advance/early chapters : p atreon.com/Ritesh_Jadhav0869
The torrent of reddish spiritual energy didn't just glow—it raged, a violent storm of power that whipped across the battlefield with hurricane force. Wind screamed through the stands, ruffling hair and clothes, nearly ripping programs from people's hands. The pressure made ears pop, made chests tighten.
Then, as suddenly as it had erupted, the spiritual power began to dissipate—bleeding away into the air like smoke, revealing what lay at its center.
The crowd went silent.
Where Neliel had stood moments before, there was now a figure that made the brain stutter trying to process it. Half-human, half-antelope—a female knight whose lower body was pure white fur and powerful hooved legs, while her upper body remained humanoid. She gripped a massive double-headed lance that looked like it weighed more than a person, holding it with casual ease that suggested terrifying strength.
The oppressive power radiating from her was suffocating. Not metaphorically—people in the front rows actually struggled to breathe, their lungs working harder against air that had somehow become heavier.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. They just stared.
In the VIP section, every single master-level cardmaker shot to their feet like they'd been electrocuted.
"This increase in strength—" The Southeastern University president's voice cracked slightly. "It's too much! That's not possible!"
"She was upper-middle silver level in her adult form," someone else added, their tone bordering on disbelief. "Now she's..." They trailed off, unable to quantify it. How did you measure something that felt like it had jumped an entire tier?
Blake's eyes were locked on Neliel, his mind racing. He knew Russell had two other cards from what appeared to be the same world—Yoriichi, the bronze-level card his disciple rarely used anymore, and Unohana, who'd just fallen in battle. But Unohana hadn't shown this. Hadn't transformed like this.
Is it an isolated ability? Blake wondered. No, wait— He remembered the battle footage from the Northgate tournament. Yoriichi had shown something similar, hadn't he? A transformation that amplified his power.
Is there a rank limitation? Does the ability only unlock at silver level and above?
What Blake didn't know—what he couldn't know—was that there existed a power even beyond this. Bankai. A transformation that made Shikai and Resurrección look like children's toys. A power that had never yet appeared in this world.
But it would.
On the battlefield, Neliel tightened her grip on the lance. Her expression was cold, focused, predatory.
Then she vanished.
Not "moved quickly"—vanished. One instant she was standing in the center of the battlefield, the next she was simply gone, her position replaced by empty air.
The lance tip appeared in front of Melinoë's face a heartbeat later, wrapped in spiraling light-red spiritual power that left glowing trails in the air. The goddess's expression didn't change—credit where it was due, she didn't flinch.
Instead, she commanded her army of ghosts forward, the endless tide of vengeful spirits surging to intercept the attack.
The ghosts froze.
They didn't charge forward. They didn't form a barrier. They just... stopped. Hovering in place, their resentful faces now showing something else entirely: fear. Primal, bone-deep terror that overrode their master's commands.
Melinoë's expression finally cracked, surprise and confusion flickering across her features. What? Her minions had never disobeyed before. Never hesitated. What could possibly—
She didn't understand. Couldn't understand. These were evil spirits, creatures of death and vengeance. But Neliel? Neliel was the pinnacle of Hueco Mundo. An Espada—an evil spirit so far beyond these lesser shades that they were like mice before a dragon. The fact that they hadn't immediately turned on Melinoë herself was a testament to how strong her control over them was.
But control only went so far.
In desperation, Melinoë's own power flared—blood-red divine energy erupting from her body in a wave, the might of Olympus made manifest.
The lance hit it and the divine power collapsed like wet cardboard.
Melted. Shattered. Vanished under the overwhelming force of Neliel's assault as if it had never existed at all.
The lance tip landed on Melinoë's body.
BOOM!
The impact sent shockwaves rippling outward. Melinoë went flying backward like she'd been hit by a train, her body tumbling end-over-end through the air until she slammed into the barrier wall with a sickening CRACK. Smoke billowed up from the impact site, obscuring her from view.
On the sidelines, Wade's face had gone the color of old paper. His eyes were wide, unblinking, staring at the smoke cloud like it might reveal some hidden truth if he just looked hard enough.
"No way..." The words came out barely above a whisper. "This is impossible..."
His mind couldn't process it. How? How? Everything had been going his way. He'd survived the light cannon. Melinoë had activated her ultimate form. He'd been winning. And then this... this fucking mascot had...
His hands shook. His vision blurred at the edges.
Then he felt it—the faint pulse of Melinoë's card in his mind. Still there. Not in cooldown yet. She was still in the fight.
Hope blazed back to life, manic and desperate. "There's still a chance!" His voice cracked, rising to near-hysteria. "Yes, there's still a chance! She can still win!"
