The theater was no longer a place of structure, but a drifting graveyard of concept and matter. The reddish-black mist had become so thick it felt like wading through liquid, yet the "Body Enhanced State" kept my perception razor-sharp. My heart—thump, thump, thump—remained the only steady rhythm in a world where the laws of physics were being pulverized into obsidian dust. Above us, the white cracks in the sky were screaming, leaking the cold, indifferent light of alien universes into the void we occupied.
After an hour of fighting Zaltraf, the very concept of time felt bruised and battered. Every second was a cycle of high-intensity violence that would have incinerated a lesser dimension. My mana was a constant, surging current, and the emerald light of my creation magic flickered in sync with the divine resonance of the First Hero beside me.
Eufrien was no longer the composed warrior who had started this encounter. His presence had become a localized supernova, a point of light so intense it threatened to delete the shadows around us. The white-gold radiance of his sword had transitioned from a glow into a pressurized aura that distorted the air.
Eufrien kept spamming the 100 mana folds attack.
The command was a constant, guttural punctuation to the sound of clashing steel. "100 mana folds!" he would shout, and the world would respond with a localized explosion of white-gold light. Each strike was a folded singularity of power, hitting Zaltraf with the weight of a thousand suns. The theater groaned under the repetition. The obsidian floor was gone, replaced by a hollow vacuum that Eufrien filled with his unrelenting assault.
But I began to see the cost.
I can notice Eufrien's body releasing a huge amount of mana.
It wasn't just an aura anymore. It was a leak. The mana was pouring out of his pores like steam from a pressurized boiler, swirling around him in violent, erratic ribbons. It was too much—too much power for a single vessel to contain, even one as legendary as his. The "Body Enhanced State" allowed me to see the microscopic tremors in his hands and the way the air itself was burning in his wake.
His body was slightly cracking and white lights were coming out from inside.
It was a terrifying sight. Thin, jagged fissures were appearing on his skin—on his cheeks, his forearms, and his neck. They weren't bleeding red; they were weeping pure, blinding white light. It was as if his physical form was a ceramic shell that could no longer hold the divinity raging within it. The cracks glowed with a heat that made the reddish mist hiss and evaporate. Every time he pivoted or swung his blade, a new fissure would open, shedding sparks of mana like a dying star.
The sight made my heart skip a beat. I shifted my weight on a floating shard of obsidian and moved toward him, my own emerald light flaring to push back a wave of Zaltraf's encroaching death magic.
I confronted him about this situation.
"Eufrien, stop!" I shouted, my voice barely audible over the roaring rifts. "Your body... you're breaking apart! Look at the light! You can't keep folding your mana like this!"
He didn't stop his movement, his dual-colored eyes—the emerald left and the sapphire right—locked onto the Demonking who was regenerating a severed arm a few yards away. He looked at me for a split second, the white light from the cracks in his face momentarily blinding.
He shrugged it off and said that he'll be fine.
"I'll be fine," he replied. His voice was calm, but it carried a metallic resonance, as if he were speaking through a veil of crystalline energy. There was no hesitation in his tone, only a focused, lethal intent that surpassed his concern for his own physical integrity.
He didn't wait for a rebuttal.
He dashed forward and kept attacking Zaltraf.
He was a blur of white-gold and emerald feathers, his speed exceeding the data-processing limits of my enhanced state. He hit Zaltraf with a flurry of slashes that turned the air into a cage of light. Each strike was a masterpiece of swordsmanship, but the sound was wrong.
I can hear vase cracking noises as he kept attacking.
Cr-crack. Snap. Tink.
It wasn't the sound of steel hitting obsidian. It was the sound of Eufrien himself. Every time he lunged, every time he exerted the force required to parry Zaltraf's monstrous claws, the sound of breaking porcelain echoed through the theater. The fissures on his arms widened, and the white light within him flared brighter, illuminating the jagged edges of his skin. It was a haunting, fragile sound that stood in stark contrast to the explosive power of his attacks. He was a masterpiece in the process of shattering, yet he did not slow down.
Zaltraf was reeling. The Demonking was sweating, the dark ichor pouring off his crystalline hide as he struggled to adapt to the sheer frequency of Eufrien's folds. His violet eyes were frantic, his dark aura flickering as he tried to find a rhythm in the First Hero's chaotic, self-destructive assault.
Then, Eufrien changed his stance. He planted his feet on a slab of floating stone, his sword arm trembling with the effort of containment.
Eufrien suddenly pointed his sword into the sky.
