The enormous holy formation continued assembling above Radiant Crucifixion while Malgoryth remained fixed against the cross beneath it, and for the first time since the battle had begun, the Demon God could do little more than endure what Noctis chose to do next. White-gold light traveled steadily through the spike buried in his surviving right palm, the two spikes fixing his feet to the lower portion of the cross, and the holy spears driven through his side and remaining shoulder. Radiant Chains still crossed his chest, waist, thighs, and ruined left side, sharing the burden of holding him upright whenever his body sagged beneath the accumulated wounds. Above all of it, concentric circles and interlocking geometric patterns continued spreading through the sky, their rotating layers gradually drawing closer to complete alignment.
Noctis stood several yards in front of the crucifixion in the same crimson armor he had worn throughout the battle. The holy radiance cast pale reflections across Nocthyrael's blood-red plates, but neither the armor nor the man inside it changed to resemble the Templars whose abilities now answered his command. No wings of holy light appeared, no ceremonial mantle covered him, and no borrowed identity replaced his own. The contradiction remained plain for Malgoryth to see: a vampire stood beneath a vast holy formation while the Demon God he had defeated hung nailed to a radiant cross.
Malgoryth tried to shift his weight despite knowing how little room the restraints allowed. His right shoulder moved only enough for the spear through it to grind against the wound before the Radiant Chain around his upper torso pulled him flat again, and the hand nailed farther along the crossbar could not follow the motion without tearing more flesh around the spike. He abandoned the upper body and tried using his legs instead, but both feet remained fixed to the vertical section while chains around the thighs prevented him from drawing his knees far enough upward to create leverage. Each attempt transferred strain from one restraint into another until he finally stopped moving and lowered his head, breathing through clenched teeth while demonic power continued trying to repair everything the previous chapter had done to him.
Noctis had no intention of allowing that recovery to continue uninterrupted. The Bloodfang Reapers filling the battlefield tightened their routes around Radiant Crucifixion and resumed attacking before Malgoryth could restore more than a fraction of the damage. Blades crossed the right forearm, abdomen, thighs, ribs, and back from continuously changing directions, some cutting while others drove their points into exposed regions whenever the Demon God shifted his protection elsewhere. Malgoryth destroyed several with bursts of demonic force, yet each shattered Reaper only collapsed into blood before reforming farther out, and the attacks never stopped long enough for him to establish a stable defense around his entire body.
His regeneration nevertheless responded because the body of a Demon God did not surrender simply because its owner had lost the battle. Torn muscle along the right thigh drew together beneath damaged armor, the wound around his ribs narrowed despite the holy spear interfering with the surrounding pathways, and even the flesh of his forearm began closing around several cuts left by the Reapers. The repairs came more slowly than before Radiant Verdict, but they came, consuming the dwindling power inside him as his body tried to preserve itself through injuries that would already have killed almost anything beneath his level.
The Bloodfangs simply opened the repairs again.
Malgoryth forced more power into his right thigh after two blades crossed the newly restored muscle, only for another Reaper to cut through the abdomen while the defense there weakened. He shifted his attention upward and destroyed the blade before it could reach deeper, but a narrow Bloodfang drove through the outside of his left thigh while another sliced the remaining forearm between the wrist and elbow. Every correction arrived a moment too late somewhere else, leaving his regeneration chasing damage faster than it could complete any single repair.
The clone moved away from Noctis during that struggle and took a position well outside the line directly beneath the enormous holy formation. It did not join the Bloodfangs or approach Radiant Crucifixion, and Malgoryth initially watched it only because he expected another attack. The duplicate instead raised one hand toward the blood already spilling from his wounds, and the reason for its new position became clear when the first dark stream changed direction before reaching the ground.
Devour pulled at blood that had already escaped Malgoryth's body.
