Chapter 1005: Beatdown

Chapter 1005: A Thorough Beating

Hela, the newly appointed deputy legion commander and a freshly ascended Super A-Class, had recently become the focus of countless eyes; she was in her moment of sharpest brilliance, and the higher her renown climbed, the greater the boon to the legion. At such a juncture, Han Xiao had no intention of dimming her prestige.

Thus, their spar remained a strictly private affair; Han Xiao required no victory over Hela to burnish his own reputation, nor did he need to steal the spotlight.

Slipping quietly away from the Black Star Legion headquarters, the pair sought out a desolate planet, where Han Xiao deployed anti-scanning devices to sever all external energy surveillance, carving out a clandestine battlefield.

"This place will suffice."

They descended upon the leaden earth, and with a raised hand, Han Xiao unsealed the secondary dimensional barracks; ranks upon ranks of mechanical soldiers marched forth, a dark tide of steel spreading across the barren ground.

With his true body present, he could command his entire arsenal on a scale of staggering grandeur; even without summoning every legionnaire, the host swiftly blanketed both earth and sky.

Youzu and a contingent of Apostle Weapons formed a single line; having returned from the Shining World, they now flanked Han Xiao, serving as the apex combatants of his mechanical host.

Han Xiao summoned a Sovereign avatar, descended his consciousness into it, and then withdrew his true form far from the fray.

A spar was merely a spar, and he harbored no desire to shorten his own lifespan; bringing his true body was a gesture of respect, while swapping to an avatar before her eyes was simple prudence.

Seeing this, Hela narrowed her eyes, offered no protest, and silently acquiesced.

Though she wished for Black Star to give his all, she knew her own powers carried a peculiar curse and held no desire to inflict hidden harm upon Han Xiao; besides, even a Black Star avatar was a formidable foe, especially when flanked by a host of Apostle Weapons.

Having stepped into the Super A-Class, Hela rode a wave of high spirits, yet she knew the odds of defeating Han Xiao were vanishingly small; her true aim was merely to gauge the chasm that still lay between them.

Hela exhaled a long breath, her eyes suddenly igniting with crimson light as surges of red death energy poured ceaselessly from her form, rocketing skyward to dye the heavens in a bloody aurora. The crimson power boiled and churned like a roaring sea, expanding still further, its aura standing as an equal rival to the mechanical legion that blotted out the world.

"Are you ready? I am coming."

Slipping into her combat state, Hela's expression cooled into detached indifference.

Han Xiao sealed the secondary dimensional barracks, guided his avatar to crack its neck, and unleashed his mechanical force to bolster the entire army; then, glancing down at the ground beneath his feet, he shook his head with a sigh. "A perfectly fine planet, doomed to suffer once more."

The moment the words left his lips, Hela offered no reply, thrust both palms forward, and launched a ferocious strike!

Rumble!!

The death energy coalesced in midair crashed down like an avalanche, as though the very canopy of heaven had collapsed, swallowing every mechanical unit ahead within its devastating reach!

The outer armor of every mechanical soldier reflected the blood-red tidal wave; Youzu cast a glance upward, slightly raised the Youzu War Spear in his grip, and tapped it gently against the earth.

Snap!

Centered upon him, a ring of pale blue psionic barrier violently sprang forth, its surface expanding at a blistering pace until it completely enveloped the mechanical legion.

The tsunami of death energy smashed against the psionic shield with a thunderous impact, unleashing a cataclysm that seemed to tear heaven and earth asunder!

With a flash of light, a shockwave of intermingled red and blue energy swept violently outward!

Boom, boom, boom—

The earth fractured inch by inch, dust erupting like geysers as rift valleys tore open, cliffs sank, tectonic plates ground together, and mountain ridges thrust upward; the terrain for hundreds of miles underwent a violent, rapid metamorphosis!

Hela's expression shifted; that Youzu could withstand her head-on caught her entirely off guard.

