ShadowBound: The Need For Power-Chapter 619: Enjoy It While It Lasts

Now, across from Percy, Liam stood in a loose yet vigilant stance, his posture relaxed on the surface but coiled with readiness beneath. His eyes didn’t blink even once. With the Ascension still actively unfolding inside him, his heart thundered louder than anything else, each beat echoing in his ears like a war drum. He could feel the violent pulse of blood surging through his veins, the pressure rushing through his Myst channels just beneath his skin. And worse than all of it was the immense, grinding pain blooming deep within his core, born from the synchronization process tearing through him without mercy.

Percy’s refined ice-aligned Myst was being torn apart piece by piece, dismantled by Liam’s fire and dark affinities as they forcibly rewrote it into something that could belong to him. Despite how overwhelming the pain was—despite how it felt like his core was being scraped raw from the inside—Liam felt a strange sense of relief. The ice Myst was breaking down. It was synchronizing.

’At least that puts me in a safer spot,’ Liam thought steadily as he remained still. ’Now the worst thing that can happen is me passing out from overexertion.’ His lips twitched faintly. ’With synchronization already taking hold, core failure or complete rejection isn’t on the table anymore.’

His gaze never left Percy as he watched him fully recover from the kick he had taken moments ago.

’Now I can focus on winning this,’ Liam continued inwardly. ’With my Myst fluctuating this high, nearly every attack I throw out is going to hit harder than it ever should at this level—harder than they’ll ever be once my Myst stabilizes.’

His heart continued to race, pounding against his ribs as if trying to escape his chest. ’But this won’t last long,’ he acknowledged calmly. ’I can feel myself creeping toward my limits. A faint, knowing smirk formed. ’And for some reason, I know Percy feels it too. He’s already planning to exploit it.’

The smirk widened slightly. ’Even if his original goal was just to see my dark magic, he’s still himself.’ Liam’s eyes sharpened. ’He’s not going to hand me a win.’

His thoughts paused abruptly.

’But that’s not going to happen,’ Liam thought, a spark igniting deep inside him. ’Because I’ve got a gift for him.’ His posture straightened just a bit, excitement flooding his expression as his eyes gleamed brighter and the wild grin from earlier crept back onto his face. ’Yeah... I’ve got a gift for him. And it’s all thanks to him that this is happening.’

’Yes, he affirmed inwardly, the thrill surging stronger, ’all of this... is thanks to him.’

Beyond the overwhelming surge of power and pain, the Ascension had done something else—something unexpected. It had enhanced his Unified Flow, a state he had never dismissed even while inside Percy’s domain.

Because Liam had been maintaining Unified Flow at the exact moment the Ascension took hold, his perception of the world began to shift drastically.

Originally, Unified Flow allowed Liam to merge instinct and intellect into a single, seamless state, letting his body move faster than normal while his mind retained full control. But as the Ascension deepened, that state expanded far beyond its usual limits.

Unified Flow now reached outward.

Liam began to perceive nearly everything around him as energy.

It was as if he were looking at the world through an entirely different lens—one that stripped away surface appearances and revealed the raw flow of Myst in the air, in the ground, and within living bodies themselves.

The natural colors of the hall dulled and faded into a darkened, muted backdrop. The world didn’t disappear, but it transformed. Tendrils of Myst flowed through the air like slow-moving currents of water, curling and weaving invisibly around everything. People were still there, clear and whole, yet each of them was shrouded in their own distinct Myst signature, constantly shifting and reshaping.

And those shifts happened before movement.

Moments before a foot shifted. Before a hand twitched. Before breath deepened.

Looking at Percy now, Liam could see it clearly. The dense shroud of ice-aligned Myst clinging to his form, rippling subtly with every minute twitch Percy made—or was about to make.

It was like being flooded with an immense amount of information all at once, streams of data pouring into his mind faster than he was used to processing. And with the Ascension still underway, the experience was overwhelming in its own right.

Yet instead of fear, it sent a rush of exhilaration straight through him.

Flames suddenly ignited across Liam’s frame, heat rolling outward as he shifted into a proper fighting stance, grounded and deliberate.

"Let’s enjoy this while it lasts," he said aloud, his voice steady and alive with excitement as his eyes locked onto Percy.

Then he moved.

There was no warning, no buildup, no gradual gathering of power that Percy could latch onto. One moment Liam stood wreathed in faint heat shimmer and flame, the next the space he occupied detonated in a concussive burst of fire and pressure. The floor beneath his feet cracked outward in a spiderweb pattern as he vanished, the explosion of flames not expanding outward but collapsing inward, folding around his body like a sling and hurling him forward.

Percy’s eyes widened.

’Too fast.’

Liam reappeared directly in front of him, not even a full step away, flames roaring around his arm as he twisted his torso and drove a punch straight toward Percy’s head. The heat hit first, a wall of blistering air that seared the skin before the strike even landed.

Percy reacted on instinct.

Ice erupted upward between them in a jagged slab, formed in a fraction of a second, dense and reinforced. Liam’s fist slammed into it with a thunderous crack, flames exploding outward on impact. The ice didn’t shatter—but it bent, fissures racing across its surface as the force behind the punch pushed Percy back a full step despite the barrier.

Liam didn’t stop.

He pivoted on his heel, flames bursting from his foot as he spun, his leg whipping around in a wide arc. Percy dismissed the cracked slab and raised his arm, coating it in a layered ice bracer just in time. Liam’s flaming kick collided with it, the explosion of heat and cold sending shards of ice screaming outward like shrapnel.

Percy slid backward across the stage, boots carving shallow trenches into the stone.

’Looks like he doesn’t plan on letting up,’ he thought inwardly. ’Probably trying to overwhelm me before his time runs out.’

Just as Percy’s thought finished forming, Liam was already there.

Flames flared again, not as a burst this time but as controlled jets, short and violent, propelling him in erratic angles. He didn’t move in straight lines. He zigzagged, vanished, reappeared, every motion sharp and predatory. A knee strike came next, aimed at Percy’s ribs, followed immediately by an elbow wreathed in fire aimed at his jaw. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Percy blocked the knee with a thickened ice plate, twisted to deflect the elbow, then countered with a thrust of his hand. A spear of ice formed instantly, shooting toward Liam’s chest.

Liam twisted before it launched.

The spear tore through empty air where his heart had been a moment earlier, grazing his shoulder instead. Liam hissed as ice scraped skin, but he used the momentum, rolling with it, flames exploding beneath him as he launched upward and came down with a hammering overhead kick.

Percy barely managed to raise a dome of ice above himself.

The kick crashed down like a meteor.

The dome shattered, fragments raining down as Percy dropped to one knee, one hand slamming into the ground to stabilize himself. Heat washed over him, his breath hitching as the temperature spiked violently.

’It’s like his Myst fluctuated again,’ Percy thought as he tried to stabilize the temperature around him. ’His flames are getting far more destructive than they should be.’