The Genius Mage Was Reincarnated Into A Swordsman Family-Chapter 356: Steel and Starlight

’What is he talking about?’ Klaus barely had time to register Erion’s words before the black ice sword descended again. He met it head-on with Greed, the impact vibrating up his arms like a struck bell.

BANG!

The force shoved him backward five steps, boots carving trenches through the singing ice. Klaus’s breath caught, not from pain, but surprise. He’d held back, testing Erion’s rhythm. Yet the patriarch had moved him like a child pushing a toy cart.

Across the courtyard, Erion’s obsidian eyes flickered. His stance didn’t waver, but his gloved fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on his sword’s hilt. He’d expected Klaus to skid ten paces, maybe collapse. The Lionhart heir stood steady, white hair whipping like frozen flame, Greed humming with violet energy in his grip.

’Strong.’ The thought carved itself into Erion’s mind. A slow, sharp smile spread across his face, a predator recognizing worthy prey.

Without warning, Erion vanished.

Klaus spun, instincts screaming. Greed flashed upward just as Erion’s blade slashed downward from behind. The collision ripped a shockwave through the courtyard, shattering ice sculptures into diamond dust. Sparks erupted like dying stars, illuminating the Stark guards frozen at the district’s edge. One young soldier dropped his spear, jaw slack. "Gods above," he whispered, "they’re moving faster than blizzards... and they’re not even trying."

’He’s not using his full strength,’ Klaus realized, blocking a third strike that cracked the ice beneath his feet. ’He’s playing.’

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

Each clash doubled their speed. Erion became a ghost in black furs, his movements blurring into afterimages. Klaus matched him step for step, Greed a streak of obsidian lightning. To the spectators, the duel dissolved into chaos: flashes of light, the shriek of steel on ice, the ground trembling as if the glacier beneath Iskandriel had awakened. Only the clang-clang-clang remained constant, a drumbeat of two wills hammering against each other.

Erion’s smile widened. How long had it been since he’d felt this? Since the Shattering Wars, perhaps. He’d believed himself alone at the peak, unmatched in speed, untouchable in strength. The Seven Monarchs were children swinging sticks compared to this white-haired storm before him. And Klaus wasn’t even ranked beyond Swordmaster! ’The entire continent was fooled,’ Erion thought, exhilaration surging through his veins. ’This boy could shatter empires before breakfast.’

"HAHAHAHA!" Erion’s laugh boomed across the frozen courtyard, raw and untamed. He finally unleashed his true power, 80% of what he’d hoarded for decades. His next strike carried the weight of avalanches.

BANG!!!

The force drove Klaus to one knee, ice spiderwebbing outward in a ten-foot radius. Yet Klaus didn’t yield. He pushed back, Greed flaring brighter, and Erion felt the shift, a counter-pressure that shouldn’t exist.

"You had the entire continent fooled," Erion panted, circling Klaus like a wolf admiring a rival. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold. "To think a lad your age hides this strength? At this level, you’re leagues beyond those Seven Monarchs. Hell, who in Runiya could match you if you went all out?" The compliment was genuine, stripped of politics. A warrior honoring another warrior. "I haven’t enjoyed a clash this much since the Frost Giants fell."

Klaus rose smoothly, wiping frost from his brow. His arms trembled, not from exhaustion, but from the sheer joy of finding a peer. Dudu watched from the shadows, golden eyes narrowed not in worry, but in approval. Even Greed vibrated in Klaus’s grip, its mental voice breathless.

{Careful,} the sword warned. { He’s shifting gears. That white energy.... He’s at the White Core level.}

Klaus knew it before Greed spoke. Erion’s blade now glowed with pure, blinding white light: the legendary tier beyond Silver Core, where mortals touched the edges of divinity. Few ever reached it. Fewer survived it.

’He wants to see my true strength,’ Klaus realized with a faint smile.

For the first time since landing in Iskandriel, Klaus stopped holding back. Arcane energy erupted from his core, black as void and cold as dead stars. It coiled around Greed until the blade seemed carved from midnight itself, runes flaring like captured galaxies. The air thickened, heavy with the scent of ozone and ancient power.

Erion’s grin turned feral. He raised his white-glowing sword, the ice beneath his boots vaporizing into mist. "Finally."

They lunged.

Time fractured.

Erion’s white blade became a comet streaking toward Klaus’s heart. Greed met it in a crescent of darkness, the collision promising to shatter the courtyard, the district, perhaps the very foundations of Iskandriel. Klaus felt the raw ecstasy of the clash in his bones, the meeting of two souls who understood that true strength wasn’t in winning, but in finding someone worth losing to.

Neither noticed the figure sprinting across the ice toward them. Neither heard the shouts from the palace towers. They existed only in that perfect, terrible moment, steel and starlight locked in a dance older than cities.

CLANG

"FATHER! THAT’S ENOUGH!!!"

The voice—sharp, young, laced with command—cut through the roar of their power like a knife through silk.

Klaus and Erion froze mid-swing, blades locked a breath apart. White and black energy crackled between them, illuminating the shock on their faces. Only then did Klaus realize his own lips were curled upward. Erion’s smile still lingered, fierce and unguarded, as if he’d forgotten to wear his mask of authority.

Behind them, boots skidded to a halt on the shattered ice.

Klaus’s gaze flickered past Erion’s shoulder. A boy stood there—no older than fourteen—dressed in Stark furs but breathing hard, face flushed with urgency. His black hair and obsidian eyes mirrored Erion’s, but his stance held none of the patriarch’s glacial calm. He clutched a scroll sealed with the Ice Queen’s personal sigil.

Erion’s blade lowered first. The white light faded from his sword like a dying star. "What is it, Kael?" His voice was rough, as if dragged from deep water.

The boy — Kael Stark — ignored him. His eyes locked onto Klaus, wide with something between awe and accusation. "The Queen summons him," he gasped, thrusting the scroll forward. "Now. Before you two bury the entire Stark district under a glacier." He paused, cheeks flushing darker. "And before you get yourselves killed over bragging rights."

Erion barked a laugh, the sound echoing strangely in the sudden silence. But his eyes never left Klaus. There was a question in them now, not of doubt, but of dawning, terrible understanding.

Klaus withdrew Greed slowly, the black energy receding like a tide. He tucked the sword through his belt, careful not to let its edge touch the boy. As he took the scroll, his fingers brushed Kael’s. The boy flinched, not from cold, but from the faint, lingering heat of Klaus’s unleashed power.

The Ice Queen’s seal glowed faintly in Klaus’s palm. He didn’t need to break it to know its contents. Iskandriel’s rulers had seen enough. They’d witnessed a truth no brooch or title could convey: the boy who shattered the Mythril Crystal was no longer just a legend.

He was a storm walking on two legs.

Kael finally looked away from Klaus, turning to his father. "She also said..." The boy swallowed hard, glancing between the two swordsmen. "She said the Frostfang Peaks have opened. Blue light is bleeding through the ice. Just like in the reports from the western valleys."

Erion’s smile vanished. The patriarch’s hand tightened on his sword until his knuckles turned white. When he spoke, his voice was icier than Iskandriel’s deepest glacier.

"Then we have bigger problems than swordsmen’s pride."

Klaus’s blood froze. Not from the cold.

But from the memory of a valley choked with blue mana stones, and the Messenger’s final words: The Harvest comes for all.