The atmosphere in the canyon crackled with unbearable tension. The humanoid beast in dark crimson armor moved like death incarnate. Every thrust of its spear was precise, lethal, and dripping with a dark energy that sought to corrode everything it touched.
Dustin drove his footwork to the breaking point. His sword light moved like liquid steel, weaving and parrying through the storm of spear shadows as he desperately searched for an opening.
“This can’t go on,” he thought, his mind racing. The beast’s third form was not only faster and stronger than before, but its combat skills were nearly flawless. Worse, its energy seemed boundless. A purely defensive fight was a losing one. He needed to find a single, decisive moment to strike.
Dustin deliberately left an opening, allowing his body to hesitate for a fraction of a second as he evaded a tricky lateral stab.
The humanoid beast’s crimson eyes flared violently. There was no way it would let such an opening slip by. Its black spear shot forward like a viper striking from the dark, gaining even more speed as it drove straight for Dustin’s unguarded side.
Just as the spear tip was about to pierce flesh, Dustin’s eyes blazed with sudden intensity.
“Now’s my chance!” he exclaimed. Instead of dodging, he channeled all his internal energy into his left palm. A deep cyan glow radiated from his palm, faintly shaping a swirling symbol of light and shadow. With unerring precision, he slammed his palm directly against the incoming spear tip.
“Origin Return Palm!”
A deep, resonant sound rang out. It wasn’t the clash of metal, but rather the hum of energy being forcibly absorbed and neutralized.
Dustin’s strike, infused with the essence of his mystical pure energy, wasn’t a direct attack. Instead, it used a profound principle of deflection and dissolution that momentarily bound the rampant dark energy.
The thrust of the dark spear faltered, just for an instant. But for someone of Dustin’s caliber, that was all the opening he needed.
The sword in his right hand moved, but it wasn’t one of his swift, wind-quick sword techniques. This strike seemed slow, as if it were pulling the very fabric of the canyon’s energy along with it.
The sword blazed with brilliant cyan light, and countless intricate runes flickered in and out of existence within that radiance.
From it surged a vast, primal force-something that felt as old as the world itself-driving back the suffocating darkness that filled the canyon.
“Eternal Severance Strike!” Dustin’s voice was low but resonant.
As the final word fell, his sword slowly thrust forward. The strike wasn’t fast, yet it gave the overwhelming sense that it could not be dodged or resisted. It felt as though this sword didn’t target space, but time and fate itself.
The humanoid beast seemed to sense the ultimate threat contained within that strike. It tried to yank its spear back, but the tip was still held fast by Dustin’s palm.
It let out an inhuman, metallic shriek. The dark crimson armor over its body glowed intensely as it tried to muster its strongest defense, and the crimson flames beneath its helmet flickered wildly. Yet, all resistance was futile before the “Eternal Severance Strike”.
Dustin’s longsword silently pierced through the hastily erected layers of dark energy barriers and touched the center of the beast’s chest armor. But there was no earth-shattering explosion or gruesome spray of gore.
For a heartbeat, time itself seemed to freeze. With the point of contact as its epicenter, countless hairline cracks of cyan light spread like a spiderweb across the beast’s entire body.
The seemingly indestructible dark crimson armor, along with the body beneath, began to crumble inch by inch under the sword intent that carried both annihilation and rebirth.
