Bernal, Osvald, and Paul kept their full attention on the point of impact where Thavuk had stood. None of them spoke as they watched the thick mass of dust and smoke drifting slowly over the shattered land. Bernal's last spell had wiped the terrain clean for thousands of meters, leaving behind a wide, ruined expanse where stone, trees, and hills had simply ceased to exist.
Before the dust could settle completely, a violent surge of void energy erupted upward from the center. The force of it blasted the smoke away in every direction, sweeping the air clear as if a powerful storm had passed through.
Thavuk's form revealed itself beneath it. He looked worse than before.
His body no longer held a stable shape. Sections of him bulged, shrank, and twisted without rhythm, as if the void inside him had begun to break free from his control. Parts of his surface stretched into thin strands before snapping back into place, while other areas pulsed like a living mass trying to escape its container. Even his monstrous face shifted unevenly, the outlines of it flickering as pain and strain became visible in his expression.
"He's struggling to keep the void under control," Bernal said quietly, studying the instability.
A deep, distorted roar tore out of Thavuk's mouth, the sound heavy and uneven.
Despite the chaos in his form, his eyes remained steady, locked onto the three of them with intense hatred.
"Do you think you can defeat the unlimited power of the void that easily?" he growled.
As he spoke, the loose void energy leaking from his body began to reverse direction. Thin streams of darkness pulled inward toward his open mouth, drawn together as if by gravity. The air around him dimmed as the power condensed rapidly, the space itself bending slightly under the pressure.
The gathering energy grew denser by the second, forming a dark core that hummed with unstable force.
Then he unleashed it.
A massive beam of void tore forward from his mouth, slicing across the battlefield in a devastating line, carrying enough power to erase anything caught in its path.
The force behind the attack was so overwhelming that Thavuk couldn't control its direction.
The beam swept wildly at first, striking a distant mountain range far behind them. A straight line of explosions followed the path of the void, vaporizing the peaks in an instant as stone, soil, and air vanished under the destructive force.
Slowly, the beam dragged across the landscape toward them.
Paul and Osvald prepared to defend themselves, gathering power to block the incoming attack, but before either of them could act, Bernal moved.
He flew forward and placed himself directly in the path of the beam. The void laser struck him head on and stopped.
The beam didn't pass through. It halted at the exact point where Bernal stood, as if it had collided with an invisible wall. The space around the point of contact began to bend and distort under the pressure, the void pressing forward relentlessly, searching for a way through.
Bernal stood there calmly with his right hand raised in front of him. In his open palm, dense mana churned together with a faint trace of something darker, something deeper than simple elemental power. That small point of energy held the beam in place, refusing to yield.
The struggle lasted several long seconds. Then the beam faded.
As the attack ended, Bernal slowly lowered his hand. Thin streams of smoke rose from his palm, and the air around him trembled from the leftover energy.
Paul and Osvald stared in open surprise. Even Thavuk's twisted, unstable face showed clear shock.
"How did you stop that attack so easily?" Paul asked.
Bernal glanced at his smoking hand before answering.
"With knowledge," he said calmly, "and a small touch of my domain."
His eyes returned to Thavuk.
"I'm not going to lose to some mindless beast."
Bernal waved his hand once, and the clouds above them scattered as if pushed aside by an invisible force. The sky cleared in seconds.
Then, a massive shadow appeared. A meteor the size of a city descended from high above, its surface burning as it tore through the atmosphere, trailing fire and smoke behind it. The air screamed around it as it fell directly toward Thavuk.
Thavuk's shifting heads tilted upward.
His mouth opened again, and another beam of void shot out. It pierced straight through the falling mass. The meteor detonated midair, breaking apart in a violent explosion that filled the sky with fire and shattered stone. Burning fragments scattered across the battlefield like a deadly rain.
But Bernal had already prepared the next wave. Clouds shaped again and lightning began to fall from the sky in rapid strikes, each bolt slamming into Thavuk's unstable form. At the same time, dozens of smaller meteors followed, crashing down one after another. The barrage didn't deal heavy damage, but it forced Thavuk to remain in place, constantly defending and absorbing the impacts instead of acting freely.
Realizing the sky offered no advantage, the void monster changed tactics.
One of his massive arms stretched unnaturally, extending forward across the ground. Five enormous tentacles followed behind it, tearing through the land as they advanced.
They didn't reach far.
Thick branches shot up from the earth, twisting around the limbs, while Osvald's wooden construct stepped in and physically blocked their advance. Roots dug deep into the ruined soil, anchoring everything in place as Osvald forced the void back through sheer control of nature.
But even as he held the line, the strain showed.
Void was the natural enemy of life. The longer Osvald tried to restrain it, the more his domain weakened. The branches darkened where they touched Thavuk, slowly losing vitality. It was clear he couldn't hold this forever.
Paul saw it. Without hesitation, he rushed forward. As he ran, the muscles across his body swelled, veins rising visibly beneath his skin. A white aura erupted around him, dense and violent, pushing outward with raw pressure.
This wasn't ordinary enhancement.
Among all warriors, only Paul could use this state. It resembled Berserk and Bloodrage, but far beyond both.
