“How arrogant and ignorant beyond measure!” Soul Devourer roared. Jared’s casual scorn had burned away his final thread of restraint; whatever reason he possessed went up in smoke. For ten millennia, he had roamed unbeaten through the realms; never once had anyone dared humiliate him so.
“Very well,” he bellowed, six wings shaking the air. “Let us see how many of my skills your strange domain can quell. Will it shield you from the Ten-Thousand-Soul Devourer, forged from a billion slaughtered souls over ten thousand years?”
All six tattered wings snapped wide instantly. Centuries of hoarded demonic aura erupted in a tidal wave of midnight flame. His jaws released an ancient incantation, every jagged syllable steeped in venom and curse. Each word curled the air into a tomb-cold wind, and space itself shook with the wails of the restless dead.
“Soul Devour! Ten-Thousand-Soul Devourer!”
Thunder boomed, louder than mountains shattering. It felt as though the gate to the depths of hell had swung wide. A flood of half-seen wraiths burst forth—contorted faces, severed limbs, antique garments—like black water unleashed from a ruptured dam. They poured from every pore of Soul Devourer’s flesh, then from his yawning maw, spiraling toward Jared in a storm of shrieks.
An odor of raw resentment energy rolled across the scorched landscape, dense and poisonous, bearing the soul energy of a Heavenly Immortal and beyond. In the blink of an eye, that fury congealed into a sea of pitch-black souls thousands of yards wide. Billions of wraiths surfaced only to sink, screaming without end. They tore at one another, yet every fragment of their hunger reached outward, eager to sink its teeth into any living thing nearby.
The blend of perfect spite and absolute death chilled the super-heated abyss until it felt like an icebound purgatory. This was one of Soul Devourer’s true trump cards, a life-bound soul ocean forged over ten millennia of razed cities and murdered kingdoms. Where that ocean spread, breath and thought alike were silenced, flesh perished, souls vanished.
Now, the inky tide surged toward Jared’s modest Chaotic Fire Domain, intent on drowning both the gray field and the man who stood inside it. Another heartbeat and the hungry dark would have swallowed him whole. Yet even as that world-ending surf blotted out the horizon, Jared’s expression did not change. He did not even so much as glance at the oncoming sea of souls.
He simply lifted his left hand and pressed his index and middle fingers together in the quiet posture of a sword. At his fingertips, a dot of crimson-gold light awakened—pure, blistering, and sovereign—as though born to burn every stain from creation.
“Earthfire True Flame… Heavenburn,” he murmured, as if reciting the simplest fact in the universe.
The abyss answered with a draconic roar that split stone and thought alike. The pinprick of light detonated. What burst forth was no ordinary flame, but a hundred-yard fire dragon wrought entirely from the purest Earthfire True Flame. Each gleaming scale caught the crimson-gold radiance and hurled it back in blinding shards. Its head was regal, and its eyes held fires that would never go out.
Earthfire True Flame, the most supreme positive energy, was the natural bane of the Soul-Devouring Technique’s ultimate negative energy. Without hesitation, the fire dragon dived straight into the black ocean of souls.
Hiss!
Steam screamed like molten oil striking snow, like sunrise lancing through the darkest night. Where the crimson-gold flame passed, the heavy, tar-thick waters vaporized in an instant. Uncounted wraiths found no time to wail as the blazing positive energy reduced them to curls of pale smoke. Released at last, they drifted into the heavens, freed forever.
Within the collapsing sea, the scorching dragon carved paths like a red-hot blade sliding through congealed butter, unstoppable and triumphant. In the span of no more than two or three heartbeats, the boundless, nightmare-black sea of souls shuddered. The dragon speared through the dark sea and branded a yawning void where solid essence had once churned. That hollow ballooned outward with nightmarish speed, devouring everything its burning jaws could reach.
“N-No! This is impossible!” Soul Devourer shouted.
Fury drained from his face, leaving only naked dread. He even forgot to hold the sea of souls together, staring mutely while a lifetime of black sorcery was scrubbed away by scarlet-gold fire. “Earthfire True Flame… That’s Gerald Earthfire’s secret technique! H-How are you able to use it? That old geezer is still alive, isn’t he? H-He imparted the technique to you, didn’t he?”
Jared only tilted his head. The half-smile curling at one corner of his mouth stung Soul Devourer worse than any blade. An answer came, not in words but in light, as a single beam of sword light split heaven and earth.
Fire still thundered around them when Jared moved. Somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, the Dragonslayer Sword slid into his right hand. Its mottled gray blade looked plain, almost ancient, yet the instant he raised it, a killing intent sharp enough to sever fate itself erupted skyward.
“Dragonslayer! Armybreaker!” Jared’s shout echoed like rolling steel.
No flourishes. No prelude. Just one brutal, vertical cleave. A beam of sword energy, only thirty feet long yet forged to perfect density, flashed gold-gray. Within it churned chaotic gray light, while crimson-gold Earthfire True Flame coiled around its exterior, forming a blade of gold and ash.
Where the beam of sword energy passed, it engraved a hair-thin black scar that refused to heal. It was indescribably fast and ruthless, locked onto the very soul it had set its eyes on. Cold terror drenched Soul Devourer. Battle instincts honed at the High Immortal Realm screamed of death. Six wing-like membranes beat frantically, spraying black-red demon light. At the last possible instant, he hurled his body sideways, skidding dozens of yards across empty air.
Swoosh!
The void itself shrieked as the blade tore past. The beam of sword energy skimmed Soul Devourer’s shoulder, then carved into the distant rock wall. There was no thunderous boom, no blazing eruption—only a silence deeper than any tomb.
A single chasm came into being, straight as a ruler, scarcely wider than three feet, yet so unfathomably deep the eye could not find its end. Its walls were polished to a glassy sheen, as though a divine blade had sliced stone and left a mirror behind. Without a whisper, the fissure raced across the cliff face, severing the mountain like a butcher’s cleaver.
Along its rim, every shard of rock had crystallized—a grotesque beauty born of impossible heat and the razor-keen sword intent that both melted and carved in a single breath.
High above, Soul Devourer recoiled. He had slipped clear of the killing stroke, yet the backwash of Jared’s sword energy still grazed the three leathery wings on his left side.
Tissue that once repelled Heavenly Immortal blows tore apart in an instant, and a palm-sized chunk spiraled away, trailing black-crimson blood. The gore rained into the magma river below, where it hissed and smoked like acid on ice.
