The forest roared with the sounds of electrical explosions and the crackling of lightning, but for Dex, in the moment he saw Lumia's slender body strike the ground with brutality, the entire world fell silent.
Time stopped in his mind. Everything around him moved in extreme slow motion: the burning leaves falling, the black lightning sparks consuming Lumia's void shield, and the grotesque victory smile stretching across all four jaws of the Greater Hell Hound. In that pivotal moment, the wall of rationality Dex had built with such difficulty since arriving in this world collapsed entirely.
"You have… touched… something… that is mine."
These words were not a whisper or a human rage-cry. They emerged from the depths of his throat as a terrifying hiss, a roar that surpassed the frequencies ordinary ears could endure. No longer a human voice in any sense: it was the roar of an ancient mythical creature awakening from a slumber spanning ages. The roar of the true Phoenix that knows no mercy when its sacred things are touched.
With these words, a radical transformation occurred in the structure of the Mana surrounding Dex. The great crimson wings blazing behind his back began to contract and condense inward, drawing all oxygen from the surrounding air. The flame's colour changed in a terrifying shift: from deep red, to celestial blue, then in a fraction of a second it detonated to a blazing, immaculate white. Not fire any longer, pure plasma: solar energy concentrated in a human body.
The heat in the space became unbearable, impossible. The thick humidity that characterised Falus Forest evaporated within a radius of one hundred metres. The nearby colossal tree trunks did not burn to become charcoal. They began to glow red, then disintegrated directly to white ash without passing through any combustion phase. Even the air itself began to shimmer and refract like a desert mirage under the transcendent heat.
The Greater Hell Hound, which was still suspended in the air after its assault on Lumia, understood too late that it had committed the last mistake of its existence. The beast, with its dual consciousness, attempted to alter its mid-air trajectory and use the black lightning to flee, but the time for that had passed.
In a fit of madness that swept away every combat tactic and calculated manoeuvre, Dex no longer concerned himself with defence or evasion. He coiled on himself for a moment in the sky, then drove downward, not as a bird in flight, but as a white meteor piercing the atmosphere.
Dex did not use conventional magic or recited incantations. He detonated the Core in his chest in an absolute thermal explosion.
Dex struck the ground at the precise point where the Greater Hell Hound had stood. There was no sound of impact, only the sound of massive evaporation. The instant Dex's two hands, blazing with absolute white, touched the massive beast's body, the black and white lightning shield dissolved like a knob of butter in a blacksmith's furnace.
Dex seized the thick neck from which the two heads branched. The beast attempted to release a concentrated bolt at point-blank range into Dex's face, but the bolt evaporated literally before it could touch his skin. Dex tightened his grip, and nothing was heard but the sound of blood boiling. In one second, the alpha hound's body ignited from the inside out. Its four eyes converted to spheres of molten glass, and its bones charred before it could release even a single cry of pain from its double throats. The alpha fell as a heap of glowing white ash.
But Dex's fury was not extinguished. He turned his head with a terrifying slowness toward the five remaining Hell Hounds. These were Rank B− beasts, creatures that struck fear into the most formidable mercenaries, yet now they were trembling. Their primal survival instinct overwhelmed their dual consciousness, and they turned attempting to flee, leaping toward the treetops.
"None of you leave," Dex spoke, and his voice ignited the air.
He raised both hands toward the sky, then drove them into the ground with colossal force.
"Phoenix Field: White Star Execution!"
A circular wave of white fire launched from where he stood and expanded at a speed exceeding the speed of sound. The wave swept the forest in a diameter of two hundred metres. It was not a wave that pushed things, it dissolved them thermally.
The five Hell Hounds that had attempted to flee were struck by the wave. They did not fall. Their limbs were not severed. They froze in place mid-run, then their bodies began converting to luminous dust. They burned in a single instant: their muscles, their bones, their lightning, all reduced to particles of ash scattered in the air before the cries could reach their double throats.
The destruction did not stop at the beasts. The forest itself paid the price of this fury. The surrounding trees, which had withstood thousands of years of poisons and beasts, charred to the roots and collapsed as pillars of smoke. The wet clay soil, saturated with organic matter, did not merely dry: its silicon composition melted. The ground beneath Dex's feet converted into a basin of gleaming black and red glass, reflecting the glow of his white fire like a volcanic mirror. Dex stood alone at the centre of this burning glass circle, like a god of destruction who had just descended to the earth. His chest heaved powerfully, and his eyes still radiated a sight-obliterating whiteness. The forest in every direction fell into a total and deadly silence: every living creature, from the smallest insect to the largest beast, had fled for miles, terrified of this catastrophic presence that had swallowed their night.