Bernal kept his eyes locked on the void as he spoke, his posture rigid and unmoving.
"It looks like it's finally time for me to release my domain."
"We can still endure," Osvald said. Paul nodded beside him.
"It's not about you," Bernal replied without looking away. "That thing is not just a creature. It's a vessel for the Void. It is the Void, forced into a shape so it can pass through the portal with it. The only advantage we have is that the Void can't push all of its power through at once."
Paul eyes narrowed. "So how powerful is she?"
Bernal paused, studying the enemy as it hovered in the torn air above the battlefield. "At least S3. Possibly higher. Somewhere between S3 and a true god. Which means..."
He didn't finish the sentence.
His eyes began to glow with a deep blue light. Lightning crackled around him, first in thin strands along his arms, then spreading into the air in violent arcs. The sky darkened as clouds churned overhead, drawn into a spiraling mass.
Above the clouds, a massive translucent figure formed, the upper body of a giant, shaped from light and electricity. Its outline flickered with every thunderclap.
"I have to go all out," Bernal said, his voice echoing with an ethereal depth that didn't belong to a human throat. "Otherwise, we have no chance of winning."
At that moment, the giant figure in the sky lifted its hand. Lightning gathered in its palm, condensing into a dense, blinding mass. With a sharp motion, it hurled the energy forward like a spear. The attack tore through the clouds and streaked toward Iralian.
Iralian turned her eyes toward it without hurry. She raised one wing in front of her body. The lightning struck and stopped against it, dispersing in a violent spray of sparks that faded into the air. Behind her, more tentacles forced their way out of the portal, pushing deeper into the world, writhing and searching for ground to anchor to.
Paul tried to move, but weakness still weighed down his limbs. As he searched for a way to help, the ground beneath him shifted. Roots and thick vines pushed through the soil, spreading outward in every direction and healing mana surged through him.
"Rest for a moment. I'll hold them," Osvald's voice rumbled from within his monster's body.
The creature drove its massive hand into the earth. The ground split open beneath the portal, and enormous branches burst upward, twisting as they rose. They slammed into the tentacles, wrapping around them and forcing them back. Wood groaned under the strain as void flesh lashed against it.
Iralian moved to interfere, but the growing storm above drew her attention again. The lightning in the sky intensified, flashing faster, brighter, filling the air with a constant roar.
Bernal raised both hands. Across the sky, black spheres the size of small rooms descended from the clouds. Lightning arced between them, linking each sphere into a crackling network of energy.
A second later, lightning began to fall from every orb at once. It rained down across the battlefield in relentless streams, striking the ground, the tentacles, and everything around Iralian in a blinding storm of electricity.
Most of the lightning strikes converged on Iralian and the portal, but others slammed into the battlefield at random, blasting stones on the ground and sending debris into the air.
In response, Iralian thrust her right hand forward. Hundreds of portals, dark as the abyss, opened behind her in a wide arc. From each one, volleys of condensed void spheres shot outward. They collided with the falling lightning in midair, filling the sky with blue and purple explosions that shook the clouds apart.
Amid the chaos, Iralian charged.
At the same moment, the giant figure above brought both hands down, and thick columns of lightning dropped from the sky like solid beams.
Iralian slipped between them with fluid precision. The beams scorched the air around her, but none touched her. In seconds, she crossed the distance and reached Bernal.
He stood ready, both hands wrapped in dense lightning that crackled and snapped around his fingers.
Iralian drove her fist forward, packed with compressed void. Bernal met it with his palm.
The impact exploded outward. The shockwave rattled the area around them.
They launched into a brutal exchange. Iralian attacked with fists, knees, and the sweep of her tail, each strike fast enough to blur. Bernal moved faster. He intercepted every blow with his hands, deflecting the void strikes with precise bursts of lightning, holding his ground as the air around them trembled from the force of their clash.
Iralian's blows carried more force. With each clash, Bernal gave ground, sliding back through the air as the shockwaves rippled around them.
In the middle of the exchange, the lightning around Bernal's hands shifted from bright blue to a darker, denser shade. He deflected Iralian's incoming fist with his left hand, guiding it past his shoulder, and drove his right palm into her stomach.
The dark lightning detonated on impact.
The blast hurled Iralian away like a rag doll. She crashed into the ground far below, carving a trench through stone and soil. Before the debris settled, she shot back into the sky, rising at the same speed she had fallen.
When she reached Bernal again, the sky had changed. Every bolt of lightning now burned in a deeper blue, thicker and more violent. The massive figure above hurled another beam downward.
Iralian snapped her wings open and veered aside, dodging the strike. But this beam behaved differently. As it passed her, its tip twisted and reshaped into the head of a dragon. The lightning curved midair and turned back toward her.
She weaved through the sky, dodging the pursuing beam several times, but it followed her every movement without slowing. Within seconds, two more beams dropped from the clouds and joined the chase.
The three lightning beams tightened around Iralian, their currents braiding into a blazing cage. Arcs snapped across her wings and shoulders, burning the air white. The pressure crushed inward, forcing her to a halt in midair.
