Arthur rose slowly from the crater he had carved through two mountains. Rubble slid from his armor as he straightened, the air around him shimmering with residual mana. The last strike had been brutal, his left arm hung useless for a moment, bones fractured, and the dull ache in his chest told him more than one organ had been damaged.
But he walked the path of light.
Warm radiance spread through his body from the core of his chest, threading through veins and bone alike. The fractures fused. The internal bleeding stopped. Flesh restored itself with visible speed until, by the time he stood fully upright, only faint cracks in his armor remained as proof of the damage.
He beat his wings once and rose back into the sky.
As he ascended, he formed a spear of condensed light in his hand and hurled it upward. The weapon split midair into a hundred smaller spears that turned and rained down like a meteor shower onto the colossal skeletal construct Thomas had summoned. Each one detonated on impact in bursts of golden fire that tore through clouds and shook the air with rolling thunder.
When the light faded, the skeleton remained exactly as it was. Not a crack. Not a chip.
Arthur did not pause to measure the result. He charged straight in.
For the first time since the assault began, the giant skeleton moved forward. It lifted its immense bone sword with unsettling smoothness and moved it in a vertical slash. The speed was completely unnatural for something of that size, the blade cutting through the air with a scream that split the clouds apart.
Arthur was already moving before the massive blade completed its arc. He surged upward, wings snapping once, and the bone sword passed beneath him close enough that the displaced air tugged at his armor. As he crossed the skeleton's upper body, his own weapon ignited with blinding brilliance. He swung in a clean, decisive motion and a crescent of light remained carved across the creature's skull after he passed.
The impact forced the enormous head to jerk sideways, clouds tearing apart around it from the force. For a moment it looked as if the strike had done real damage. Then the glow faded, revealing the same dense layer of mana still coating the bone like an invisible armor. Not a single fracture showed beneath it.
A low laugh echoed from beyond the construct.
"You need to break a lot more swords to be able to hurt him," Thomas called out.
He lifted his lance and the air around it darkened as void and shadow poured upward in thick streams. They wrapped around the skeleton like living smoke. The transformation began immediately.
Sinewy muscles formed over the rib cage and arms, stretching and tightening as if a body were being rebuilt over the bones. Tendons appeared along the forearms. Dark flesh crawled across the hands until fingers of hardened muscle closed more firmly around the sword's hilt. The skull thickened as layers of shadowed tissue spread over it, giving the once bare structure a grotesque, half living appearance.
At the same time, the skeleton raised its sword with both hands. The tip pierced into the clouds far above, disappearing from sight.
Dark mana spiraled around the blade in tightening rings, feeding into it from Thomas's lance. The creature's newly formed hands flexed as skin finished growing over them, veins pulsing with purple black energy that traveled straight into the weapon.
The strange part was that the blade was not aligned with Arthur at all.
Thomas watched him and smiled with open malice. "From what I see, you still need more time to bring your domain out. So I will give you a choice. Try to stop that attack and die… or let it pass and live long enough to fight me again."
Arthur did not need to look to understand. He felt the direction of the gathered power through the air itself. The skeleton's sword was aimed north, toward the retreating army, toward Marco and Briva, and far beyond them, toward the lands that led to Castle of Count Errenor.
He had already seen what a weaker swing from this creature could do. This one, fed by void, shadow, and necromancy together, would not simply carve the land. It would erase everything in its path for dozens of kilometers.
Arthur moved. In less than a heartbeat, he placed himself directly in front of the descending blade.
Thomas's smile widened. "Wrong choice."
The skeleton, now with skin running to its elbows, brought the colossal sword down. The edge split the clouds, tore through the sky, and struck Arthur head on.
A deafening impact rolled across the heavens. But nothing followed.
There was no explosion. No beam of void and shadow racing north. No shockwave tearing the land apart.
The blade had stopped. Thomas's eyes narrowed as he tried to understand what he was seeing.
Arthur was still there. He was suspended in the air, both hands raised above his head. In his grip, a new weapon had formed, not a sword, not a shield, but a solid pillar of condensed golden light. The skeleton's blade had struck it and halted as if it had collided with the foundation of the world itself.
The pressure around Arthur was so immense that the air beneath him had turned into a visible spiral, compressing and twisting from the force being redirected downward.
Then the sky changed.
A blinding golden radiance descended from above, pouring over the battlefield like a second sun rising in an instant. The clouds evaporated in its presence. The shadows that wrapped the skeleton recoiled as if burned. Even Thomas instinctively raised an arm to shield his eyes.
"You say I need to break more swords to grow stronger? That was when I was still below S-rank."
The torrent of golden radiance condensed in Arthur's grip and sharpened into a long, flawless blade. He held it in one hand, and with that single weapon he halted the colossal bone sword that was still pressing down with the weight of void, shadow, and necromancy behind it.
"I can draw whichever weapon I wish from my domain… whenever I wish."
With a controlled surge of strength, he forced the skeleton's blade upward. The massive sword was knocked back as if struck by a force far greater than Arthur's size suggested.
High above him, five weapons manifested in a perfect circle, a greatsword, a spear, a bow, a shield, and a staff. They rotated slowly, humming with layered mana, their forms blurring as streams of light began to pass between them. The weapons dissolved into one another, thewas barely visible beneath the tide of shadow and purple b ir shapes collapsing and recombining until only a single, enormous sword remained, far larger than Arthur himself, suspended in the air like a divine verdict waiting to fall.
He did not immediately send it forward.