The movement was deliberate and heavy. As the white-gold blade rose toward the cracked ceiling of the dimension, the reddish-black mist began to spin. It formed a massive, atmospheric vortex centered on the tip of his weapon. The white light leaking from the cracks in Eufrien's body began to flow upward, drawn toward the blade like iron filings to a magnet.
Suddenly a ball of pure white light is starting to grow.
It began as a spark, no larger than a grain of sand. Within seconds, it expanded into a sphere of absolute radiance. It wasn't a glow; it was a void of light, a point in space where the darkness of the theater was simply deleted. The ball of light grew until it was the size of a carriage, humming with a frequency that made my very teeth ache. The gravity around Eufrien shifted, drawing the debris and the mist into the orbit of the sphere. The "Body Enhanced State" signaled a warning—a level of mana density that threatened to collapse the local reality.
Eufrien's body was a web of white fissures now. The "vase cracking" sounds were a continuous, high-pitched ringing. He looked up at the sphere, his face a mask of radiant determination. He gripped the hilt with both hands, his knuckles turning white as he fought to keep the power from detonating prematurely.
He swung his sword and screamed, "Ball Of Light Of Divine Gods!!!"
The swing was a vertical arc that brought the sphere crashing down from the sky. The ball of light didn't travel through the air; it consumed it. It left a trail of absolute vacuum in its wake, a path of pure cleansing energy that targeted Zaltraf's very existence.
The impact was a transformation of physics.
Suddenly Zaltraf bursted into liquid as he got hit.
There was no explosion of fire or stone. When the Ball Of Light Of Divine Gods made contact with the Demonking, his physical form simply failed. The obsidian hide, the crystalline armor, the dark blood, and the bone were all reduced to a state of primordial matter. Zaltraf's body collapsed into a massive, surging pool of dark, viscous liquid that splattered across the remnants of the theater. The liquid hissed and steamed under the intensity of the divine light, the violet essence of the Demonking swirling frantically within the black muck.
For a moment, there was a terrifying, hollow silence. Eufrien stood there, his sword lowered, the white light still leaking from his cracked skin. He was breathing heavily, the sound of his breath a wet, rattling rasp.
But the Demonking was an entity of unyielding adaptation.
He regenerated.
From the center of the dark liquid, a violent surge of mana erupted. The black sludge defied gravity, rising into the air and knitting itself back into a humanoid shape. The obsidian skin returned, thicker and more jagged than before. The violet eyes snapped open, burning with a rage that shook the rifts. Zaltraf was back, his frame larger, his aura more oppressive, his body already shifting to counter the frequency of the light that had just unmade him.
He snarled, a sound that vibrated through the floorboards of the world, and raised his claws.
We didn't give him a second to breathe. The realization that the First Hero was breaking, that the Demonking was evolving, and that the world was ending, crystallized into a single, desperate intent.
And we all kept attacking Zaltraf.
It was an all-out, non-stop barrage.
I led the charge with my dual emerald swords. The "Body Enhanced State" pushed me to the edge of my endurance, my movements becoming a blur of high-frequency slashes. I targeted the fresh obsidian on Zaltraf's chest, my blades leaving glowing green scars with every strike. My heart—thump, thump, thump—was a drumbeat for the assault. I wove through the dark mist, my creation magic flaring as I summoned emerald spikes from the air to pin the Demonking's shadow.
Eufrien was right there beside me, despite the cracks. He was a phantom of white-gold light, his blade moving in a constant, rhythmic dance. The "vase cracking" sounds accompanied every swing, but he did not falter. He struck Zaltraf's neck, his shoulders, his arms, his sword leaving trails of divine fire that hissed against the dark blood. He was pouring everything into the fight, his body a conduit for a power that was slowly destroying him.
Celdrich was a shadow of lethal intent on the right. He moved with a precision that was chilling to behold, his black katana and dagger seeking the microscopic seams in Zaltraf's new, jagged armor. He wasn't just striking; he was dissecting, his blades moving through the dark aura as if it were nothing more than smoke. He fired pulses of dark energy from his palms, creating openings that Eufrien and I immediately exploited.
Tokine and Euphyne were a storm of silver and gold on the left. Tokine's scythe was a silver circle of death, her time magic creating pockets of temporal friction that made Zaltraf's movements stutter. This allowed Euphyne to land heavy, concussive blows with his war axe. The golden fire of his ego-aura was so intense it turned the surrounding debris into molten slag. Every hit he landed was a thunderclap that echoed through the rifts.
