I felt extremely powerful. The sensation was not merely a surge of energy; it was an absolute, violent flood of diverse essences that felt as if they were physically rewriting the structure of my soul. The emerald light of my own creation magic did not merely flicker back to life—it roared into a towering, blinding inferno, bolstered by the echoing presence of my fallen classmates. I felt their strength, their specialized affinities, and their very will to survive coursing through my veins like liquid fire. The crushing weight of the masked man's fear-aura was still there, pressing against the dimension like an iron ceiling, but for the first time since this nightmare began, I didn't feel like I was drowning in it. I felt as if I had become a sun, radiating a heat that could finally push back the infinite, freezing void.
I didn't waste a single heartbeat. I reached deep into the core of the newly acquired reservoir, pulling on the familiar, sturdy essence of Zane's magic. I used Zane's barrier magic to create a barrier around me. Instantly, a shimmering, multi-layered geometric construct of translucent energy erupted from my skin. It wasn't just a simple bubble; it was a complex, interlocking series of hexagonal plates that rotated with a low, humming frequency. Each plate pulsed with a deep, earthy resonance, creating a physical perimeter that hummed with unyielding stability. The air directly outside the barrier hissed as the oppressive mana of the dimension tried to find a way in, only to be completely and utterly rebuffed by the absolute integrity of the shield. I could feel the invisible surface of the barrier vibrating against the palms of my hands, a reassuring weight that promised to absorb any kinetic or magical impact.
But defense was only the beginning. I needed speed. I used Vela's space magic to speed myself up by removing the space between me and my surroundings. The visual of the dimension distorted violently. The distance between my current position and the masked man's casual, standing form did not merely decrease—it collapsed. The reddish-black mist in front of me buckled and folded, the background warping as if I were looking through a thick, jagged lens. The very concept of travel became redundant. My physical body remained in motion, but the reality through which I moved was being actively compressed. Every inch I stepped forward was effectively miles traversed in the blink of an eye. The invisible floor of the dimension seemed to stretch and tear behind me as the space I had just occupied was violently expanded to compensate for the void I was currently deleting.
To ensure the black-masked figure could not track the trajectory of my collapse, I increased my overall speed by using Lucian's lightning magic. The air within my barrier ignited with a sharp, piercing screech of high-voltage energy. Jagged, violet-blue arcs of electricity began to dance across the surface of my white gold sword, snapping and popping with an aggressive, predatory rhythm. The lightning didn't just coat my weapon; it infused my very muscles. My nervous system felt as if it had been struck by a bolt of pure, unadulterated lightning. Every fiber of my being was vibrating at a frequency that defied the laws of biology. The smell of ozone became so thick it was almost sweet, and a trail of smoking, ionized air began to spiral around my feet.
I dashed forward. The sound of my movement was a deafening, sonic-boom crack that shattered the heavy silence of the realm. I didn't just run; I became a blur of emerald, violet, and gold that tore through the crimson mist. The twenty Wolves of Destruction were still recovering from the previous shockwaves, and they could do nothing but howl in frustration as I bypassed their pack formation in a microsecond.
I felt faster than before. The man's featureless black mask was suddenly, violently in my direct line of sight. He didn't have time to snap his fingers. He didn't have time to disappear. The combined velocity of my space-warping and my lightning-shrouded dash resulted in a kinetic force that was fundamentally off the charts. I pulled my white gold sword back, the emerald fire and violet lightning merging into a singular, blinding blade of absolute, desperate resolution.
I landed a hit on the masked man. The collision was like two stars violently crashing into one another. My sword slammed directly into the center of his chest, precisely where his heart should have been. The resulting shockwave was so immense that it physically blew back the clouds of reddish mist for miles in every direction, momentarily revealing the cold, black foundation of the dimension's floor. The emerald and violet energy from my blade detonated upon impact, sending a massive, spiraling pillar of fire and electricity high into the churning sky.
But he just stumbled a bit. He didn't fly back. He didn't crash into the ground like I had. The force that should have leveled a mountain only pushed him back a few yards. His boots scraped harshly against the invisible floor, carving shallow, glowing grooves into the air as he absorbed the catastrophic momentum. His posture briefly broke, his shoulders hunching forward from the weight of the blow, and his head snapped back slightly behind that dark, unyielding mask.
And he laughed. The sound was chilling, a deep, resonant rumble that vibrated through the very hilt of my sword and up into my arms. It wasn't the laughter of a man who was hurt; it was the laughter of a man who was deeply, genuinely entertained. The sound echoed off the invisible walls of the void, mocking the absolute maximum effort I had just expended. He looked up at me, his black mask still pristine despite the point-blank explosion, and the air around him suddenly grew impossibly thin.