In her mind, Han Xiao should have relied on legion tactics to wear her down, winning through sheer numbers; she never expected his current Apostle Weapons to have been fortified to such a terrifying degree.

Hela's gaze sharpened as she soared into the air and pressed her hand downward; the death energy eroding and battering the psionic barrier surged in power once more, and the already straining shield instantly spiderwebbed with vast, jagged cracks.

With a sudden, deafening detonation, the barrier shattered into a sky full of luminous dust!

Hela was, after all, no mere triviality like Koller or Beoni; compared to her, the Apostle Weapons still fell short.

The mechanical legion abruptly scattered, each unit deploying a psionic shield while bracing against the death energy's impact and raising their cannon muzzles to launch a counterattack.

A dense forest of energy cannons focused their fire upon Hela, searing beams of light seeming to slice through space itself, leaving trailing streaks of luminescence. Few Super A-Classes would willingly endure such a ferocious concentrated barrage from a mechanical legion, and Hela was no exception.

Her figure darted rapidly through the sky, evading strikes as an unending stream of death energy poured from within her, weaving layer upon layer of tight protective shrouds around her form; every so often, an energy cannon would strike the casing, blasting open jagged breaches.

Death energy served both offense and defense, and Super A-Classes lacking shield mechanisms were a rare breed indeed.

The Power of the Dead ability actually suffered a disadvantage against a mechanical legion; ordinary mechanical soldiers were lifeless objects, rendering Hela's life drain attribute inert, thereby severing a crucial avenue for vitality recovery.

Moreover, the mental damage wrought by death energy proved utterly useless against machines, stripping away yet another advantage.

Only when facing opponents brimming with vitality could her ability unleash its fullest, most devastating potential.

Defense was never Hela's forte, and the repeatedly fortified mechanical legion had long undergone a metamorphosis in offensive power; the moment legion warfare commenced, she felt an overwhelming pressure crashing down from all sides. Han Xiao's artillery fire ceaselessly pierced her shields and struck her flesh, her vitality plummeting in chunks as wounds steadily accumulated.

Yet Hela's regenerative capabilities were far from poor; though they could not rival Aurora's, they remained formidable. Even at low tiers, she had possessed the Rapid Regeneration specialty, where the Power of the Dead nourished her flesh and blood, granting a baseline recovery boost of five hundred percent, and soaring to one or two thousand percent when channeling her energy.

Now that she had ascended to the Super A-Class, Hela had acquired even more restorative abilities; even with her life drain rendered useless, her healing speed remained blisteringly fast, marking her as one of those deceptively fragile yet astonishingly durable fighters—a trait she undoubtedly shared with Han Xiao.

For the time being, she could withstand the legion's concentrated barrage.

"Not bad. It seems she won't fall so quickly." Observing this, Han Xiao smiled with satisfaction and returned his focus to grinding his movement distance.

The moment combat erupted, he had his avatar activate Charge: Endless Accumulation, beginning a frantic circuit around the perimeter to rack up travel distance.

Activating this skill initiated a channeling preparation phase; only the distance covered during this channeling counted as valid. Until the strike was unleashed, the skill remained in a state of continuous activation, and only upon delivering the blow would its cooldown begin to tick.

Though its power hinged on distance rather than speed, the skill's name bore the word Charge, meaning halting and starting was forbidden; the so-called sprint distance in its description demanded constant motion once activated. Speed mattered little, but coming to a stop would reset the counter to zero, and even if movement resumed, the skill would only tally the fresh distance covered from the last pause to the moment of impact.

Once the charge began, it was best never to cease; with the mechanical legion keeping her occupied, Han Xiao could manage this with ease. Furthermore, Charge: Endless Accumulation only applied to his next melee strike, leaving his ranged artillery fire completely unhindered.

Since his tier surpassed Hela's, the moment they clashed, his interface's combat log displayed her complete current attributes, laying every capability bare; Han Xiao browsed the data while maintaining his ranged suppression.

"Truly worthy of an S-rank potential ability. These stats are genuinely exquisite."