The stream leaving the wound beneath his ribs lifted away from his side and stretched through the air toward the clone, joined almost immediately by blood running from the thigh and the ruined flesh around his right shoulder. More droplets rose from his forearm and abdomen until several lines were moving sideways across the battlefield, avoiding the brightest holy radiance around the cross before converging above the duplicate's open hand. They gathered there instead of disappearing into its body, slowly turning around a common center while fresh blood continued arriving from the wounds the Bloodfang Reapers kept reopening.
Malgoryth noticed only after the suspended mass had grown large enough to remain visible between attacks. His eyes tracked a thick stream leaving his thigh, followed it toward the clone, and settled on the dark crimson sphere beginning to rotate above its palm. Confusion crossed his face first, then recognition hardened his expression as another ribbon of his own blood left the spear wound beneath his ribs and joined the growing mass.
"No."
He forced demonic power around the damaged vessels nearest the side wound and compressed them enough to slow the bleeding. The response worked, but the power supporting that suppression had to come from somewhere, and the Bloodfang Reapers immediately found the weakness created elsewhere. Three blades attacked the right thigh in quick succession, one opening the front while the others crossed from either side, and Malgoryth redirected his strength downward before they could deepen the damage enough to compromise the leg entirely.
Blood began flowing more freely around his shoulder.
The clone took it.
Malgoryth shifted power back toward the shoulder, and a Reaper cut across the abdomen. Another entered through his left thigh while two more struck the remaining right arm, keeping the Demon God in a continuous cycle of choosing what part of himself he could afford to protect. The clone needed no complicated method to defeat those defenses because every fresh opening already gave Devour access to blood that had left intact circulation.
The sphere expanded steadily.
"You are taking it."
Malgoryth's voice carried through the Bloodfang storm without the fury that had filled his earlier curses. He watched the blood accumulating beside the clone and understood that Noctis was not simply allowing him to bleed as part of the execution. The blood itself had become something Noctis intended to preserve.
Noctis gave him no explanation, nor did he need one. He had already consumed enough of Malgoryth's blood earlier in the battle to obtain the memories and knowledge Blood Memory could reveal, including the Demon God's combat experience, spatial methods, structural weaknesses behind his rifts, and the message from the Royal Demon King that had triggered his betrayal. There was little reason to swallow everything remaining when the blood carried value beyond what Noctis personally needed, especially when Nocthyrael and the forces following him might eventually benefit from what could be safely refined from a Demon God's vitality.
The thought did not distract him from the execution. His attention remained on Malgoryth's body as regeneration tried to close another wound across the abdomen, and the Bloodfang Reapers struck the recovering tissue before it fully hardened. Fresh blood immediately curved toward the clone, adding to a sphere that had already grown beyond the width of the duplicate's shoulders.
Malgoryth responded by gathering demonic power through his entire torso and releasing it outward in a violent surge. Several Radiant Chains shuddered beneath the force, dozens of Bloodfang Reapers burst apart, and enough energy escaped the crucifixion to push toward the clone and the collected blood. He could not reclaim what had already left him, but destroying the harvest would at least deny Noctis one part of what he was trying to take.
The Reapers he had not destroyed flooded the path of the expanding wave before it crossed half the distance. They did not form a defensive wall in front of the clone; they simply continued attacking through the power itself, forcing Malgoryth's surge to spend strength breaking one construct after another while the surviving blades disrupted its shape. By the time the remaining demonic force reached the duplicate, it had weakened enough for the clone to shift several steps without losing control of Devour, and the sphere continued rotating above its hand as though Malgoryth had accomplished nothing.
Even the Bloodfangs destroyed during the attempt refused to become useful to him. Their blood curved back toward Noctis's storm and reformed separately from the dark crimson blood inside the harvested sphere, leaving no confusion between what belonged to the vampire and what had been taken from the Demon God. Malgoryth saw the distinction, and something in his expression tightened when he realized how completely Noctis controlled the battlefield around him.
The Bloodfang Reapers returned to his body before he could attempt another broad release. This time more of them concentrated around the right arm stretched across the crossbar, attacking between the shoulder spear and the spike through his palm. Malgoryth forced demonic reinforcement into the limb immediately, but the arm had already accumulated too much damage from Ghorvath, Radiant Verdict, and the earlier impalements to withstand continuous attacks indefinitely.