Zaltraf was a titan under siege. He was hit from five directions by five different types of legends. Emerald creation, white-gold divinity, shadow-steel, silver time, and golden fire all converged on his form. The sound was a continuous, rhythmic cacophony—CLANG. CRASH. SLICE. BOOM.—that filled the hollow theater.
The Demonking roared, his dark aura flaring as he tried to push us back. He swiped with his claws, but Eufrien parried the strike with a sound of breaking porcelain. He unleashed a wave of death magic, but I intercepted it with a wall of emerald spears. He tried to freeze time, but Tokine's scythe cut through the temporal web.
The sweat was pouring off Zaltraf, the dark ichor mixing with the dust of the floor. His violet eyes were fixed on us, his body shifting and hardening as he tried to adapt to the five of us at once. His obsidian hide was a patchwork of nicks, gouges, and burns, and his dark aura was flickering with the effort of holding back our unified assault.
The theater groaned under the pressure. The rifts above us widened until they were yawning chasms of stars, and the floor was disintegrating into pure mana. But we didn't look up. We didn't look back. We kept our eyes on the monster in the center, our blades moving in a relentless, punishing sync.
I felt the "Body Enhanced State" begin to push against its ultimate limits, the mana consumption reaching a point where my very cells were screaming, but the warmth of the green bird's spirit in my veins—and the sight of Eufrien's cracking form—kept me anchored. I swung my sword again, the emerald light carving a deep furrow across Zaltraf's chest.
CLANG.
The Demonking staggered. For the first time, he was being moved not by a single strike, but by the sheer, overwhelming weight of our coordination. His dark aura contracted, drawing inward to protect his core, and his breathing became a series of sharp, jagged gasps.
"Don't stop!" Eufrien's voice rang out, a clarion call over the roar of the battle, his voice cracking just like his skin.
We redoubled our efforts. I used my creation magic to summon a flurry of emerald meteorites, launching them at Zaltraf's eyes to force him into a defensive posture. Euphyne's axe-strikes became faster, the golden flames turning into a solid wall of heat. Celdrich and Tokine were a blur of silver and black, their blades weaving a cage of steel around the Demonking.
Zaltraf snarled, his body shifting yet again. His obsidian hide began to grow jagged, reactive plates that moved like armor scales, seeking to trap our blades and snap them. He was adapting to the rhythm of the group, his monstrous nature turning our coordination into a puzzle he was determined to solve. But even as he adapted, the sweat continued to pour, and the dark blood continued to drip.
The fight raged on, an endless hour turning into a timeless struggle. We were five warriors against a monster that refused to die, fighting in a dimension that was slowly being erased from existence. The sky was a web of white cracks, the rifts were screaming voids of stars, and the only constant was the sound of our breathing and the unrelenting rhythm of our strikes. We pushed forward, our spirits bound together in a final, desperate struggle to end the Demonking's reign before Eufrien shattered completely and the theater collapsed into nothingness.
Every strike I landed, I felt the vibration travel through my arm and into the "Body Enhanced State." My heart—thump, thump, thump—stayed steady. We were a wall of light against the encroaching dark, a collection of souls who had decided that today was not the day the world would end. Zaltraf stood in the center, a titan of shadow and blood, his eyes burning with the violet light of a god who refused to die, and the sound of breaking vases followed every move of the First Hero.
And we continued fighting. The ring of steel on obsidian, the roar of the ego-fire, and the hum of the divine magic blended into a single, terrifying symphony of war. We gave him no room to breathe, no time to think, only the endless, punishing reality of our blades. The theater was dying, but we were more alive than we had ever been, our every movement a testament to the fact that we were still standing, and we were still fighting.
I swung my left sword in a horizontal arc, catching Zaltraf's side, while my right blade sought the gap in his shoulder. Eufrien's white-gold light illuminated the theater, turning the reddish-black mist into a sea of glowing dust. Celdrich's dark energy crackled around us, and the combined weight of Euphyne and Tokine's assault kept Zaltraf anchored to the crumbling floor. We were a hurricane of vengeance, a storm of light that would not be quelled until the last shard of the theater fell into the void or the Demonking was finally silenced.
The rifts continued to pulse, the stars watching from above as we hammered against the obsidian mountain. Zaltraf snarled, his claws clashing against our steel, his regeneration keeping him in the fight as he sweated and bled. The vase-cracking sounds became louder, more frequent, a ticking clock that reminded us of the price of our power. But we didn't stop. We couldn't stop. The rhythm of the fight was all that existed, a cycle of strike and parry that would define the fate of the world.