Lynder spat an incantation through bloodied teeth. "Castration: Deluge of the Void."
Obsidian panels erupted in the air between them, layer upon layer of swallowing black rising like a sudden wall, meant to seal the dragon's path and turn its own darkness against it. For a heartbeat the barrier held, the dragon's charge slamming to a halt inches from the void.
But the creature's song rose again, low and vicious, threading counter-notes through the spell. Tiny pockets of inverse nothingness bloomed across the panels like rot racing through dead wood. Cracks spider-webbed outward. The entire wall shuddered, groaned, and collapsed into harmless wisps of shadow that drifted away like smoke.
"I can't believe it took me this long to realize it. That is also Ancient Arcane Void Magic," Truman identified.
"Explain," Roy demanded.
"It is structurally identical to the attack Lynder calls 'Absence'," Truman said. "The dragon is using the same source somehow."
A small shadow detached itself from Roy's back. Orden stood there, watching the fight with wide, unblinking eyes.
"I can explain," the boy said, his voice quiet. "Though the Guildmaster would likely hate me for it. That dragon… it's a scale of Tormenta, the very beast he formed a contract with."
Roy flinched. "A scale?"
"Tormenta sees through the eyes of his scales," Orden chirped. "I bet he liked Lynder. Probably reached out to him ages ago, offered him the power to get revenge on the very thing that killed his friends. Lynder knows. That's surely why he calls it the Tortured Scale."
"I can't imagine being so desperate," Takara said quietly, "that I'd sell myself to the very killer just to gain the power needed to defeat them."
"Please," Roy whispered, "no more."
Orden then hopped onto Roy's back. "You think that is crazy? Just wait till you hear this! Tormenta hasn't even been born yet! My dad plans to create him in, like, ten thousand years or so! This has to mean the dungeon operates with rules outside of time!"
"That explains the tech from Roy's world," JFK observed.
"As well as monsters that look like familiar stories from his world," FDR added.
"I knew it!" Takara yelled. "I was going to say that I saw a truck a couple floors back but I didn't want to seem crazy.
"I am going to shit my pants, right now," Roy announced.
Orden ignored him, staring at the ceiling. "Earlier, I tried to order the dungeon to reveal its secrets. It rejects even my power. That means a Primordial didn't make this. Neither did a God, Monster or one of the other…freaks. That leaves one option only, it's one of the Five."
"Leaving," Roy said. "I am leaving."
On the battlefield, the dragon moved. It crossed the distance in a instant, a massive claw descending. Lynder threw up a void barrier. The dragon punched through it like wet paper. Lynder dove, the wind of the passage shredding his robe.
He triggered a trap rune. It shattered harmlessly against the dragon's scales.
"Why isn't he layering?" Roy asked.
"He's running on fumes," Truman analyzed. "That first attack cost him forty percent from my estimates. He needs one decisive hit now."
Lynder was running on a cloud of grey, false void. The dragon sang, and the cloud flickered, threatening to drop him. Lynder jumped from stream to stream, keeping ahead of the cancellation. He circled the debris field rapidly drawing in the air and chanting at the same time.
"Ancient Arcane Magic: Grand Reassembly," Lynder growled.
Truman let out an impressed laugh. "Did he just… he's inscribing guiding runes while simultaneously casting Arcane magic? He's weaving the two systems. He learned our trick after just two viewings."
Shards of broken stone and ice scraped across the floor, then shot upward in a sudden, violent rush. They knit together mid-air, sharpening into a fresh thicket of jagged spires that hung like a storm of spears poised to fall.
"Concraze!" Lynder's voice cracked, half scream, half command.
The swarm exploded in number, doubling, tripling, too many to track. The dragon's babble pitched higher, frantic now, syllables tumbling over one another. It managed to unravel half the spell mid-flight, dissolving ranks of spires into gray dust, but the rest kept coming. Stone and ice lances slammed home into the chest, forelegs and soft underside of the neck of the dragon. Dark blood sprayed across the cavern wall as the dragon's desperate song finally ceased.
The dragon's scream ripped through the cavern, raw and metallic, like iron being torn apart by giant hands. Blood streamed from the fresh wounds in its chest and neck, but pain only seemed to fuel it. It threw itself forward in a desperate lunge, the ruined wing beating once, twice, trying to catch air that wasn't there. A wet, sickening crack split the air as the last supporting cartilage gave way. The wing buckled, collapsing against the dragon's side like sodden leather.
The beast crashed to the stone in a skid of claws and scales, momentum carrying it forward in a grinding slide. For a heartbeat it lay stunned, then talons dug in, hauling its massive bulk upright. It came on again, low and fast, eyes fixed on Lynder with single-minded hate.
Lynder tried to backpedal, but his boot heel snagged on a chunk of broken spire. He pitched forward, knee slamming into the floor, hands scraping as he fought to keep his feet. Too late. Balance gone, he was still scrambling when the dragon's shadow swallowed him whole. It reared above him, forelimb cocked high, claws gleaming.