After studying it for a while, even Han Xiao felt a pang of envy.

Compared to himself, a false genius scrambling to scavenge specialties everywhere, Hela was the authentic prodigy, blessed with a trove of specialties, many of them unique, personal exclusives that marked her as a premier enforcer in the making.

Given time to mature, as her base attributes climbed ever higher, the effects of these specialties would grow increasingly monstrous; for now, she was far from the peak she had reached in his past life. Even having painstakingly ascended to Super A-Class, she still appeared refreshingly green in Han Xiao's eyes.

Hela's Super A-Class tier specialties came as no surprise to Han Xiao: one was Supreme Might, drastically amplifying her ability's intensity, and the other was Cellular Reactor, massively boosting her energy reserves and greatly enhancing her endurance.

Though he intended to hold back to preserve Hela's confidence, Han Xiao had no plans to overdo it, nor did he wish to drag this into a war of attrition.

While the legion's concentrated fire carried immense threat, Hela could weather it for now; what truly pushed her to the brink of peril was the pack of Apostle Weapons led by Youzu.

Each Apostle Weapon was a force unto itself, vastly fortified since the battle against Ames; now, swarming Hela all at once, they instantly forced her into a frantic, harried defense.

Bang, bang, bang!

Beams of death energy were shattered mid-flight as the Crimson Fire Cluster, a turret-based entity, rattled off rapid volleys, spewing countless dark energy lances that intercepted the vast majority of Hela's ranged strikes aimed at the Apostle Weapons.

Zhentianqi charged relentlessly forward; the occasional stray death energy bolt that slipped through was instantly cleaved apart by his rapidly shifting arsenal, failing to halt his advance by a single step. Laden with countless high-tech melee armaments, he was a master of weapons, serving as the chief combat instructor for the mechanical civilization.

Closing the distance smoothly, Zhentianqi immediately rolled and leapt, his electromagnetic war blades, high-frequency chain edges, and cleaving axes shifting with fluid grace; he unleashed a combo worthy of a mechanical martial artist, his steel frame moving with astonishing agility, beautiful as a war dance.

Hela was forced to condense death energy over her body, turning herself into a living weapon to parry Zhentianqi's relentless onslaught; alas, her close-quarters prowess paled drastically against a grandmaster who had synthesized countless martial disciplines, and she soon found herself overwhelmed, reduced largely to absorbing blows.

Clang!

The alloy-forged vibrating battle-axe was halted by Hela's raised arm, leaving a shallow crimson mark; she suddenly drove her leg high, stomping the axe downward, then struck out with a jade-white palm through the air like a hidden blossom beneath leaves. A beam of highly concentrated death energy erupted from her palm, blasting the close-quarters Zhentianqi far away.

Before she could even catch her breath, space rippled behind her and Kuangtianlie flashed into existence, jaws bristling with metallic fangs gaping wide as it ferociously lunged for her throat.

"Get lost!"

Hela reacted with lightning speed, ducking her head, raising her arm, and driving a backward elbow strike.

The point of her elbow hammered into Kuangtianlie's jaw, death energy detonating on impact and bursting outward in a shockwave that sent the mechanical beast hurtling away.

At that very moment, a violet figure descended from above, wreathed in a distorting special force field and trailing lightning-like energy arcs; it slammed bodily into Hela, knocking her off course and driving her toward the ground.

It was a burly purple mechanical soldier, its frame saturated with nano-biochemical tendons and coiled in crackling energy; this was Zitianling, pushed into an overclocked and berserk state, radiating terrifying combat prowess.

Hela spun like a top, steadying her frame while jetting waves of death energy to force the Apostle Weapons back, desperate to carve out a moment to breathe.

Yet in that very instant, a sliver of cold light suddenly pierced the crimson veil, flaring bright within Hela’s vision.

Swish!

Hela jerked her head aside just in time; the glinting edge grazed her cheek, leaving behind a faint trail of blood.

