Ning looked at the crystals around him and back at the Emperor. "Are you sure you want to fight me, old man?" he asked. "The best case scenario for you out of this will be to walk away without your Essence core."
"Hah, that's a lot of talk for someone without Essence," the Emperor said. "I was going to let you go, but I'm afraid I cannot do so. You bonded with the sword, and like him, I must kill you too."
"Father, why ar—"
"Shut up! I do not want to hear a single thing from you," the Emperor said before turning back toward Ning. "You should not have taken that sword."
"I found this sword, so this is my sw—"
A crystal spike struck him in the head out of nowhere, bursting into a million different shards as it spread all around Ning.
Clara was pelted a bit by the shards too, but other than that, she wasn't hurt.
The Emperor was about to go grab the sword, but when he saw that nothing happened to Ning, he was confused. "What… what did you do?" he asked. He hadn't felt him use any Essence, so he couldn't understand what had happened.
Surely he didn't just stand there and take the attack directly, did he?
Ning sighed. "I told you not to do this," he said. "And yet you still do. You won't understand with words, will you? I guess it is only fists that will help you understand."
Ning started walking toward the Emperor.
The Emperor attacked once more, sending massive amounts of crystals to kill him at once, and yet when they struck Ning, they all shattered. Many were even destroyed so badly that they turned back into Essence.
And yet, not a single scratch appeared on Ning's body.
Finally, the Emperor felt scared. He felt no movement from Essence in Ning. He felt no armor, and he definitely saw that he didn't move at all. And that started scaring him for the first time in a long time.
He realized he was dealing with something that he couldn't make sense of. Something foreign from everything that he had been used to.
Something unknown.
As Ning got closer, the Emperor was terrified.
"Kill him!" he ordered his royal guards, who immediately jumped into action.
6 different Essence souls appeared out from behind Ning, each one growing over 10 meters tall in an instant.
There were souls with wings, souls with weapons, souls with a flower growing out of them, and various other little traits that showed that their souls were slowly changing from a human soul to something different.
A little bit more change and a heap of Essence later, these people would enter the Stellar Harmony realm as well.
Ning cared not for that realm, so this realm did nothing to him either.
A flash of light burned as a massive fire serpent devoured him where he walked. A green blade fell into the fire, causing an explosion that brightened the entire area for an instant.
A giant rock spike grew out from the ground and was pulled into the air before it was dropped where Ning was. It crashed into him without the fire, and no one could tell what happened to him at all.
The guard with a Steam Essence core quickly sent out a strong, fast stream of steam that blew into the place where Ning was at. The Steam would be of such a high temperature that it would rival the flames while adding more heat to the location.
The ones with water and ice attacks held off from attacking for a moment. They wanted the heat to deal with Ning and then they used their attacks.
Both Ice and Water attacks landed where he was at the same time, adding so much force to the ground that the very structure of the arena shook to the point where it was going to shatter.
Clara was shocked at the attacks that were dealt to Ning. Not even she took that much damage at once when she was fighting earlier. The open area had given them a lot of levity on where to attack and who to.
The Emperor looked seriously at where it happened and waited for the dust and smokes to settle down before finding out if Ning was dead or not.
However, he didn't need to.
"Did you think that would kill me?" Ning's voice came first, and then the man walked out himself.
The Emperor gawked in terror when he saw that there was not a single scratch on his body at all.
"You… who— no, what are you?" he asked in fear.
"Me? I'm the man you just tried to kill," Ning said. "Now, it's time for payback, right?"
"Attack him again!" the Emperor shouted before turning around to run away. He needed to get out of here as soon as he could.
He didn't look back and ran toward the other side of the arena, but before he could get far away, he slammed onto a strong wall and fell back.
He held his nose started bleeding and quickly looked up to see what he had hit. To his surprise, Ning stood in front of him, with hands in his pockets and eyes that looked down on him.
"Is this all you can do?" he asked. "Kill those that are weak, run away from those that are strong? Pathetic."
He threw the man's own words back at him.
"Y-you! What are you? You're not a human," he shouted.
"You're not wrong," Ning said. "I am more than a human."
"Don't… don't kill me, please," he shouted.
"Oh?" Ning raised an eyebrow. "Did you think that would work? Did it work when the Grazer family and servants were burned alive that day? Did it work when Jernon asked you for forgiveness after the duel?"
"Did it work when your father asked you not to kill him after you poisoned him and forced him out of the throne?"
The Emperor's eyes went wide. "How- How do you know that?" he asked.
"Doesn't matter," Ning said. "The thing that matters is… you are not getting away from this without any consequences."
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