Where Catharticum purified and Terrium anchored, Skyraforma dominated.
This phase was the most volatile Genesis possessed short of its final form. It granted Elyonari dominion over wind and pressure, and yet demanded a brutal toll on her body. Time became an enemy here. The longer Skyraforma remained active, the more violently Nature Energy filled her body, forcing rapid escalation or collapse.
Genesis answered that demand by making herself bigger.
The ground beneath Elyonari cracked as her body began to rise. Her silhouette stretched upward at a terrifying rate. Trees that had survived the earlier devastation were reduced to sap and splinters under the pressure of her expansion. By the time she stopped growing, Elyonari stood at eighty meters tall.
Acidia's massive Forgotten form recoiled instinctively.
"Unacceptable!"
Acid emerged from her body forming thick tentacles that emerged from her back. They lashed forward in unison, attempting to cover Elyonari entirely and dissolve her.
They never reached her. An invisible wall met them in mid-air.
The tentacles slammed into an air barrier so dense it might as well have been made of metal. Acid splashed harmlessly, unable to pass through the compressed layers of wind Elyonari had shaped into a defensive shell.
Elyonari looked down at Acidia.
"You were right. This ends now."
She lifted one massive foot and stomped.
Entire plates of earth tore free. Massive slabs of bedrock and molten soil was lifted higher and higher until they floated like islands suspended in the sky. Acidia barely had time to react before the air itself seized her. Wind wrapped around the Forgotten like chains before Elyonari threw her.
Acidia was hurled upward. Her massive form flew through cloud layers with acid streaming behind her in ragged trails as the pressure dropped violently. The altitude rose at an extremely fast rate.
Elyonari's bow materialized in her hands, scaled perfectly to her colossal size. Her fingers curled around the string. She began to summon an arrow. She used the earth to make the foundation of it but covered in dense Nature Energy. Fire followed with emerald flames wrapping the core in spiraling layers, Vast, roaring air currents spun faster and faster until the arrow's tip became a rotating vortex of Nature Energy.
Elyonari drew the bowstring to its absolute limit, something she rarely did. Her massive form trembled as Skyraforma strained against its time limit, Nature Energy was surging violently through her veins, exhausting her body past its limits.
The arrow met Acidia head-on. For the briefest fraction of a second, there was silence.
Acidia saw it clearly.
The rotating vortex at the arrow's tip was no longer merely Nature Energy. Earth gave it mass, fire gave it inevitability and power, and air gave it absolute velocity. There was no angle to dodge, no direction left to flee and no regeneration fast enough to matter.
She laughed softly.
"So that's how deep you buried it. Your true potential rivals that of the Deities."
She did not raise her tentacles. She did not activate another technique. Pride or clarity, it hardly mattered now.
The sky tore open, causing a rift of distorted air and fractured light screaming across the heavens. The shockwave reached Elyonari an instant later.
The floating earth plate beneath her shattered as though made of glass. The fragments were pulverized mid-air by the sheer air displacement. Entire layers of the atmosphere were shoved aside, creating expanding rings of compressed wind that raced across the ruined forest, flattening what little remained and carving trenches that glowed faintly with residual heat. At this point, the forest was nothing but a scorching desert.
Skyraforma gave out. Genesis did not fail her yet her body had reached its limit.
Her towering form of eighty meters faded as Elyonari shrank rapidly. Her vision blurred as she fell. Her hair kept moving violently from the fall. Her lungs burned as the pressure normalized far too quickly. As she tumbled, she saw the tear in the sky. A long wound stretched across the firmament with light leaking through it in distorted hues as though the world itself were trying to heal. That scar existed because of her. And apparently, beyond it was nothing but space
She hit the ground hard. Pain surged everywhere at once, flooding her senses until even breathing became a conscious effort.
Elyonari tried to move but her body refused.
A harsh cough tore from her throat, followed by the taste of blood as it splattered against the broken stone. She lay there, staring upward. Her emerald embers faded from her skin as Genesis fully receded. Above her, the sky was still torn open.
