Eternal Master: Path to Godlike Status-Chapter 38: Seal Part 9
"Let’s end this game. I’ve already given you enough time to play around," Haron declared.
Six serpents emerged from his back, like
Translucent. Enormous. Their bodies were made of condensed shadow given shape.
They fanned outward before striking simultaneously.
Rain was already moving, leaping backward.
He pushed off the nearest cube and felt the first serpent’s jaws snap shut where his torso had been a half-second prior. The displaced air hit him like a fist.
’Fast.’
Faster than anything Haron had shown before.
These weren’t merely projections—they tracked, correcting mid-lunge with a precision that made his earlier attacks look child play by comparison.
Rain hit another cube running and didn’t stop.
His legs found a rhythm that stopped being natural somewhere around the fourth stride.
The VIEL pressed through his muscles like pressurized current.
Two hundred kilometers per hour. That was his speed in a straight line.
And it barely felt like enough.
A serpent cut across his path from the left. He dropped his shoulder and slid beneath its jaw, feeling the rush of displaced air drag at his collar.
Before he could reset his footing, a second came from above—diving straight down, jaws spread wide.
He twisted mid-stride, throwing himself sideways.
The impact missed his body but the tail caught his arm on the way past.
The force sent him skidding across the stone floor, shoulder screaming from the hit.
’Can’t keep running. He’s reading my trajectory.’
Only a handful of flying cubes remained, severely limiting the ways he could move.
He changed approach entirely.
The wall came up fast on his left and he drove both feet into it without slowing, using the momentum to run perpendicular.
Gravity registered the decision a half-second late. His body stayed level against the vertical surface as his speed did the arguing with physics.
The serpents recalibrated—but not instantly.
That half-second gap was everything.
He ran the full breadth of the chamber along the wall, the stone cracking faintly under each footfall.
Two serpents pursued along the area below him, their translucent bodies rising in anticipation of where he’d have to land.
He didn’t land where they expected.
At the far corner of the chamber, he kicked off the wall and caught the edge of a floating cube, using it to launch himself back toward Haron.
The three serpents converged—but his momentum was already committed, and he drove straight through the gap between them like a needle through cloth, close enough that their scales grazed both arms on the way past.
He didn’t stop. Didn’t adjust. Just aimed.
His kick landed.
BOOM!
The sound it made was less like a strike and more like an explosion in a closed space.
Haron skidded back three steps, the stone floor groaning beneath him.
Rain closed the distance before the echo died.
He attacked without pattern or pause—fists, elbows, the occasional knee driving into the same ribs he’d been methodically dismantling since the fight began.
No flourish. No wasted motion. Every strike aimed for a vital organ.
Rain, a master of many weapons, realized one thing after living for so long: the human body was the best and most flexible weapon there was.
If a body could be made as flexible as rubber and as hard as metal, no other weapon could surpass it.
Haron’s guard came up.
It didn’t matter. Rain worked around it, under it, through it—finding the margins between each block the way water finds cracks in stone.
Then the darkness surged.
New serpents erupted from Haron’s back—not six this time. More. They didn’t strike outward.
They spiraled inward, wrapping around Rain in overlapping loops, crushing his arms against his sides, winding tight across his chest until movement became impossible.
The pressure was extraordinary. Even the VIEL’s reinforcement strained audibly.
Rain paused and reassessed his situation.
He found his footing. Adjusted his center. Drew one slow breath into what little space remained in his compressed chest.
Then he punched.
One hand. One inch of travel.
The mechanics were almost invisible—a slight rotation of the wrist, a precise transfer of force through the shoulder, a release timed to the exact moment the serpents allowed a single millimeter of give.
CRACK.
Haron staggered back one full step, the serpents losing cohesion for a half-second from the shockwave passing through.
Rain seized the opportunity to escape, lunged back at Haron, and snapped his legs around the man’s neck in a crushing scissor hold.
Haron’s fingers found Rain’s ankles and pulled.
The grip was enormous—the beast’s strength pouring into his hands all at once, wrenching outward with enough force to have torn a giant’s leg from their sockets.
Rain’s grip broke, and he was hurled into the stone wall, striking it hard enough to crater the surface, dust punching outward in a ring from the impact.
"You really are dangerous. You’re very intelligent and know how to utilize your body," Haron acknowledged.
"It’s a shame. If you were part of our organization, you’d be the perfect candidate to unlock all the seals."
Rain jumped out of the wall and rolled his shoulder. "I’m fine. I don’t even think that thing will merge with me. My body has a tendency to kill off viruses."
Haron’s eyes narrowed. "Looks like your ego grew just because I let you hit me a couple of times."
"Not at all. I talk like this when I’m excited."
"Let’s see if you can still say that after this." Haron slammed his fist into the ground, and another wave of serpents erupted—multiplying by the dozens, then hundreds. Then thousands.
Though smaller, their sheer numbers made them impossible to dodge.
"I’ve already analyzed your fighting style. You rely only on physical strength and regeneration, so you have no way to cast a barrier to stop my attack."
Rain didn’t deny it and simply took his stance. He drew a deep breath, and when the first serpent lunged, he moved with it, reaching a speed of 200 km/h.
His speed was enough to slip through them, but then they began exploding midair.
What followed was the full force of the blasts slamming into him, until his vision went dark.
