Everything slows down.
Time bends, reality falters, and I see— I see everything.
Three blade-arms came down at once, slicing through the air with deadly precision, as if death itself had taken form.
My sword met them.
"CRAAAAAAAAAAAAACK"
The three blades were deflected.
But the force was far too much.
I was thrown backward.
The world spun.
Sound exploded in muffled waves, like drums in a deep ocean.
But I didn't stop.
The rift opened— as if it had always been there, waiting for me.
I stepped in and came out above the monster, high above. At the exact second.
I descended like a spiraling bolt of lightning.
Like a hurricane of steel.
Spinning with the fury of the heavens.
My blade fell.
"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHH," the beast screamed.
One of its massive eyes was shattered.
Not sliced— destroyed and blown apart, I had annihilated it.
But… then.
Right in front of me, inches from my face, the purple beam of living destruction hovered.
Liquid death.
I didn't think— I just acted. My eyes flared, golden-yellow lightning danced in my pupils and then… I fired.
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM"
Two brutal beams shot from my eyes. They collided with the tail's beam.
The impact wasn't meant to win— it was to survive. To be pushed back instead of turned into dungeon ash. And thankfully, it worked.
I was hurled backward with force, my body dragged through the air like an out-of-control missile. But the Guardian made his move too.
Black rifts burst around me, and from within came the bombardment. Purple lasers surrounded me like a rat caught in a trap.
There were so many, it didn't matter what I did— dodging them all was impossible.
Five hit me. One tore through my shoulder, pierced the armor, and left a hole in my body.
Clean as it was cruel.
You could stick a finger straight through it.
The pain wasn't a scream.
It was silence.
The silence before collapse.
But the Guardian was bleeding too. Honestly, the suicidal mode wasn't by chance— I was seizing every opportunity to put my plan into motion. Even if it cost me pieces of flesh.
Instead of worrying about my body, I launched another attack. Rifts appeared in front of his wounded eyes and hundreds of blue lightning bolts exploded into his monstrous face.
The exchange was brutal.
Violent.
We were both thrown apart.
The Guardian? Wounded.
But only in the eyes.
His limbs were still whole.
His tail, untouched.
And me?
Bloody.
Exhausted.
Shattered.
I could barely recognize my own body.
And yet…
Four minutes.
Four minutes had passed since I started trying to destroy that damned chalice.
I didn't even know if I could hold out for one more minute.
If my final plan didn't work…
Then here…
This would be my end.
The Guardian had managed to push me far enough from the chalice to create what he considered a safe perimeter. At least in his eyes.
Far enough to weaken my attempts to strike it accurately.
So I stopped— following the flow of the fight, I stopped attacking the artifact and instead, every dimensional rift, every bolt, every spark was aimed at those damned laser-spitting eyes.
His eyes, in my quick analysis, were his only visible weakness.
The Guardian roared with his soundless voice a sound that shattered the edges of the mind, as if the world were fracturing from within.
He still had energy. A lot.
And he used it mercilessly.
The dungeon's artificial sky dissolved into shades of purple, black, and poisonous green, as new continuous beams sliced everything. Ever more violent attacks.
Ever more destructive and powerful— but also increasingly desperate.
I had to admit, I was a truly annoying cockroach hard to kill, hard to catch.
But I was also beginning to feel desperate.
Yet I wasn't defeated.
My entire body was cloaked in blue lightning.
It crackled over my skin, between the joints of my armor, through my hair.
I was lightning incarnate.
We exchanged blows. Blade-arms versus incandescent sword— every move too fast for any normal person to follow. Shockwaves exploded atop the mountain with every clash. The summit was unrecognizable. No one would believe this place once resembled the ruins of an ancient castle. It had all turned to dust.
And then… it began.
The plan.
It wasn't a technique.
It was an absurd idea.
Impossible.
And my only chance.
Ten oval rifts formed around me, glowing like warped mirrors, bending space.
The Guardian didn't even react, and because of that— didn't hesitate. His attacks kept raining down like hellfire.
Thousands of lasers and continuous beams shot toward me, but they didn't hit me. They entered the rifts and came out… right at him.
They exploded against his carapace, his limbs, his eyes. One of the continuous beams entered one oval rift and exited from another behind the monster.
The result?
Two of his own arms were torn off with brutal force. No glory, no warning— just pain.
The Guardian screamed— not with sound, but with rage.
But I… paid too.
Five of my oval rifts collapsed at once under the pressure and violence. That caused a massive imbalance in my energy and magical control. I felt my organs twist, everything inside me burning like a volcano erupting.
I spat blood a crimson surge, hot and alive, signaling my imminent death.
The metallic taste flooded my mouth, my vision wavered... but I didn't stop.
Five new oval rifts opened. Glowing. Singing. Tearing space once again. Shimmering cracks against the collapse, reborn even as I stood on the edge of disappearing.
We ran. Both of us. Beasts at impossible speeds. I dodged blades, beams, claws, streaks of light— trying to keep the rifts between me and death. Trying to redirect destruction. Turn chaos into chance. And it… to kill me.