The crowd watched in stunned silence, most of them struggling to understand what they'd just witnessed. The dominant force of the battle—the seemingly invincible Melinoë—had just been swatted aside like a fly.
The smoke began to clear.
Melinoë pushed herself upright, swaying slightly. The lance tip had torn through her divine flesh, leaving a horrible gaping hole in her torso. You could see through her, could see the barrier wall behind where her internal organs should have been.
But even as people gasped, blood-red divine power flared around the wound. Scarlet flesh began growing, filling in the gap like time-lapse footage of healing. Slow, but steady. Because she was a goddess of Olympus—even the lowest of gods couldn't be killed so easily.
Russell stood at the sideline, his face slightly pale. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His breathing had gone shallow.
Neliel's Resurrección, even in its incomplete form, was consuming his mental energy at a rate he hadn't fully anticipated. It was like trying to hold back a flood with his bare hands—possible, but exhausting.
Neliel seemed to sense his condition. Her cold gaze shifted to Melinoë, and she raised her lance, pointing it directly at the goddess's chest.
"The next strike will finish you."
Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact, carrying across the battlefield with absolute certainty. Not a threat. Not a boast. Just a statement of inevitable fact.
"WHAT A JOKE!"
Wade's scream tore through the tension like nails on a chalkboard. His face was twisted with rage and humiliation, his carefully maintained composure completely shattered.
"You—you NOBODY!" Spit flew from his lips. His hands clenched into fists so tight his fingernails drew blood from his palms. "I lost to a nobody like you... I can't accept it!"
Memories flooded back in a torrent—Blake rejecting his application to become a disciple. The humiliation of losing to Russell in the pocket dimension. The mocking looks. The whispered comments behind his back. Every slight, every failure, every moment of inadequacy crystallizing into pure, burning rage.
"Kill her, Melinoë!" Wade shrieked, his voice cracking. "KILL Her NOW!"
All pretense of noble bearing, of strategic thinking, of playing the long game—gone. If he lost this match, his life would be over. Not literally, maybe, but everything he'd built, every bit of status and respect—gone. The thought filled him with a terror so visceral it made his stomach churn.
Neliel didn't acknowledge his words. Didn't even glance in his direction.
She just raised her front hooves, her perfectly sculpted muscle curves catching the light, and moved.
BOOM!
The sonic boom was thunderous, a physical force that rattled the barrier. The double-headed lance began to spin, wreathed in spiraling light-red spiritual power that grew brighter and more intense with each rotation. It built momentum impossibly fast, becoming a drill of pure destruction.
And then Neliel was there, in front of Melinoë, the spinning lance already striking.
Melinoë's mouth opened in a sharp whistle—a command so absolute, so forceful, that it overrode even the ghosts' terror. They surged forward despite their fear, layering themselves in front of their goddess in a desperate shield of spectral bodies.
The lance hit them and they simply ceased to exist.
Not destroyed. Not scattered. They were there one moment and gone the next, erased so thoroughly it was like they'd never been summoned at all. The lance didn't even slow down.
Blood-red divine power flared around Melinoë like a star going nova, drawing on Wade's mental strength in massive, desperate gulps. She poured everything she had into defense, into survival, the power of Olympus burning like fire around her body.
Oh, it's just that, little god of Olympus, Neliel thought, her expression unchanging. You have done your best.
The lance punched through the divine power like it was fog.
Wade's mental strength hadn't completely exhausted—he still had reserves, could have kept fighting for minutes more under normal circumstances.
But it didn't matter.
The lance touched Melinoë's half-black, half-white body and pierced straight through, the massive weapon's momentum carrying it forward until the goddess was pinned against the barrier wall like an insect on display. The spiral of light-red spiritual energy continued tearing at her flesh, shredding divine matter faster than it could regenerate.
Melinoë's mouth opened in a silent scream.
Then her body began to dissolve—not burning, not breaking apart, but simply turning to light and fading away. Particle by particle, she disappeared into the air until there was nothing left but the lance itself, still spinning, still embedded in the barrier, a silent testament to her existence.
Every single person watching—in the stands, at home, in the VIP section—felt like they were being strangled. Nobody could speak. Nobody could move. The silence was absolute, suffocating, broken only by the faint humming of the still-spinning lance.
The battle had just... ended. No dramatic final clash. No last-minute reversal. Just Neliel erasing Melinoë from existence like it had been easy.
After what felt like an eternity but was probably only seconds, a voice rose from somewhere in the stands. Quiet. Tentative. Almost afraid to say it out loud.
"...Did he win?"
The question hung in the air, unanswered, as thousands of people stared at the battlefield and tried to process what they'd just witnessed.
PLZ THROW POWERSTONES.