Yajin reappeared behind the nearest god, green magic spiraling around his blade like a living, venomous serpent. The god reacted with frantic instinct, white sigils flaring around his form as he threw up a hand in desperate defense.
A dome of pristine white light erupted—
The moment Yajin's edge kissed the barrier, the dome didn't shatter. It didn't crack or dissipate into mana. It was simply erased.
The god's eyes widened with a look of pure, existential horror.
He leapt back, but Yajin was already there, the blade hovering inches from his throat. The god twisted violently, narrowly avoiding the metal, but the air where his neck had been flickered and distorted, as if reality itself had been wounded. Yajin pressed the advantage, his blade flashing in rapid, blurring arcs; each swing left a trail of green light that carved through the atmosphere like a series of emerald moons.
The god countered with beams of condensed white magic, but each one detonated upon contact with Yajin's aura—not because they hit their mark, but because the blade's very presence refused to let them exist. Yajin became a streak of green, vanishing and reappearing in a rhythmic dance of destruction. The god was sweating now, his divine composure crumbling into raw panic. He knew that in this game of inches, a single mistake meant total oblivion.
While Yajin hunted, Civilar advanced with a casual, almost bored gait, dragging his chained blades behind him. The metal shrieked against the earth, sending sparks dancing across the silver grass.
Three gods stepped forward to intercept him. "You overestimate yourself, Devil," one spat.
Civilar tilted his head, his shadow lengthening. "No," he rumbled. "I underestimate you."
He vanished.
Black lightning tore through the air as Civilar reappeared behind the trio, swinging both blades in a colossal arc. The chains snapped forward like striking cobras, lashing around the gods' limbs. They flared with white magic, struggling to break the tether—
Civilar yanked.
The deities were ripped off their feet, colliding mid-air with a sickening thud before being slammed into the ground with enough force to fracture the bedrock. Civilar raised a hand, and black magic surged upward, coalescing into a massive, swirling sphere of absolute darkness. The sphere pulsed once, then fired a beam of pure shadow that swallowed the three gods in a column of void.
The ground trembled; the sky bruised into a deep purple. When the beam finally faded, the three gods were on their knees, their robes shredded and their divine forms flickering like dying candles.
Civilar cracked his neck, the sound echoing in the sudden quiet. "Next."
Eiden stood perfectly still. Silent. Calm.
Black magic seeped from his skin like ink in water, curling around his arms and his three blades. The remaining six gods focused their collective gaze on him, sensing something fundamentally different—something colder, sharper, and far more deliberate than his companions.
"Black magic… how distasteful," one god sneered, raising a hand.
Eiden offered no reply. He simply lifted his longsword, the runic lines on his glove's metal sleeve beginning to glow with a steady, haunting light.
The six gods attacked in unison. A barrage of white beams, spears of light, celestial chains, and divine sigils erupted, turning the sky and the plains into a blinding, featureless white. The world became a storm of holy energy.
And Eiden moved.
He stepped forward, and the entire barrage bent around him, curving away like a river parting for a stone. The gods froze.
Eiden's voice was a quiet, chilling rasp. "You're too slow."
He vanished into a spiral of black magic, reappearing behind the first god and slashing upward with both katanas. The god's form flickered violently as white cracks began to spiderweb across his skin. Another lunged from behind, a spear of light aimed at Eiden's heart.
Eiden twisted with fluid grace, catching the spear on his armored sleeve and redirecting the force into the ground, creating a crater of white fire. He stepped onto the shaft, sprinted up its length, and launched himself into the sky. Black sigils formed beneath his feet, detonating with each step to propel him higher until he hung against the sun.
He descended like a falling star. Three blades. One target.
The god raised a barrier, but Eiden didn't just hit it—he shattered it into a thousand useless shards. The god's form cracked deeply, divine light leaking from the fractures like blood. Eiden landed silently, his blades dripping with a heavy, black aura.
In the same heartbeat, Yajin delivered the final blow to his quarry. His blade grazed the god's shoulder—barely a touch.
The god froze. White cracks raced across his body like fractures in glass. His eyes widened in a final, silent plea as his divine form began to unravel.
"No… no—"
The voice vanished. His body collapsed into ash-light, dissolving into glowing dust that drifted toward the stars like dying fireflies.
The battlefield fell into a terrifying silence. For the first time, even the gods knew the taste of fear.
Yajin flicked the green energy from his blade, his eyes burning. "One down."