A dull thud rolled out from her chest.
Then, a ring of void burst from her body and expanded in a perfect circle. The lightning struck the edge of that darkness and skidded away, unable to cross it. Sparks scattered like rain. The air around her thickened as her aura grew heavier, denser, pushing outward with steady force.
She leaned forward and charged.
Void gathered along her arm and hardened into a blade. The weapon looked rough and uneven, like a shard carved from night itself, bleeding faint trails of darkness into the air behind it.
Bernal answered with a sword formed from compressed lightning. The blade hummed, bright and sharp.
Their swords met.
The collision cracked like thunder at arm's length. Light and void tore at each other, spraying fragments of energy in all directions. Iralian drove forward with void strength, forcing Bernal's arms back. He locked his stance for a heartbeat, boots grinding against the air as if it had turned solid, then twisted his body and redirected the force to his side.
The released void shot past him in a straight line and struck the ground far away. The impact erased stone, soil, and everything in between, leaving behind a wide, smoking crater with glassed edges.
Iralian pressed the attack. She swung low, then high, then spun and drove her tail toward his ribs. Bernal blocked each strike with tight movements. Every impact rang through his arms and shoulders, lightning flaring brighter with each contact. He didn't waste motion. He absorbed, redirected, and stepped just enough to avoid being overwhelmed.
As the battle continued, they start to move faster.
Their blades clashed dozens of times in seconds. Each impact sent visible shockwaves across the sky. The clouds above them tore apart under the pressure. Below, the earth split into long fractures. Hills collapsed. Forests flattened as invisible force rolled across the land.
Iralian's swings grew heavier. Each one bent the air before it landed. Bernal's counters grew sharper. Lightning wrapped tighter around his body, crawling across his chest and back like living veins.
When their weapons locked again, the ground directly beneath them caved in, unable to withstand the pressure of their power pressing down from above.
Iralian drew back to strike again when a lightning beam dropped from the sky. It curved midair and rushed toward her like a living thing. She cut through it with a single slash. The beam split in two and burst apart behind her.
She glanced upward, raised her index finger, and aimed at the giant shape above the clouds. A thin line of void shot from her fingertip. It pierced the layers of lightning and cloud without slowing.
A second later, a massive explosion flared above the cloud cover, larger than the giant itself. The light from it flashed across the sky like a second sun. Without waiting to see the result, Iralian lunged forward again.
Bernal understood the cost of letting this continue. Each clash carved deeper wounds into the land below. The lightning around his hands softened and flowed like liquid, shifting shape as he prepared something different.
But before he could complete his new attack, Above them, the sky darkened. An inverted black tower began to descend from the clouds, its surface smooth and lightless, as if cut from solid night. It lowered slowly, carrying a crushing presence that pressed against everything beneath it.
At the same time, Osvald's defense intensified. From the mass of branches already grappling with the void tentacles, new growth burst outward. Thick roots, slabs of stone, and violent gusts of wind joined the struggle. Wood twisted tighter, rock slammed into writhing limbs, and the wind howled through the gaps, forcing the tentacles back toward the portal.
Iralian slowed and hovered in place, her eyes fixed on the inverted black tower descending from the clouds. Its surface swallowed the surrounding light, and the air around it felt heavy, as if the sky itself pressed downward.
At the same time a thick branch whipped up from below, aiming for her. She slipped to the side and avoided it, wings cutting sharply through the air. The movement broke her focus for a fraction of a second and Paul appeared in front of her.
There was no sound, no trail of mana, no warning. One moment the space was empty; the next, he stood within arm's reach. His fist drove forward and struck her square in the chest before she could react.
The impact folded the air around them. Iralian shot downward like a cannonball and crashed into the ground. The collision blasted dirt, stone, and shattered roots outward in a wide ring.
Before she could push herself up, branches descended on her. Thick wood wrapped around her arms and legs. Splintered roots forced their way under her wings. Chunks of earth and broken slabs of rock slammed down from above, piling over her in a growing mound meant to hold her in place.
Bernal turned his head slightly to the left, never fully taking his eyes off the battlefield.
Alexia stood there, calm and composed, as if she had always occupied that spot and only now allowed herself to be noticed. Dust and loose strands of hair drifted around her, stirred by the violent winds.
"What took you so long?" Bernal asked.
"I was giving instructions," she replied, her voice steady and serious. Her gaze shifted toward the struggling mass of branches and stone. "Was that the Void Caller?"
"Yes," Bernal said. "But this is only a vessel. The Void itself sits behind it. This one is far more dangerous than the previous."
Alexia lifted both hands slowly. The ground answered.
Deep tremors rolled through the battlefield as enormous slabs of stone tore free from the earth. Entire sections of bedrock rose into the air, dragging dust and debris with them. The floating masses circled high above like fragments of a broken mountain, casting wide shadows across the land.
"Then we end this now," she said. "Before it's too late."
Lightning cracked across the sky in response. The storm thickened, flashes growing brighter and more frequent, as if the heavens themselves prepared to strike alongside them.