't realized how bad it had gotten.
North's blood—
It wasn't just corrosive.
It was hungry.
It drained.
It ate.
It spread with a will that felt almost sentient, breaking him down faster than his system could even keep up with.
But they were locked now.
Pinned.
Trapped together.
And in this moment—
He had a gun.
Heat began leaking from his mouth, searing the inside of the mask, building pressure for one final blast.
North felt it.
And smirked.
Of course he does.
Of course this guy got one more in him.
North didn't.
So he did the only thing left.
He matched it with grit.
His punches got worse.
Not cleaner.
Not stronger in form.
Just harder.
He drove his fists into the mask again and again, bones splitting through his knuckles until fragments of his own skeleton became part of the impact. He used them—those jagged edges—as pressure points, grinding them into the cracks forming in the mask.
Cawren's mask strained.
Cracked.
Held.
His charge built.
North couldn't move.
Still pinned by the bone lodged through his arm.
Checkmate.
Cawren laughed.
Heat rising.
Victory close enough to taste.
Then—
North's eye moved.
His good eye.
The sigils rotated.
And he bent distance.
Just enough.
The backlash hit instantly.
His eye sputtered blood—
Then closed.
But he didn't care.
Because his hand—
Was already there.
Inside the mask.
Two spaces collided.
Reality folded wrong.
And the mask—
Shattered.
Cawren's eyes widened—
And he unleashed the beam.
North smiled.
Blood poured from his sockets—
And burned into Cawren's face.
3%
North drove forward.
He punched through Cawren's teeth—
And caught the blast.
Bare-handed.
His ruined hand wrapped around the beam itself, blood colliding with flame, his flesh burning while Cawren bit down with what teeth he had left.
Then—
It erupted.
A violent explosion of blood and fire detonated between them.
North ripped his arm back—
Then drove it forward again.
Through Cawren's throat.
Deep.
Until he felt it—
The spine.
He grabbed it.
And pulled.
Up.
Hard.
Using the momentum—
He tore Cawren's head free.
Cawren's mind flashed.
Everything.
The plans.
The failures.
The quest.
The hatred.
The climb.
And though he wasn't satisfied—
Though he had failed—
There was something unexpected at the end.
Clarity.
A strange, off-balance peace.
For all the ruin, he couldn't deny it. He had enjoyed the climb. It was ugly. Pointless. Incomplete. And somehow—he loved it.
More than he thought he would.
Ria's fate—
Was hers now.
And he had gone out on his terms.
An antagonist.
North roared.
A raw, broken sound as he sat atop the corpse, blood dripping, heat fading, the last traces of flaming script dissolving into nothing.
The battlefield stilled.
And then—
A voice.
Everywhere.
"CONGRATULATIONS, COMPETITORS."
"YOU ARE THIS YEAR'S WINNERS OF THE 40,579th ANNUAL FORTUNE HOLDER EVENT!"
"YOU WILL NOW BE TELEPORTED OUT—OUR NEW CHAMPIONS!"
North smiled.
Just barely.
Then collapsed.
Still sitting—
On Cawren's corpse.