The reddish-black void of the Masked Man's dimension felt like a physical weight pressing against my skin. Every breath I took was saturated with the metallic tang of ancient mana and the scent of a dying world. Inside me, I could feel the presence of Elphyete, her soul merged with mine, her heart beating in a syncopated rhythm with my own. The green glow of our combined power pulsed through my veins, a stark, emerald contrast to the bleeding sky of this nightmare realm. My elf ears, sensitive to the slightest shift in the atmosphere, twitched as the tension between the gathered powers reached a breaking point.
In the center of this void, the focus shifted. Euphyne and Zaltraf looked at each other for a minute.
The silence between them was not empty; it was a heavy, suffocating pressure that seemed to push the very air out of the dimension. Euphyne stood bathed in his golden aura, his one-sided war axe resting casually on his shoulder, his eyes filled with that insufferable, divine arrogance that had only grown since we left the 10,000th floor. Opposite him, the Demonking stood as a monument of absolute dread. The ground—or the invisible surface we stood upon—seemed to groan under the weight of their combined presence.
Suddenly Zaltraf said to Euphyne, "How about we take this fight far from here for no interruptions?"
His voice was a deep, resonating rumble that vibrated in my chest, carrying the weight of two destroyed continents. It wasn't a request; it was a suggestion made by a predator to an equal. Euphyne looks at Zaltraf and said, "I don't take orders from anyone, but I also don't want to get interrupted."
The arrogance in Euphyne's voice was sharp enough to cut. He didn't even blink in the face of the master of Death magic. He simply adjusted his grip on his axe, his golden light flaring for a brief, blinding moment. Then suddenly they went far from here.
They didn't just walk or fly; they vanished in a collision of gold and dark energy that sent a shockwave through the dimension, leaves of reddish mist swirling in their wake. Their departure left a vacuum of power that was immediately filled by the remaining players in this grim theater.
Zarha looks at me and said, "How about we continue this fight?"
The white-masked assassin didn't wait for an answer. The casual tone of his voice was betrayed by the lethal intent radiating from his dual daggers. Suddenly he dashed forward and disappeared.
My eyes darted across the void,I saw him from my right, his white mask a ghostly blur against the dark background. I prepared to parry, but the air rippled with a deceptive shimmer. But he tried to attack me from my left. It was a flicker-step, a technique designed to bypass the visual perception of even the most seasoned warriors.
I instinctively dodged thanks to my Zen zhi 2nd pillar training by Mr Ghale.
I felt the cold whistle of his daggers as they passed through the space where my shoulder had been a millisecond before. My body moved with a fluid, practiced grace that had been drilled into me during those grueling hours of training. The memory of Sir Ghale's voice echoed in the back of my mind, guiding my center of gravity as I pivoted away from the strike.
Suddenly he laughed and said, "You're interesting."
He skidded to a halt several yards away, his daggers held low. There was no malice in his laugh, only a cold, professional curiosity. Suddenly he threw his dual daggers.
The blades spun through the air like lethal silver coins. But they didn't fly free. A chain appeared from his hands to the daggers and he controls the daggers with his chains in his hands. The chains were black and etched with glowing runes, snaking through the void with the unpredictability of living serpents. Zarha flicked his wrists, and the daggers changed direction mid-flight, snapping toward my throat and my heart simultaneously.
And I kept deflecting it with my sword and I kept dodging.
The white gold sword in my hand was a blur of motion. Clang. The metal of the dagger met the divine edge of my blade, sending a shower of green sparks into the reddish-black mist. I stepped back, ducking under a horizontal sweep of the right-hand chain, then parried a downward thrust from the left. The chains allowed him to attack from angles that were physically impossible for a standard melee fighter. He was a puppeteer, and his daggers were the marionettes of my death.
The masked man in his throne just watching us fight.
From the corner of my eye, I could see the dark figure on the bone throne. He didn't move, he didn't speak; he simply sat there, his chin resting on his hand, observing the carnage as if we were nothing more than insects in a jar. His presence was a constant, looming shadow over the entire battle.
Zarha suddenly disappeared and without even a single sound he appeared from the sky and tries to hit me.
