My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy
Chapter 148: Line Whipping

Chapter 148: Line Whipping

Beneath the stillness, his stomach knotted tighter, twisting under the weight of everything he couldn’t say out loud.

A Block was already fragile — Kikaru’s reports flashing in his memory, warnings about the Asurik tensions building under the surface. Tidwell’s scattered alerts about unrest threading through the sectors.

They didn’t have time for him to doubt.

They barely had time for anything.

The screens flickered again, another silent replay. Roachaline’s Chaos Reign in slow motion — a shattering ripple of soldiers across the broken landscape. Lyra’s Tempest Rush carving a spiral of death through the survivors, the movement almost beautiful if it hadn’t been so final.

The carnage stretched across the screens like a wound no one knew how to close.

Elias breathed in, slow and shallow, the motion stiff in his chest. He didn’t look away.

He couldn’t.

Across the table, Geras leaned forward, elbows braced against the tabletop, the data reports crinkling beneath his rough hands. Lines carved deep across his grizzled face, fatigue dragging at the edges of his voice.

"Data’s gold," he said, the words heavy, worn thin. "Chaos Reign’s got a fifty-meter range. Tempest Rush hits like a damn cyclone."

He tapped one of the reports with two fingers, the sound a soft, sharp crack against the steel. His eyes stayed hard.

"They’re monsters."

Geras didn’t need to say more. The word hung in the room, thick as the recycled air, the weight of it pressing heavier than the hum of Cube X’s walls.

He shifted slightly, a small movement, but Elias caught it — the flicker of doubt tightening his jaw, the heaviness tucked beneath the soldier’s blunt urgency.

Geras pointed back to the screens.

"We hit early," he said, voice sharpening. "Cut their supply lines before they regroup. Starve ’em out."

It was instinct talking — a soldier’s answer to what couldn’t be beaten head-on.

Chairwoman Veyra’s fingers paused, the slow tap against the tabletop falling silent.

Her gaze shifted to Geras, cool and assessing, before sliding back to Elias.

"Too risky," she said. No hesitation. No softness.

The words came clean and sharp, like a scalpel slicing through a battlefield triage.

"We wait. Watch the next spiritual contest. See how Elias holds."

She leaned back, the chair creaking faintly beneath her, but her posture never broke. Authority sat on her shoulders like a second skin, quiet and absolute.

"Data’s not enough," Veyra said. "We need certainty."

Her gaze pinned Elias in place, sharper than anything flashing across the flickering screens. She didn’t blink. Didn’t relent.

And under the blue light bleeding from the displays, with the echo of the bloodbath still pulsing in his ears, Elias felt the heat of her scrutiny strip him bare.

He shifted, the chair’s worn edge biting into his palms where he gripped it too tight. His throat worked against a dry swallow before he forced the words out.

"Reinforce A Block first," Elias said, voice tight but steady.

"Tidwell’s seen unrest building. Kikaru’s flagged concerns about Asurik pushing at the edges. If we move too fast—"

He paused, teeth gritting against the knot in his gut.

"We lose ground here."

The words tasted fragile, a threadbare plea for caution wrapped in tactical language. But he held Veyra’s gaze, locking himself into the effort the way he would a battlefield stance, refusing to flinch.

Somewhere beneath the cold steel and the static hum, the image of Faye surfaced — her sitting cross-legged outside her pod, music Ikona humming softly, her voice calm and warm as she taught rookies the basics of shard harmonization.

A Block wasn’t just numbers. It was Faye. It was the new trainees. It was the last foothold before the storm hit.

Across the table, Geras let out a rough snort, shoving back in his chair.

"That’s a gamble too," he muttered, arms crossing over his broad chest.

"Epics don’t wait," he said, nodding grimly toward the screens where Roachaline’s aura still crushed through Federation lines. "They carve."

His eyes tracked the footage — not the drone specs, not the formations — but the raw collapse of men and armor under shard-borne power. His jaw tightened. The tension in it looked too familiar. Too worn.

"We’ve got specs on ’em," Geras said, voice rising despite himself. "Tempest Rush clocks sixty kph. Chaos Reign’s like a damn warhead in human skin."

He shoved a report forward, the corner scraping loud across the table.

"Strike their outposts," he said. "Hit ’em before they hit us."

The urgency cracked through his voice at last, breaking past the iron soldier’s restraint. But his hands — clenched too tightly now on the chair arms — betrayed the cost behind the push.

The memory of strikes that hadn’t gone clean. Losses that hadn’t been small.

And the room, for all the talk and all the data, felt no closer to safe.

The Chairwoman’s eyes narrowed. Her fingers tapped once against the table — sharp, final.

"No strikes yet," she said, her voice cutting clean through the heavy air. "The contest will show us Elias’s edge — or his limits."

She turned to him fully then, and the weight of her gaze hit harder than any order.

"You’ll prove it there, won’t you?"

It wasn’t a question. Not really. It was a blade pressed flat against his chest, waiting for the answer she had already decided she would hear.

Elias’s chest tightened. His hands, still braced against the chair’s frame, twitched once before he caught himself. Dot’s hum pulsed faintly at his wrist, a quiet anchor in the noise pressing against his skull.

He nodded once, forcing the motion steady.

"I’ll hold," he said.

The words came quieter than he wanted. Some of the defiance frayed at the edges now — too much weight leaning on it — but he meant it.

The faces in A Block flashed behind his eyes — Faye’s guarded smile, Kikaru’s silent tension — and the thought of them steadied him when little else could.

Across the table, Geras exhaled sharply, the sound closer to a growl than a sigh. He shook his head, the motion short and sharp, but said nothing else.

Chairwoman Veyra stood.

The scrape of her chair against the floor rasped louder than anything that had been said.

"Sleep on it," she ordered, voice leaving no room for reply.

"We’ll see what the contest brings."

The screens above flickered, the endless loop of carnage replaying without sound — Roachaline’s Chaos Reign detonating soldiers across the field, Lyra’s Tempest Rush carving wide, fatal arcs.

Elias rose stiffly, legs heavier than they should have been. The hum of Cube X filled the silence left behind, a low, cold pulse that rattled down into the floor.

Vardency’s shadow pressed closer through the steel walls as he turned and left the room behind him.