He dashed forward to me. His movement was a terrifying mirror of my own, but devoid of the visible lightning or space-warps. He simply moved. One moment he was yards away, and the next, he was a dark, looming shadow directly in my personal space. I dodged him. Drawing on the hyper-accelerated reflexes of Lucian's lightning, I twisted my body in mid-air, spinning my torso to the left as he lunged forward. I felt the cold, sharp wind of his passage graze my cheek. I was ready to counter-attack, ready to bring my blade down on his exposed back as I completed my spin.
But suddenly I can't move. The world around me didn't just slow down; it ceased. My arm was frozen in the middle of a swing. My legs were locked in a mid-step. My very heart seemed to pause between beats. I wasn't paralyzed by fear, and I wasn't being held by physical chains. It felt as if the very atoms of my body had been told to stop, and they had no choice but to obey. The emerald fire on my sword was static, the violet lightning frozen in jagged, motionless arcs. I was a statue in a world of silence.
The man slowly turned around, his movements fluid and entirely unaffected by the sudden stasis that had gripped me. He leaned in close, his black mask inches from mine. And he said, "I temporarily stopped you."
The words were spoken with a terrifying, matter-of-fact calm. Before the meaning could even fully register in my mind, he pulled his fist back. It was a slow, deliberate motion, as if he wanted me to see exactly what was coming and be completely unable to do anything about it. And then he punched me. The moment of stasis shattered as his fist connected with my gut. The "temporary stop" was replaced by a singular, explosive point of absolute, overwhelming agony. It felt as if a tectonic plate had been slammed into my stomach. The air was instantly, violently forced out of my lungs in a sharp, wheezing gasp.
And I flew far into the ground. I was launched backward with a force that far exceeded his previous casual flick. I became a high-speed projectile once again, hurtling through the dimension at a velocity that blurred my vision into a smear of red and black. I skipped across the invisible floor like a stone, the friction of my passage igniting the air around me. I finally came to a halt when I crashed into a massive, jagged ridge of obsidian. The impact was deafening, the stone shattering into a thousand pieces as my back slammed into it.
I lay in the wreckage, my armor cracked, my sword lying several feet away. The emerald fire was gone, and the lightning had flickered out. Every bone in my body felt as if it had been turned to glass and then vibrated until it splintered. I looked up through the haze of blood and dust, watching as the man with the black mask casually walked toward me, his hands behind his back.
I asked him on why did he do this. Why. My voice was a ragged, broken whisper, barely audible over the ringing in my ears. I looked at the crater where Euphyne lay. I looked at the dark blade pinning Celdrich to the floor. I looked at the empty space where Elfrich and Elfhine had once been. Everything was falling apart, and the sheer senselessness of the destruction was more painful than the broken ribs.
He just stood there. He didn't look at my fallen friends. He didn't look at the ruin of his dimension. He looked only at me. And he said, "I'm here for you."
I instantly became confused. The words made no sense. They didn't fit the context of the erasure, the torture, or the battle. I wasn't a prize. I wasn't a target. Why would this being—this absolute, reality-warping monster—be here for me? The confusion was a sharp, biting cold that cut through the physical pain of my injuries. It made the world feel even more unstable, even more nonsensical. But the confusion didn't last. It was quickly, violently drowned out by the sheer, unadulterated desperation that had been driving me since the start.
I forced my hands into the cracked, invisible floor. I pushed myself up, my muscles screaming and trembling, my breathing a series of sharp, jagged stabs in my chest. I didn't care about the pain. I didn't care about the logic. I reached out and summoned my white gold sword back into my hand. I started attacking with my sword.
I lunged forward, not with the calculated grace of the earlier dash, but with a frantic, wild ferocity. I swung the blade in a heavy, overhead vertical arc, aiming to split his mask in two. He didn't move. He didn't teleport. He didn't even raise his hand. And he kept tanking and blocking it.
The sword slammed into his shoulder with a dull, heavy clang. It should have severed his arm, but it didn't even cut his clothing. He just stood there, absorbing the impact as if I were hitting him with a wooden stick. I didn't stop. I pulled the blade back and unleashed a rapid-fire sequence of horizontal slashes, the metal ringing against his form again and again.
Clang. Clang. Clang. Every strike felt like it was reverberating back into my own arms, threatening to shatter my wrists. He occasionally raised a hand to lazily bat the tip of my sword away, but mostly, he just stood there, letting the heavy, white gold blade bounce off his chest, his neck, his arms.
