[Blade Control] activated.
The swords whirled around her, forming a deadly orbit before launching forward at blinding speed. As they struck, each one ignited with the very flames of Yugoth, transferring the inferno's might directly into the First Dawn's core.
The beast's body ruptured from within.
The eternal flames consumed it from inside out, burning not just flesh, but spirit—damnation itself manifested in fire.
For a moment, silence fell over the battlefield.
The First Dawn's eyes snapped open.
A golden pulse erupted from its body, the flames flickering violently before being forcibly expelled. Its wounds began knitting back together, flesh reforming, muscles reattaching—
It was adapting.
Its regeneration surged beyond anything Celestia had seen before. The flames that should have erased it from existence now merely flickered harmlessly across its scales.
The First Dawn vanished.
A blur of golden destruction.
Celestia barely had time to react before the beast's katana cleaved through space itself, an arc of condensed force screaming toward her with the power to bisect mountains.
[Divine Barrier] activated.
A radiant golden dome manifested in an instant, layers upon layers of celestial energy stacking over one another like woven threads of fate. The First Dawn's katana slammed into it—
BOOM.
The impact shattered the sound barrier, sending shockwaves rippling through the battlefield. Grass, stone, and even the sky above fractured under the sheer force of the collision. Celestia gritted her teeth as cracks spread across her barrier, but before the beast could push further—
[Spirit-Lightning Infuse] activated.
The white lightning surged through her blade like a storm given form. She twisted, her sword cutting upward in a brutal counterstrike.
Shockwaves were sent throughout the land as blinding explosions of white and gold engulfed them both, the sheer force of the collision rippled through the land, sending arcs of lightning screaming through the sky.
[Flames of Yugoth] activated once more, but this time, she didn't release it towards the beast, she fused it into her blade.
With a flick of her wrist, the burning cosmos above collapsed into a spiraling inferno, latching onto the storm of lightning surging through her blade.
[Flame Infuse] activated.
[Ice Infuse] activated.
Her weapon that pulsed with different elements, combined into one blade.
The First Dawn lunged forward, again. Its katana whipping toward her neck with terrifying precision, but Celestia met it with a perfectly timed counter. Her feet dug into the ground, her mana expanding outward like a star reaching its final eruption. The stars danced violently around them, their glow intensifying as if reacting to her power.
The First Dawn roared, its wings flaring outward as a golden tempest surged around its body, a manifestation. It swung its katana downward in an executioner's strike, but Celestia vanished.
The battlefield was a warzone of cosmic destruction—the sky burned, the earth fractured, and the air itself screamed under the weight of celestial forces colliding.
Celestia-Astra reappeared in an instant, the fabric of space bending with the sheer velocity of her movement. The First Dawn barely had time to react before—
[Tempest Blade] activated.
A storm of slashes erupted.
Seven strikes. Seven detonations of pure devastation.
Each blow landed with unrelenting force, carving through divine flesh, sending gouts of golden ichor spraying across the field. The flames from her previous attacks still clung to the beast, flickering violently as [Flames of Yugoth] ignited again, swallowing the First Dawn whole.
But this time—she didn't stop there.
As the beast writhed in agony, its body split between freezing ice and hellish flame—she twisted her blade.
[Curse of Nightmares] activated.
The earth trembled. The sky darkened. The past returned.
From the ground, spectral forms rose—figures of the dead, victims of the First Dawn's slaughter. Their twisted, rage-filled faces emerged from the cracks in reality, crawling toward the beast, their wails piercing the heavens.
[Dream Manipulation] had silently altered reality and turned the nightmares into real creatures once again.
Hundreds of vengeful spirits burst forth like a tidal wave, descending upon the First Dawn in a frenzied assault. Clawing, biting, tearing, shrieking.
The beast roared—a deep, soul-shaking sound, like the end of the world itself.
With a single mighty leap, it shot into the sky, landing on invisible platforms of condensed energy.
