Gen's mind raced. The three-tailed Sky Demon was a nightmare that had haunted them for months. The Greedy Shark was a predator that fed on their will to fight, growing stronger with every desperate blow they landed. Handling either one alone would have pushed them to their absolute limit. Now, trapped in this echoing stone chamber with both of them, the situation felt impossible.
He felt the cold sweat prickle on his neck. Panic was a luxury they couldn't afford.
His eyes never left the two beasts as he spoke, his voice low and urgent, cutting through the chamber's tense silence. "Listen. I need you all to trust me. When I tell you to move, you move back. No questions."
The group tightened around him. No one argued. Lorel shifted to his left, her pink Lantern's light a steady pulse. Liang took his right, the Kalash of Elements hovering over his palm. Chubbs and Kang Mao fell back a step, forming a defensive line behind them—Chubbs with his fists raised, Kang Mao with his body low, ready to shift.
Their formation was set.
Across the hall, the two predators assessed each other. The three-tailed Sky Demon's glossy black exoskeleton rippled, plates contracting and sliding over its face once more, forming the seamless, emotionless helmet it wore in battle. It had fought Gen before. It would not underestimate him again. Its head tilted toward the Greedy Shark, a silent communication passing between apex hunters.
"The boy in the middle," the Sky Demon rasped, its voice the sound of grinding chitin. "Take him out, and their unity shatters. He is their glue."
The Greedy Shark let out a wet, chittering laugh. "Consider it done."
It flipped onto its back, its seven barbed tails splaying out like the spokes of a wheel. Then, it began to spin.
It became a blur of iridescent scales and glinting stingers, a living shuriken the size of a cart. The air screamed as it tore forward, aimed at Gen's chest with impossible speed.
"Now!" Gen shouted.
The group split apart in a heartbeat. Gen shot sideways, propelled by the condensed force of the Eternal Body's Second Door. Lorel and Liang shot upward. Chubbs and Kang Mao dove to the flanks.
Gen was the prime target. And the Sky Demon knew it.
As the shuriken-whirl of the Greedy Shark shot past the space he'd just vacated, the ground in front of Gen erupted. The Sky Demon burst from the stone floor as if swimming through earth, its three poisonous tail-stingers already arcing in a coordinated strike for his head and throat.
Gen's body tensed. He didn't have room to dodge. He thrust his right hand forward, the index finger glowing with a point of annihilating black light.
**End of the World Finger.**
The Sky Demon's faceless helmet seemed to smirk. In mid-lunge, it twisted its torso with serpentine flexibility, letting the blinding beam sear past its shoulder. The technique blasted a perfectly cylindrical hole through the far wall, but it had missed. The beast used the momentum of its dodge to coil in the air, its body whipping around to ensnare him.
At the same moment, the Greedy Shark shrieked, having carved a circle in the air. It redirected itself, the shuriken of scale and tail coming around for a second pass at Gen's exposed back.
He was cornered.
A sphere of soft pink light, warm and solid, expanded in the space between Gen and the spinning shark. **Lorel's Unbound Lantern.** The shuriken struck the glowing barrier with a sound like a thousand bells breaking. Pink and purple sparks erupted in a violent shower. The Lantern's light dimmed, and Lorel gasped from above, but it held—for just two seconds.
It was enough.
Gen shifted his weight, evading the Sky Demon's coiling grab by a hair's breadth. He pivoted on his reinforced heel and threw a straight punch, not with his fist, but with the hardened air encasing his forearm from the Second Door. The blow was a solid ***CRUMP*** of compressed force that connected with the Sky Demon's side, knocking it into a spiraling retreat.
From his higher vantage, Liang pointed. **White Lightning from the Abyss of the kalash** fell not as a rain, but as a single, focused spear of crackling energy, aiming to pin the staggered Sky Demon to the floor. The beast dove headfirst into the solid stone, vanishing just before the lightning struck.
"Chubbs, now!" Liang yelled.
Chubbs had been waiting. He was already on the ground where the Sky Demon had disappeared. He stomped down with his full weight, augmented by **Jingdao**, using the **Final Touch**. The stone floor for ten meters around him didn't crack—it liquefied for an instant into a pool of shimmering dust.