"I'm here for you," he had said.
The words echoed in my head with every failed strike. I screamed in frustration, a raw, guttural sound that tore at my throat. I swung with everything I had left, the emerald light of my creation magic flickering desperately at the edge of the blade. I was a storm of steel and fire, a frantic blur of motion trying to find a single, solitary weakness in an unbreakable god. But he didn't flinch. He didn't bleed. He just stood in the center of my frantic assault, a silent, black-masked pillar of absolute, untouchable power, watching me with a cold, unyielding patience as I tried to cut him out of my reality.
The dim, reddish-black sky seemed to pulse in time with the rhythm of my blade striking his unyielding form. Each collision sent a spray of emerald sparks into the air, lighting up the cold, featureless surface of his black mask. The twenty Wolves of Destruction circled the perimeter of our clash, their violet eyes watching the spectacle with a predatory intelligence. They didn't intervene; they simply waited, their massive forms flickering like shadows against the edge of the void. To my left, Zaltraf and Tokine remained on their knees, the pressure of the masked man's presence still pinning them to the floor. The Demonking's barrier was dim, nearly transparent, as he struggled to even maintain his own consciousness under the weight of the fear radiating from the man I was currently trying to kill.
I shifted my weight, driving a powerful thrust toward his throat. He caught the blade between two fingers, the white gold metal humming with suppressed energy. I roared, twisting the hilt to break his grip, but he held it with the ease of a man holding a feather. I kicked out at his knee, my boot wreathed in the fading violet lightning of Lucian's gift. He didn't even flinch. The impact felt like striking a mountain of solid iron.
I pulled back, gasping for air, the metallic taste of blood thick on my tongue. The Bond magic was still humming inside me, but the sheer physical toll of using it was beginning to mount. I could feel the space-warp magic of Vela straining at my mind, and the lightning was beginning to singe my own muscles from the inside out. My vision blurred for a second, the image of the black-masked man doubling in my sight.
"Why me?" I hissed, the question finally tearing its way out of my lungs. "What do you want?"
He didn't answer with words. He simply stood there, his posture relaxed, his hands once again falling to his sides. He was waiting for my next move, waiting for me to exhaust every last drop of the borrowed power I was currently wielding. He was a void that swallowed everything I threw at him—every strike, every spell, every ounce of my rage.
I looked at the others. Euphyne was still out, the massive crater around him silent and still. Celdrich was struggling, his hand weakly reaching for the hilt of the dark blade that pinned him. The desperation in the air was palpable, a thick, cloying sensation that threatened to choke me. I couldn't stop. I couldn't let it end like this.
I gripped my sword with both hands, the knuckles of my gauntlets white. I ignored the trembling in my legs and the sharp, stabbing pain in my side. I ignored the fact that he had erased two of my classmates with a snap of his fingers. I focused everything—every bond I had made—into a singular, burning point of focus.
I charged again. The emerald fire flared one last time, reaching a brilliant, searing peak. I swung, not for his mask, but for the very center of his being. The world seemed to slow down once more as the blade descended, the violet lightning snapping and the space around the sword buckling under the sheer intensity of the effort.
He raised a single hand, his palm flat. The sound of the collision was a low, heavy thud that seemed to vibrate the very foundations of the dimension. The emerald light washed over him, illuminating the cracks in the floor and the silent, watching wolves. For a moment, we were locked in a stalemate, my blade pressed against his palm, the energy between us crackling with a violent, unstable frequency.
He leaned forward slightly, the black mask inches from my own face. Through the eye-slits, I could see nothing but an endless, churning darkness.
"I'm here for you," he whispered again, the voice sounding as if it were coming from inside my own mind.
The frustration peaked. I threw my entire body weight into the sword, trying to force it past his hand, but he was an immovable object. I was hitting a wall of absolute reality, and I was starting to break.
The dimension itself seemed to groan, the reddish mist swirling faster and faster around us. The Archangels behind me remained still, their golden armor dimming as the masked man's influence continued to grow. The hope that had flared with the Bond magic was beginning to flicker, threatened by the realization that no matter how much power I borrowed, it might never be enough to touch the person behind the black mask.
I didn't stop, though. Even as my muscles failed and my vision darkened, I kept swinging. I kept fighting. I kept trying to find a way through the darkness, because if I stopped, there would be nothing left but the void.
Clang.
The sound of the blade hitting his arm rang out again, a lonely, desperate note in the middle of a dying world.