But then, the Guardian changed. He stopped. Straightened. Stood firm like a war tower. A posture of ending. As if even his artificial patience had run dry.
The whole mountain trembled. The ground wept. The sky… went dark.
The red sun vanished like a candle. And in its place came shadow. Gray, dense, devastating. A black rift, as vast as the summit of the seventh mountain, began to open in the sky. And I understood: the end.
The scorpion tail stopped. What came next was worse.
The carapace opened— fissures between the chitin plates. And from within, black snakes. The same ones from the Sixth Mountain. The same ones that bring death. They returned. Thousands. Hissing, emerging, teleporting through micro-rifts around me. Trying to bite. Just one would be enough. And it would all be over.
But my Nexus— my pair of gloves— held the final card.
A rune flared. A magic cry thundered.
And then the world turned into a storm.
A hurricane of lightning. Electric shocks in a ten-meter radius. Everything became light, thunder, destruction. The snakes were undone, swept away, annihilated.
But the Guardian wasn't made of flesh. He was made of hatred. Of purpose. Of death.
The lightning blinded me just long enough to miss the subtle portal forming behind me. The bastard had disappeared and reappeared at my back— savagely braving the lightning storm that had shredded part of his eyes.
And before the electricity faded… I felt it. The pain.
One of the blade-arms pierced through my abdomen. Cold, metallic. And hot… far too hot with my own blood.
My eyes nearly shut. But my magic didn't. Not yet.
I unleashed gravity a brutal, blinding wave that launched me away like a projectile. Leaving behind a trail of blood. And a hole in me. Literally.
And he… smiled. The bastard smiled. As if he had won. As if this was the end.
And then, from the sky… she descended.
A purple spear. It wasn't just a weapon. It was a serpent. Made of mist, energy, pure hatred. Tearing through the massive rift above the dungeon. Falling. Falling. Toward me. Slow as fate. Unstoppable as death.
The weight of oppression dropped on me like an open abyss in the sky. It felt like the world had split in two. My magic... vanished. An immense pressure crushed everything inside me. There was no air. No escape. I couldn't move. The end was in my eyes, and it wasn't a metaphor. It was cold, solid reality, about to fall like a sentence passed.
I turned inward, desperate, tearing through every corner of my mind, searching for a way out. Anything. Even the Guardian had stopped. Watching from afar, as if he knew nothing could be done. The serpent of black energy that cursed spear from the end of time—continued its descent toward me. Slow. Relentless. And I couldn't even lift a finger.
Until something burned in my hand.
On my finger.
Like a star igniting under my skin, the ring that cursed ring I had obtained in this hellish dungeon—began to burn, to pulse, to sing within me. And then, as if something cracked inside, a fracture in the prison… spatial magic awakened. Only it. And it was enough.
I went all in.
The final move. The last step of the plan I'd been shaping since the second minute of this insane fight.
I raised my right hand like a spear, even as my muscles screamed, as my bones cracked. The ten oval portals that had once surrounded me fused in front of my palm. Like mirrors being melted together, they became a single two-meter rift. A tear in the fabric of reality.
And then I thrust my hand in.
I shoved my entire arm into that rupture, screaming like a madman.
My veins burst. My blood poured like an open river. My whole body trembled, unable to withstand that power. But I didn't stop.
The serpent arrived.
A violet flash. The sound of the end. And then... explosion.
Silence.
For an eternal instant, it stopped. The purple serpent froze right where my arm touched the rift. As if trapped in a moment frozen in time. Everything around vanished—sound, wind, pain.
And then, like shattering glass, a new sound.
The rift in my hand expanded.
It grew.
It tore everything apart, as if my palm were the womb of an alternate world. And the serpent—the colossal cursed spear made of pure hatred and energy was sucked inside.
And emerged. Far away.
At the top of the mountain, directly above the chalice.
It pierced through the rift... and dropped like a thunderbolt straight onto the cursed object. The impact lit up the world. The earth cried. The mountain shook.
I smiled. Nearly unconscious. Nearly dead. But with just enough strength for one final gesture.
I raised my left arm. Covered in blood. And lifted my middle finger. At the Guardian.
He screamed. A beast's roar of absolute fury. Running. Leaping. Desperate. Trying to reach the chalice as everything around him collapsed.
I fell.
I blacked out before I could see the result. But deep down... I knew. He wouldn't make it.
The mountain screamed. Not with sound, but with fracture. Rifts opened in every direction, spitting rocks, flames, and distorted energy, as if the world were being rewritten by force. The purple serpent twisted over the chalice and, upon impact, didn't just obliterate it—it tore reality around it. A vortex of darkness devoured the mountaintop, and a bluish-purple flash expanded in violent waves, pushing everything outward.
Then came the collapse. A dry sound, like a divine crack, and everything around shattered like cracked porcelain. Dimensional lights swallowed the Guardian, Glenn, and everyone else, hurling them out of the dungeon like mere discarded fragments of an ancient nightmare. The world rejected them. The final explosion thundered like the end of all things and, in the very next moment... a hidden cave in demon territory.