The impact when flesh met the flat of the war-axe was like the collision of giants.

BOOOM!!

A shockwave exploded outward from the point of contact, shattering every piece of glass within two hundred yards and sending cobblestones flying like shrapnel. The force of it knocked grown orcs from their feet and caused the very foundations of nearby buildings to tremble. But most impossibly of all, the massive war-axe—forged in stellar fire and inscribed with runes of unbreaking—bent backward at an impossible angle, its meteoric iron yielding to Jaenor's bare fist like soft clay.

Grashek stared in stunned disbelief at his ruined weapon, his primitive mind struggling to process what had just occurred. In his years of warfare, he had never seen his axe so much as chip.

Now it hung from his grip like a broken twig, its edge folded back on itself and its runic inscriptions dark and lifeless.

"Impossible," he snarled, spittle flying from his tusked mouth.

"No mortal possesses such strength!"

"You're absolutely right," Jaenor agreed, beginning to circle the massive orc like a predator stalking wounded prey.

With each step, energy rippled outward from his feet, causing the stones beneath to crack and glow with inner fire.

"I am far from mortal."

The Orc Lord hurled aside his ruined weapon and drew a backup—a massive weapon whose spiked head was the size of a man's torso.

But even as he raised it, he could see something changing in his ethereal opponent.

The air around Jaenor began to shimmer with barely contained power, Origin energy and aura swirling together in patterns that defied every law of the world.

The sight should have been impossible.

Origin power—the fundamental force wielded by the witches—and aura—the golden energy that flowed through the greatest knights and warriors—were opposites in every sense.

Fire and water, light and darkness, creation and destruction.

They could exist separately, but when they met, they annihilated each other in explosive fury.

Yet here they danced around Jaenor's form like old lovers, purple and gold streams of energy intertwining without conflict, their combined power making reality itself tremble at the edges.

Grashek charged again, desperation lending speed to his massive frame.

His weapon whistled through the air with enough force to pulverize stone, its spiked head aimed directly at Jaenor's heart.

This time, Jaenor didn't dodge at all.

Instead, he stepped forward to meet the attack head-on, his left hand rising to catch the weapon's haft just below its deadly head.

The weapon simply stopped.

Not with the grinding halt of metal meeting an immovable object, but with the absolute stillness that comes when unstoppable force meets truly infinite resistance.

The spiked head's momentum vanished as if it had never existed, leaving Grashek straining against an opponent who might as well have been carved from the bedrock of the world itself.

"My turn," Jaenor said softly.

His right fist, now wreathed in a perfect fusion of Origin and aura energies that made the air itself scream in protest, drove forward in a straight punch aimed at the Orc Lord's massive chest.

The blow landed with the force of a falling star.

Grashek's feet left the ground as if he had been struck by a siege engine.

His massive frame flew backward through the air, crashing through the wooden stalls of half a dozen merchants before finally slamming into the stone wall of the market's largest granary.

The impact left a perfect impression of his body in the old masonry, with cracks radiating outward in a spider web pattern that spoke of nearby forces.

But the Orc Lord was not finished.

With a roar that seemed to come from the very depths of hell, he pulled himself free from his stone prison and staggered back to his feet. His armor was cracked, his face bloodied, but his eyes still blazed with the indomitable fury of his kind.

"What... are... you?" He gasped, dark blood streaming from his tusked mouth.

Jaenor began walking toward him with measured, unhurried steps.

With each footfall, the energy around his form intensified, purple and gold light intertwining in spirals that made the air itself writhe with barely contained potential.

"You shouldn't spout words that you cannot back," he replied, his voice carrying an undertone that seemed to resonate in the bones of everyone who heard it.

He raised his right hand, and this time the energy that gathered around his fist was something beyond mortal comprehension.

Origin power—raw creation force that could reshape reality itself—flowed in perfect harmony with aura energy that burned with the intensity of a dying sun.

The combination created something new, something that had never existed in the world before this moment.

Grashek's final charge was born not of confidence but of the desperate courage that comes when death is certain but surrender is impossible. He had no weapon left save his bare hands, but he was an orc, and orcs fought until their last breath left their bodies.

Jaenor met that charge with compassionless precision.

His energy-wreathed fist struck the Orc Lord squarely in the center of his massive chest, directly over his heart, and the result was both beautiful and terrible to behold.

The Orc Lord's body didn't simply die.

The combined Origin and aura energies destroyed flesh and bone. A huge hole appeared on his chest as he fell to the ground.

Odessa stood transfixed, completely baffled. She was at a loss for words.

Around the edges of the square, the surviving orc warriors finally succumbed to the terror that their primitive minds had been struggling to process. They broke and ran, their crude discipline shattered by witnessing power so absolute that it challenged their fundamental understanding of existence itself.

As they fled into the maze of burning streets, Odessa emerged from the shadows, where she had been systematically eliminating the scattered raiders who had been terrorizing the civilian population.

Odessa had been silently watching Jaenor, his origin, and the aura, which she saw now; she hadn't seen him use it before.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.