On this day – all of reality lost a few seconds of time – to the anomaly.
The Knight had always known about Red Scorches full capabilities after taming him. It had been pacified in their battle due to [Daunting] and the chains.
A breath hurdled through the air, burning away any and everything in its path. Oceans far off in the distance bubbled – lakes evaporated, whole rivers vanished. The air itself got so supercharged it turned into plasma, burning anything near. This breath burned straight to the core of Ouran – a smaller planet would have been obliterated, but this planet survived easily, it had been made to contain the void in dungeons after all.
As this breath blew, the planet became warmer.
An unimaginable quake ran through the entire continent.
From this single breath, space distorted, causing spatial and temporal anomalies to occur though out this continent. Space would shrink and expand before their eyes. Random hot air pocket would form, swing and consuming all in flames. Volcanos formed. Those nearest to the blast grew old turning grey and old, some even digressed.
The Five dragons, Waeria – one of decrease elemental (usually referred to as water or ice), then was the darkness elemental dragon – Nyrebus, the dragon of the light elemental/purity – Osmi, dragon baring the life elemental – Breath, dragon of existence elemental – Aeon Monad. All of them felt the universal chains they had placed on one of them shatter. An eternal bond broken, a seal and a promise forsaken. They all shifted in caution as they realised that something was wrong – Red would never use his real force.
This uncomfortable shift was just another addition to the ever-chilling changes happening in this world. They could not ascertain why he would do this, but they knew it was not good.
Each of them are disaster class beings – like the queen and Mugaw. This is because any form of release of their true power is enough to shake the entirety of everything around them. So, to them, this was a warning, no disaster class should be allowed to be.
Mugaw had been pacified early because it foolishly absorbed a monsters soul and eventually got trapped in a dungeon – limiting his growth to level 150. The queen, Xarion, had Elleria to take care off. The dragons had all placed a pact on each other, binding them and sealing what they are truly capable of.
The dragons avoid destroyers due to the immense risk to all of the dragons possessing their genes. They had long ago gathered that should the main one die, so does all the others related to it. By the time they learned this it had been too late. They had already had generations of births, and they learned this through a painful lesson. So, they had no choice.
None of them ever forgot the fact that there used to be seven dragons – Acxiquark – the dragon of purpose elemental. All of them wiped – kin who had nothing to do with their battle. They watched their loved ones die out of nowhere.
And unlike the Knight and Red Scorch, none came back. On that day, all of them ran from the darkness, and found a powerful legendary wizard to place a seal on all of them. They swore to never fight to their full extent and avoid the darkness.
Their skill now served two purposes – it allowed them to split into a legion of dragon to prevent backlash of their powers, and it made them less notable to powerful entities. It worked so well the entire planet grew to think that a hundred metres was the actual size of a dragon, even hunting them down, for rare materials.
After that, they all split from the rest of the planet, either becoming recluses like Red scorch. Waeria disappeared into the sea and chose to protect the island of where most of their decedents dwelled. The others found their own paths.
They became so detached that all civilisations began to hunt them for scales and materials. Except for a rare few, many lost the ability to even speak to the dragons, eventually leaving them as just another failed contender, in the long list of those who had tried and failed to push back the darkness – the void.
Even then, they all knew Red Scorch, and him doing this was strange.
A disaster is an identification to a being that should they go all out, it spelled out nothing but disaster for everything else. Till today, the Knight was still lucky enough to have never met a disaster class void dweller.
And at this instance? There was no classifying this moment in reference to time, for the temporal anomalies would lead many to consider this disaster to have taken an instance, others saying it took ages.
Regardless, in this moment, it stood that, the Knight had broken the chains on Red Scorch. And all of this to buy time until it could undo the dark bindings that had been placed on it – it had never imagined the destruction would be on this scale.
The Knight began moving like a thawing animal after hibernation in thick ice. Its fingers moved first, then its head, the rest followed shortly after. It looked at the damage it had permitted; the damage [Daunting] had made it avoid. The entire continent was just an inch away from collapsing. And that was no joke, and no easy feat.
The Knight knew, it could not even hope to undo all of this using [Desire], but it was going to try before it left this continent. And the fact that no-one would know it was all its doing, would make it fixing the place – all just for a measly invite.
'Disasters huh?'
The whisper took this as a question and explained but had chosen not to take points for this.
Disasters are a league above. Many things in this world and others classify strength. Souls. Skill. Powers. Titles. Ranks. Then there are Types. Disasters are a type that have been identified to have unlocked an even higher level of authority that most on a power. The system can adapt to accommodate the difference between type and class. These can be classified under one as I have done – but Separation of the two can be achieved. The reason they are classified together lies in the fact that this is a property about a being that has nothing to do with anything else around them.
Whereas type classifies the common path a being has chosen for themselves – class is a measure of how far a being has gone this along this path. Would you like to separate these identifications?
[Yes]/[No]
The Knight was still analysing the fruits of its meddling, the consequences of its influence on someone like the dragon Red Scorch. It then answered whisper.
'Do it.'
Confirmed. Done. All beings forward shall have an available class identification.
It wanted to see this classification, and see, just what defines these disasters from the rest. It had known Red Scorch was stronger, but it had never imagined that its true power could have reached this far. The Knight was kind of drooling – metaphorically – as it imagined what kind of tool it could make with Mugaw and Red Scorches souls.