Blades cut through the biceps and forearm from alternating directions while others attacked whenever Malgoryth tried to strengthen one particular region. The shoulder could not rotate enough to withdraw the arm because the holy spear fixed it to the cross, and the hand could not move toward the body because the spike through the palm held the opposite end in place. Radiant Chains around the forearm removed what little freedom remained between those two points, turning the entire limb into something the Bloodfangs could attack without needing to chase it.
Malgoryth destroyed a cluster near the elbow and poured power into the damaged upper arm, forcing regeneration to rebuild the deepest cuts. New tissue closed over exposed muscle and partially restored the structure around the bone, but the next group of Reapers crossed through it before the repair matured. He regenerated again, and they cut again, each cycle consuming more power while producing more blood for the clone to harvest.
The sphere beside the duplicate continued growing until its diameter exceeded the height of an ordinary person. The clone compressed the outer layers as new streams entered, preventing the mass from spreading while the deeper currents inside it rolled under Devour's control. Malgoryth watched another portion of his regenerated arm become blood inside that sphere and finally lost what remained of his restraint.
"You have enough!" he shouted, forcing power through the right arm so abruptly that several surrounding Reapers shattered.
Noctis glanced toward the enormous mass beside the clone and returned his gaze to Malgoryth. "No."
The Bloodfangs resumed cutting before the word finished settling between them.
A deep strike opened the upper arm from the front, another entered from behind, and a third crossed through the weakened structure while Malgoryth tried to reinforce both wounds at once. The bone beneath them cracked under the accumulated damage, forcing the Demon God to send regeneration directly into the break before it could worsen.
The Reapers never allowed that repair to become complete.
New tissue gathered around the damaged bone and began restoring the connection, but several blades passed through the same region while it was still forming. The rebuilding structure failed under the combined strain, and the arm sagged visibly between the palm spike and shoulder spear as the remaining bone fractured further.
Malgoryth tried to flood the entire limb with power.
The Bloodfangs cut through what little still connected it.
His scream carried across the battlefield as the lower portion of the arm separated from the shoulder. The severed forearm and hand did not fall because the palm remained nailed to the crossbar and Radiant Chains still held the limb against the white-gold surface, while the short section left near the shoulder stayed fixed beneath the embedded spear. The missing space between them left Malgoryth staring at two separate pieces of what had once been his only remaining arm.
Regeneration reacted before thought could stop it.
Dark tissue began extending from the ruined upper arm toward the forearm still pinned to the cross, trying to bridge the separation and restore continuity between the two pieces. The Bloodfang Reapers attacked the new growth almost as soon as it formed, cutting through the incomplete tissue and turning another attempt at recovery into more blood for Devour.
Malgoryth's head snapped toward Noctis. "Stop."
Noctis did not answer him this time.
The Reapers continued attacking until Malgoryth finally stopped trying to restore the arm and redirected what remained of his regeneration toward the torso and legs. That surrender cost him the limb, but it briefly reduced the amount of power being wasted on tissue the Bloodfangs could destroy faster than he could rebuild.
The enormous formation above him had continued evolving throughout the entire struggle. One of its inner rings slowed while Malgoryth fought to preserve his remaining body, its luminous symbols aligning with corresponding marks along the layer outside it. White-gold lines connected the two circles as they settled into synchronization, and additional geometric structures filled the remaining gaps around the center.
Malgoryth looked upward only when the holy pressure deepened enough for the wounds around the embedded spears to begin burning more intensely. The formation that had still been visibly incomplete when the Bloodfangs resumed their attack now covered a vast portion of the sky in interlocking circles and sacred geometry. Several layers rotated in opposite directions, but their movement had become slower and more deliberate as the entire structure approached final alignment.
Thin streams of radiance descended from the outer rings and entered Radiant Crucifixion.
The cross brightened against Malgoryth's back.
