At this moment, countless bolts of lightning trembled across the pitch-black sky, while blazing fire churned.
Fierce hurricanes stirred the heavy storm clouds, as flashing yellow lightning intertwined with flames.
Driven by the raging wind, they dyed the sky into a crimson purgatory.
The dazzling light brought no peace.
Instead, it drove boundless fear deep into everyone's heart.
Outside the city walls, whether civilians or mages, everyone stared with their eyes wide open.
Even though the oppressive dark clouds had yet to spread above them, simply witnessing the scene was enough for them to feel that danger had reached its absolute peak.
They stared into the sky.
Beneath layers of fear, they witnessed an even more astonishing sight.
A man in a trench coat floated high in the heavens, deep within the violent cloud layer.
Viktor stood atop the dark storm clouds, surrounded by disasters formed from five different elements.
His broad coat, burning with elemental power, whipped violently in the air, while the blazing flames cast brilliant multicolored light across the crimson clouds.
Everyone in the royal capital witnessed this scene.
Their eyes widened as they looked at Viktor, who resembled an elemental god, too astonished to speak.
On the city wall, Haim Horn also looked up at the sky.
His face showed warning-like signs from being saturated with excessive elemental power.
"Unbelievable... So many disasters descending at once."
If Viktor weren't controlling them, so many disasters would probably have affected the entire world.
Rachel beside him silently agreed, nodding gently while continuing to control the magic in his hands.
Haim Horn watched the increasingly chaotic elemental storm and Viktor, wrapped within layer upon layer of elemental power, and couldn't help feeling emotional.
No matter when it was, every time he saw Viktor, the man always brought him a brand new shock.
And every time, it was greater than the last.
When Viktor had first arrived in Endymion, the gap between Haim Horn and him hadn't been particularly large.
But now, Viktor stood alone within the disasters, like a god.
The whole thing felt utterly unbelievable to Haim Horn.
They were both Fourth-Rank mages.
So why was Viktor, another Fourth-Rank mage, this outrageous?
Suddenly, confusion and astonishment flashed across Haim Horn's face.
"Wait..."
He seemed to see layers upon layers of magic circles lighting up behind Viktor.
Countless formation circles rotated together like gears.
The intricately patterned circles intertwined and merged into one, forming a gigantic totem.
The terrifying glow of magic surged freely around his body like fish in water.
Such precise control over magic, together with those dazzling halos behind him...
'Could it be...'
"Viktor... has become a Fifth-Rank mage!?"
The moment Haim Horn realized it, he froze.
His phantom-like face, already impossible to make out clearly, was instantly replaced by static.
He couldn't understand it.
Viktor had only advanced to Fourth Rank half a year ago.
Did he have any idea what a Fifth-Rank mage meant? Was this even reasonable?
'What's going on with Viktor?'
'How could he improve so quickly?'
'It's as if a god were helping him.'
This time, Haim Horn was truly shattered.
All of these old-timers had already touched the threshold of Fifth Rank.
But aside from Cocotte advancing to Fifth Rank, none of the other council members had managed to cross that boundary.
Moreover, Cocotte had only succeeded because Viktor had helped her.
Now she was already a member of the Clavenna family, no longer a council member of the Mage Council.
The more Haim Horn thought about it, the angrier he became.
He wished he could replace Cocotte immediately and become an employee of the Clavenna family himself.
———
Meanwhile, far away in the palace plaza, Cocotte, who was sitting atop the clouds with her full attention focused on sensing the elves' natural energy, suddenly sneezed.
She gently rubbed her little nose.
"Oh... Sand got into my nose."
Although the forest blocked most of the blowing sand, the occasional grain still drifted in. That couldn't be helped.
Moreover, Cocotte could already sense that the royal capital had completely fallen into elemental chaos.
Every district of the city was covered by violent elemental forces.
The earth split apart.
Lava churned.
The sea flooded inland.
Hurricanes raged.
Even the forest vines were growing wildly, stretching toward the clouds.
Even the residents in the central plaza looked up at the sky.
When they saw the five gigantic beasts floating overhead, they were left completely stunned.
They found it impossible to believe that such terrifying creatures could exist in the world.
But no matter how frightening the disasters elsewhere became, the palace grounds remained peaceful and safe.
It was as though some miraculous force were protecting the place.
The natural magic around the royal capital continued swelling.
Cocotte clearly sensed that the natural power brought by the disasters surpassed all magical power, overwhelming everything with its immense density.
She gazed at the sky, quietly sensing six different attributes descend upon the land and run rampant.
But suddenly, a trace of confusion rose within her.
She carefully examined the dark, oppressive sky.
