His first strike, a simple straight punch, shattered the Lich's hasty guard and sent the undead lord skidding across the dirt roads. The second, a wild haymaker that should have been easy to dodge, somehow curved in mid-air as his aura bent space around it, catching the Lich in the ribs with a crack like breaking timber.

"Impossible," the Lich gasped, dark ichor leaking from the corner of his mouth. "Such crude technique cannot—"

A knee to the solar plexus cut off his words and lifted him clear off his feet. As he fell, Jaenor's elbow met the back of his skull, driving him face-first into the stone.

But the Lich was far from finished.

Even as he hit the ground, death energy exploded outward from his body in all directions. Jaenor's enhanced reflexes got him clear of the worst of it, but the expanding wave of decaying force withered plants, cracked stone, and left the very air feeling hollow and dead.

"Enough games," the Lich snarled, rising to his feet.

His form had changed—grown larger and more imposing.

The green flames in his eye sockets now burned like twin stars, and when he spoke, his voice carried the weight of the grave.

"I am eternal. I am inevitability. I am the end of all things."

The skeletal dragon responded to its master's fury by releasing its own roar—a sound like breaking glass mixed with screaming wind.

Pale blue coloured energy gathered along its entire form now, not just its spine, until the creature looked like it was carved from living ice and lightning.

Meanwhile, the bone giant had finally managed to corner Odessa against the remains of what had once been a blacksmith's shop. Its massive hands reached down to crush her, and there was nowhere left to run.

Jaenor felt a surge of protective rage that dwarfed anything he'd experienced before.

These undead monstrosities threatened not just his life, but the life of someone who had shown him kindness, who had helped him understand what he was becoming.

That rage became fuel for his energies, but instead of the wild, uncontrolled burst from before, this time he found focus.

The Origin power and aura didn't just flow through him—they merged, becoming something greater than the sum of their parts.

When he moved this time, he left afterimages in the air.

Not because of speed alone, but because the combined energies were bending reality around him, creating echoes of possibility that the eye could actually see.

He reached the bone giant first, arriving just as its hands were about to close around Odessa.

His fist, now wreathed in energy that shifted between colors like an aurora, punched clean through the construct's massive leg bone.

The entire ten-meter frame toppled sideways, crashing through the remains of several buildings before coming to rest in a cloud of dust and debris.

"Stay down," he told the rubble, then turned back to face the Lich and dragon.

The undead lord's burning gaze tracked Jaenor's approach. "You continue to surprise me, anomaly. But raw power alone will not—"

He never finished the sentence.

Jaenor had learned something important in that moment of protective fury—his energies responded not just to his will but to his emotions, his desires, and his very essence.

And right now, every fiber of his being wanted these creatures gone.

The attack came from six directions at once.

Not because Jaenor had somehow multiplied himself, but because his merged energies were creating genuine probability echoes—versions of attacks that could happen, might happen, or should happen all striking simultaneously.

The Lich managed to deflect two of them, dodge one more, and absorb another with his death energy. But the remaining two punched through his defenses like they weren't there.

One caught him in the chest, the other in the side of his head, and both carried enough force to launch him clear across the square.

He hit the dragon's side with an impact that made the massive skeletal creature stumble.

Dark ichor sprayed from multiple wounds, and for the first time since the battle began, the Lich looked genuinely shaken.

"What are you?" he whispered, struggling to regain his footing.

Jaenor stood in the center of the square, energies still swirling around him like a personal storm. "I told you already. I don't know."

The skeletal dragon, perhaps sensing its master's distress, decided to end the battle with overwhelming force. Its entire form lit up with dark blue energy, every bone glowing like a star. When it opened its maw, the power gathering there was enough to level the whole town.

But Jaenor was ready for it.

His merged energies had shown him something during the battle—a technique that felt as natural as breathing, even though he was certain he'd never attempted it before.

He brought his hands together in front of his chest, and the Origin power and aura began to spiral around each other in increasingly tight patterns.

The rotation accelerated, faster and faster, until it became a sphere of pure possibility—neither purely destructive like Origin power nor purely protective like aura, but something that embodied both potential and actualization.

When the dragon finally released its breath weapon—a beam of dark blue energy as thick as a tree trunk and hot enough to melt stone—Jaenor was ready.

He thrust the sphere forward, and it expanded into a disc of swirling energy that caught the dragon's attack head-on.

For a moment, the two forces were perfectly matched, neither giving ground.

Darker blue energy met swirling possibility in a contest that lit up the entire area around them, spanning several miles in diameter.

Then Jaenor smiled and put more of himself into the technique.

Not just his energy, but his will, his determination, and his refusal to let these creatures harm anyone else.

The disc suddenly blazed brighter and began to push forward, driving the dragon's breath weapon back toward its source. The skeletal creature's eyes widened—if bones could show expression—and it tried to cut off its attack, but it was too late.

The reflected energy struck the dragon square in the chest, and the resulting explosion shattered every remaining window in the town square.

When the smoke cleared, the massive skeletal form was gone, leaving nothing but scattered bones and fading wisps of blue energy.

The Lich stared at the remains of his mount in shock.

"Centuries," he whispered. "Centuries I spent bonding with that creature, weaving our essences together..."

He turned to Jaenor with hatred burning brighter than ever in his hollow sockets. "You have no idea what you've destroyed."

"Something that shouldn't have existed in the first place," Jaenor replied, though the effort of the last technique had left him breathing hard.

The merged energies were taking their toll—he could feel them beginning to separate, his control starting to slip.

The Lich seemed to sense his weakness.

"Yes, I can see it now. All that power, but your mortal flesh cannot contain it indefinitely. You're burning yourself up from the inside."

It was true.

Jaenor could feel the strain in his bones, the way his muscles trembled with exhaustion. The dual energies that had felt so natural were now pulling in different directions, and keeping them synchronized required constant effort.

But he wasn't finished yet.

"Maybe," he admitted, "but I don't need to last forever. Just long enough to finish this."

The final exchange was brief but decisive.

The Lich gathered every scrap of death energy he possessed, weaving it into a spear of pure negation that could unmake anything it touched.

Jaenor, in turn, let his separating energies find one last moment of perfect harmony.

They charged at each other across the ruined square—undead lord and anomalous youth, death and life, ancient experience and raw potential.

The spear of negation met Jaenor's combined energies with a sound like reality tearing.

For an instant, they were perfectly balanced—destruction and creation, ending and beginning, the ultimate expression of opposing forces.

Then Jaenor did something the Lich hadn't expected.

Instead of trying to overpower the death energy, he embraced it, letting it flow through him while his Origin power and aura worked together to transform it.

Death became change, ending became transformation, and negation became the space between one thing and another.

The spear of pure negation became a lance of pure possibility, and Jaenor drove it through the Lich's chest like a sword of light.

The undead lord looked down at the energy piercing his form with something like wonder. "How... how did you..."

"I don't know," Jaenor said honestly.

"But I think that's the point."

The Lich began to dissolve, his ancient form finally finding the rest it had been denied for centuries.

"Perhaps," he whispered as he faded, "perhaps you truly are what this world needs. An ending to the old ways... and a beginning of something new."

Then he was gone, leaving only Jaenor standing alone in the ruined square, his energies finally separating as exhaustion claimed him.

He fell to his knees, exhausted.

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