Holy power reached him through the restraints before he could decide how to respond. The spike through the severed hand flared first, followed by both foot spikes, while the spear beneath his ribs and the spear through his shoulder carried deeper currents directly into his body. Radiant Chains across his chest, waist, and legs illuminated along their full lengths, converting restraints that had already denied his movement into conduits for the formation gathering above.
Malgoryth stiffened as sanctity entered through multiple wounds simultaneously. He forced demonic power toward the spear beneath his ribs because it reached closest to his center, only for more holy energy to enter through the shoulder and both feet while the Bloodfang Reapers attacked his thighs. Protecting one region allowed the others to deepen, and every attempt to move against the cross only drove him harder against the spikes and spears already holding him in place.
"Noctis."
Noctis raised one hand toward the formation without taking his eyes from him.
Several of the rotating circles began slowing together.
Malgoryth pulled against the chains around his thighs, but the spikes through both feet prevented the movement from carrying him anywhere. The strain widened those wounds and released more blood, which curved toward the clone before reaching the ground. He watched the streams disappear into the sphere and looked back toward Noctis as the final inner layers of the formation drew toward alignment.
"Stop this."
The central circle overhead became brighter.
Noctis remained silent long enough for Malgoryth to hear the Bloodfang Reapers continuing their passes around his body and the faint hum of holy power moving through the cross. When the final inner ring locked into position, the entire formation changed at once. Its outer geometry stopped expanding, the luminous script settled into fixed patterns, and power that had been circulating through the structure began converging toward the center directly above Radiant Crucifixion.
Malgoryth's breathing quickened.
"Stop."
Noctis lowered his hand.
"Too late."
The center of the formation opened.
White-gold radiance descended in a single massive column and struck Radiant Crucifixion from above, engulfing the cross and Malgoryth within it. The restraints prevented the impact from sending him away, forcing the holy power to pour through the structure instead of scattering its target. Every spike and spear became part of the same execution mechanism, carrying purification through Malgoryth from several directions while the outside of his body remained trapped inside the descending beam.
His scream was immediately swallowed by the roar of opposing powers.
Demonic energy erupted from his torso and pushed outward against the white-gold column, darkening sections of the beam around him while he forced everything his damaged pathways could still carry into resisting the purification. The release distorted the radiance and destroyed several Bloodfang Reapers moving too close to the center, but the formation overhead continued feeding more power downward without needing time to recover.
Malgoryth's resistance began burning away around the edges.
He tried to strengthen it.
The spear through his side conducted more sanctity into the same pathways carrying his demonic power.
The defense weakened.
Bloodfang Reapers continued working through the less concentrated edges of the beam rather than charging blindly into its center. They opened wounds across the abdomen, flanks, thighs, and back, retreating before the holy density could dissolve them and circling around for another pass while Noctis constantly adjusted their routes. Every cut created another opening through which purification could enter the body, and every stream of blood leaving those wounds gave the clone something else to preserve.
The duplicate remained outside the beam with one arm extended toward Malgoryth and the other controlling the enormous sphere beside it. Devour pulled exposed blood away before the purification could destroy it, bending dark streams sideways through the edge of the white-gold column and drawing them into the compressed mass. The sphere grew faster during the first stage of purification because the heat and pressure forced more blood from open wounds while Malgoryth's regeneration continued desperately trying to replace what was being lost.
He responded by regenerating harder.
Fresh tissue closed around cuts in his abdomen and thighs, temporarily reducing the amount of blood escaping those regions. The restored flesh carried enough of his god-level vitality to resist ordinary damage, but the sanctity already traveling through his internal pathways reached it from within before the repair was fully complete.
The new tissue began burning.
Bloodfang Reapers cut through what survived.
Devour took the blood released by the renewed damage.
Malgoryth regenerated again.
The same cycle repeated with diminishing results, his body spending greater amounts of power to rebuild less tissue while Noctis used every attempt as another opportunity to harvest blood and deepen the purification. What had once made Malgoryth extraordinarily difficult to kill now prolonged the process by which Noctis dismantled him.