That chilling gleam hailed from a spearhead, exhaling a deep-blue blade of highly concentrated nether energy, and the one wielding the war spear was none other than Youzu.

Among the Apostle Weapons, Youzu reigned supreme; Hela found him no easy foe, and with the others constantly interfering, her position grew ever more precarious.

Their fierce clash dragged on for an age, reducing the planetary surface to an unrecognizable wasteland, much like an egg with its shell brutally cracked. Molten rock coursed through gaping fissures, erupting in violent geysers, while tectonic shifts and colliding plates triggered devastating quakes across countless regions.

"Hah... hah..."

Blood dripped and pattered from the sky above; Hela stood drenched in crimson, exhaustion etched across her features, her specialized tight combat suit torn to ribbons to reveal vast stretches of pale skin, with close-quarters weapons lodged deep in her shoulder, abdomen, and thigh—a single glance at her ravaged state spoke volumes of the battle's brutality.

"Absolutely ferocious," Han Xiao muttered under his breath, a wry grin tugging at his lips.

Hela had always fought with everything she had; even in a spar with Han Xiao, she threw herself into the fray as if her life depended on it, showing zero regard for her own safety.

Han Xiao had deliberately held back slightly, ordering his mechanical legions to rein in their offensive output, thereby granting Hela the chance to unleash her full might; only by maintaining an overwhelming advantage under these conditions, letting her fight to her heart's content, could he earn her genuine submission.

At that moment, Hela yanked the embedded weapons from her flesh, the mangled wounds slowly knitting themselves back together as she swept her gaze over the circling, predatory Apostle Weapons, suddenly drew a deep breath, and snapped her fingers.

After such a protracted engagement, every Apostle Weapon, Youzu included, had accumulated fifteen stacks of Death Erosion—and she detonated them all at once!

Boom!

Crimson light erupted from every Apostle Weapon, leaving them all grievously wounded.

The core of Death Erosion lay in its adherent, highly corrosive death energy; detonating it had nothing to do with vitality, so unlike life-draining effects, this ability worked on any target, machinery included.

For mechanical lifeforms, instant death equated to the extinguishing of their spark cores, and death energy erosion held a chance of achieving just that; yet Hela never lost her composure in combat and refused to strike a fatal blow against Han Xiao's vital forces, so the instant-death threshold remained untriggered, activating only the base effect that evaporated a massive portion of the Apostle Weapons' health.

Crippled by the blast, Youzu and the other Apostle Weapons exposed a fatal opening; Hela seized the chance to break through the encirclement, charging straight for the constantly kiting Dominator avatar like a crimson meteor, sending mechanical soldiers flying in her wake.

"So this is the final strike, then."

Han Xiao's eyes flickered as he read the combat data; Hela had reached the end of her rope, her health pool scraped bare.

Aware that Hela could suppress regeneration, Han Xiao had kept his avatar out of the line of fire, relying solely on the Apostle Weapons and mechanical legions to batter her into a critical state; but now he ceased his evasive maneuvers, pivoted the avatar, and charged straight toward her.

Above the scarred and shattered earth, a black meteor and a red one, both trailing blazing exhaust, collided with earth-shattering force!

Han Xiao showed no mercy, channeling the full might of Charge: Endless Accumulation into his fist as he brutally hammered it into Hela's chest.

Bang!!

It was as though the heavens themselves had cracked!

A violent shockwave detonated in an instant, sweeping away every wisp of dust and smoke in the vicinity.

A massive, gaping hole tore through Hela's chest, clean from front to back, every organ shattered to pulp as her blood mingled with shredded flesh and sprayed outward, leaving not a single drop behind.

The light in Hela's eyes vanished in a heartbeat; she plummeted downward and struck the ground with a heavy thud, cratering the earth upon impact.

"Target shows no signs of life," Youzu observed, a hint of shock in his voice. "Sovereign, did you... did you actually kill her?"

Weren't we supposed to be sparring?!

Han Xiao shot him a glance, dismissed the Dominator Descent, and let his true body descend slowly to Hela's side.