In sheer reflex Lynder flung up his hands. A thousand fragile domes of void snapped into being around him, thin as blown glass, layered in frantic succession. They shimmered black for an instant and then burst one after another, harmless, dissolving into nothing against the descending talons.
Heat shimmered in the air as Eryndra stepped forward. "I'm not watching this."
"STOP!" Lynder's shout tore out of him, raw and ragged. He didn't spare her a glance; his eyes stayed fixed on the talons ready to descend toward his skull.
"You steal this from me," he roared, voice breaking on the words, "and you are my enemy. How would you feel if someone took your chance to avenge Roy from you? I spent a thousand years preparing for this. A thousand."
Eryndra ceased her advance instantly, retreating, seething, yet compliant.
Orden clapped. "YES! Drama! Conflict! Roy, watch, this is better than your movies!"
"Why does that make me jealous?" Roy mumbled. "Wait, I'm not jealous!"
"Don't lie," Takara whispered.
Lynder slumped amid the shattered remnants of his barriers, shards of void drifting like ash around him. His gaze lifted first to the dragon, hulking, bloodied, but still alive. Then it slid to Roy, standing silent at the edge of the boss room.
"Last shot," he rasped, the words scraping from a throat raw with exhaustion. "If this fails... let me rot here."
Roy's jaw tightened, but he held his composure.
Lynder closed his eyes and began the prayer in the faintest whisper. This invocation demanded the absolute peak of his mastery. Each syllable spaced with surgical exactness, power drawn from his near-empty core and threaded through conduits narrowed to razor fineness, every inflection honed across centuries into lethal economy.
Tormenta.
Tormenta, rage-born, rage-eaten.
Your fury is the cry of the overlooked.
My fury is the groan of the overlasted.
Tormenta.
We share the same black root.
Drink deep this offering, my bitterness distilled.
Twist it into your cruelest edge.
Carve the mocking thing to silence.
Tormenta.
When silence falls,
ease the storm that devours you.
For this mercy, I kneel eternal.
A hammer of energy pulsed in Roy's chest with every word the old mage completed. The earlier link had gifted Lynder with unrestrained mana, allowing him to launch sweeping torrents of raw power. With the link gone, this prayer sharpened the void to its ultimate limit, creating a single, flawless channel that escalated mere absence into utter destruction. Power, cold as ice water, coursed through his cracked veins, thickening and curdling the surrounding air. When he opened his eyes, black freckles erupted across his sclera. These voids spread rapidly, consuming the white until all that remained was the darkness of the void.
He rose with a surge that tore straight through the failing shell of his own barrier, shards exploding outward. A lance of True Void, pure, untouchable, beyond the dragon's song, and propelled him forward. He struck the beast's chin with his shoulder, the impact a thunderclap that hurled the dragon skidding back dozens of feet, talons carving deep gouges in the stone.
Despite the fact that the shoulder used for the strike was now shattered, Lynder calmly climbed higher on a thin stream of darkness, his hand lifted. The true void's flickering black, flame-like energy already began to ignite around his fingers.
"Castration: Abse—"
The flames guttered. His hand trembled. "No. Not yet. Mana failure."
The stream fractured beneath him. He dropped, landing hard on the cavern floor, knees buckling.
"Damn it." The curse came out ragged. He shifted, drawing on his last reserves, "Ancient Arcane Void Magic: Absence."
A single sphere of perfect nothingness bloomed deep inside the dragon's chest. It imploded with a muffled thud, scales barely containing the collapse.
"Concraze."
The Absence repeated. Again and again. Chains of absolute void opened in rapid succession within the beast's torso, each one a muffled detonation.
The dragon's body became a drum of destruction. With a shuddering Implosion, its ribs buckled inward, and it coughed up torrents of blood mixed with black mana. Then, an explosion, scales split and flesh tore.
Lynder's voice was a ragged, slurred sound. "CONCRAZE!"
The relentless rhythm, implode, explode, hammered the creature, a pulse of destruction atomizing its internal organs. Yet, the dragon dragged itself forward, one laborious step at a time, its eyes locked on the elf who had waited a thousand years for this confrontation.
Lynder collapsed. He sank first to his knees, then supported himself with a trembling hand, until finally he lay face-down on the cold stone. His eyes were empty black pits, and his lips still moved, silently repeating the spell that was threatening to consume him.
Looming one last time, the injured dragon was too devastated to sing its magic, yet its mouth still shaped the sound. A massive claw rose, hovering near Lynder's prone body.
Then its chest caved inward in a final, catastrophic collapse. The light in its eyes winked out. The massive limb fell, striking the floor inches from Lynder's head with a thud that rippled through the stone and stirred his limp form.
Lynder twitched once when the ground shook. His hand lifted a fraction, fingers curling toward the corpse as if to cast again.
"Con... craze..."
Truman stepped forward from the shadows, metal feet ringing softly. The Presidroid knelt beside the fallen elf and gently guided the trembling hand back to the floor.
"It's done," he said, voice low and steady. "You won. You got him."