"I will miss you, Mother," Kai whispered.
The words echoed directly into the fractured, grieving remnants of Nyx's heart.
Nyx smirked, dark divine blood staining her lips. "Let me give you a memorable final moment, child."
As she spoke, the very fabric of the air around them violently warped.
A broken, volatile sphere of golden energy began to manifest around her body. Kai's heartbeat spiked.
If that sphere fully materialized, she would instantly recover her HP, and the sheer, unfiltered radiation bleeding off it would melt him down to his bare bones.
He didn't hesitate. He pushed every last drop of his remaining mana into the legendary Harpe and activated his skill.
[ Zero Kelvin ].
A terrifying, blindingly white blade of absolute zero extended from the Harpe's golden edge.
With a sickening crunch, Kai thrust the frozen blade forward, slowly piercing Nyx's chest just as the golden sphere formed a dome around them both.
But the Goddess didn't scream. The physical trauma was entirely numb to her; no mortal or divine blade could ever exceed the agonizing pain of losing her child.
Her crimson eyes burned with a violent, apocalyptic determination. She was going to drag this Glitch down to Hell with her.
She intensified the sphere.
The temperature inside the dome spiked astronomically. The divine radiation began actively deteriorating Kai's avatar, violently blistering and burning his skin.
Not yet, Kai thought, violently gritting his teeth. He increased the output of Zero Kelvin, fighting a desperate, suicidal war of thermodynamics against a literal Goddess.
[WARNING: ZERO KELVIN OVERRIDE DETECTED. HOST TISSUE DAMAGE IMMINENT.]
Kai ignored the flashing red text blocking his vision.
Before Nyx could detonate her power, a shadow materialized directly behind her. A pristine, white-gloved hand wrapped violently around her throat, forcefully choking her from the outside.
The Masked Man.
Nyx gasped, her airway crushed, but she forced her remaining divine energy down into her right hand, manifesting a jagged, glowing golden dagger.
Kai's physical strength was completely failing.
The flesh of his hand holding the Harpe was blistering from the radiation, his fingers going numb and slipping from the hilt.
The pain was so horrifying, so deeply embedded in his nervous system, that he couldn't even force his brain to pass out.
Instead of letting go, Kai made a ruthless, terrifying calculation.
He activated Zero Kelvin directly onto his own arm.
Ice and frost coated his skin in a microsecond, instantly freezing his own muscles, tendons, and joints completely solid.
He literally locked his hand onto the weapon's hilt so his failing body couldn't drop it.
The golden dagger had completely formed in Nyx's hand.
Even as she was being choked by the Masked Man, she made her final, desperate move. She thrust the divine blade directly at Kai's face.
The dagger stopped exactly one millimeter before it pierced his eye.
Nyx's eyes widened in absolute shock. Her brow furrowed in confusion.
You little ... Her own hand was violently shaking, completely refusing to obey her command.
Deep inside her corrupted code, beneath the surface of the vessel, Nyra was pulling the strings.
The human girl was forcefully paralyzing Nyx's arm from the inside out.
Nyx was completely trapped. She was being choked by the Masked Man from the outside, pierced by Kai's absolute zero blade in the center, and paralyzed by Nyra from the inside.
The sheer, overwhelming pressure of the three-way attack forced the Harpe to bypass its programmed limits.
[Divinity Detected.]
[ Judgment Accepted. ]
The Womb of Astral Radiance—the very vessel of creation—had begun to violently corrupt.
In her final moments, Nyx's hands began to glow with blinding intensity.
Every particle of ambient mana in the boss room condensed at her abdomen. She was bypassing all restrictions, activating her final, apocalyptic protocol:
[ Divine Restoration: Big Bang ].
As she initiated the sequence, her physical body began to shine with the terrifying gravity of a dying star.
Sensing the sheer, world-ending density of the collapsing energy, the Masked Man froze.
For the first time since he entered the game, his gloved hand trembled. A single drop of cold sweat fell from his masked forehead.
"The lineage of the tale has fractured, seduced away by an ancient, gathering gloom," a voice echoed through the heavy air.
Nexus, the Black Cat with glowing violet eyes, smirked from the shadows behind them.
"Seeing you tense up really feeds my appetite."
The Masked Man remained silent, his vast mind racing to analyze the collapsing variables of the room.
"Do you need my help?" Nexus asked, a cunning, demonic smile stretching across its feline face.
"No," the Masked Man replied flatly, his voice cutting through the static.
"Even if the story gets diverted, the fate remains exactly the same."
The fate of this world is in your hands, Kai, the Masked Man thought, watching the boy.
As the Big Bang reached its absolute critical threshold, Kai struggled against the blinding light.
"Mother... I'm sorry," he whispered, hot tears flowing freely down his frozen, blistered face.
For a split second, the System glitched.
Using his unique class, Kai forcefully overwrote his own visual rendering.
His silhouette flickered wildly in the light, and his face seamlessly merged with the ethereal, tragic image of King Iyad.
Nyx's breath caught in her crushed throat.
Seeing her son's face looking back at her, her violent, apocalyptic aura instantly dissolved.
The rage drained from her crimson eyes. She slowly lowered her glowing hands.
"Oh... my little Iyad."
The world-ending light disappeared, her divine authority willingly shutting itself down.
Nyx reached out, her trembling fingers gently brushing against Kai's blistered cheek.
"Don't harden your heart, Kai."
As Nyx smiled, deep, glowing cracks began to spiderweb across her flawless porcelain skin.
Kai pushed every last remaining ounce of his energy into the frozen hilt.
Blinding white light leaked violently through the fissures in the Goddess's body, the very ground of the dungeon rejecting her existence.
BOOM.
Nyx's body shattered, exploding into a beautiful, tragic shower of glittering golden dust that rained down across the dark water.
As the divine light faded, Kai felt a strange, heavy weight behind him.
He turned back. For a split second, the ruined, flooded battlefield vanished entirely, replaced by a pure, blindingly white void.
Standing in the center of the void was Nyx's shadow.
She wasn't a terrifying monster anymore; she just looked like a tired, deeply grieving woman.
She stepped forward, leaning in to press a gentle, motherly kiss to Kai's forehead, softly ruffling his hair.
"Stop," Kai whispered, his voice cracking under the emotional weight.
Nyx offered a small, genuinely warm smile.
"Thank you for pretending to be my son."
Kai slowly lowered his head, a crushing weight of guilt pressing down on his chest.
"Kai, I was planning to die the moment I realized my son was no longer here," Nyx said softly, lovingly rubbing her thumb across his cheek one last time.
"But thanks to you... I got to see my boy one last time."
As Nyx smiled, a small, sorrowful curve emerged on Kai's broken face.
She disappeared, fading away into the white void like morning mist.
Kai smiled softly, but the smile didn't reach his exhausted eyes.
As the void shattered, the real world violently rushed back in. And along with reality came the consequences.
The adrenaline instantly evaporated from his bloodstream. Every single nerve in his body screamed in absolute agony.
His frozen arm, his burned skin, his depleted mana core—it all crashed down on him at once.
He fell forward into the dirt, collapsing into the darkness as if a mountain had finally been lifted from his shoulders.