The Sky Demon erupted from the earth five meters to the left, forced out by the shockwave. Its eyes glinted. It had expected the attack.
But Kang Mao was already there. He had predicted the dodge. He swung with the Jingdao of **Ogre's Hammer**, a massive, invisible maul of pure concussive force, aiming to crush the beast into paste against the wall.
This time, the Sky Demon did not try to flee. It dropped low, closing the distance with terrifying speed before the Hammer' arc could complete. It got inside Kang Mao's guard, its body almost pressed against his. There was no room to swing.
Kang Mao's eyes went wide. *Too close.*
One of the Sky Demon's whip-like tails flickered. Not a stab, but a precise, lancing thrust. It struck Kang Mao's chest with a sound like a nail hitting slate.
***PING.***
The **Jingdao of the Born Monolith** held. The tail-tip did not pierce. But the concentrated force did not vanish. It transferred through the defense, a shockwave of pure impact that lifted Kang Mao off his feet and sent him skidding backwards across the hall, a thin trickle of blood escaping his lips as he slammed into the base of a pillar.
It had pierced the Born Monolith's *effect*. Not the skin, but the technique itself.
Gen's face darkened. *This is bad.*
The Greedy Shark, having shaken off the Lantern's sting, appeared behind Gen without a sound. It wasn't spinning now. It stood on its hind legs, and its front talons lashed out not with bestial swipes, but with clean, white arcs—the precise, cutting forms of a master swordsman. It had learned.
Gen pushed the Eternal Body to its limit. He weaved and ducked, but the claws were everywhere. One grazed his ribs, scoring a line of fire across his reinforced skin. Another glanced off his shoulder, leaving a shallow, stinging wound. He gave ground, retreating step by step, until his back was nearly to a wall. He saw an opening, a fraction of a second where the beast overextended. He didn't punch. He dropped and kicked out sideways, his foot clad in crystallized air landing square in the center of the Greedy Shark's chest.
There was a deep, hollow *THOOM*. The beast's chest cavity visibly compressed. It was lifted off its feet and hurled backwards, straight into the path of the relentless white lightning Liang was still directing from above.
The impact was deafening. A miniature sun of blue-white light and purple scales bloomed in the center of the hall. The Greedy Shark shrieked, a sound of genuine pain.
Lorel didn't wait. Her seven **Supremacy Swords** fell from the ceiling like the needles of a divine seamstress. *THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.* One after another, they pierced the creature's hardened hide with shocking ease, pinning its limbs and two of its tails to the stone floor. It writhed, trapped.
Chubbs saw his chance. The **Lightning Balloon** technique flared around him,. He became a blur of motion, appearing directly above the pinned beast. The rings of power around his body condensed around his descending leg. He fell like a meteor, like a god's judgment, aiming to stomp the Greedy Shark's core into dust.
The Sky Demon's face, hidden behind its exoskeleton, seemed to darken. *They let me harm their companion on purpose… to halt my attention. The fool.*
It shrieked and dove for the ground again, a black streak aimed at Chubbs's exposed back.
"Not this time!" Gen was already in its path. The **Sword of Infinity** materialized
The Sky Demon actually laughed, a dry, scraping sound. "You still have not learned. It is cool light… but it has no p—"
The Sword of Infinity's blade, forged from Gen's focused will and the principle of endless space, did not stop at the exoskeleton. It passed *through* the creature's defense.
The blade sheared through the Sky Demon's shoulder before its exoskeleton could fully reinforce.
The laughter died. The Sky Demon spasmed in mid-air, not from pain, but from a sudden, profound lack of understanding. Black ichor, thick as oil, spurted from the clean wound. It clutched at its shoulder, its movements jerky, and stumbled back, landing hard on the floor.
At the same moment, Chubbs landed.
His foot connected with the center of the pinned Greedy Shark. The shockwave was silent for a heartbeat, then the sound caught up—a deep, subterranean ***BOOM*** that shook the entire castle. Dust rained from the ceiling. A web of cracks radiated fifty meters across the floor from the point of impact.
A grin split Gen's face. The Greedy Shark's evolution wasn't complete. It could still be hurt. It could still be pinned. *We have a chance.*
But his grin froze.