The right thigh began failing before the rest. It had already endured repeated Bloodfang attacks before the beam descended, and the purification now weakened the pathways supplying it while the Reapers continued cutting from outside. Malgoryth tried to move the leg whenever the attacks concentrated there, but the foot remained nailed to the cross and the chains around the thigh limited his movement to useless strain against the restraints.
Several Bloodfangs crossed the weakened region in rapid succession.
The remaining tissue separated.
The lower portion of the leg stayed against the vertical section of Radiant Crucifixion because the foot spike and chains around the calf still held it there. Malgoryth's upper body sagged to the opposite side, but the chains across his waist corrected the movement before the shift could relieve pressure from the spear beneath his ribs.
His regeneration immediately tried to replace the missing connection.
Dark tissue extended from the severed thigh and began forming downward, but the holy beam burned through the deeper structure while Bloodfang Reapers cut away the outer growth. The attempt failed before anything resembling a complete leg could return, and the blood produced by the process crossed the battlefield toward the clone.
The left leg lasted longer because Malgoryth sacrificed protection elsewhere to preserve it. Demonic reinforcement thickened through the thigh and lower body, allowing the limb to withstand several additional Bloodfang passes even as the beam continued entering through the foot spike beneath it. The decision protected the leg, but it weakened the torso enough that white-gold radiance began showing through several wounds around the abdomen.
Malgoryth noticed the light inside his own body.
His fear changed.
The purification was no longer attacking only flesh and blood.
It had reached the demonic pathways sustaining his regeneration.
He withdrew power from the left leg and rushed it back toward the torso in an attempt to prevent the holy energy from spreading farther. The movement came too late for the limb. Bloodfang Reapers immediately attacked the weakened thigh from different directions, cutting through the remaining reinforced tissue until the second leg separated and the lower portion stayed nailed to the cross beside the first.
Without either leg connected normally to his body and with both arms already gone, Malgoryth no longer possessed any limb capable of supporting or repositioning him. Radiant Chains around his chest and waist held his torso against the cross while the side spear and shoulder restraint carried part of his weight, leaving the Demon God suspended entirely by the execution structure Noctis had built around him.
The blood sphere beside the clone had grown massive.
Its compressed surface rose higher than the duplicate itself, dark crimson currents turning within as fresh blood entered and disappeared into deeper layers. Noctis had already begun considering how he would preserve and examine it once the battle ended, but he resisted the temptation to decide too quickly what any follower would receive. Nocthyrael could be tested first because its connection to his own blood and evolution made it the safest place to begin, while anything given to the rest of his forces would require refinement and careful examination rather than blind distribution of raw Demon God blood.
For now, the sphere simply needed to survive intact.
Malgoryth's regeneration was beginning to fail badly enough that the rate of collection had started decreasing. The remains of the severed thighs produced only incomplete masses before purification destroyed them, cuts across the abdomen no longer closed between Bloodfang passes, and the tissue around the chest became increasingly unable to hide the deeper structure Noctis had been watching throughout the execution.
Omni Eyes found the god-core before Malgoryth understood how exposed it had become.
Noctis immediately adjusted the Bloodfang storm.
Reapers that had been cutting across the center of the chest altered their paths toward the ribs, flanks, back, and lower torso, keeping their blades away from the region where the core remained hidden beneath diminishing layers of demonic protection. Malgoryth noticed the change after several passes and followed Noctis's gaze toward his own chest.
His expression collapsed into naked alarm.
"No."
He withdrew what remained of his external defenses and compressed demonic power around the god-core. Dark energy converged there from the ruined limbs, abdomen, and failing pathways until a dense protective shell surrounded the one part of him that might survive physical death. The protection was far stronger than anything his body had produced recently because it drew directly upon the core instead of relying solely on damaged circulation through the vessel.
The purification pressed against it from outside.
Malgoryth reinforced the shell.
The spear beneath his ribs carried holy energy close enough to attack the defense from another direction.
A fracture appeared.
