The air in the Land of Gods didn't just grow cold; it ceased to support life. The sweet, ethereal scent of the divine meadows was replaced by the acrid, suffocating stench of Black Magic—a rot so deep it felt as though the soul of the world was being hollowed out. Civilar stood at the epicenter of this decay, his blue pupils pulsing like dying stars against the darkening horizon. He turned his gaze toward the distance, where the flickering lights of Eiden's mansion glowed like a beacon of domestic peace. It was a sight that offended his very existence.
He began to walk. His bare feet were silent on the corrupted earth, but with every step, the grass beneath him turned to ash. He was a rhythmic promise of slaughter, moving toward the last remnants of Eiden's joy.
He didn't make it ten paces.
"Unstoppable Field."
The words were not shouted. They were a calm, absolute decree that vibrated in the very atoms of the air, a command from a higher authority that the universe had no choice but to obey. Civilar froze mid-step. An icy, suffocating pressure clamped down on the dimensions around him. The simple act of lifting a foot suddenly felt like trying to shift a tectonic plate. The atmosphere grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and an ancient, dormant power that had finally been poked awake.
Civilar turned slowly, his blue pupils trembling.
Eiden stood there. He was bathed in a white aura so intense it bled into a faint, shimmering outline that blurred the edges of his silhouette. He was kneeling beside Gavran, a hand resting gently on the fallen god's tattered, blood-soaked wing. Eiden didn't look up immediately. With a fluid, practiced motion, he reached behind his back and unsheathed two of his legendary blades. They sang a metallic chorus, a high-pitched hum that resonated with the Unstoppable Field, as he slid them into the specialized metal sleeves of his gloves. Then, with a blur of motion, he drew two more blades from his waist, gripping them with a knuckles-white intensity.
"Civilar," Eiden said. His voice was a low, terrifying rumble that seemed to come from the ground itself. "You injured someone of very great importance to me."
Eiden stood up. The movement was slow and deliberate, carrying the crushing weight of an approaching storm. He snapped his fingers—a sound like a crack of thunder that echoed for miles.
Instantly, the deep, weeping gashes on Gavran, Larry, and Morvath vanished. Their divine ichor flowed backward into their veins as if time itself were reversing; their skin knit together, and their broken bones snapped back into place. They glowed with a soft, restorative light for a heartbeat before flickering out of existence, teleported safely to the sanctuary of the mansion.
"Heh," Civilar spat, his dark magic swirling in violent eddies to combat the pressure of the field. "Ready to die as well?"
Eiden didn't answer. He closed his eyes, his mind diving into the infinite well of Creation Magic. He didn't want the effortless victory of a thought-based erasure; he wanted the visceral, absolute weight of a spell that reflected his fury. He began to compress his entire being—his history, his loss, his divinity—into a singular focal point.
The white aura shattered.
In its place, a blinding, neon-blue mana erupted, towering into the sky like a pillar of sapphire fire. It wasn't just light; it was a physical force that cracked the bedrock of the Land of Gods. The four blades in his hands and sleeves hummed, their steel turning into glowing conduits for this new, volatile energy.
Eiden bolted. He wasn't a man running; he was a blue tectonic shift. He collided with Civilar in a spray of sparks and obsidian shards. Civilar raised his black blade to parry, but the sheer momentum of Eiden's strike drove the blue-mana steel right through the center of the obsidian weapon. The dark blade shattered into a thousand needles, and Eiden's sword continued its path, carving a deep, jagged trench across Civilar's chest.
Black blood sprayed into the air, sizzling as it hit Eiden's aura. Civilar let out a choked hiss and dashed backward, his heels digging into the dirt as he retreated a hundred yards in a blink, leaving a trail of smoke.
"You'll pay for that, little elf," Civilar growled. He reached into the void of his cloak and pulled out dual blades connected by a heavy, rusted chain. The metal rattled with a cursed, discordant sound that made the air feel greasy.
Civilar launched himself back at Eiden. He became a whirlwind of chains and steel, dancing the blades through the air in unpredictable, jagged arcs that tore through the reality of the field. Eiden met him head-on. The sound was deafening—a relentless, metallic clack-clack-clink as Eiden used his four blades to intercept every strike. Each time the cursed chain wrapped around Eiden's blades, Eiden would flare his mana, the blue energy shattering the bind like glass.
The battlefield began to warp. The Land of Gods dissolved as their combined power created a Divine Field—a pocket dimension where the sky was a swirl of violet and gold, and the ground was a shimmering mirror of raw energy.
Eiden began to weave his first true spell. "Azure Ruin!"
