The orb's fragments lay on the floor, glowing like dying stars. Sir Vael took a single step forward, and the ground didn't break—it solidified. The cracks in the dimension began to seal themselves under his feet, as if his very presence was anathema to the chaos Sagha had created.
He didn't speak to me, and he didn't speak to the masked man. He simply raised his hand, and a blade of pure, concentrated light began to manifest in his grip. It wasn't white gold; it was a fragment of the sun itself.
The "playing" was over. Sagha Vain Damuire had brought me here to break me, but the one thing that could truly end him escaped his seal. I felt a smirk tug at the corner of my mouth again. The determination to kill him was still there, burning as brightly as ever, but now I wasn't alone in the dark.
I looked at Sir Vael, then back at Sagha. The black mask was still cracked, the blood still staining his collar. He looked at the knight, then at me, and his shoulders slumped slightly—not in defeat, but in a sudden, cold realization that the script had been rewritten.
The battle for the dimension was no longer a slaughter. It was a war.
The theater of the dimension was no longer the silent, oppressive void it had been just moments ago. The arrival of Sir Vael had introduced a new, radiant frequency into the atmosphere—a golden, piercing light that seemed to actively push back the reddish-black mist that had served as the masked man's shroud. I stood there, my "Body Enhanced State" still vibrating with a cold, mechanical precision. My skin was tight, my heart was a slow, heavy thrum, and my vision was so sharp that I could see the individual particles of golden energy dancing around Sir Vael's silhouette. The man who had been a prisoner just seconds prior was now the absolute center of gravity in the room.
Sir Vael looked at my unconscious classmates. His eyes, burning with a calm but terrifying intensity, swept over the wreckage of the battlefield. He saw the broken forms of our friends scattered across the fractured obsidian, their bodies limp and their spirits exhausted. There was no pity in his gaze, only a deep, calculating assessment of the damage that had been done. He stood tall, his armor reflecting the golden light of his own release, making him look like a statue carved from the sun itself.
He turned his gaze toward me, and for a moment, the pressure of his eyes felt as heavy as the masked man's fear-aura.
"Where are Elfhine and Elfrich?" he asked.
The question was direct, cutting through the heavy silence of the theater. My voice, when I spoke, was different—deeper, raspier, flavored by the raw determination of the enhanced state. I didn't look away from him.
"They got erased by the masked man, Sagha," I said.
The name "Sagha" seemed to ripple through the air, causing the reddish mist to hiss and recoil. I remembered the sight of them vanishing—the way reality had simply folded over them until they were gone, leaving nothing but an echoing absence in the world. Sir Vael didn't flinch. He didn't show the grief that I expected. Instead, he narrowed his eyes, his focus sharpening.
"How long has it been since they got erased?" he asked.
I thought back through the blur of the battle, through the "Body Enhanced State" that had distorted my perception of time. It felt like hours, but in reality, only a few desperate minutes had passed since I had watched the twins disappear.
"It's recently," I said.
Upon hearing my answer, a subtle change came over Sir Vael. The stern, immovable expression on his face broke. Sir Vael smirked. It wasn't a smirk of amusement, but of absolute, terrifying confidence. It was the look of a man who knew the rules of the universe and was about to remind the dimension who truly held the pen.
"I can bring them back since it's recently," he said.
He raised his hand, his fingers poised with a casual, almost dismissive grace. The golden light around him surged, suddenly becoming so bright that I had to squint even with my enhanced vision. He snapped his fingers.
The sound was a crystalline chime that shattered the heavy atmosphere. Suddenly, Elfrich and Elfhine appeared.
They didn't manifest slowly. There was no shimmering or gradual formation. One microsecond the space was empty, and the next, they were simply there, standing on the obsidian floor as if they had never left. They looked confused, their eyes wide as they tried to process the transition from non-existence back into the crimson theater. The "erasure" that Sagha had performed with such casual malice was undone in a single heartbeat.
But Sir Vael was not finished. He was moving with a purposeful, rapid rhythm, rearranging the battlefield as if he were playing a high-stakes game of chess. He snapped his fingers again.
