Kaelan’s gaze swept over the terrified Earthers, a collector assessing his prize. "So," he said, his voice devoid of urgency. "Do your thing, Rodney."

  The command was met not by compliance, but by a blast of frigid air.

  "NOT SO FAST!"

  A man slid down a ramp of ice from the sky, his orange skin and shock of blue hair a stark contrast to the barren earth. He landed with a crackle of frost.

  Rodney’s jaw tightened. "What the hell? How'd they get here so fast?"

  The relaid was not alone. The air itself began to tear. One by one, twelve shimmering portals ripped open in a circle around them, and from each stepped a single, formidable figure. The Orken Unbound, Tertius Division, had arrived.

  "Damn it," Rodney spat, his bravado cracking. "Rampofo’s men."

  A new voice boomed from above, raw with fury. "Whether he likes it or not, Kaelan is gonna die!"

  A man descended, his body already mid-transformation. Brown skin stretched as fur sprouted across it, his height surging upwards. Claws ripped from his fingertips, and his face elongated into a bestial snout. This was Havazar, a Commander of the Tertius Division.

  Not far from him, another figure fell from the sky. This was Sancho, a Valphraxsis, standing at a hulking eleven feet and ten inches. A Commander of the Tertius Division. His skin was orange, his hair a brilliant white, a matching tail lashing behind him. A ruff of white fur framed a face dominated by golden eyes. He raised a hand, and his body began to transmute. His flesh darkened and grainized, becoming bark. Branches, sharp as spears, shot from his palm, racing toward Kaelan. He had assimilated the Wood Seed.

  Kaelan watched the arboreal assault without flinching. The branches met his head—and instantly combusted into ash.

  Sancho screamed, a mix of pain and shock, and retracted his smoldering limbs. Enraged, he lunged, his entire arm morphing into a giant, knotty fist. Kaelan sidestepped with an almost lazy grace. The wooden fist hammered into the ground, digging a trench and sending a powerful shockwave through the earth.

  The force hit Kevin and Olivia like a physical wall, throwing them apart. They landed hard, the wind knocked from their lungs.

  Rodney yelled, "You bastards, we got here first!" He brought his hands together in a sharp clap. Where a hundred humans had stood, there was now empty air. He clapped again, and again—a blur of motion. With each concussive sound, a hundred more Earthers vanished.

  From the sky, a new portal opened, Poliandrew, shouted a command. "Diael, take the Earthers!"

  On cue, Diael shot out of one portal and into another, using them as a slingshot to propel himself through the air at impossible speeds. "I'm way ahead of you!" he yelled, bursting from a portal just above the ground. He swung his arm, and a giant, portal materialized, shooting forward like a wave and engulfing everything in its path in a straight line. He landed and swung his other arm, another portal-devourer swallowing thousands.

  Rodney clapped in a frenzy. "You greedy bastards, don't you have enough Earthers already?!"

  Kevin scrambled to his feet, his eyes frantically searching. "Olivia!"

  He saw her getting up, tears streaking through the dust on her face. "Dad!" she cried, running towards him through the chaos.

  They ran for each other, a desperate, shrinking gap in a world tearing itself apart. Kevin stretched out his hand, his fingers just inches from hers.

  And then, she was gone. Vanished into thin air right before his eyes.

  "NOOO!" Kevin's roar was a raw, guttural thing, torn from the depths of his soul.

  He had no time for a second breath. A portal, wide as a tsunami, shot towards him. It swallowed the ground, the air, the light, and finally, him. There was only a dizzying, colorless void, and then, nothing.

  ---

  Kaelan stood alone against the Tertius Division, and the air itself hummed in deference to his power.

  He didn't move; he simply ceased to be in one place and became light, reappearing directly before Havazar. His leg was already in motion, a kick sheathed in a corona of blinding white lightning. The impact was not a sound, but a vacuum of noise, followed by a thunderclap.

  Havazar's eyes bulged. He spat a torrent of blood as he was launched backward, his body tearing a sonic trench through the sky before plowing a furrow of devastation across the landscape for over a thousand kilometers.

  Sancho could only stare, his golden eyes wide. "Holy shit."

  Before the thought could fully form, Kaelan was already gone. He shot toward Poliandrew, a living bolt. His fist, moving faster than sight, connected with Poliandrew's face. The force did not stop there; a concentrated beam of lightning erupted from his knuckles, lancing through the air and vaporizing the peaks of several mountains three thousand kilometers away.

  Poliandrew rose from the rubble, his body smoking. The flesh and hair on his head were completely burned away, leaving a grisly mask of seared muscle and bone. A guttural roar of pure rage escaped him. He shot forward at Mach 3000, a meteor of fury.

  "FIRE MAGIC! FIST OF MOLTEN LAVA!"

  He punched forward, and the air itself ignited. Consecutive building-sized fists of molten rock, glowing with apocalyptic heat, shot towards Kaelan.

  Kaelan didn't dodge. He simply raised a single finger.

  A precise, surgical bolt of white lightning lanced out.

  CRACK-THOOM!

  The bolt struck the center of the first lava fist. The superheated rock didn't just break; it vaporized instantly in a catastrophic explosion, hurling fiery fragments in every direction. Kaelan repeated the motion, a calm conductor of the storm, and one by one, the colossal fists of lava were blasted into harmless, incandescent dust.

  He floated, utterly unharmed, a wisp of smoke curling from his fingertip. The path to him was cleared by sheer, overwhelming force.

  Then, he multiplied.

  Kaelan split into thirteen identical bolts of living lightning. One for each member of the Tertius Division. Seven of the bolts targeted the Bravo Users. Each one transformed back into Kaelan at the moment of impact.

