My Soul card is a Reaper-Chapter 1042: Dreams of the Past: The Triplets fight with Aurelius (Part-3)
Aurelius' gaze sharpened.
The ground beneath Rael and Eon cracked, and a pillar of black and white energy erupted upward, spiraling together like intertwined serpents. Their bodies began to blur, their outlines dissolving as if they were no longer separate beings, and the Death Scythe and Hourglass trembled violently, pulled toward the center of the storm.
Rael and Eon's voices overlapped, not spoken loudly, but spoken with absolute certainty.
"Basic Fusion."
Light exploded.
Darkness followed.
The storm collapsed inward, and for a heartbeat, the world held its breath.
Then, standing where the twins had been, a new figure emerged.
Tall.
Cloaked in an aura of death and time.
A Grim Reaper, its form half-shadow and half-glimmering light, holding a massive scythe in one hand and the sacred Hourglass in the other, its presence so overwhelming that even the knights watching from afar felt their knees weaken.
The arena fell silent.
Raphael stared, eyes wide, unable to hide his shock.
Even Aurelius, the demigod, stood still.
And the Reaper lifted its head slowly.
Its eyes glowed with a cold, impossible power.
Then it took one step forward.
Aurelius stood opposite it, his sleeves still rolled, his hands empty, but the expression on his face had changed.
The Duke's calmness remained, but his eyes were no longer indifferent.
They were narrowed.
Thinking.
Measuring.
For the first time since the spar began, Aurelius did not look like a father testing his children.
He looked like a demigod facing an unknown.
Raphael lay on the ground at the far edge of the ruined arena, his body bruised, blood staining the corner of his lips, but even in his battered state, his eyes were wide, fixed on the Reaper as if he had just witnessed something that shattered his understanding of the world.
The spectators were frozen.
No one breathed too loudly.
No one dared move.
Because the aura coming from the fusion was not simply strong.
It was final.
Aurelius' gaze remained fixed on the Reaper, and the longer he stared, the deeper the realization sank into him, like a blade slowly entering the mind.
Rank Seven.
In terms of pure rank, it was the same level Raphael had reached.
Yet the pressure this creature radiated was not the pressure of a Rank Seven.
It was the pressure of a concept.
Death itself.
Aurelius' eyes darkened as a thought struck him, and his lips pressed into a thin line.
So that was it.
The priestess had been wrong.
Everyone had been wrong.
When the triplets were born, the court had assumed the power of death had chosen Rael alone, and the strange attachment between Rael and Eon had been dismissed as childish closeness, a twin bond that would fade with age.
But it hadn't faded.
It had only grown deeper.
Because it wasn't emotion that tied them together.
It was an inheritance.
It was fate.
They had never been separate vessels.
They were two halves of a single Arcana spirit.
A Deity-level Arcana spirit.
Aurelius exhaled slowly, and the air around him trembled as if the world itself understood the weight of that truth.
"So that's why…" he murmured under his breath, his voice barely audible even to himself. "The power of true death… wasn't passed down to one son. It was split."
The Reaper tilted its head slightly, and when it spoke, the voice that came out was distorted, layered, carrying both Rael and Eon at once, like two souls speaking through one mouth.
"Father," it said, the tone cold and deep, yet strangely familiar. "This is our ultimate technique."
The words carried no arrogance.
Only certainty.
Aurelius didn't respond.
He simply watched.
The Reaper raised its left hand, the Hourglass pulsing once, and then it lifted the scythe in its right, the blade humming as death energy condensed around it like a storm being born.
Then the Reaper spoke again, and the words felt like an execution decree.
"Rise of the Undead."
The ground shuddered.
Not cracked, not trembled.
Shuddered, as if the earth itself had been forced to remember every corpse buried beneath it.
Black mist poured from the soil, thick and suffocating, and the temperature dropped sharply. The spectators staggered backward, knights instinctively drawing their swords even though they knew it was pointless, because the aura was not something steel could fight.
A moment later, the earth split open.
One by one, figures climbed out.
Fourteen.
Not skeletons.
Not mindless corpses.
These undead were towering, monstrous, their bodies partially armored with bone plates and ancient steel, their eyes glowing with violet flames. Each of them carried a spirit core embedded in their chest, shining like a cursed jewel, and the power leaking from those cores was unmistakable. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
Rank Seven.
Fourteen Rank Seven undead.
Platinum-grade monsters.
And worse than that, they weren't mere puppets.
They were complete beings.
They could think.
They could cast.
They could use soul skills.
The spectators were pale now, and even some veteran knights swallowed hard, because if those creatures were released outside the estate, they could erase a city before an army even formed.
Aurelius remained still, but the faint furrow in his brow deepened.
The Reaper's hand moved.
Not hurried.
Not dramatic.
Just a simple motion of command.
And the undead obeyed.
They charged forward in perfect synchronization, their heavy footsteps shaking the ground, their claws tearing through stone, their weapons rising, and their mouths opening to release soundless roars that carried nothing but hunger.
Aurelius finally moved.
He stepped forward.
And in that single step, the air exploded.
A shockwave of pure arcana burst outward from his body, flattening the grass beyond the arena, sending dust spiraling into the sky, and forcing the spectators to brace themselves. Several knights stumbled back despite their training, and even Raphael, lying injured at the edge, clenched his teeth as the pressure slammed into him like a wall.
The first undead reached Aurelius.
A massive beast shaped like a bull, its horns coated in black flame, swung its head downward, attempting to gore him in half.
Aurelius punched.
His fist collided with the monster's skull.
The undead bull didn't simply fall.
It detonated.
Bone and black mist exploded outward, and the spirit core cracked instantly, shattered by sheer force, the fragments dissolving into dust before they could even touch the ground.
The second undead, a winged creature with skeletal feathers and a mouth filled with jagged teeth, dove from above, its claws glowing with a soul skill.
Aurelius didn't even look up.
He raised his palm.
A pulse of energy shot upward.
The creature's body froze mid-air, then collapsed as if gravity had suddenly tripled, slamming into the ground hard enough to carve a crater.
Aurelius stepped onto its chest.
The spirit core shattered under his heel.
The third and fourth undead attacked together, one wielding a cursed blade and the other launching a barrage of dark spears, their soul skills firing in unison like coordinated artillery.
Aurelius' coat fluttered as he moved, and his body blurred, not because he used time manipulation, but because his physical control was simply that absurd. The cursed blade missed by a hair, the spears shattered against an invisible arcana barrier, and Aurelius' elbow struck the undead swordsman's neck.
Its head flew off.
Aurelius caught the head mid-air and crushed it.
The core inside exploded into dust.
The undead lancer tried to retreat.
Aurelius grabbed its arm and swung it like a weapon, smashing it into two other undead, sending all three bodies crashing across the arena in a violent tumble of bone and black smoke.
The spectators stared as if watching a god dismantle an army with bare hands.
And yet, Aurelius wasn't smiling.
Because he knew this was only the opening act.
The Reaper stepped forward.
The moment it moved, time rippled.
The Hourglass in its left hand pulsed, and the sand inside shifted faster, as if it was bleeding away seconds to buy power.
The Reaper raised the scythe.
A black arc of death energy erupted, far denser than Rael's previous Slice of Death, thick enough that it looked like the sky itself had been carved open.
Aurelius turned.
The death arc slammed toward him.
He crossed his arms.
The arc struck.
The shockwave tore through the arena, cracking stone, ripping dust into the air, and forcing the spectators to shield their faces. For a brief moment, Aurelius' boots dug into the earth, and his body slid back several meters, leaving deep trails behind him.
When the dust cleared, Aurelius stood with his arms lowered.