The unconscious classmates who were scattered across the floor were suddenly enveloped in a soft, translucent light. Their bodies were lifted into the air, caught in a swirling current of energy. Most of our unconscious classmates got sent to a ball of barrier. A massive, glowing orb of protection formed in the corner of the theater, pulling the fallen students into its safety, suspending them in a stasis that would keep them far from the fallout of the coming clash.
Sir Vael snapped his fingers a third time.
His focus shifted toward the two who had been most brutally targeted in the early stages of the fight. Suddenly, Celdrich and Euphyne got healed and teleported behind us.
Euphyne stood up as he regained consciousness. His golden hair was disheveled, and his breathing was heavy, but the vacant look in his eyes had been replaced by a sharp, sudden awareness. He looked at his hands, then at Sir Vael, his expression one of pure, unadulterated shock.
Beside him, Celdrich held his stomach. He remembered the dark blade, the feeling of cold iron piercing his gut, and the sensation of his life force leaking out onto the floor. But as he pressed his hand against his armor, he saw and felt that his wounds were healed. The jagged tear in his flesh was gone; the internal bleeding had ceased. There was no scar, no lingering pain—only a strange, cooling warmth where the injury had once been.
"You three needed this for what is about to happen," Sir Vael said.
His voice was like a low rumble of thunder, carrying a weight that made the very ground beneath us vibrate. He wasn't just restoring our numbers; he was consolidating our strength. He snapped his fingers once more, and a new energy erupted from the ground beneath our feet.
We got a barrier. A clear blue sphere barrier.
The construct was beautiful and terrifyingly solid. It was a perfect dome of cerulean light that hummed with a high-frequency resonance. It didn't just block the physical air; it felt as if it were filtering the very concept of "fear" out of the space inside. The reddish-black mist of the dimension slammed against the blue surface, only to be deflected in a shower of sparks. Inside the dome, for the first time in what felt like forever, the air was clean.
Sir Vael looked at Sagha. The golden light in his eyes flared to a blinding intensity, his gaze locking onto the cracked black mask of the man who had claimed to be untouchable in his own realm.
"You're going to pay for this," Sir Vael said, his words echoing off the walls of the blue barrier.
Then, he turned his head slightly, his gaze falling upon the figure who had been standing in the shadows of the masked man's influence. His expression softened, but only slightly, carrying a heavy, paternal weight.
"Tokine, I don't know the reason for your betrayal, but I forgive you. Go back to us," Sir Vael said.
The offer of forgiveness was a physical thing, a bridge of light extended toward the traitor. Celdrich and Euphyne watched with bated breath, their eyes fixed on Tokine. We all waited for a sign of hesitation, a flicker of the person we once knew. But Tokine just ignored Sir Vael. There was no response, no movement, only a cold, stony silence that seemed to reject the very idea of redemption.
The moment of grace ended. Sir Vael's jaw tightened, and he turned his full attention back to the man in the black mask. The theater seemed to shrink around them, the two heavyweights of the dimension finally coming face-to-face. Suddenly, Sir Vael pointed his finger at Sagha.
The black-masked man didn't flinch. He stood in the swirling red mist, his posture relaxed despite the massive golden presence looming over him. He spoke, his voice carrying that same chilling, resonant amusement.
"You can't manipulate or erase the concept of otherworlders like us," Sagha said to Sir Vael.
The statement was a challenge, a reminder of the fundamental laws that governed their existence. They were entities that existed outside the standard rules of this reality, beings whose very "concept" was tied to a different origin. Sagha was claiming that even Sir Vael, with all his golden radiance and finger-snapping miracles, could not truly touch the core of what he was.
Sir Vael just laughed.
It was a deep, booming sound that shook the blue barrier. It wasn't a laugh of mockery, but of a man who found the masked man's arrogance genuinely entertaining.
"I don't plan on making this easy for you," Sir Vael said.
The atmosphere inside the blue sphere suddenly became vacuum-thin as all the energy in the vicinity was drawn toward Sir Vael's extended finger. The golden light condensed into a singular, infinitely bright point at the tip of his digit. There was no wind, no sound—only a terrifying, static tension.
And suddenly, a beam of white light came from his finger.
