Inside the domain, all sound had died.
The very concepts of time and space had been stripped away. Warcury's charging posture, Mars's diving trajectory, the shock frozen on Saturn's face, everything was locked into an absolute nothingness.
Kael was the only color in that motionless painting, the only variable.
His figure carved a black-gold Z-shaped zigzag through the darkness, a path the naked eye could not even follow, as he flashed past the bodies of the four titanic monsters.
When Kael reappeared at the center of the domain, matching wounds surfaced across them all as if they had been etched into reality at the same instant.
A deep, bone-revealing gash tore across Warcury's waist and gut.
Another split Saturn's chest cavity.
Peter's severed torso, which had been in the middle of knitting itself back together, now wore a massive slash line across the healing flesh.
And at the base of Mars's wings, a brutal cut opened up along the root.
The wounds were savage, but not a single drop of blood spilled.
Within the domain of "Still," even the flow of blood was frozen.
And then, in that same moment, the void that had robbed the world of everything seemed to reach its limit.
Crack… crack.
A faint sound, then a rapid spread.
The pure black sphere of space, like a mirror pushed beyond what it could bear, filled with spiderweb fractures.
In the next instant, the world returned.
Light, sound, heat, airflow, everything that had been suppressed to the extreme came surging back in a violent rush.
The four Elders regained movement.
They regained senses.
And what followed immediately was the delayed, soul-rending agony.
Pff!
Blood erupted from their massive wounds like four scarlet waterfalls.
Roar!
Pain drove the beasts into full ferocity. Without a heartbeat of hesitation, the moment the domain shattered, they unleashed a combined strike unlike anything seen before.
Warcury's brutal charge.
Mars's underworld-black flames.
Peter's sand lances stabbing up from below.
Saturn's mental shock blasting from its eyes.
Four completely different powers fused in perfect timing, merging into a single torrent of pure destruction that sealed every possible angle of Kael's escape.
For the first time, the shadow of death settled on Kael's heart with chilling clarity.
He felt it.
A threat that would erase him completely, leaving not even ash behind.
Dip it in soy, feels damn good!!
Kael drew a hard breath, chest heaving, and poured everything into Nidhogg.
"Dragon Exile!"
With a furious roar, a black-gold dragon-shaped slash, compressed to the absolute limit, burst from the blade and slammed into the onrushing annihilation.
Using the monstrous recoil, Kael himself turned into a streak of light and shot backward to the side.
BOOM!!!!
A roar beyond language exploded across the Red Line.
The entire Red Line seemed to shudder twice. The shockwave carried for thousands of meters, and a section of Mary Geoise's distant wall collapsed under the aftershock.
Dust rolled like a storm, blotting out the sky.
When the violent energy finally began to settle, only a bottomless crater remained at the battlefield's center.
The four Elders appeared at the crater's edge, each injured, each gulping air in harsh, ragged breaths.
That strike had drained most of their stamina.
But at last… that monster was finished.
Just as the thought flickered through their minds, their pupils constricted violently.
Through the dust, a figure walked out.
He was drenched in blood. The lines of his upper body were harsh and brutal under the firelight. His wounds across chest and abdomen ran deep enough to show bone, yet he still stood straight.
In those golden eyes, reason was fading.
What burned there was pure, mad battle intent.
Impossible.
He took that combined strike head-on, and he was still standing?
Kael bared his teeth, a smile smeared with blood and grime.
Then his figure vanished.
Saturn's instincts screamed, but its reactions could not keep up with Kael's speed.
A black-gold flash cut through.
Pshk!
Saturn let out a piercing shriek. The six pincers it had only just regrown were severed clean at the roots again.
The pain made its whole body convulse. Blood sprayed from its mouth.
Roar!
Warcury's charge followed immediately, its massive frame carrying the force of a mountain range being crushed into motion.
Kael did not dodge.
He only shifted slightly and took the hit with his left shoulder.
Crack!
The crisp snap of ribs breaking rang out.
Kael grunted, and used the impact to launch himself like a cannonball into the sky.
Kree!
Mars had been waiting for this. Its huge bird body dove from the clouds, talons reaching for Kael's head.
Midair, Kael forced his body steady. He extended his left hand, drenched in blood, toward the rapidly rising Mars below, and clenched his fingers hard.
Mars's dive stuttered.
An invisible force wrapped around its body, and the gravity around it multiplied dozens of times in an instant.
You ask Kael what kind of force this is. Gravity? Attraction?
No.
This is the Third Force.
The power of "I think so."
Mars's enormous body dropped uncontrollably, like an invisible hand was smashing it toward the ground.
The savage light in Kael's eyes flared hotter. He raised his arm, threw his head back, and roared at the heavens.
"Tengai Shinsei!"
The sky answered.
The heavy clouds tore open into a vast hole. A blazing meteor over a hundred meters wide, wreathed in fire and dragging a long burning tail, fell straight down, aimed at the plummeting Mars.
Roar!
Mars shrieked, spewing torrents of black flame.
The black fire surged upward and collided with the meteor. Under that burning, the meteor rapidly melted, its size carved down by more than half.
But it still could not be stopped completely.
Boom!
The remaining mass slammed into Mars, driving it into the Red Line with a thunderous crash and a burst of dust.
Mars clawed its way out of the crater, battered, scorched in several places, but seemingly not fatally harmed.
Yet the instant it lifted its head, its bird pupils shrank to needle points.
Above the clouds, inside that ripped-open hole in the sky, another meteor was falling.
No.
Not another meteor.
Something bigger than the first, almost like a small island, a super-meteor tearing through the atmosphere with world-ending might, screaming down toward it.
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