Solo Cultivating in Superhero Academy
Chapter 124: Battle 3

Chapter 124: Battle 3

The words hung in the air like cold mist. Fraven froze mid-laugh. Keith tilted his head slightly. Shania’s eyes flicked toward him with a ghost of curiosity.

Fraven barked out another laugh. "That a challenge?"

Elius didn’t reply.

Instead, he shifted slightly, cracking his neck with a soft pop as the air thickened with tension.

Keith’s expression changed. Subtle, but noticeable. His playful arrogance faded, replaced by a narrowed-eyed assessment. Calculating. Like a general observing a battlefield.

Fraven, still in mockery mode, turned toward the tomb and called again.

"Hey, Zhark! That hero just asked all of us to fight him! What do you say, tag-team?"

"DON’T YOU DARE!" Zhark screamed from within. "I’M TELLING YOU—I GOT THIS! I’LL BREAK OUT AND FRY HIM!"

"Sure, sure," Fraven said, grinning. "Just so you know, your little dirt prison’s glowing like a decorative lantern. You’ve got, what, five more seconds before you pass out?"

"STAY OUT OF IT!"

Fraven turned back toward Elius, chuckling. "Well, that’s the big guy’s official statement, I guess."

Then, Elius raised his hand slightly.

Fraven’s smirk faltered.

Five swords appeared behind Elius.

They shimmered into being like ghosts forged from metal and silence—floating in formation behind him, each one glowing faintly with Qi-infused energy.

They hovered like serpents ready to strike, their tips pointed outward, humming with invisible pressure.

Fraven’s grin died instantly.

"Wait," he said, stepping back. "You’re... an Esper too?"

He had no time to process the thought.

SWOOSH!

The swords shot forward like comets.

Fraven’s instincts flared—he ripped a broken street brick from the ground with his mind, hurling it into the path of the oncoming blades.

CLANG!

One of the swords slammed into the brick, exploding it into powder.

But the others twisted midair.

SWIPE!

A blade grazed his left shoulder, slicing through the fabric and drawing a thin line of red. Fraven reeled back, eyes wide. Not just from the hit—but the sheer precision.

Elius slowly turned toward them, for the first time making full eye contact with the trio.

His voice was deathly calm.

"I repeat."

He took a step forward.

"All of you. Come together."

Another step.

"And join the party."

The swords reformed behind him in midair, perfectly aligned again. Still glowing. Still aimed.

Fraven clutched his shoulder, fury rising beneath the shock. "You bastard..."

He turned his head toward the tomb and screamed—

"ZHARK, HE’S FORCING ME!"

The moment Fraven clutched his shoulder and screamed for Zhark, the air tensed like a string about to snap.

Then—snap it did.

Fraven dropped from his floating debris with explosive force, landing hard, sending cracks webbing across the broken concrete below. His face contorted—not with pain, but with fury.

Gone was the smirking jester taunting Zhark.

What remained was the brutal villain known across the underground as the Telekinesis Tyrant.

"You want a party?" Fraven growled, his voice guttural. "Then let me welcome you with decorations!"

BOOM!

The air exploded.

Fraven’s hands jerked up, and the world shuddered.

Everything—EVERYTHING—within two hundred meters, from shattered buildings, road signs, broken lamp posts, cracked walls, discarded cars, street benches, broken pavement tiles, trash bins, steel girders, hanging wires, shattered glass, crumbled bricks, corpses of drones, light poles, sewer covers, long-forgotten street vendor carts, even half-buried bicycle wheels—rose.

A tidal wave of junk and ruin hovered in the sky like a cloud of death.

Fraven roared, eyes glowing violet, his veins pulsing.

"DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE!"

And the debris launched.

BOOM!

Thousands of objects hurled toward Elius like an avalanche of steel and stone.

A chair twisted into a spear.

A glass shard sharpened like a dagger.

A bicycle compressed into a saw-blade wheel. Each fragment moved at bullet-speed, screaming through the air.