It wasn't a slow-moving projectile. It was an instantaneous bridge of destruction. The beam tore through the reddish-black mist, igniting the air in its path. It hit Sagha with a force that defied calculation. The impact didn't cause an explosion; instead, the white light simply erased the matter it touched.
Sagha got a big hole in his chest.
The wound was massive, a jagged, circular void that went straight through his torso, revealing the churning, dark clouds of the dimension behind him. Any mortal being would have been vaporized instantly, their soul shattered into a thousand pieces. But Sagha didn't fall. He didn't scream.
He just laughed and regenerated.
I watched with my "Body Enhanced" eyes as the white light was swallowed by the returning darkness. The edges of the massive hole in his chest began to churn like boiling oil. Dark, viscous threads of shadow wove themselves across the gap, knitting together bone, muscle, and fabric in a horrific, high-speed reconstruction. Within seconds, his chest was solid again, the dark material of his clothing restored to its pristine, unblemished state.
Sagha straightened his posture, his black mask still angled toward us, though the cracks in it seemed to be weeping a faint, dark vapor. He looked at Tokine and then at the Demonking who stood beside him.
"Distract them," Sagha said, his voice dropping into a low, predatory hiss.
Suddenly, Sir Vael and Sagha disappeared.
They didn't fly away. They didn't teleport with a flash. They simply vanished from the physical space of the theater, as if they had moved their battle to a layer of reality that we could no longer perceive. The golden light and the dark shadows were gone, leaving only the sound of a distant, echoing rumble that vibrated through the invisible floor.
The silence that followed was even more terrifying than the battle had been. The massive pressure of the two masters had been removed, but the void they left behind was quickly filled by a new threat.
Tokine and Zaltraf were in our front.
The Demonking, Zaltraf, stood tall, his presence a heavy, oppressive weight that challenged the integrity of our blue barrier. Beside him, Tokine remained silent, his eyes cold and focused. They stood between us and the rest of the dimension, a wall of betrayal and demonic power that blocked our path.
I gripped my white gold sword, the "Body Enhanced State" thrumming in my veins. My heart beat slow—thump, thump, thump—as I looked at the two who had stayed behind to "distract" us. The skin on my knuckles was white, and my vision was locked on Tokine.
Celdrich stepped up beside me, his hands on his weapons, his eyes burning with the anger of a man who had been healed only to find a friend standing on the side of the enemy. Euphyne stood on my other side, his golden aura flickering as he gathered his strength.
The blue barrier hummed around us, a fragile sanctuary in a world that was still trying to kill us. Sir Vael and Sagha were fighting somewhere beyond our reach, their battle likely shaking the foundations of the dimension itself. But here, in the reddish-black theater, the script had shifted. We were no longer spectators to a god's duel.
The "distraction" was standing right in front of us. And the "Body Enhanced State" was telling me exactly what I needed to do. I stepped forward, the floor cracking under my weight once again, my gaze fixed on Tokine. The air in the theater began to swirl, the waves of pushed air from my previous attacks still rippling through the mist.
"Distract us?" I whispered, the words lost in the thrum of my heart.
I didn't need to say anything else. I didn't need to ask why. The determination to end this was all that mattered. I lunged.
The theater felt empty without the overwhelming presence of Sir Vael and Sagha, yet the tension between the remaining combatants was enough to make the air feel like solid lead. Tokine didn't move as I approached, his posture as still as the obsidian ridges that surrounded us. Behind him, Demonking Zaltraf let out a low, guttural sound—a laugh that carried the weight of ancient, demonic malice.
I felt the "Body Enhanced State" reach a new level of synchronization. My breathing was nonexistent; my body was simply a vessel for the kinetic energy I was generating. I swung the white gold sword, not at the air, but directly at the space Tokine occupied.
The blue barrier stayed firm behind me, protecting the twins and the others, but I was outside now. I was in the red mist. I was in the dark. And as Tokine finally raised his hand to meet my strike, the shockwave of our first collision sent a wave of pushed air that flattened the mist for a thousand yards.
The distraction had begun, but I had no intention of being distracted. I was going to carve my way through them until I found Sagha Vain Damuire again.