Malgoryth immediately flooded more power into it, sealing the weakness before the purification could widen it. The effort cost him almost everything still moving through the rest of his body, but that no longer mattered. His arms and legs were gone, his regeneration was failing, and there was nothing left to save except the core.
"You already won."
Noctis continued watching the protection around it.
"You have my blood."
The clone maintained the enormous harvested sphere outside the beam.
"You took Ghorvath."
Malgoryth's voice broke as another crack appeared through the demonic shell. "Leave the core."
Noctis met his eyes.
"No."
Malgoryth closed his eyes briefly, and when they opened again the pride that had survived even Radiant Verdict was gone. He forced the core downward inside what remained of his chest, tearing weakened internal pathways as he tried to bury it deeper inside the dying vessel. The movement released another rush of blood from the abdomen and widened several wounds the Bloodfangs had already opened.
The clone collected the blood.
Noctis tracked the core.
Malgoryth moved it again, this time attempting to shift it toward the opposite side of the torso.
The Bloodfang Reapers adjusted their routes to avoid the new position.
He tried once more.
They changed with him.
The realization arrived quickly. There was nowhere inside his own body where Noctis could not follow it.
The shell around the core fractured again, and this time Malgoryth lacked enough remaining strength to rebuild it completely. Holy power entered through the weakened section and began stripping away the outer layers, forcing him to abandon movement and concentrate entirely on keeping the core protected.
The clone stabilized the blood sphere behind itself and reduced the amount of attention devoted to harvesting. Devour continued drawing the final accessible streams automatically while the duplicate turned fully toward Radiant Crucifixion, its posture changing just enough for Malgoryth to understand what would happen before it moved.
"No."
The clone crossed the battlefield.
Real Noctis remained directly before Malgoryth and maintained the purifying beam as the duplicate approached from outside its center. At the edge of the white-gold column, the clone entered without hesitation, its blood-forged body enduring the controlled sanctity long enough to continue toward the cross.
Malgoryth gathered the last demonic power still available outside the core and expelled it through his chest. The point-blank burst struck the duplicate as it approached, tearing blood from its shoulder and side, but the clone allowed the damaged portions to reform while continuing forward. It did not need to remain pristine. It only needed one hand to reach the core.
Malgoryth tried to move it again.
Noctis tracked the shift immediately.
The clone corrected its approach.
"Noctis!"
The duplicate reached him while the purification continued burning through the weakened protection around the core. Its right hand drove directly into Malgoryth's chest through tissue that had already been damaged by the Bloodfangs and burned from within by the holy beam, following the exact position Noctis had identified rather than searching blindly.
Malgoryth's torso convulsed against the chains.
Dark power collapsed around the clone's forearm the moment it entered deeply enough to threaten the core. The pressure stripped blood from the duplicate's arm and distorted the white-gold light around it, but the clone continued reaching while Malgoryth concentrated every remaining fragment of his existence into one final barrier.
The fingers reached that defense.
Malgoryth forced it thicker.
Noctis increased the holy power traveling through the spear beneath his ribs.
Sanctity struck the barrier from the side while the clone continued pushing from the front, widening the cracks already running through it. Malgoryth tried to seal one fracture and another opened beside it, allowing white-gold light to enter the defense and tear through the structure from within.
The shell broke.
The clone's hand closed around the god-core.
Malgoryth stopped struggling.
For several seconds, the only movement came from the holy beam surrounding the cross and the Bloodfang storm circling beyond it. Malgoryth stared downward toward the arm buried in his chest as though refusing to understand what the contact meant, while the clone tightened its fingers around the dense demonic sphere hidden inside him.
"Noctis..."
The clone pulled.
The god-core shifted toward the opened chest, stretching the remaining connections binding it to Malgoryth's divine pathways. His body arched against the Radiant Chains as far as the embedded spear allowed, and the first connection held long enough for demonic power to surge through it in a desperate attempt to drag the core back inside.
The clone continued pulling.
One connection tore.
Purification immediately entered through the opening.
Another stretched until it broke.
