The stance was strange yet elegant, perfectly balanced, and utterly foreign.
Maxwell couldn't find an opening. His instincts screamed that any attack would be suicide.
Even Muliad, watching from behind the bars, felt his pulse quicken. Sweat ran down his temple as he tried to process what he was seeing.
The posture was flawless. Calculated. The boy moved like someone who'd been killing longer than he'd been alive.
The prisoners dared not speak. The air felt heavier by the second.
However.... inside Harian's head there was something else going on entirely....Vex broke the silence.
[THAT POSE LOOKS UNNECESSARILY DRAMATIC.]
"Shut up," Harian muttered, still focused.
Vex's voice returned, cold and direct as ever but this time, with a sharp edge of disbelief.
[QUERY: ISN'T THAT THE STANCE MASTER VIXEN SPECIFICALLY FORBADE YOU FROM USING?]
Harian blinked. "...What?"
[AFFIRMATIVE. QUOTING MASTER VIXEN: 'THAT FORM LOOKS STUPID AND SERVES NO PRACTICAL ADVANTAGE WHATSOEVER.']
A vein popped in Harian's forehead. "It doesn't look stupid."
[IT DOES. STATISTICALLY AND VISUALLY.]
"I-... okay, maybe it looks a little strange, but it works, alright?!"
[MASTER ALSO ADDED: 'IF YOU'RE EVER CAUGHT USING IT, I'LL PERSONALLY BREAK YOUR LEGS.']
"Well, master isn't here right now, is he?!"
[CORRECT. HE ISN'T. WHICH IS PERHAPS WHY YOUR DECISION-MAKING HAS DETERIORATED.]
"Shut up, Vex!" Harian hissed, trying to keep his focus. "I'm in character! You're killing the mood!"
For the first time in what felt like forever, Vex paused.
Then, with the faintest digital sigh or an imitation of what a sigh sounds like
[…SIGH.]
Harian blinked, lowering his sword slightly. "Wait. Did… did you just sigh at me?"
[REGRETFULLY, YES.]
"You can do that?" Harian groaned. "Unbelievable."
As Vex continued to berate him, Harian's focus faltered for just a heartbeat and with it came a flood of memory.
Those hellish days of training.
He saw himself again younger, scrawnier, desperate to look like a warrior that "had presence." He'd spent days in front of a cracked mirror, copying a stance he'd once seen in a match between two elite swordsmen. To him, it looked menacing, full of grandeur, the kind of pose that would make enemies tremble before the first swing.
He remembered presenting it proudly to his master.
The man's face, half-shrouded beneath that ever-present hood, had looked him over once, in total silence.
Then, after an agonizing moment, Master Vixen had simply muttered one word:
"...Shit."
The silence after that was worse than any beating.
[RECOLLECTION: MASTER VIXEN DID, IN FACT, CALL IT 'SHIT.']
[FOLLOW-UP QUOTE: 'VOID ESSENCE TAKES MINIMAL MOVEMENT. NO POSES. NO THEATRICS. SIMPLICITY IS PERFECTION.']
"Yeah, yeah, I remember," Harian muttered through clenched teeth. "Minimal movement, simple execution, blah blah blah. You've mentioned it three hundred times."
[THEN WHY ARE YOU STANDING LIKE A DRAMATIC PEACOCK ABOUT TO DUEL FOR FASHION RIGHTS?]
Harian's eye twitched. "Because, Vex," he hissed, "master isn't here right now to scold me, is he?"
[NO, HE ISN'T.]
"Exactly!" Harian grinned, resetting his stance with exaggerated flair. "So I'm going to show him and you, how deadly this stance really is!"
[…LOGICAL ERROR DETECTED.]
"I'm concentrating," he hissed under his breath, still keeping his stance flawless.
[YOU LOOK LIKE YOU'RE ABOUT TO START BALL ROOM DANCING.]
He ignored the snark and steadied his breathing. The flow of Essence through his body had shifted, pulsing like a second heartbeat. His limbs felt lighter now, his perception sharper like the world itself had slowed to half-speed.
No matter how powerful Devour Field was, it had one fatal flaw: unless the target activated their essence, there was nothing to consume. That single limitation made every fight both difficult and dangerous for Harian especially in the current situation.
Yet there was another side to it a hidden advantage that set the Void Essence apart from every other materialistic essence. It was the very reason Hanzo had risen so high in his past life.Void Essence could absorb essence at a far higher rate than any other, but only if the user's body and mind could withstand the load. Take in too much, and the body would crush itself under its own energy.
Harian was frail now, the weakest he'd been since his first life skinny, starved, brittle. But this was also why the Void Essence had chosen him in the first place. Not for strength. For will. For the ability to stare at death and still push further.
He pulled essence through Devour Field faster than his body should have allowed, adjusting every intake with precision. His veins burned, his muscles screamed, yet the energy never spilled over.To use essence with such a fragile vessel was suicide but Harian's spirit was unbreakable.
And Vex, watching from within, didn't question him once. Because the man who wielded the Void Essence had always been worthy of it.
From the outside, it was terrifying.
The torches along the wall flickered, bending inward as if being pulled toward him. The air thickened, vibrating faintly under invisible pressure. The Essence leaking from Harian wasn't violent it was hungry. It pulled.
Maxwell staggered, instinct screaming. Every Essence user in the world recognized that shift the sudden swell of power, the kind that didn't rise naturally but spiked, sharp and unnatural.
And this kid… this frail prisoner… was generating it effortlessly.
"What… what is this?" Maxwell muttered, his knuckles whitening around his sword. "How can his Essence-....!"
Maxwell's instincts screamed louder. His years of battle told him that this stance, this rhyth whatever it was....was dangerous. He couldn't find an opening. Not a single one.
"A knight of Rezia…" Maxwell said through clenched teeth, tightening his grip. "…will never back down."
Every prisoner watched in disbelief. A boy barely seventeen, frail and half-starved, stood before a battle-hardened knight and it was the knight who looked afraid. Meanwhile, inside Harian's head:
[ARE YOU PLANNING TO ACTUALLY ATTACK, OR JUST STAND THERE POSING LIKE AN OMINOUS STATUE?]
"Patience," Harian muttered quietly, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.
Then to break the deafening silence Maxwell declared, "Whatever you're planning is futile. I'll show you how futile it is. I am a Knight of Rezia a knight who fought many wars on the southern border and survived. I've defeated many. A boy like you was dead the moment you bared your fangs at me. For the crime of killing soldiers of the Rezia kingdom, I sentence you to death."
Harian's grin never left. That made Maxwell grind his teeth; nothing he said seemed to affect the boy. Then a devious idea crossed his face.
"Those orphans," Maxwell sneered. "I'll slice you up like I sliced up those who escaped with you. Do you want me to tell you their last words?"
Harian's smile disappeared. The air around him changed; he glared at Maxwell with eyes that could kill.
Maxwell laughed, thinking he'd won. "Or do you want me to tell you about the people I sold the other kids to? What kind of people they were? Or how much I earned? Honestly....not much. That's how little you were worth." He laughed again.