Soo then appeared from behind the edges of the crater. The rim of this crater had formed mountain ranges kilometres high. The Knight gazed at Soo.
'How did he survive?' As he sat at one of these peaks.
He was surrounded by two others, seems only its undead and Automiun had been burned away, and they had avoided the anomalies that lasted after the blast. The Knight turned and looked at Red Scorches mouth – and the Knight felt that the dangerous part about this tamed true beast was the fact it could do it over and over again.
The Knight then turned back to Soo, who was screaming something at the Knight who was far deep near the chasm that had formed at the centre of the massive crater. The Knight first looked at the eternal flame that had formed – nothing but a counter power in permanence could remove this flame.
The Knight then teleported near them, which made Soo stand up.
The Knight could hear from down there, but it wanted a clearer conversation.
Soo looked at the Knight, making confused faces, his helmet had been taken off.
"You undid my bind – I have seen so many destroyers struggle, leaving me enough time to escape. Did it have something to do with that dragon friend of yours? I got to say, I thought at the biggest dragons got to be about a few hundred metres large at most, that friend of yours is a couple hundred to a thousand big, I've never…"
The Knight did not answer and just teleported to the left side of Soo, who blocked the punch with his sword.
'I was right its gone.'
Earlier, the Knight was stuck but had expected something like that to happen. Then Red Scorch came and attacked, and pushed back Soo, and the darkness elemental until the Knight was out of range, but the bound still remained.
The battle was going fine, so it did not rush. Then it felt red scorches chains, it was about to ignore them when it noticed something on the edge of the darkness elemental. Red Scorch's flames burnt even the darkness. And this power deep within the dragon could be enough to burn away all of it, thus the Knight reached out, even having to use the void just to get rid of those chains – learning a new skill [Chain Breaker].
After all that, the Binding on itself was still not gone, but the Knight had at least burnt away that pesky darkness elemental, even if there was some collateral – a huge amount of it even. Just as it was about to think of another way to undo the seal – it used the new chain breaker skill, eventually freeing itself.
The burn had helped. The skill itself was stronger than normal unsealing skills because the Knight had earned it from breaking through a seal stronger than the one that had been placed on it, making its bind easier to undo.
The chains on Red Scorch might have been stronger, but they were not the same ones on the Knight. Breaking them earned it a strong unsealing skill, unsealing all regardless. And unlike the Knight, the skill did not differentiate between types of seals only their power level.
The knight now looked at Soo. 'I guess the collateral was worth it, those two next to him are the only bit of darkness he has left. Pathetic – the void does not burn – even to this.'
Then the Knight looked at the deep chasm that had formed, and the glow and sparkle of the sand as most, if not all of it had turned into diamond from the intense heat – too bad no-one had a need for those except collectors and makers of ancient technology.
'I wonder if this heat can burn away a paladins barrier of purity?'
Never.
'That solves that mystery.'
Would you like a clearer answer?
'I guess no free answer this time.'
Only system related prompts can be freely answered. Have any in mind?
'No. Maybe later.'
The Knight then looked at Soo as his helmet formed. It didn't matter what the explanation was, his entire darkness was gone, except for those two darkness manifest creations around it.
'How revolting, they don't even have a soul. Well, it's my turn – how do you fare in mine.'
Then a cloud of bellowing void escaped from the Knight, and after activating [Dauting] both of those dark thought beings, Doiun and Oiun, disappeared. Being part of the active creation of his power, they could not exist lest the Knight permitted it.
The Knight then teleported to punch him, when instead he turned into a blotch of ink and upon impact entered the Knights soul.
He looked around inside the Knights soul.
'I've been inside a destroyers soul before; even if these things can barely be called souls – I bet the researchers would go crazy over what I've seen in here. I swore to never come back in here, but this time I have no intention of staying for too long – I'm desperate, and I can't die yet, I still have to earn the favour of true darkness – my life simply can't end here. And after all that – I'll still get to save them all.'
Sure --- he truly had been inside a destroyers soul before, probably as an unintended stowaway, and managed to live long enough to remember the tale. But this was no simple destroyer soul, this was the soul of something beyond simple understanding – the paragon of mock soul creation, a dreaded soul.
Nothing could have prepared him for this.
Inside, his mind began to whisk itself away. Knawing on itself furiously trying to unsee the inside. Unlike the forest folk, and many before them, he was not seeing the outside of the soul, he was witnessing the true maddening extent of this soul. Every bit of it in its glory.
His being began to degrade, like someone found the main string and was tugging on it, undoing the fibres of his existence, undoing his creation. None could say if this was a mercy or it was some kind of divine intervention. Though cruel this fate may be, the mind undoing itself was stopping itself from seeing this for any second longer.
The only thing he even remotely even recognised in there, was this fault line going across from the middle of the soul. Something that looked and seemed so unnatural in the soul was a feature he had seen in the world, a normal canyon. One stretching infinitely in all directions, somehow keeping two sides of a whole separated.
You have slain a level 339 human, Former Knight Bachelor Soo. Type-Knight. Class-Vagrant. Soul acquired – soul in permanent disrepair – eradicate?