Several more began failing as the holy beam reached the structures exposed by the extraction, burning through weakened pathways faster than Malgoryth could reinforce them.
The god-core emerged from his chest in the clone's blood-covered hand.
Dark crimson and black radiance surrounded it, dense enough to warp the holy light immediately around the sphere. A handful of remaining connections still reached from the core into Malgoryth's body, but the purification struck them the moment they became exposed and burned through them one after another.
The last connection failed.
The core came free.
Malgoryth's body sagged against Radiant Crucifixion as though something fundamental had disappeared from it, because that was exactly what had happened. His regeneration stopped entirely, the incomplete tissue around the severed thighs collapsed, and the remaining demonic reinforcement throughout the torso faded almost immediately after losing the source sustaining it.
The clone did not give the extracted core even a moment to determine whether it could escape independently. Abyssal Binding Chains formed around the sphere while it was still in the duplicate's hand, wrapping it from several directions before additional blood restraints filled the spaces between the links. The god-core pulsed against them once, forcing the chains outward slightly, but the clone tightened its grip while more restraints secured the surrounding space.
A second pulse produced less movement.
The core remained trapped.
Malgoryth's head lifted weakly.
Whatever awareness still lingered in the dying body found the clone and then settled on what it held. The recognition was immediate despite everything the purification had already done to him. He saw his god-core outside his own chest, bound in chains before the body had even finished dying, and understood that the escape available to Aurelion had never been offered to him.
The clone withdrew its arm from his chest and moved backward through the edge of the purification beam. It returned to the enormous blood sphere outside the column, taking the chained god-core with it while Devour gathered the last viable streams leaving Malgoryth's vessel. By the time the duplicate settled beside the harvested blood, it held everything Noctis still considered worth preserving from the Demon God.
Real Noctis remained before Radiant Crucifixion.
He looked at Malgoryth's ruined body and found nothing he needed to protect.
The memories he wanted had already been obtained.
The blood had been harvested.
The god-core was chained outside the beam.
Ghorvath had been taken away earlier.
Noctis raised his hand toward the formation.
The purification intensified.
White-gold radiance flooded Radiant Crucifixion with enough force to make the cross almost disappear inside the column, and every holy restraint still embedded in Malgoryth's body responded by carrying more sanctity through the remains. The Bloodfang Reapers withdrew from the beam and widened their orbits around the battlefield, their work finished now that nothing valuable remained inside the physical vessel.
Without the god-core, Malgoryth possessed no regeneration capable of resisting what followed. The remains of his severed legs began burning away around the spikes that still fixed the feet to the cross, demonic flesh disappearing beneath sustained purification while damaged armor fractured and dissolved with it. The severed hand followed, leaving the spike through the palm suspended against the crossbar after the flesh around it vanished.
The torso resisted longer only because more material remained there.
Residual demonic power leaked from the open chest where the god-core had been removed, but every dark current burned away before it could cross the boundary of the beam. The flesh surrounding the shoulder spear gradually disappeared, followed by the ruined side around the weapon beneath the ribs, until both holy spears remained luminous inside gaps where there was no longer enough body to hold them.
Malgoryth's head lifted once during the process.
His eyes found Noctis through the white-gold radiance.
His mouth moved.
Whatever words remained never crossed the beam.
Noctis did not reduce the output.
The purification moved through the remaining torso until Radiant Chains that had once pressed against flesh began closing around empty space. The chest vanished, then the neck, and finally the last recognizable traces of Malgoryth's face disappeared inside the white-gold column.
Noctis kept the formation active after the body was gone.
Residual demonic energy clinging to Radiant Crucifixion burned away under continued purification, along with fragments of ruined armor and any contaminated blood the clone had deliberately left because it had already been damaged beyond usefulness. Omni Eyes followed the process until nothing remained inside the beam that still belonged to Malgoryth's physical vessel.
Only then did Noctis begin reducing the power.
The column narrowed gradually while the holy formation overhead continued feeding it, contracting from a vast beam surrounding the cross into a concentrated pillar before finally withdrawing upward. As the radiance diminished, the spikes that had once pinned Malgoryth's hand and feet dissolved into drifting white-gold particles, followed by the two holy spears and the Radiant Chains that had bound his torso and legs.
