Mike's laughter was hollow.
"You think you can hide your world from me? I'll see everything… I'll—"
The moment his consciousness reached toward Drax's inner world, the forest disappeared. The trees, the wind, even the mist evaporated into an infinite void.
Mike's mind entered the Abyss—but the Abyss wasn't empty.
It was infinite. Black. Hungry. And it had an owner.
He had expected a simple inner world—shadows, terrain, maybe a glimpse of Drax's memories.
What he got instead was nothing.
Nothing but darkness.
Mike's heart pounded. His magic faltered. His inner world manipulation felt weak, meaningless, like a candle flickering in a hurricane.
A sound broke the silence—a soft, almost imperceptible creak.
Mike turned—and the red moon appeared.
Gigantic. Centered above him. Its eye… piercing.
The air throbbed with the pulse of the black tree emerging slowly from the void. Its roots stretched infinitely, curling into every corner of his vision, its branches blotting out the non-existent sky.
He dropped to his knees.
The Abyss was not something he could conquer. Not something he could see or even touch.
And then he looked down.
Water—black as night, swallowing all light. He saw his reflection and… Drax.
Standing behind him, impossibly calm.
Eyes glowing. Abyssal. Slit-pupiled, the same as the red moon above.
Drax's hand hovered above Mike's head.
"You… shall be suspended in the Black Sea."
The words weren't shouted. They didn't need to be. They carried the weight of the Abyss itself.
Before Mike could react, the black water surged upward like a living tide. His body was pulled in, writhing, screaming—but the Abyss fed on his struggle.
He sank. And sank.
The sensation was unlike drowning. It was being erased, rewritten, consumed.
Then, as quickly as it began, it stopped.
The water flattened. Calm. Silent.
Mike's essence, his powers, his will—gone. Absorbed. Rewritten.
And somewhere in the endless void, a new soldier emerged under Drax's command—a shadow of what Mike had been, now reshaped, controlled by the Abyss.
Drax blinked. The world reformed around him—the forest, the soil, the mist. His black blade hummed faintly, satisfaction coiling in his chest.
"Done."
He exhaled.
Far above, atop the tallest peak—a volcano's jagged summit—Velgrid stirred.
The mountain trembled. Smoke spiraled from its top like the breath of a god.
He was no longer merely a dragon. He was ancient, massive, scales black as night, eyes like molten gold. His presence alone threatened to burn the forest to ash.
Drax felt it.
He smiled faintly. "Finally… something worth my attention."
Inside the volcanic summit, the last rogue of the organization, Dannebrog, had tried to flee. But Velgrid had already sensed the disruption. He landed beside him in humanoid form, towering, armored in scales that seemed forged from obsidian.
"Pathetic," Velgrid said, voice rumbling like magma. "Your meddling ends here."
Before Dannebrog could scream, Velgrid struck. One blow ended him. No hesitation. No mercy.
Dannebrog's body collapsed. His inner world shattered. Velgrid turned to the forest below.
Drax walked slowly to the center of the forest, boots sinking into blackened soil from the earlier battles.
He stopped. Head tilted. Smile faint.
The volcano above him rumbled. Velgrid stepped onto the cliff's edge, humanoid form towering against the smoke and fire.
Their eyes met.
Red-orange gold against violet-black abyssal glow.
The forest held its breath.
A hundred miles away, monsters paused, sensing the tension. Trees shivered. The wind stilled.
Drax's aura rippled, black sea spilling from him like shadows leaking into reality.
Velgrid's claws dug into the stone. Fire surged faintly along his arms, the promise of annihilation simmering in every scale.
And Drax smiled.
"Mission complete… now, let's grind more essence," he muttered to himself. "Time to see how many realms I can access next."
Velgrid's eyes narrowed. The mountain trembled, smoke curling into the sky like a crown of doom.
The standoff held. Predator and god. Abyss and fire.
The forest itself had become their arena.
The world waited.
And the Abyss had already won.