"One... two... three... four... five?"
'Strange.'
'Why is one missing?'
'Aren't there six disasters altogether?'
The natural magic filling the air couldn't be mistaken.
The atmosphere of all six elements was definitely present.
Since she couldn't figure it out, she simply stopped thinking about it.
Cocotte leaned back decisively and lay comfortably on the soft clouds.
She stared at the clouds flashing with multicolored light, her expression calm.
After all, surprise and shock like this were no longer anything new to her.
It was Viktor.
She had long since gotten used to it.
Only...
The other elves couldn't think the way their Elf Queen did.
Countless elves huddled together, trembling.
Every pair of eyes was filled with extreme terror.
Looking at the five giant beasts in the sky, they felt absolute shock deep in their hearts.
The disasters were powers born from nature itself.
And the elves also belonged to nature.
So when the elves faced these disasters, it felt as though they were seeing five fathers overflowing with furious power appear at the same time.
And every one of them radiated incomparably vast natural power.
Some of the more timid elves were so frightened that they fainted.
After all, it was their first time seeing something like this.
Five dads in the sky.
Who wouldn't be scared?
Besides, they couldn't leave even if they wanted to.
Viktor still needed them.
The elves were very useful.
They could continuously provide Viktor with the natural energy he required.
In any case, once they had supplied the natural energy, their task was complete.
What came next only depended on Viktor.
Just as Cocotte was concentrating on the flashes of light in the sky, an immensely terrifying earthquake suddenly spread across the earth.
It felt as though the entire crust had begun to shake.
The residents standing in the central plaza also felt the violent tremor.
They struggled to keep their footing, terror spreading across their faces.
For a moment, screams and panic filled the land before the palace.
Cocotte also sat upright again and looked around.
'What is happening?'
Although she was sitting on a cloud, it didn't stop her from noticing the violent shaking of the earth below.
She raised her head and looked toward the sky.
The gigantic stone giant, whose body stretched deep into the clouds, revealed half of its earth-brown torso, as though it had broken through the sea of clouds.
The thick cloud layer divided the earth giant's body in two, making its upper and lower halves seem to exist in different worlds.
At this moment, the giant's lower body emerged from the clouds, floating quietly in the sky.
Everyone knew that the Earth Disaster needed solid ground beneath its feet.
Its power came from the vast earth.
Flying into the sky was like giving up its home-ground advantage.
No disaster with even a little intelligence would do something like that.
So Cocotte suddenly understood.
She realized the Earth Disaster's true intention.
Just as she had guessed, someone in the central plaza pointed at the sky in terror and shouted,
"Look... look!"
"A mountain! A whole mountain has risen into the sky!!!"
Following the direction of the pointing finger,
the soil across the battlefield crashed downward as the rocky ground split apart.
Like the spine of a dragon, an entire mountain range was pulled from the earth and rose into the heavens with overwhelming force.
Before everyone's eyes, the earth-brown mountain range shot toward the sky.
It drew closer to Uranos's half-exposed body above the clouds.
When the rocks began making contact, gradually breaking apart,
Cocotte finally realized...
Those rising mountain ranges had already become its body.
The mountains merged perfectly with the Earth Disaster.
At this moment, its gigantic body truly spanned the entire royal capital.
Its overwhelmingly oppressive body continuously released deafening rumbles.
The sound of collapsing stone surged beneath the earth, echoing heavily into the clouds.
After Uranos became a mountain range, it finally stood level with the chaotic sky.
Its six orange eyes flashed continuously, carrying an ominous light.
The mountain range stretched for hundreds of miles.
No one could see its end with a single glance.
Its swollen, enormous body crowded the royal capital, making the land seem far too small.
Although streams of multicolored light still flashed across the sky, wherever the mountains crossed, towering clouds of dust rose into the air, blurring everything from view.
Finally, Uranos turned its colossal body to face the other four disasters.
It let out a furious roar.
The terrifying mountain range began to tremble, and collapsing peaks rained down from above.
Together with a giant wave of sand and dust reaching into the clouds, it raised an enormous brown arm.
The thick brown arm shot straight into the sky.
The dense black clouds were ripped open by an unimaginably massive crack.
The violent shockwave shook the surrounding swirling clouds.
It was as though that terrifying punch had scattered the entire cloud layer.
Even the flowing multicolored light between the clouds was torn apart by the sweeping sandstorm, losing its strange glow.
The terrifying impact battered Uranos's enormous body.
Even its mountain-like form, stretching for thousands of miles, rumbled as it shook.
That overwhelming force struck everyone's heart like a heavy blow, leaving behind a profound, crushing shock.