The moment Paul activated the technique, every limit inside his body broke.
This state didn't simply strengthen him, it forced his body to operate far beyond its natural capacity. Muscles, bones, nerves, and mana channels all pushed past their safe thresholds at once. He wasn't just fighting at full power; he was forcing himself to use more than his body was meant to handle. For a brief window, he became several times stronger than his normal peak.
He charged forward at his usual speed.
Thavuk noticed the incoming threat immediately. A new mouth tore open across his abdomen, stretching wide as void energy gathered inside it, preparing to fire the same destructive beam he had used on the meteor.
But before the attack could form, Paul vanished.
His speed spiked again, crossing into something even faster than lightning. In the next instant, his fist was already in motion, traveling at a speed Thavuk couldn't follow.
The punch landed squarely on the forming mouth.
Boom.
The impact exploded outward with brutal force. The shockwave tore through Thavuk's body, punching a massive hole straight through him. The pressure of the strike didn't stop there, it continued forward into the sky, carving a gap through the clouds in a straight line.
Paul didn't pause.
He launched himself upward, pulling both fists back as he prepared to continue. He knew this state wouldn't last long. Every second mattered.
Bernal saw the opening.
A bolt of lightning shot down and wrapped itself around Paul's body before his next strike, feeding into him without resistance. The added energy amplified his already overwhelming strength.
Paul descended like a storm. He unleashed a relentless barrage of punches, each one landing before the last shockwave had faded. With every strike, parts of Thavuk's body disintegrated under the force. Void matter tore apart, unable to reform fast enough to keep up.
In less than five seconds, Paul threw more than a hundred punches.
Then he jumped back. By the time he stopped, almost nothing of Thavuk remained.
Only the head still floated in place.
Even after losing almost his entire body, the remaining head still pulsed with void, strands of darkness stitching themselves together as he tried to rebuild what Paul had just destroyed.
Bernal did not give him the chance.
A bolt of lightning, twice as thick as any he had summoned before, came down from above with a deafening crack and struck the floating head directly. The air around it warped from the intensity. When the light finally faded, there was nothing left. No fragments. No trace.
For a brief moment, the battlefield fell silent. But none of them relaxed. A void user never died that easily.
And just as expected, from the very point where the lightning had erased him, thin streams of void began to leak outward. They twisted together, knitting shape and mass, until Thavuk's original form stood there once again, breathing heavily but very much alive.
"The void is unlimited," he rasped, his voice rough and broken. "Now I will show you its true power."
He lifted one trembling hand toward the sky.
Before any of them could react, a thread of void shot upward and pierced the heavens.
A sharp, glass like sound echoed across the battlefield and the sky cracked.
Not metaphorically but visibly. Fracture lines spread across the blue like a shattered mirror, and then the sky itself broke apart. Beyond it was no sunlight, no clouds, no stars. Only an endless abyss staring back at them.
From that wound in reality, something began to move.
Thick, enormous tentacles slowly pushed their way through the opening. These were not made of void energy. They were real, physical limbs of some colossal creature that existed on the other side.
Thavuk began to laugh, a broken, hysterical sound that echoed under the fractured sky. "Now try and stop that…"
His voice cut off. An eye opened inside the rift.
It was vast, lidless, and impossibly ancient. The moment it focused on him, Thavuk's body lifted from the ground as if seized by an invisible hand. His limbs thrashed while he looked around in panic, no longer the master of the void but its prey. He hung there for a heartbeat in front of the tear in the sky, then his movements turned into violent convulsions.
Something was pulling from inside him. No matter how much he struggled, he could not break free. The void he had worshiped, wielded, and trusted was draining him dry.
His screams lasted only a few seconds before his body began to crumble. Flesh turned gray. Then black. Then ash.
The wind scattered what remained of him into nothing.
"What is happening?" Osvald asked, unable to hide the tension in his voice.
Bernal's eyes never left the rift. "The void decided he was no longer useful. It used him as fuel to stabilize that opening. He wasn't a wielder anymore. He was a sacrifice."
Paul, still panting from the strain of his overdriven state, swallowed. "That's not good."
"No," Bernal agreed quietly. "It's not."
The enormous eye shifted and looked down at them for a long, assessing moment. Then its lid slowly closed.
Something moved behind it. A figure stepped out of the rift and descended through the broken sky as if gravity did not apply to her.
She landed lightly in the air above the battlefield.
It was the naked body of a woman with smooth purple skin that seemed to absorb the light around it. Vast leathery wings spread from her back, their crimson veins pulsing faintly as they stretched wide enough to cast a shadow over the ground below. Her face was beautiful in a sharp, unsettling way, framed by long purple hair that drifted in the air as though she was underwater. Curved horns crowned her brow, elegant and terrible at the same time.
Osvald's breath caught. "That form…"
Bernal nodded grimly. "Iralian. The Void Caller."
But this was not Iralian.
Her eyes held no thought, no recognition, no humanity. They were deep wells of nothingness, staring at the world as if it were already gone.
The body was hers.
Inside it, only a herald of oblivion remained.