The atmosphere inside the reddish-black theater had fundamentally shifted. The oppressive, suffocating weight that had belonged exclusively to the Demonking was suddenly met and challenged by a serene, overwhelming radiance. Eufrien stood in the center of the fractured obsidian floor, his resurrected body pulsing with the emerald energy of my creation magic, his golden hair catching the brilliant sapphire light that had announced his return. He had just casually sliced through a barrier that had previously adapted to and tanked our absolute strongest, combined efforts. The dimension itself seemed to hold its breath, the swirling mist freezing in place as if unsure which master to obey.
Zaltraf stumbled back from the shallow cut on his chest, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and a rapidly boiling, volcanic rage. The realization that his ultimate defense had been bypassed so effortlessly shattered the cold, detached amusement he had carried throughout the battle. The dark energy around him flared, transforming from a defensive shell into an aggressive, churning storm of malice. He roared, a sound that vibrated through the very marrow of my bones, and threw his arms wide.
Suddenly, Zaltraf spammed his skull spirits.
It wasn't a mere summoning; it was an eruption. The space around the Demonking tore open, revealing pockets of absolute darkness from which an endless tide of horrors poured forth. Hundreds of burning skulls, wreathed in that same oily, pitch-black fire, flooded the theater. The air was instantly consumed by their high-pitched, ethereal shrieks—a chorus of damned souls that threatened to shatter the eardrums of anyone caught within the dimension. The skulls didn't just float; they shot forward like a swarm of demonic meteors, their hollow eye sockets burning with a sickly, violet light that tracked Eufrien's every microscopic movement.
The sheer volume of the attack was staggering. The skulls blotted out the dim light of the theater, turning the space between Zaltraf and Eufrien into a solid wall of incoming, explosive death. The heat radiating from the black fire was so intense that the obsidian floor beneath the swarm began to melt, turning into a glowing, bubbling river of slag. I watched from the safety of Sir Vael's reinforced blue barrier, my "Body Enhanced State" pushing my vision to its absolute limits, terrified of what that concentrated swarm would do upon impact.
But Eufrien didn't move to dodge. He didn't drop into a defensive stance, nor did he brace himself for the catastrophic kinetic impact. He stood completely relaxed, his posture casual, his grip on the white gold sword loose and effortless.
As the first wave of burning skulls reached him, Eufrien just casually parried.
His movements were a masterclass in kinetic redirection. He didn't swing the sword to destroy the spirits; he flicked his wrist, angling the white gold blade by fractions of a millimeter. The metal caught the edge of the leading skull, and instead of exploding, the spirit was seamlessly guided along the curve of the blade. With a fluid, almost lazy spin of his body, Eufrien used the skulls' own monstrous momentum against them. He batted the second, the third, and the fiftieth skull with terrifying precision.
The air rang with a series of sharp, crystalline clinks as the white gold metal met the bone and black fire. With every casual flick of his wrist, Eufrien deflected them back at Zaltraf.
It was a mesmerizing, impossible sight. The dense, suffocating swarm of demonic meteors was forcefully reversed. The skulls shrieked as their trajectories were violently altered, flying backward at twice the speed they had arrived. They crashed into the Demonking's position in a relentless, concussive bombardment. Boom. Boom. Boom. The explosions of black fire blossomed against Zaltraf's newly hardened aura, the sheer kinetic feedback of his own ultimate attack sending shockwaves rippling through the floor. The dark flames consumed the area where Zaltraf stood, creating a towering inferno of his own making.
The barrage eventually ceased, the last of the deflected skulls detonating in a shower of black sparks. The smoke and dark fire slowly began to dissipate, drawn away by the vacuum of the displaced air.
From within the clearing smoke, Zaltraf emerged. The concussive force of his own attack had clearly rattled him, but the dark energy shielding his body had absorbed the worst of the explosions. He stood amidst the melting obsidian, the swirling red mist curling around his massive frame. However, the blind rage that had fueled the attack was gone.
As the dust settled, Zaltraf just smirked.
The expression was jarring on his demonic features. It wasn't the arrogant, mocking smirk he had directed at us earlier; it was a heavy, twisted smile that carried the weight of an eternity. His glowing eyes locked onto the blonde-haired man standing effortlessly amidst the destruction. The Demonking's posture shifted, rolling his broad shoulders as if shedding the last vestiges of his earlier surprise.
Zaltraf said to Eufrien, "We've met again, old friend..."
The words echoed through the cavernous space of the theater, carrying a strange, dark resonance. Eufrien didn't flinch at the greeting. The bright, warm smile that had graced his features when he first awoke slowly morphed. The warmth faded, replaced by a sharp, calculating edge.
Eufrien just smirked.
It was a mirror to the Demonking's expression, though Eufrien's smirk was entirely devoid of malice. It was the look of a man who recognized the insurmountable mountain standing in front of him and found the prospect genuinely thrilling. He rested the flat of his white gold sword against his shoulder, his blue eyes unblinking as he stared down the towering monster of dark energy.
Eufrien said, "I never expected to see you again."
For a split second, the dimension was completely silent. The screeching of the spirits, the roaring of the black fire, the crumbling of the obsidian floor—it all ceased. The tension between the two entities was so dense it felt as if the very air had solidified into a physical barrier.
And then suddenly, they clashed.
There was no warning, no preliminary dash. One microsecond they were standing hundreds of yards apart, and the next, they were occupying the exact same space in the center of the theater. The sound of their collision was not a metallic clang; it was a catastrophic sonic boom that shattered the invisible boundaries of the dimension. A massive shockwave of pure, compressed air exploded outward, flattening the reddish-black mist and slamming into Sir Vael's blue barrier with enough force to make the indigo magic groan in protest.
