Soul Devourer re-knitted his vaporous form, a midnight silhouette floating over the shattered earth. His gaze settled on Jared, who was still struggling in the distance, and his voice coiled out like a razor. “That was your ultimate strike? Pathetic. It did not even tickle me!”
Jared dropped to one knee. The sword in his fist became a crutch, its tip gouging a trembling groove while he hauled air into bruised lungs. Sweat and blood blurred together on his face, disbelief widening his eyes.
*How can this be? I have thrown every hidden card, even tapped the very cadence of ultimate energy, and still cannot touch his core…
*A moment ago, I felt unstoppable, certain I could crush that ancient cur with one squeeze. Reality lands like ice water, dousing every shred of swagger.*
*Did I level the entire Ninefold Heaven only because the adversaries were weak?*
*Up against a monster that survived from ancient times, my so-called power is laughable, and he has not even finished rebuilding his physical body.*
Soul Devourer watched Jared’s spiraling despair and drank it in.
“Now you see the gulf between us,” he purred. “Kneel, beg, gift me your soul and that Beast-Subduing Tower. Perhaps I shall grant you a swift death!”
Jared lifted his head and swiped the blood from his mouth. Shock still lingered, but something feral now burned behind it, a cornered wolf’s glare that knew solo heroics were done.
“Beg? In your dreams,” he snarled, forcing his body upright in one convulsive surge.
He whirled toward the restless Draconian lines behind him. “Coall! Cyanna! Quit spectating, move! We end this mangy relic together. Tear him apart!”
Honor, duels, the pretense of fairness—rubbish when life balanced on a blade’s edge. All Jared wanted now was Soul Devourer’s annihilation.
“Roar! Brothers, carve up that antique and avenge Mr. Chance!” Coall’s bass thundered across the field.
First into the fray, the black-scaled giant erupted with a roar that cracked the very sky.
“Form the Myriad Godslayer Formation!” Cyanna’s crisp command sliced through the troop. Draconian soldiers snapped into motion.
Hundreds of throats unleashed a cataclysmic dragon chant. Their killing auras fused, knitting into a single colossal energy dragon that barreled forward, intent on pulverizing all in its path.
“Ants remain ants,” Soul Devourer hissed. “If you crave death, I shall oblige!”
With a contemptuous snort, he swelled, drawing the very marrow of the Soulgrave Abyss into himself. Winds howled as his vast soul collided head-on with the charging Draconians.
Coall, long past patience, met the impact with another roar that shattered what little still stood of the surrounding void.
With a thunderous rush, the obsidian dragon hurled itself through the murk of Soulgrave Abyss. Clad in rolling murderous qi, its mountainous bulk looked like a range of burning black peaks crashing forward in a single unstoppable tide.
“Myriad Godslayer Formation, rise!” Cyanna cried, her voice as cold and sharp as winter iron.
At once a pillar of emerald light burst from her, pure dragon aura made visible, spearing into the clouds to mark the heart of the formation.
Hundreds of Draconian beasts answered her call. No longer circling at random, they wheeled along an ancient pattern, their roars folding into a single chord while rivers of dragon essence fused into the newborn array.
An apparition took shape overhead: a five-clawed golden dragon, several times larger than Coall’s true body, sculpted entirely from condensed power yet gleaming as though forged of living metal.
Every scale shone like hammered gold. Its eyes burned twin suns, and the pressure of its presence alone drained all color from sky and earth.
This was the Draconians’ oldest war array, a killing engine that gathered the might of a legion into one sovereign beast. The manifestation bellowed, a primeval roar dredged from the dawn of creation.
Its titanic claw tore open the air, scattering laws of reality like sand, and raked straight for Soul Devourer. Where that claw passed, space cracked like brittle glass, exposing a hurricane of black void currents behind the shattered pane.
“Parlor tricks! Ten-Thousand Soul Banner, appear!” Soul Devourer spat, the first hint of caution sharpening his tone. No longer mocking, he loosed a shriek that made the abyss vibrate.
From deep within his spectral mass surged a banner blacker than midnight. On its surface, billions of anguished shades writhed and wailed, clawing at the silk as though it were the walls of hell.
