The ocean of white light finally began to fade, thinning into mist, until the devastation it left behind was laid bare.
Where once there had been a thriving forest, now there was only a scar of annihilation—charred earth stretching for kilometres, trees ripped apart or reduced to smoking stumps, the very soil torn open as though the world itself had been clawed at by a god. There was no life, no colour, only ruin.
No Ali. No Mateo.
Only silence.
A low, guttural groan broke it.
"—ugh…"
Ali's eyes flickered open. For a moment, everything was nothing but light and agony. His vision pulsed red and black, every nerve screaming as he tried to move. The smell of burnt flesh—his flesh—hung heavy in his nostrils. Slowly, painfully, he tilted his head and realised he was lying on the charred grass at the end of a long, blackened trail of destruction.
The sight stunned him: towering trees stood on either side of the scar, their tops still swaying in the wind, untouched by the cataclysm. The devastation cut through the forest like a straight line of fire, and he was at its edge.
'I was launched here…' Ali realised, his thoughts sluggish, his head pounding with every heartbeat.
He tried to move—and froze. The gore on his right side hit him like a second explosion.
His entire right half was gone. The shoulder, the arm, the ribs up to the scorched edge of his lung—obliterated. Only blackened flesh and glowing cracks of cosmic fire marked where his body ended, the silver flames no longer in his body. Every breath rasped painfully, half his chest refusing to move. His Spirit Realm trembled in sync with his body, fissures tearing through it, the Gate of Dragons forced wider than it ever should have been.
The price of survival.
His bleary gaze fell on a pile of shattered stone beneath a soldering bush. Something about it struck him as familiar, though the pain blurred his thoughts too much to place it right away.
Another groan, deeper, harsher.
Ali's human eyes shifted toward the sound. There, stumbling like a corpse that refused to fall, was Mateo.
The man was a wreck. His lightning was gone, the aura of godlike power extinguished. Only faint sparks still leapt between his wounds—tiny streaks of electricity snapping weakly around the gaping hole in his abdomen. His face was bloodless, his body shaking with every step. Yet still he moved, dragging himself upright as if the earth itself was daring him to collapse and he would not give it the satisfaction.
Ali spat a mouthful of blood onto the scorched grass, crimson streaking down his chin. His Dragon Eyes had cost him—two trails of blood ran from his normal human eyes like tears, burning hot against his cheeks. His healing cells ached, desperately straining to rebuild his missing side. He forced them to stop.
Mateo's deadened eyes narrowed as he staggered closer, each step tearing at his wounds.
"Lightning… Guild Spell…" he muttered hoarsely, his words half-broken by blood and breath.
Twenty meters. That was all that separated them now.
Ali pushed against the ground, his left knee shattering with pain as cracks spread across it. He nearly collapsed. But he rose, trembling, his body more ruin than man.
Mateo's right arm twitched upward, trembling violently. A whisper slipped from his lips.
"Lightning Blade…"
A sword of radiant blue crackled into existence, attaching itself to his arm as though it were flesh and steel. He stumbled forward, every meter feeling like a mile. Blood poured freely from his abdomen, painting the burnt ground with each dragging step. His Spirit Realm collapsed in tandem—the land beneath him dissolving into nothingness, leaving Mateo alone in a crumbling void.
Ten meters.
Ali dropped to one knee, his left side unable to hold his weight. The crack spread deeper. He lifted his head weakly to meet Mateo's eyes.
The sight gave Mateo strength. A final surge of desperate willpower gripped him. His body screamed, his vision swam, but he forced himself upright, lightning blade raised high above Ali's bowed figure. His mind whispered the words he had carried through every clash, every strike, every desperate breath:
'This is it.'
His Spirit Realm fell into darkness. His body threatened to collapse. But his arm still rose.
Ali looked up, blood-stained lips curving into a smirk despite the ruin of his body. His words came low, rasping, but clear enough to reach Mateo's ears.