  One of these clones descended upon Sancho, a lightning-forged hand slamming down. Sancho roared, crossing his fortified wooden arms above his head. The impact cratered the ground for twelve kilometers in a perfect circle.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Don't you know," Kaelan's voice was calm, almost pedagogical over the din, "lightning beats wood every time."

  Sancho screamed, not just from the physical weight, but from the millions of volts coursing through his wooden body, cooking him from the inside out.

  Another clone drove its fist into the chest of an Aurellian man. Lightning erupted from the man's back in a shower of gore and sparks.

  "You know," Kaelan mused, watching the man fall, "I used to fear you Bravo Users. But now... you're not all that. I guess Seeds truly are the pinnacle of power."

  The clone Kaelan became pure lightning once more, shooting into the stratosphere before reversing direction and punching down. A pillar of concentrated thunder, wide as a city block, rained down upon the Aurellian. His screams were swallowed by the apocalyptic roar.

  Yet another clone ensnared a Dragoon woman in whips of crackling energy. She convulsed, shrieking as electricity ravaged her nervous system. With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, Kaelan used the lightning as a rope, swinging her through the air and slamming her into the earth with planet-cracking force. The resulting crater spanned fourteen kilometers.

  The Tertius Division, an elite force of conquerors, was being systematically dismantled by a single man.

  In a display of absolute dominance, Kaelan had overwhelmed all twelve members of the Tertius Division. Even the three Commanders were broken before the raw, elemental power of the Epic-tier Lightning Seed.

  A bolt of lightning descended from the heavens—it was Kaelan’s boot, driving Poliandrew from the sky. The Commander screamed, his body convulsing as electricity coursed through him before he cratered the earth in a fifteen-kilometer-wide impact zone.

  Kaelan landed gracefully over his scorched and broken form. Poliandrew, his body a bloody ruin, looked up with sheer, uncomprehending fury. "How?" he rasped, blood bubbling on his lips. "How did a nobody like you get a Transmutus Seed?!"

  Kaelan smiled, a cold, sharp thing. "I know a guy. Oh, and it's Epic-tier, too. To be frank, you never stood a chance." He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a condescending whisper. "It's a shame a Bravo User's raw power can still hurt me... but they have to be able to touch me first."

  Elsewhere, another Kaelan stood over Havazar's smoldering body. "My life changed after meeting him," he mused, almost to himself. "Till about a month ago, I didn't even know Seeds had types." He looked down with pitiless eyes. "Sucks to be weak, huh?"

  That was the final spark. Havazar's Bravo erupted in a final, desperate inferno. "I'M A COMMANDER!" he roared, his body surging upward. "I WON'T LOSE TO A NOBODY!" His fist, wreathed in destructive energy, slammed into Kaelan's gut.

  The lightning clone's eyes went wide. He spat blood, the shockwave of the punch hurling him high into the sky. He stabilized, touching his chest where the bruise was already forming. "Damn Bravo Users..."

  But Havazar was already upon him. "You are weak!" the Commander bellowed, his fists raining down on Kaelan's face, driving him back toward the ground like a hammer on a nail. "All you have is your Seed! You can't even sense me, nor my attacks! I'LL BE DAMNED IF I LOSE TO YOU!"

  They hit the ground. The impact was apocalyptic, carving a twenty-kilometer crater.

  Kaelan lay bleeding at the center. Havazar stood over him, his remaining arm cocked back. The arm vibrated, turning a violent, purple as he concentrated every ounce of his Bravo into a single, annihilating strike.

  No, Kaelan thought, a sliver of genuine fear piercing his arrogance. I can't let that hit—

  Havazar punched down.

  The world turned white, then silent. A crater one hundred kilometers wide yawned open, and the Kaelan clone that had tormented him was simply... gone. Obliterated.

  The effect was instantaneous. All across the battlefield, the remaining Kaelans spasmed as one, coughing blood before being violently hurled back, their forms dissolving into streaks of light that converged into the original Kaelan. He fell to his knees, gasping, his body screaming from the feedback of a clone's destruction.

  A vicious, bleeding wound opened on his own torso, mirroring the spot where Havazar's final blow had landed on the clone.

  He never saw the next blow coming.

  A fist, elongated and made of pure, white latex, snapped through the air like a cannon shot. It connected with his jaw with a sickening CRACK. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he was launched, tumbling uncontrollably for over a thousand kilometers through the shattered landscape.

  From the sky, a new voice rang out, laced with absolute authority. "THOSE EARTHERS ARE OURS! SO KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF. UNLESS YOU WANNA DIE!"

  Chrominton descended, his body seamlessly transforming, his skin taking on the smooth, gleaming texture of liquid latex. Kaelan tried to push himself up, but found his hands and clothes fused to the ground by a sticky, rubbery substance.

  "What the—? What is this?!" he grunted, straining with all his might. His lightning sparked and fizzled against the material, unable to find purchase.

  A wide, predatory grin split Chrominton's face. "I've been waiting to test this theory."

  A whip of solid latex cracked through the air, striking him across the back. Kaelan screamed, a sound of genuine shock and pain.

  How is this possible? his mind raced, reeling. I feel no energy from him, he cant use mana or bravo! He shouldn't be able to touch me, let alone hurt me! How is he doing this?!

  Chrominton didn't give him time to think. Another punch, his arm stretching like rubber, slammed into Kaelan's chest with the force of a meteor. The impact launched the lightning-wielder another eight hundred kilometers, tearing a new scar across the the land.

  Chrominton leaped, his touch on the ground propelling him into the sky in a single, impossible bound. He soared above the dazed Kaelan, his voice a triumphant roar that echoed across the wasteland.

  "DIDN'T YOU KNOW?" he bellowed, the fundamental law of his power becoming Kaelan's sentence. "RUBBER BEATS LIGHTNING EVERY TIME!"

  To Be Continued...