“Hahaha! Fire Spirit fossil, bullying a half-dead phantom proves nothing. Face me, the demon lord!” The laughter rolled like thunder laced with inferno.
A mountainous hand, forged entirely from pitch-black flame, lunged from the rift and clamped around the descending column of starlight as if seizing prey. “Fire Demon Lord?” The Fire Spirit Lord’s voice, for the first time, betrayed a note of stern fury.
Flame-wrought fingers collided with cosmic light; no deafening blast followed, only the hiss of two absolute laws gnawing at one another.
Starlight tried to cleanse the demon flame; the demon flame strove to consume the starfire. For a breathless span, neither side yielded, deadlocked in silent annihilation. Jared watched the Fire Demon Lord’s arrival, brow knotting tight.
*For crying out loud, why does that walking bonfire always pick my battles to crash?*
Back in the cataclysm of Level Six, the Fire Demon Lord had appeared from nowhere, ripping the Soul Devourer out of the Fire Spirit Lord’s grasp.
Now, just as starlight was about to erase the fiend forever, that same blazing tyrant tore the heavens open once more.
Within the single heartbeat of stunned silence, the Soul Devourer’s last shred of essence—thin as a needle, black as midnight—shrieked like a cornered beast.
It wriggled free of the star-forged shackles, then shot downward in a hair-fine streak and vanished into the boiling sea of blood below, leaving only echoing terror behind.
“Hahaha! I live, I live! Fire Spirit Lord! Jared Chance! You crawling Draconians! Mark my words, when I return, you will repay this humiliation a hundredfold!” Soul Devourer howled from the depths, its voice bubbling up through the crimson waves like a curse.
Hope, so recently kindled in Jared and the Draconian army, guttered out in a single icy gust. The future that had seemed within reach was stomped flat beneath the returning tread of the Fire Demon Lord.
High above the battlefield, fury blazed across the Fire Spirit Lord’s starlit visage.
“Fire Demon Lord, your meddling ends now!” His words rang out, cold enough to freeze suns.
From the ragged wound in space, the Fire Demon Lord’s voice rolled forth, molten with contempt. “Spare me the speeches, old star-keeper! I’ve long hungered to test your so-called Cosmic Purifying Flame. Dare you meet me beyond the heavens?”
“Name the place,” the Fire Spirit Lord replied, three calm words that cracked like thunder. Two supreme auras locked, the universe itself shivering beneath their gaze.
The pillar of starlight folded inward. The colossal hand of black flame clenched and withdrew. In silent agreement, one figure blazed like a silver river, the other like a charred sun.
Together they ripped through the Ninth Heaven’s wall and streaked into the uncharted dark, shifting the war to realms unseen.
They had arrived like passing storms and vanished just as abruptly, celestial titans who treated worlds as casual chessboards.
Soulgrave Abyss fell mute again, its air thick with iron gloom. Only Jared, the battered Draconian army, the unseen remnants of the Soul Devourer, and a slowly healing rift remained.
Despair that arrives after hope is the heaviest stone a heart can bear…
Jared scanned the suddenly quiet chasm, every breath rasping against cracked ribs while his spirit flickered like a dying lamp. Around him, comrades bled and sagged, and yet a bitter smile still tugged at his lips.
“Fire Demon Lord, you flaming bastard! The moment I have the strength, you’re the first name on my list!” Jared rasped, forcing the threat past torn lungs and into the echoing dark.
“Mr. Chance, what do we do now?” Coall’s broad shadow fell across Jared’s armor as he turned, worry sharpening the lines around his eyes.
A single question left his mouth, low and gravelly, yet brimming with unspoken urgency that seemed to echo against the war-scarred stones.
“We head back to Nethergate Sect,” Jared answered, resolve tempered by fatigue. “When Mr. Swanson and the others heal, we’ll return and make Soul Devourer pay. Right now, just the two of us, and the other candidates, are nowhere near his level.”
“Understood…” Coall dipped his head once, the gesture as solid and weighty as an iron gate slamming shut.
The brash confidence Jared had flaunted on arrival lay in ruins. One strike from Soul Devourer had shattered it, hurling him back into harsh reality.
Yes, he had marched a Draconian army across Level Nine, yet before a true titan he remained insignificant, a child swinging wooden swords at thunder. He had even dreamed of storming Level Thirty-Six.
*What a fool I was. An utter fool…*
Determination, stripped of arrogance, crystallized. He had to return to Nethergate Sect and forge greater strength, or he would never survive another clash with Soul Devourer, let alone challenge Malevolent Path Hall or survive the higher levels.
He had arrived swaggering. He would depart chastened, the tail of his cloak dragging through dust like a beaten banner.
So Jared, bedraggled yet unbowed, led the Draconian army in a ragged arc back toward Nethergate’s black peaks, every wingbeat and footstep a quiet vow of redemption.
On arrival, he commandeered every last resource—elixirs, spirit ores, fractured law shards—and vanished into the yawning mouth of Pentacarna Tower, sealing its gates behind him with a clang that rang like final judgment.