Beams of blue light, sharp as needles and moving at the speed of thought, rained from the artificial sky. Civilar twisted his body with supernatural agility, using the chains of his blades as a spinning shield, but the spells were too precise. They grazed his shoulders and thighs, shearing off strips of his cloak and chunks of grey flesh. Civilar retaliated, throwing a wave of Black Null Magic that sought to erase Eiden's existence, but Eiden simply stepped through it. The dark energy slid off his blue aura like water off a polished stone.
"Why isn't it working!" Civilar screamed, his face contorting into a mask of rage. He flared his eyes, sending a massive Illusion—a thousand versions of himself, a thousand images of Eiden's wives being slaughtered—directly into Eiden's mind.
Eiden didn't even blink. His gaze remained locked on Civilar's throat. "Your lies have no weight in the face of my Truth."
The battle turned barbaric. Eiden reached up and tore his gloves off, letting the metal-sleeved blades fall to the shimmering floor of the field. Then, he unbuckled his remaining blades, dropping them alongside his cloak. He stood there in his simple black robe, his muscles coiled like high-tension wires.
In a literal blink, Eiden was in front of Civilar. He didn't use a sword. He used his fist.
He drove an uppercut into Civilar's midsection with such force that the shockwave cleared the atmospheric clouds for a hundred miles. Civilar was launched upward, a streak of black and blood. Eiden didn't wait; he took off after him, a blue comet chasing a dark shadow.
They tore through the atmosphere, the air screaming as it was displaced by their speed. High above the world, in the cold, silent vacuum of space, they collided again. It was a brutal exchange of haymakers and mana-bursts. Eiden landed a hook to Civilar's jaw, the sound of bone shattering echoing through the silence of the void.
Eiden grabbed Civilar by the throat. His fingers sank into the grey flesh, and he accelerated. They became a blur of blue and black, moving at Light Speed.
Ahead of them loomed the system's sun—a roaring, titanic furnace of nuclear fire. Eiden didn't veer. He drove Civilar directly into the heart of the star. They bolted through the corona, through the radiative zone, and out the other side. The Unstoppable Field acted as a perfect heat shield for Eiden, while Civilar's skin boiled and charred, his black magic struggling to hold his molecules together against the solar pressure.
As they exited the sun, Eiden hurled Civilar toward a desolate, grey planet on the edge of the system. Civilar hit the surface like a relativistic warhead. The impact didn't just create a crater; it liquefied the planetary crust for miles.
Eiden followed, descending like a vengeful god. He didn't slow down. He accelerated, his blue mana flaring into a massive, spear-like point that dwarfed the planet's mountains.
CRACK.
Eiden slammed into the center of Civilar's crater. The impact didn't just shake the planet; it broke it. Massive fissures, miles deep and glowing with blue mana, raced across the surface of the grey world, splitting continents apart and sending mountain-sized shards of rock into the void.
In the center of the devastation, Eiden stood over the broken, bloodied form of Civilar. He drove his fist downward, punching through Civilar's face and into the hard ground beneath. A spray of black blood and grey matter coated the crater.
Eiden went to retract his fist, but his eyes narrowed. Something had latched onto his hand from inside Civilar's head. Eiden bolted his arm back, dashing ten yards away in a defensive crouch.
As he watched, something crawled out of the "Civilar" husk. A spikey, three-fingered hand, deep crimson and steaming with heat, reached out from the chest cavity first. It was followed by another.
Meanwhile, at the Golden Throne Kingdom, the capital was a graveyard of stone and fire. The "Civilar" there stood with his dual blades, looking down at the broken forms of Prinston, Bengie, Ou'weii, and Uzak'me, who were scattered across the plaza, their blood staining the white marble.
Prinston, teeth gritted against the pain of a punctured lung, bolted at the intruder. He drove his blade with every ounce of his remaining soul into Civilar's chest. To his absolute surprise, the blade sank in deep.
But the body didn't bleed. It froze. The "Civilar" before him turned to ash, the form crumbling into dust that the wind carried away. It had been a puppet, a mere shadow of the horror now manifesting in deep space.
Back on the shattered grey planet, the red figure fully emerged from the remains of the Civilar husk.
It was a nightmare given flesh. A tall, muscular red figure with black horns curving back from its forehead. Its skin was the color of a fresh wound, and its eyes were pits of glowing, murderous red. But the most jarring feature was below the waist—instead of legs, a massive, powerful snake-like tail coiled and thrashed, crushing the rocks beneath it.
The creature ran its clawed fingers through its long, black hair, shaking off the last of the grey dust. A red aura began to sprinkle around it like falling embers, washing away the blood.
"You, Eiden..." the creature said, its voice a haunting melody of malice. "Are a really interesting elf."