She saw the red hologram again.
[TARGET ELIMINATED]
[FORGOTTEN RANK KREPSUNA: ACIDIA HAS BEEN ELIMINATED.]
Elyonari let out a weak, breathless scoff.
"So… that's how far I've come. I killed... a Forgotten Rank… as a Fourth Enlightenment Divine."
The fear, the doubt, the endurance, the endless preparation, it had not been meaningless. Her lips curved into a faint smile. The sky continued to mend itself above but for some reason, it didn't work.
Elyonari's eyes fluttered. The pain finally caught up with her resolve.
And with that small, honest smile still on her face, she let herself slip into darkness. And even as she passed out, the earth itself formed a shield around her, protecting her from any external harm.
°°°°°°
Edarea stood on the balcony of her palace. The morning sun had barely risen but the realm of Ledatic Siliportem was already bathed in an unnatural greenish glow. Her eyes were fixed on the gaping tear in the sky that still lingered. Even from this distance, from the safety of her palace, Edarea felt it.
She exhaled slowly with a faint hiss of disbelief escaping her lips. A Fourth Enlightenment Divine, one who hadn't even reached her full potential, had killed a Forgotten Rank Krepsuna.
A Forgotten Rank.
Acidia—the nightmare she had sent to test her forces, one of the fiercest and most cunning of all the Krepsunas in her army, a being who had trained for centuries to annihilate anything in her path— was gone. It had been done by someone barely a fraction of her own power.
Every lesson, every scouting report, every simulation she had run in preparation for handling intrusions like this failed to prepare her for this reality. She had watched her subordinates train and fight and yet… a single High Elf, a single member of this so-called Dynasty, had accomplished it.
For a month she had allowed her spies, her scouts and even some of her lower-ranked Krepsunas to monitor the forests, the borders and the outskirts. She had expected incursions, minor skirmishes, perhaps the loss of a dozen or two of her subordinates to test the invaders' strength. She had not expected this.
Her hands shook slightly as she ran a fingertip along the stone of the balcony. Her mind raced through the possibilities, the sheer scale of what had happened. The Dynasties were absolute monsters. How could someone so young, so unassuming from afar, wield such power? How could they kill beings four ranks above them, with skill, precision and endurance beyond comprehension? Acidia had been the type who relished combat, who would goad her enemies, test their limits, never once underestimating them. She thrived on the thrill of battle, and yet, she was gone.
Whoever fought one of her subordinates had to have been not only strong but lucky, extraordinarily lucky. And yet, this wasn't luck. Luck wouldn't have created the destruction she now witnessed from her palace. The forests, the terrain, the residual shockwaves, it was all methodical.
Unfortunately for her, she didn't know that Ely has Extreme Luck as a Boon.
Edarea's eyes narrowed as she attempted to sense the residual energy of the battle. Normally, this would have been trivial. The Divine Presence of a Divine, even in the farthest corners of a forest, could be detected. Yet now, she felt… nothing. The elf, the one responsible for this devastation, had erased herself from her perception entirely. It was as if a wall had been erected around her, blocking every bit of energy and Divinity that Edarea could sense.
A cold, creeping realization settled in her chest. This wasn't just a Fourth Enlightenment Divine acting alone. She had no knowledge of the other members' locations apart from her Dynasty.
What were their capabilities? What kind of monsters existed within that group? And if the Fourth Enlightenment Divine could annihilate a Forgotten Rank, what horrors lay in wait from those she hasn't even seen?
Edarea's shoulders slumped for a brief moment. Every strategy she had prepared, every plan for dominance and protection of her realm and every patrol and countermeasure was obsolete. This single encounter had rewritten the rules. Wherever the rest of the Dynasties were, Edarea now realized she could no longer consider them underestimates.
She turned away from the balcony finally, pacing back into the shadows of her grand halls. She would not panic. She would not show weakness. But in the pit of her stomach, the realization gnawed at her: this invasion is far more dangerous than she had ever anticipated.