"Good fight… kid."
And with that, Ali burned his only Spirit Point. A spirit point he replenished from when he borrowed the cosmic fire…
Mateo's vision collapsed into shadow.
The world before him twisted as a black portal opened at his feet, swallowing him whole. His lightning blade, once so brilliant and fierce, passed through the rift like a dying star, its glow snuffed out the moment he crossed.
'No…' Mateo thought as the coldness consumed him. His eyes burned with the glare of a light he could no longer withstand, his skin shredded against jagged stone. The lightning blade dissipated instantly.
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the crumbling wasteland of his Spirit Realm. But there was nothing left. The vast land that once surged with storms and power had withered away. He stood alone on the final shard of earth, a fragment of rock drifting in endless dark. Beneath him, the void yawned wide, waiting.
He dropped to his knees.
In the real world, his body froze, a horrible, unnatural cold wrapping around him. His nerves screamed one last time before going numb.
'I failed…' Mateo thought, his jaw clenching, tears of rage and shame that would never fall burning behind his eyes.
'I wasn't good enough… Wasn't… STRONG ENOUGH!'
The words echoed in both his heart and his dying Spirit Realm, a defiant cry swallowed by silence.
Then his flesh crystallised. Ice crawled across his body in jagged veins until he was entombed in it, his figure frozen in place. A moment later, his body shattered into fragments, dissolving into countless motes of blue light.
[You have killed a Player]
[Reward: 120 PC]
The message burned across Ali's interface, sharp and final.
Ali stared at it through half-lidded eyes. Every nerve screamed, every bone ached, but his lips curled into the faintest smile. He had done it. Against one of the most powerful non-Apostles of the second level of Paradise, against an opponent who pushed him to the edge of death and beyond—he had survived. He had won.
And yet, victory did not feel like triumph. It felt like warning.
"This… is what players are capable of," Ali whispered to himself, his voice raw. He understood now. Mateo's death was not just an ending—it was a revelation. The Players of Paradise were monsters in their own right, many were capable of destruction that could threaten his life.
His gaze shifted downward. On the map flickering in his interface, a red marker glowed steadily. The crystal cave he had been teleported to. Its location was clear.
'Exactly one hundred meters below…'
Ali exhaled. He released the tight control he had kept on his cells, and they surged instantly, ravenous to repair him. Flesh and bone regrew at impossible speed, knitting muscle over charred scars, replacing the arm that had been torn from him. The cracks across his skin sealed one by one.
The pain dulled into numbness. His body, at last, gave in. He collapsed back into the scorched grass, tired black eyes flickering closed. Unconsciousness swallowed him whole.
Far away, in Paradise, a god stirred.
The Lightning God sat upon his throne of storms, his blazing eyes fixed on the vision of the battle's end. He gazed not at the destruction, nor at the fading remnants of Mateo, but at Ali—the unconscious human lying broken and whole in equal measure.
What he saw made his divine core still.
A tether. No—a powerful connection. It linked Ali not to any realm of men or gods, but to a place many gods whispered of with caution: the Hall of Dragons. The oldest and most dangerous of all the known Beast Worlds. A realm even gods had learned to fear.
'Impossible…' the Lightning God's thoughts rumbled like thunder. His gaze narrowed as he probed deeper, his all-seeing lightning eyes piercing through body and soul.
'Did this mortal form a contract with one of them? The fire, the shadow, the essence… all of it reeks of draconic origin. And not just any dragon… an ancient one.'
He pressed harder, reaching for the truth. For a heartbeat, he almost touched it.
Then Ali's wrist flared crimson.
The tattoo there pulsed once with cosmic red light, and the Lightning God recoiled as though struck. His gaze was blocked. His power denied. Even he—the most relentless seeker of truth, whose vision could see through the lies of mortals and gods alike—was blinded.
The throne room trembled faintly as the god leaned back, his storm-wrought body rippling with cold fury.