Radiant Crucifixion remained for several breaths longer before fading with them.
The formation above began shutting down layer by layer rather than vanishing all at once. Its innermost circles slowed first, the luminous script along them dimming while the geometric connections linking them to the outer rings dissolved. Each completed layer faded only after the energy traveling through it had dispersed, gradually reducing the enormous pattern across the sky to fewer and fewer rings.
The Bloodfang Reapers continued circling throughout the process.
Noctis had defeated both gods, but that did not mean he had forgotten the battlefield around them. Thousands of blades maintained control over the surrounding space while the clone approached with the blood sphere and Malgoryth's bound god-core, ensuring that the end of the execution did not become an opening for anything else to approach unnoticed.
The harvested blood looked even more substantial once the holy beam no longer overwhelmed the battlefield with light. The sphere stood larger than the clone beside it, its outer surface compressed beneath Devour while dark currents moved slowly through the enormous volume within. Malgoryth had regenerated repeatedly while Noctis dismantled him, and much of what the body had spent divine vitality replacing now existed inside the sphere instead of being burned away with the corpse.
The god-core remained in the clone's other hand.
Abyssal Binding Chains wrapped it densely enough that only portions of dark radiance escaped between the links, while additional blood restraints prevented the sphere from slipping free through a gap or gathering enough uncontrolled spatial power to wrench itself away. The core pulsed again as the clone approached, but the restraints tightened before the movement could become anything more.
Noctis looked toward it only long enough to confirm that it remained secure.
Aurelion's captured god-core was still restrained elsewhere on the battlefield.
Now Malgoryth's joined it.
Two gods had entered the confrontation with physical vessels capable of devastating the surrounding land through ordinary exchanges, and neither vessel remained. What survived had been reduced to cores under Noctis's control, while Malgoryth had also left behind an enormous reserve of blood that Noctis had no intention of wasting.
Nocthyrael reacted faintly when he approached the sphere.
A subtle movement traveled through the crimson armor beneath the remaining holy light, enough for Noctis to recognize its interest even before his gauntleted hand touched the surface of the compressed blood. The liquid nearest his palm shifted toward him immediately, responding to the connection between his blood and the living armor covering his body.
He prevented it from entering.
There was no reason to feed Nocthyrael impulsively when the resource in front of him had come from a Demon God. Malgoryth's blood carried immense vitality, but it also carried the characteristics of his demonic nature, remnants of his cultivation, and whatever other influences had accumulated within a god-level body. Noctis would examine what could be separated, what could be safely absorbed, and whether purification or further refinement would preserve the useful aspects without destroying the power that made the blood valuable in the first place.
Nocthyrael would have the first opportunity once that work was complete.
The others could come afterward.
Some among Noctis's forces might possess bodies or bloodlines capable of accepting refined Demon God blood, while others could be harmed by even a fraction if the compatibility proved poor. He would not discover the difference by gambling with their lives. The sphere would remain intact until he understood exactly what he had taken from Malgoryth.
Noctis withdrew his hand.
The clone maintained control of the blood while holding the bound god-core beside it, and the last remaining rings of the holy formation continued fading overhead. Their diminishing light moved across Nocthyrael's crimson plates, the dark surface of the harvested blood, and the Abyssal Chains wrapped around the core.
For several moments, all three powers remained visible together.
Holy radiance lingered above.
Demon God blood floated beside him.
Abyssal chains held the core of the being whose body had just been erased.
Then the final ring of the formation faded from the sky.
Noctis remained beneath the empty space it left behind, surrounded by thousands of Bloodfang Reapers while the clone stood beside him with Malgoryth's blood and god-core securely under control. Aurelion's core remained restrained elsewhere, Ghorvath had been taken, and the battlefield that had once belonged to two gods now answered only to him.
Malgoryth had left nothing behind that Noctis had not either taken or destroyed.