The wounded Sky Demon did not cry out. Its exoskeleton began to *move*. Plates slid and separated with a sound like grinding bones. It was using **Fendow** and **Heidow** in tandem, not to create, but to unmake and recombine its own body. The sleek, intelligent humanoid form unraveled. The exoskeleton thickened, sprouting jagged spikes. Its limbs elongated, becoming more bestial, more primal. It was shedding its learned refinement, returning to a older, rawer, and far more violently powerful state.
It let out a shriek that was pure, undiluted malice.
The still-celebrating Chubbs, exhausted from his ultimate technique, only felt a cold presence strike at him. The Sky Demon's three tails, now thicker and covered in brutal hooks, spun down like falling pile-drivers.
Chubbs tried to use his explosive speed to get out. He managed to twist his torso, but he was too slow, too drained.
One of the hammer-like tails caught him on the shoulder.
***CRACK.***
The sound was sickeningly clear. Chubbs was thrown like a ragdoll, his body carving a trench in the stone floor before rolling to a stop twenty meters away. He pushed himself up with his good arm, his face white, his right shoulder hanging at a wrong, broken angle.
At the same time, the Greedy Shark, though wounded, was not finished. It ripped itself free from the Supremacy Swords with a spray of purple blood and scale fragments. It saw Kang Mao, still leaning against the pillar, catching his breath. It flipped onto its back and became the shuriken again.
It struck the Born Monolith defense Kang Mao hastily raised. *SCREE-CRACK.* Again. *CRACK.* A third time. *CRACK.*
On the fourth impact, Kang Mao's strained Jingdao finally gave. The monolith shattered. He was flung across the hall like a discarded stone, crashing into a recessed wall with a heavy thud and slumping to the floor, unmoving.
Above, Lorel and Liang maneuvered desperately, trying to evade the newly transformed, rampaging Sky Demon. Lorel sent beams of concentrated pink light slashing at it from all angles. The Sky Demon didn't dodge. It used its tails as swords, each swing a black blur that met the Supremacy Swords head-on with a sound like shattering crystal. Lorel gasped, feeling each parry vibrate back through her spirit. One of her swords flickered and died. She was forced to retreat.
The Sky Demon finished its brutal deflection and shot towards Liang. He was the slowest, still weakened by the old poison in his veins. He tried to move, to raise the Kalash, but his body wouldn't obey fast enough.
A cold, chitinous hand closed around his throat. He was slammed against the castle wall, the impact driving the air from his lungs. He hung there, pinned, the Sky Demon's pitiless eyes inches from his face.
*It's happening again.*
The thought was cold and clear in Liang's mind, cutting through the panic. Kirin had targeted him. The Sky Demon had poisoned him. Now it had him again. He saw Kang Mao down, Chubbs clutching his broken shoulder, Lorel being pushed back, Gen fighting alone against the Shark. Why was it always him? Why was he always the weak link? Even Chubbs, with all his bluster, was faring better. A dark, resentful heat bloomed in his chest. The glimpses he'd stolen of those symbols on the parchment… the whispers of a different path… if he just used a little of that understanding, it would be different. It *had* to be.
Before he could act on the thought, Gen was there.
"LET MY FRIEND GO!"
Gen's roar filled the chamber. He didn't use his fist. He planted his feet, pointed his finger at the wall *next* to Liang and the Sky Demon, and unleashed the **End of the World Finger** at point-blank range.
The world turned black and silent.
The beam did not hit the Sky Demon. It hit the ancient, magically reinforced castle wall. And it erased it.
The Sky Demon, still holding Liang, was wrenched sideways. Liang was torn from its grip. The Greedy Shark, mid-pounce, was yanked off course. Gen, Lorel, Chubbs—all of them were dragged, tumbling through the air, out of the shattered chamber and into the void beyond.
They fell, a tangled group of wounded teenagers and snarling monsters, through a blinding haze of golden dust and debris, and landed in a heap on a new, unforgiving surface.
The impact drove the remaining breath from Gen's lungs. He pushed himself up, his vision swimming.
They were no longer in a hall. They were in an **immaculate, colossal plaza**.