'It blocked me,' he thought, his tone calm but dangerous.
'A seal powerful enough to deny me. Then this is no ordinary contract. Which god hides behind this human? Which of us dares bind him with such a mark?'
He knew his own strength. His apostles ruled the battlefield across countless levels of Paradise, his flow of Origin vast and steady. Few could stand against him. Fewer still would be able to construct such a seal. The list of suspects narrowed sharply.
'It cannot be many,' the Lightning God mused, storm-light flashing behind his eyes.
It is true there wasn't many gods that could rival him in strength, but there was one god that had such strength without even using the power of Origin.
Back in the forest…Ali stayed still.
Though his flesh had mended, though the scorched wounds and missing limbs had been restored by the ravenous work of his cells, Ali did not stir. His body with perfect skin and chiseled muscles, rested bare upon blackened earth, his shredded garments barely clinging to his waist. His chest rose and fell faintly. His scars were gone, his skin unmarred. He looked almost untouchable—except that the truth of his wounds was hidden deeper.
What was broken now was not the body, but the soul.
Inside him, his Spirit Realm groaned as it pieced itself back together, fragments of land reknitting themselves around a sky split by silver cracks. The echo of the Dragon Gate still rattled through his essence. His soul strained under the weight of not one, but two Ancient Dragons pressing their power into his being. Their presence left a pressure so immense that it threatened to collapse the connection he had with the Dragon Hall.
And so, even in victory, Ali's rest was not peaceful...
Hours passed.
The sun slipped low across the sky, painting the plains with streaks of amber and blood-red. At the edge of the devastated battlefield, where forests once thrived, now lay a wasteland—a scar carved into the land itself. South of Stork Fort, at the very border of the kingdom, nothing remained but charred stone and upheaved earth, stretching until it reached the untouched line of green that marked the boundary of the Elf Kingdom.
From the Stork stronghold, Miles observed in silence.
The feed of destruction sprawled across his displays, dozens of newly-forged drones humming above the ruins, cameras scanning every inch of ground for any trace of the clash. He watched carefully as twenty aerial scouts streaked toward Ali's last known signal, their lenses cutting through smoke and ash.
But when they arrived, there was nothing. No body. No heat signature. No trace of the man who had survived the impossible. Only a scorched trail leading into the distance, then nothing but silence.
Miles frowned. His map pulsed with Ali's marker—it had moved. The signal stretched deeper into the forest, flickered across the border, and entered the forest of the Elves. The drones did not follow. They could not. That land was beyond his reach, his signal didn't go that far.
Ali drifted.
His eyes cracked open in flashes, each glimpse more fleeting than the last. In one moment, he saw trees rushing past, towering trunks blurring as if carried at unnatural speed. His body floated, not upon the ground, but held aloft by shadowy hands—ethereal shapes of darkness that bore him with effortless strength.
Another flash: a tree unlike any other. Massive, ancient, crowned in leaves of luminous blue that shimmered faintly against the dying light. Its roots spread wide, burying into both kingdoms, its trunk standing as the marker of the border. None crossed it. None dared. And yet, Ali's broken body passed beneath its boughs.
The final flash: a woman.
He could not see her face clearly, but her silhouette etched itself into his memory. Long strands of silvery-white hair flowed like liquid moonlight, and her skin—smooth—gleamed with the unmistakable shade of deep grey.
Then darkness again.
The voices came later, threading into the haze like whispers through a veil. He could not see them.
———————
Author here, finally the fight ends. So how was it? Is it my best fighting scene so far? I hope you enjoyed it. This should show you guys how really powerful apostles are, Mateo is an anomaly in how strong he is but there are apostles out there that Ali couldn't handle with their gods backing them, which is why he needs the dragons else it's way out of his league.
Please donate some of your power stones, it would help my ff massively.
If you want to support my work and get Five chapters ahead of webnovel : patreon.com/Rondo312