And then—Its maw opened.
Celestia's breath caught.
A ball of swirling destruction, a convergence of every element she had seen, every curse, everything it had ever absorbed—formed within the beast's mouth.
The moment it launched, it looked pathetic.
A mere flicker of energy, no larger than a pebble, lazily arcing toward the ground.
But then... It touched the grassy field.
Reality shattered.
A colossal eruption of power expanded instantly, swallowing everything in a blinding dome of annihilation. The sky cracked apart. The very laws of existence warped.
The spirits vanished in an instant.
The land ceased to exist beneath them, replaced by a void of pure, elemental destruction. Mountains in the distance crumbled to dust. The ground itself was partly erased, leaving behind only a broken husk of a battlefield.
Celestia's vision went black.
[Passive: Death Denial Layer 3] activated.
[Blessing of Eternal Regeneration] activated.
Her body rebuilt itself in an instant—flesh reknitting, bones reforming, her mind snapping back into clarity.
She had died.
'So that's what death feels like…' she thought bitterly, exhaling shakily. 'That is NOT a damn experience... I ever want to go through again.'
[Passive: Calmness] activated. Forcing her to calm down and she got back into the fight without much more of a thought of what had happened.
The dust settled.
The First Dawn stood tall, its monstrous form still wreathed in golden divine energy.
Something was wrong though. Her eyes sharpened.
'It… tore itself apart?'
The beast's body had shattered into thousands of pieces mid-attack, leaving her summoned blades that that made their way inside the beast earlier to clatter uselessly to the now-scorched earth. But instantly, It started reforming.
Piece by piece.
The shattered flesh and bone reassembled, golden light fusing it back into existence—but one piece remained missing.
A wound.
A single, unhealed crack running across its massive chest.
Celestia's lips curled into a smirk. 'I can kill you.'
She gripped her blade tighter.
The First Dawn landed onto the battlefield as it began to radiate with magic of every imaginable color crackled around its form. The air twisted, vibrating with an unnatural force before everything went still. Then, it landed—and reality shattered again.
[Dawn's Creation] Activated.
The world was swallowed whole, devoured by an unfathomable force. The battlefield was no longer the star-kissed grassy plains they had fought upon—in its place, a realm of ruin and madness unfolded.
Blades. Thousands upon thousands of blades.
They jutted out of the ground, a graveyard of forgotten warriors. Among the rusted steel lay the corpses of creatures she had never seen, their monstrous forms twisted in death. The stars above loomed impossibly close, massive celestial bodies burning like dying suns, their light stretching across the endless abyss of this foreign world.
The trees in this realm were ancient, their bark stained deep violet, aged beyond time, withered and barely clinging to existence. The whispers began almost immediately.
Voices. Endless, murmuring voices.
Eyes had formed within the cosmic abyss, countless, unblinking, filled with unknowable intelligence. Celestia could feel their gaze pressing into her very soul, studying, judging.
Then—a presence.
A human figure materialized beside her, standing silent as her crimson hair whipped back in the chaotic wind. She turned, her gaze meeting the ghostly apparition's. There was no explanation. No words exchanged. And yet, they both turned in unison—toward the First Dawn.
It was changing.
Its body collapsed in on itself, consumed by blinding radiance fused with deep twilight. The divine and the profane entwined, reshaping its form. As the light faded, what remained was something beyond mortal comprehension.
One eye as golden as creation could be, the other a darkness deeper than oblivion, its center a swirling red sigil.
The First Dawn was no longer a beast. It was begin who sat upon a throne on top of a dragon.
A massive, abyssal creature with wings engraved with a single, undeniable word—"King."
The dragon wailed, its voice splitting the sky, its sheer existence radiating authority that demanded reverence. It soared upward, taking the First Dawn and the throne with it, before looking down at Celestia—and the spectral figure standing beside her.
"... I really shouldn't have accepted this damn trial..." She thought to herself and shook her head as she looked up at the dragon.