Elius didn’t move.

CLANG! SWISH! CHING! BOOM!

His flying swords came alive.

The five blades burst apart like falcons in a storm.

One spun and sliced a traffic light pole in half, another cleaved a sofa in two, a third shattered a barrage of bricks with a radiant slash of light.

Two circled him, a whirling cyclone of steel and death, shredding every object that dared come close.

CLANG! SWOOSH! RIPPP! CRASH!

Fraven wasn’t stopping.

A bus lifted from the ground and hurled itself at Elius.

SLICE!

A sword split it down the middle, its halves crashing into either side of the field.

"ZHARK!" Fraven yelled while attacking, his face twisted in rage. "THIS GUY’S MAKING A MOCKERY OF US! WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STILL IN THAT DAMN BOX?!"

"SHUT UP!" came the muffled reply from the coffin. "I’LL GET OUT! STOP HELPING!"

Fraven snapped, "HE’S USING FLYING SWORDS LIKE AN ESPER—WHAT KIND OF EARTH USER DOES THIS?!"

He ripped open a manhole and sent the heavy cover spinning at Elius like a circular buzzsaw.

DING!

A sword clanged it away, the sound shrieking like a chime of metal death.

"You decided to join the party after all," Elius finally said, voice calm as a still pond.

Fraven’s eyes burned. "YEAH, I’M JOINING—AND I’M GOING BERSERK!"

The city around them trembled as Fraven unleashed the second wave.

He reached deeper—far deeper—into the battlefield.

From a collapsed subway entrance, rails bent and twisted free like writhing serpents of metal. Rusted steel beams wrenched out of old construction ruins. A broken truck’s trailer peeled itself like paper. Even concrete itself, slabs the size of vans, groaned as they were torn from the earth.

WHOOSH!

They flew at Elius.

An iron typhoon.

A hundred tons of death.

SLASH! SLASH! SWOOSH! CLANG!

The swords responded like dancers in a deadly ballet.

They sliced spiraling rebar mid-spin.

They chopped stone chunks into sand mid-air.

They disassembled an airborne car into floating screws and bolts before it ever got close.

Behind his calm demeanor, Elius observed.

So this is Fraven in berserk mode, he thought.

Keith stood in the distance, arms crossed, unreadable as ever, but his eyes gleamed with cold focus.

Elius glanced at him.

"What about you?" he called out, voice still emotionless. "Don’t you want to join?"

Keith didn’t answer.

But Fraven—still roaring—kept attacking.

He was screaming now, grabbing buildings themselves, twisting them, breaking off balconies, snatching road dividers, yanking water pipes from under the asphalt, ripping the world apart and tossing it like confetti at a funeral.

The swords flashed.

Deflected.

Cut.

Intercepted.

They flew in erratic, masterful arcs, sometimes spinning like saws, other times stabbing forward like precision needles. No matter what Fraven sent, the swords met it like extensions of Elius’s thoughts.

SWOOSH! SLICE! BOOM!

Debris fell around Elius in shattered chunks and sparks.

Fraven’s power was immense, but Elius’s sword control was flawless.

"WHY—WON’T—YOU—DIE?!"

Fraven bellowed, sweat flying from his face, blood dripping from his nose. His power was fraying, energy overloaded, but he refused to stop.

"ZHARK!" he screamed again. "HE’S MAKING ME LOOK STUPID OUT HERE! I’M THROWING A CITY AT HIM AND HE’S SLICING IT LIKE IT’S TISSUE PAPER!"

No response.

Just more lightning flashing uselessly inside the tomb.

Fraven panted heavily, eyes bloodshot, body shaking. His last attack—an entire collapsed tower’s worth of debris—had been reduced to fluttering dust by a single wide arc from the five swords.

The dust settled.

Elius stood there, completely untouched.

Fraven gasped for air.

And Elius spoke again.

His voice cut through the wind like a guillotine.

"...It’s my turn again."