They were a blur of contrasting absolute powers. Zaltraf was a maelstrom of pitch-black fire and viscous shadow, his claws tearing through the air with enough force to level cities. Eufrien was a streak of blinding sapphire and white gold, his movements so fast and precise that he seemed to exist in multiple places at once. They exchanged dozens, then hundreds of blows in the span of a single heartbeat. The ground beneath them didn't just crack; it disintegrated, turning into a massive, expanding crater of floating dust and debris.
Eufrien pushed back, sliding across the frictionless void of the shattered floor, his boots carving twin glowing trenches in the air itself. He raised his sword, his demeanor shifting from casual engagement to absolute, focused intent.
Eufrien said, "Divine magic."
The response from his weapon was instantaneous. Eufrien's sword suddenly glowed white gold. It wasn't just a surface illumination; the metal itself seemed to ignite from within, transforming into a concentrated beam of holy radiance. The light was so intense, so brutally pure, that the surrounding shadows in the theater actively hissed and recoiled from its presence. The aura radiating from the blade felt heavy, a physical manifestation of order and light imposing its will upon the chaotic dark.
Eufrien tightened his grip on the hilt, the muscles in his arm flexing beneath his sleeve. He narrowed his eyes, tracking the Demonking through the settling dust of their previous clash.
He said, "One hundred mana folds."
The white gold light surrounding the blade didn't just brighten; it violently compressed. I watched with my enhanced vision as the aura folded in on itself, layer upon layer of raw, divine energy stacking, condensing, and multiplying in density. Once, twice, ten times, fifty times—the energy compacted until the space immediately surrounding the blade began to warp and distort from the sheer gravitational mass of the gathered mana. By the hundredth fold, the sword was no longer just a weapon; it was a contained singularity of absolute, blinding light. The humming of the blade became a high-pitched, terrifying vibration that made my teeth ache even from behind the protective dome.
Eufrien didn't wait for Zaltraf to prepare a defense. He charged forward.
His speed was incomprehensible. He didn't just cross the distance; he erased it. He appeared directly in front of the Demonking, the momentum of his charge carrying the weight of a falling meteor. Zaltraf reacted with predatory instinct, throwing his left arm forward, his hardened, pitch-black barrier flaring to its absolute maximum density to intercept the strike.
Eufrien swung his sword.
The arc of the white gold blade was a perfect, merciless horizontal line. The hundred-fold compressed divine mana met the ultimate dark adaptation of the Demonking's barrier. There was no struggle. There was no pause.
The left arm of Zaltraf got cut.
The blade sheared through the dark energy shield, sliced through the reinforced demonic armor, and cleanly severed the massive, muscular limb at the shoulder. Black, viscous blood erupted from the stump, spraying wildly into the dim air as the severed arm spiraled away into the void.
But the devastation of the swing didn't stop at the flesh. The sheer, unadulterated density of the folded divine magic carried so much concentrated force that it broke the fundamental rules of the theater.
The slash cuts through reality itself.
Behind Zaltraf, following the trajectory of Eufrien's swing, the fabric of the dimension simply tore open. It looked as if a massive, invisible claw had ripped a jagged, horizontal gash through the canvas of the universe. The edges of the cut looked like shattered, floating glass, weeping static and spatial distortion. Inside the tear, there was no red mist, no obsidian floor, no dark energy—only an infinite, terrifying void of absolute nothingness that threatened to suck the surrounding air into its depths. The sound of the reality tear was a horrifying, high-pitched static scream that drowned out the roar of the battle.
Zaltraf stumbled, his massive frame tilting from the sudden loss of his limb and the catastrophic displacement of the space behind him. He looked at the clean stump of his shoulder, his eyes wide, the shock of the injury momentarily overriding his rage.
But the Demonking was an entity of monstrous resilience. He didn't fall, and he didn't retreat. With a guttural roar that shook the remaining foundations of the theater, he commanded the dark energy within him.
Zaltraf regenerated.
The dark, boiling shadow-magic surged from the open wound at his shoulder. It didn't heal slowly; it violently extruded. Bone, muscle, and dark flesh aggressively knitted themselves together in a fraction of a second, thrusting outward from the stump until a brand new, fully functional left arm had completely materialized. He clenched his newly formed fist, the dark fire reigniting along his knuckles, his aura flaring with a renewed, desperate intensity.
Eufrien didn't pause to watch the regeneration. He simply adjusted his grip, the white gold singularity of his blade humming with unbroken power, and stepped directly back into the Demonking's guard.
And they kept clashing.
The theater became a canvas of absolute destruction. The two titans collided again and again, their strikes moving faster than the concept of sound. Flashes of blinding white gold light intersected with catastrophic explosions of pitch-black fire. They fought mid-air, they fought on the crumbling remnants of the floor, they fought against the very edges of the reality tear that Eufrien had opened. Every time their weapons met, a new shockwave pulverized whatever matter was left in the vicinity.
I stood inside the protective blue sphere, my "Body Enhanced State" entirely pushed to its limits just trying to track the afterimages of their movements. Eufrien, wielding the white gold blade with divine, folded precision, pressed the assault relentlessly, while Zaltraf, fueled by an eternity of dark power and monstrous regeneration, met every strike with world-shaking force. The dimension quaked, a fragile arena caught in the crossfire of a reunion that was tearing the very fabric of existence apart.