"D-did we go too far?" The other Apostle Weapons gathered close, exchanging uneasy glances before bowing their heads like chastised children, trembling with apprehension.

Han Xiao remained silent, but just then, streams of gray energy suddenly converged from all directions, sinking into Hela's "corpse"; her eyes abruptly regained their clarity, though the dark crimson glow had shifted to an ashen black.

In the next breath, her ravaged body began to mend at a visible pace, flesh proliferating, organs regenerating, and wounds sealing shut with startling speed.

Her pallid complexion gradually flushed with life as Hela pushed herself upright, gasping for air; the gleam in her eyes suddenly flickered out, and she immediately broke into violent coughs:

"Cough, cough, cough—"

Han Xiao had anticipated this; a faint smile graced his lips as he reached out to gently pat her back. "Does it hurt? Take a deep breath. Let it pass."

He was already well acquainted with Hela's Ignore Instant Death specialization, and the system panel spelled it out clearly; knowing she could not be killed in a single strike and could endure any amount of damage, he had simply held nothing back, relying on the explosive force of Charge: Endless Accumulation to push her to the brink of death.

He had long since figured out her temperament; fiercely competitive and unyielding, a thorough beating at full strength would only leave her satisfied, revealing a rather pronounced masochistic streak.

After a moment to recover, Hela's coughing finally subsided, leaving her with an expression of helpless resignation.

"You really went overboard," she muttered. "You actually killed me."

Han Xiao raised an eyebrow and spread his hands. "Isn't this exactly what you wanted? Don't tell me you didn't like it."

At that, Hela merely snorted, offering no rebuttal.

Having nearly been beaten to death, Hela harbored no resentment; since she had gone all out, this was precisely the kind of life-and-death struggle she craved, and Han Xiao's refusal to hold back left her thoroughly satisfied.

Moreover, this spar had given her a visceral understanding of Han Xiao's combat prowess at the Super A Grade, leaving her silently awestruck.

She never imagined that even after ascending to the Super A Grade, Black Star would still utterly dominate her; the gap remained just as staggering as ever.

Yet rather than sinking into despair, the realization only stoked the fires of her fighting spirit.

"Truly the one I aim to catch," Hela silently steeled herself. "You won't be overtaken so easily. A real challenge, a steep climb—that's where the thrill lies."

She had always revered the strong, and now a deeper sense of awe naturally took root within her.

"I lost, but that was incredibly satisfying. Worth it." Hela smiled genuinely; she had few passions, but combat ranked high among them.

"Tch, battle maniac," Han Xiao chuckled, shaking his head as he ruffled her hair. "Can you still walk?"

"Stop messing up my hair. Let's head back."

Jerking her head away from his broad hand, Hela braced herself on her knees to rise, but fresh from the brink of death, her condition was poor and her stamina nearly depleted; seeing this, Han Xiao wrapped a firm arm around her shoulders to steady her.

Hela shot him a sidelong glance but did not pull away, allowing him to support her as they boarded the ship, even leaning slightly closer into his embrace.

...

After that clash, the bond between them deepened noticeably.

Though they had shared a rapport before, they had never truly stood on the same level; now that both occupied the same tier and held equal status, their common ground multiplied instantly, their rapport warming rapidly as two decades of absence and awkwardness melted away.

Hela savored this newfound closeness; once, she could only watch Han Xiao's retreating back, but now... perhaps she could finally say she stood beside him?

The private nature of their spar ensured no leaks reached the outside world, and with the public none the wiser, no ripples disturbed the broader galaxy.

What currently piqued the most curiosity within the Shattered Star Ring was a single phenomenon: an ever-growing number of Super A Grades were arriving, making no effort to conceal themselves as they led their respective fleets straight toward the Black Star Army's headquarters.

Local interstellar citizens of the Shattered Star Ring stirred at the rumors, their collective gaze locking onto these Super A Grades and the Black Star Army, every one of them catching the unmistakable scent of a major headline.