There was no rush of air, no shift in mana. One moment the space above me was empty, and the next, the white-masked assassin was descending like a falling star, his daggers pointed directly at the crown of my head. But I dodged. I rolled across the invisible floor, the daggers slamming into the nothingness with a sound like a thunderclap.
Zarha landed silently, his knees bent, his chains rattling softly as they retracted into his sleeves. And Zarha says that he's a user of the 8th pillar Gho Ust.
The name of the pillar hung in the air, a testament to his mastery over the silent, spectral arts of the assassin. I just scoffed it off and I started attacking. I didn't care about his pillars or his titles. I had Elphyete's power flowing through me, and I had a name to avenge.
I used Elphyete's Creation magic to create a million floating swords and fired it at him.
The dimension was suddenly illuminated by a sea of emerald light. Behind me, the void was filled with the manifestation of a million blades, each one forged from pure mana and holy intent. They hummed with a collective energy that made the very atmosphere vibrate. With a single gesture of my hand, the million swords roared forward, a tidal wave of steel and light aimed at the white-masked figure.
But he disappeared silently.
The swords tore through the space where he had stood, disappearing into the infinite distance of the reddish-black universe. And I kept dodging while he kept disappearing and attacking with his dual daggers.
He was like a flickering flame in a storm. He would manifest for a fraction of a second, lashing out with a chain-linked dagger, only to vanish before my counter-strike could land. The battle became a frantic rhythm of emerald light and white-masked shadows. I was constantly on the move, my feet dancing across the void as I avoided the silent, lethal strikes that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
I needed to break his rhythm. I needed to cut the strings of the puppeteer.
I raised my sword and charged it and swung it.
The white gold sword glowed with an intensity that rivaled the sun. I channeled every ounce of Elphyete's creation magic into the edge of the blade, the green light turning almost white. As I swung downwards, the force of the blow was not just physical; it was a conceptual strike.
His chains got cut and the surrounding reality cracked but it repaired itself.
The divine blade sliced through the runic chains as if they were made of silk. The impact of the swing was so great that the very fabric of the dimension split open, a jagged rift of white light appearing in the reddish-black void. For a second, I could see the raw chaos beneath the surface of the realm. But the Masked Man's dimension was resilient. The rift closed almost instantly, the reality knitting itself back together with a sickening pop.
Zarha repaired the chains and he started to try to chain me up but I dodged everything.
The assassin didn't seem bothered by the destruction of his weapons. With a flick of his fingers, the broken links of the chains fused back together, glowing with a new, dark energy. He began to weave the chains through the air, creating a web of steel designed to entangle my limbs and restrict my movements. I moved with desperate speed, twisting and flipping through the tightening net, the green glow of my aura trailing behind me like a ribbon.
I needed more pressure. I couldn't fight him alone while he had the advantage of the 8th pillar.
I summoned 10 archangels and we attacked Zarha.
The space around me erupted in ten pillars of holy light. From the light emerged the Archangels—towering figures of divine grace, their wingspans filling the void, their swords glowing with the same emerald light as my own. They moved with a collective purpose, diving toward the white-masked assassin from ten different directions.
And he kept disappearing and killing the archangels.
It was a massacre of the divine. Zarha moved through the ranks of the angels like a ghost through a graveyard. He would vanish just as an angel's sword descended, reappearing behind them to drive his daggers into the nape of their necks or the joints of their armor. One by one, the pillars of light shattered. An angel would cry out, its form dissolving into golden dust, only for Zarha to disappear again before the next one could strike.
The assassin was a whirlwind of silent destruction. Within moments, the ten archangels were gone, their presence erased from the dimension as if they had never been summoned. Zarha stood in the center of the clearing, his white mask reflecting the dim, reddish light of the sky, his chains rattling with a slow, menacing rhythm.
I stood my ground, my chest heaving, the white gold sword heavy in my hand. I could feel Elphyete's soul straining, the drain of the million swords and the archangels taking its toll. Across the void, the Masked Man remained on his throne, his silent observation more terrifying than the assassin's blades.
The battle was far from over, but the realization was starting to sink in. We were in a realm where the rules of the world no longer applied, and Zarha was the master of its shadows. I adjusted my stance, my elf ears picking up the faint, rhythmic clicking of his chains as he prepared for his next move.
Now that the archangels have fallen and the dimension has been cracked,