The skeleton reacted first. It brought its blade across its body in a defensive arc, trying to intercept the incoming threat.
Arthur vanished. He reappeared directly in front of the skeleton's guard and, with effortless precision, stopped the bone sword again before it could fully rise.
At that exact moment, the massive sword above shot forward.
It crossed the distance in an instant and struck the skeleton's skull head on. The tip pierced through bone, mana, and the layers of muscle that Thomas had wrapped around it.
Arthur's voice was calm when he spoke. "Divine Rupture."
Light did not explode outward. It detonated inward.
The sword poured its radiance into the skull, and for a brief second the entire head glazed over in pure gold before beams of light erupted from the eye sockets, the jaw, the cracks in the bone. The glow intensified until the structure could no longer contain it.
Then the head simply ceased to exist.
Where the skull had been, there was only a cloud of dissolving ash and fading particles of light drifting in the air.
The enormous body of the skeleton swayed, momentarily headless, the void and shadow around it flickering in instability.
Thomas looked up at his creation without panic, only interest.
"Not bad," he said, his tone almost impressed. "But not enough."
Darkness surged upward from the monster's core like ink rising through water. Where the skull had been erased, a new structure pushed outward, first bone, then layers of dense muscle weaving over it, and finally a sheath of skin sealing the form. In a matter of seconds, the towering half giant was no longer a skeleton at all but a fully formed abomination, wrapped in a thick aura of dark mana that distorted the air around it.
The transformation did not stop there.
Void gathered like liquid cloth and draped itself over the creature's body, forming a shifting mantle that clung to its torso and flowed down its arms. The same substance poured into its sword, saturating the bone until the original material was barely visible beneath the tide of shadow and void.
Thomas watched with quiet satisfaction. "Let's see what you do now."
The monster moved.
Its sword came down in a slash far faster than anything its size should have allowed. The motion tore through the air with a shriek, compressing space ahead of the blade.
Arthur met it head on.
Their swords collided, and the shockwave burst outward like a silent explosion, carving a ring through the clouds. Despite wielding one of the strongest weapons from his domain, Arthur felt resistance unlike before. Fine fractures raced along the golden blade from the point of impact, spiderwebbing toward the hilt in a single strike.
They exchanged blows in rapid succession, each collision heavier than the last. Arthur replaced two weapons in that short span, summoning new blades as the previous ones shattered under the monster's overwhelming strength. He understood with growing clarity that if this continued at this pace, he would eventually run out of time to respond.
He changed tactics.
Three massive swords manifested around him, each one humming with concentrated divine light. As he charged, one sword shot forward to intercept the creature's next swing, locking the bone blade in place for a fraction of a second. The other two curved in from opposite sides and slammed into the monster's torso simultaneously.
"Divine Rupture."
Twin detonations of light erupted inside the creature's body. The aura around it flickered violently as the internal explosions burned through muscle and skin, blasting open charred cavities along its sides. Patches of flesh disintegrated, exposing glimpses of bone and void beneath.
Arthur did not pause. He was already in motion, his right hand raised with his sword toward the sky. Power gathered along the edge as he prepared to release his hundred slash technique, a descending execution meant to cleave the monster in half before it could stabilize.
He brought the sword down.
But Thomas appeared.
The dark knight came in front of the falling blade with impossible timing, his lance already wrapped in layers of void and shadow. The two weapons struck with a deafening impact that halted Arthur's attack mid descent.
The collision hurled both of them backward several dozen meters through the sky.
Arthur steadied himself, teeth clenched, golden wings beating hard to stop his momentum. His eyes moved past Thomas to the monster behind him.
The charred wounds were already closing. Muscle crawled back over bone. Skin reformed. The dark aura thickened once more as if the damage had been nothing more than an inconvenience.
Arthur's jaw tightened.
He had lost the window.
…
Leo descended through the air and landed beside Zahhak, boots touching the cracked stone with a dull thud.
"I've done what you asked," Leo said, his voice steady but tired.
Zahhak's lips curled into that familiar, wicked smile that never quite reached his eyes. There was always something unsettling about how amused he seemed, no matter the situation.
"Indeed you did," he replied smoothly. "Raise your left hand."
Leo frowned but did as told, lifting his arm without lowering his guard.
Zahhak's tail snapped forward with blinding speed and sank its fangs into Leo's hand.
"Hey!" Leo jerked back instinctively, pulling his arm away as a sharp sting spread through his skin.
"Relax," Zahhak said casually, as if nothing unusual had happened. "I merely gave you my mark."
Leo looked down. On his forearm, dark lines were already forming beneath the skin, twisting and shaping themselves into the image of a black serpent coiled tightly around his arm. The mark pulsed once with faint energy before settling into stillness.
"You could have warned me," Leo muttered, irritation clear in his voice.
Zahhak's grin widened. "Yes. I could have."
He turned slightly and pointed toward a distant corner of the ruined space. "I will open a portal for you there."
Leo didn't move. His eyes remained fixed on Zahhak, annoyance slowly turning into impatience.
"Haven't you forgotten something?"
Zahhak tilted his head with an exaggerated look of confusion. "Have I?"
Leo's gaze sharpened. "I don't have time for games."
Zahhak let out a long sigh, as if deeply disappointed. "You are no fun." His expression shifted, the amusement fading into something more serious. "Fine. I will tell you what you need to know about the corruption. Listen carefully."
Leo crossed his arms, his attention fully on him.
Zahhak began to speak.