Ultimate Dragon System: Grinding my way to the Top

Chapter 345: Echo Rising

Oidin changed his approach.

He stopped cutting storage threads—the interception had made that technique costly, each cut feeding the armor rather than clearing it. He redirected toward larger fate threads instead—the connections that defined Naxra’s relationship with the fight itself rather than the specific mechanical threads of the echo storage.

The thread between Naxra and the armor.

Not the storage mechanism. The ownership connection—the fate-link between the fighter and the suit she wore, the thread that made the armor hers rather than just an object on her body.

He reached for it.

The energy cost hit him immediately—a significant expenditure, far larger than the footing twists and storage cuts he had been executing. This was an important fate. The armor was central to Naxra’s fighting identity, the connection between fighter and ability running deep. Cutting it would require more than the small interventions he had been using.

He pulled the thread.

Not a full cut—a partial twist, weakening the connection rather than severing it, the energy cost lower for a twist than for a complete cut. The ownership thread between Naxra and the armor fraying slightly.

Naxra felt the armor shift.

Not coming off—not losing function—but the specific wrongness of a connection that had been absolute becoming something less. The suit still on her body. The absorption still running. But the thread between her will and the armor’s responses slightly degraded—the echoes stored but slightly less responsive to her direction.

She pushed the stored echoes outward—releasing two of them before they became less responsive, the spectral imprints stored from the stumble impacts and the intercepted cuts firing outward at Oidin’s position.

Two echoes—the force of two stumble impacts and a fate-cut’s energy, released as spectral counterattacks aimed at Oidin.

Oidin cut the thread between himself and the incoming echoes’ targeting.

The echoes passed wide—the fate-link between the stored attacks and their intended target severed, the counterattacks losing their direction and dispersing into the space around him without contact.

Naxra advanced.

She was generating echoes faster now—moving deliberately into the footing interventions rather than avoiding them, using her body weight to maximize the impact absorbed with each stumble. Each intervention Oidin made to stop her advance was building her arsenal. Each stumble absorbed, each fall caught by the armor’s surface, each contact between her suit and the stone adding a stored imprint.

Oidin was running the arithmetic.

He was spending more energy per exchange than Naxra was—the fate thread interventions drawing from finite reserves, the larger threads costing disproportionately more than the small ones. The footing twists were cheap but they were feeding the armor. The storage thread cuts had been intercepted. The ownership thread twist was expensive and had only partially degraded the connection.

He needed a thread that was large enough to matter and cheap enough to execute.

He found it.

The thread between the armor’s stored echoes and each other—the fate connection that allowed the Thousand Echo Requiem to work, the thread that let multiple stored attacks be released simultaneously rather than sequentially. Not the ownership thread. Not the storage thread. The coordination thread—the connection that made the ultimate move possible.

He cut it.

The energy cost was moderate—less than the ownership thread, more than the footing twists. The coordination thread between the stored echoes severing cleanly.

Naxra felt the change immediately.

The echoes were still stored. Still releasable. But the simultaneous release—the Thousand Echo Requiem—was no longer possible. Each echo would have to be released individually rather than in the coordinated barrage the ultimate required.

She looked at Oidin.

He had taken away the finishing move.

She released the stored echoes one at a time—sequentially, the individual releases still powerful, each spectral counterattack carrying the force of the original impact. Six echoes released in rapid succession toward Oidin’s position.

Oidin cut targeting threads on each one.

First echo—wide. Second—wide. Third—he was three interventions into rapid succession and the energy cost was climbing. Fourth—wide. Fifth—the energy reserve showing its floor, the cuts becoming more expensive as the reserves depleted. Sixth—

The sixth echo hit.

The targeting thread on the sixth cut didn’t fully sever—the energy reserve insufficient for a clean cut, the thread fraying rather than severing, the echo’s targeting degraded rather than eliminated.

The sixth echo arrived at a partial angle—not the direct impact Naxra had aimed for but a glancing contact against Oidin’s left shoulder. The spectral force of a stumble impact delivered at reduced effectiveness against solid surface.

Real hit. Reduced.

Oidin stumbled—left shoulder pushed sideways by the echo’s force, his footing briefly disrupted without his own ability managing it.

The armor absorbed the stumble.

A new echo—the spectral imprint of Oidin’s own stumble, stored in the suit’s surface.

He found his feet.

Both fighters had spent significantly—Oidin’s thread-cutting reserves depleted from the rapid succession of targeting cuts, Naxra’s echo arsenal reduced from the six individual releases.

She had one echo remaining in the suit.

The one she had just stored from his stumble.

He had enough reserves for two more cuts—maybe three small ones, maybe one large one.

She advanced.

Three feet.

He reached for the thread between her foot and the floor—the footing twist, the cheap intervention.

He cut it.

Naxra’s foot slipped.

The armor absorbed the fall.

New echo—second one now, the stumble stored alongside the first.

Two echoes. His reserves at one cut remaining.

She was three feet from him.

He looked at the threads around her.

At the thread between her two stored echoes—the coordination thread he had already cut.

At the individual release threads—the connections between each stored echo and its ability to be released.

At the thread between Naxra and her forward momentum.

One cut remaining.

He chose the thread between Naxra and her forward momentum—the fate-link between her intention to close the final three feet and the physical execution of that advance. Cutting it wouldn’t stop her permanently—the thread would reform—but it would stop the advance for the seconds he needed.

He cut it.

Naxra stopped.

Her body halted mid-step—the connection between intention and movement severed, the advance frozen in the moment the cut landed. Not a fall. Not a stumble. A freeze—the body holding the mid-step position as the thread that drove the movement was absent.

Two seconds.

The thread reforming.

Oidin used the two seconds.

He reached for the thread between both of Naxra’s stored echoes and their release mechanism—not the coordination thread, the release threads themselves, the fate-connections that allowed the stored imprints to be summoned and directed. Cutting both release threads simultaneously.

The energy cost—both threads at once—was everything he had remaining.

He cut.