Beyond The System Chapter 275: Battle of Gods

The air felt cold with his words.

“What’s happening?” i whispered, pulling on her mother’s dress with small, shaking fingers. Ai didn’t answer, her eyes locked on the three in front of us. “Serith, I can’t Step, what—”

Serith cut her off with a stiff order. “Focus. Get ready to fight. I’ll take two.”

Drema began to laugh. Light at first, a thin, brittle sound, then expanding more and more until it was uproarious, then mad. He wiped a tear from his eye, straightening his posture after bending down. “Oh, Serith. You’re still so naïve. You really think—”

He didn’t have ti to finish. A dark hole through space opened just next to him, its edges warping, a pulse-beam of dark matter shooting out. Serith had moved too fast for to track, the precise formations of her arms forming in a sharp blur.

But Dream didn’t appear surprised. Neither did his older compatriots.

Boom!

The beam struck sothing solid, but not the man—elf himself. With his eyes narrowed and his voice gone cold, he chuckled. “I’ll admit your power has surpassed mine. But your ability to take advantage of what’s around you has not.”

A singular wall of ice now stood inches from his face, vapor curling off the cracked white sheet that had blocked my Guardian’s attack. The two n beside him began chanting in a deep tone, their voices low and resonant, the language unfamiliar and thick on their tongues.

The room began to change. Frost crept along the walls like an infection, spreading from their feet outward over tal and stone. My breath beca visible in front of , a pale cloud, and a chill ran up my spine.

“Peter, keep out of the way.” Ai’s went silent after that.

Her body shuddered in the next mont, muscles rippling beneath her dress as if sothing inside awoke. Alive and moving. Her pupils thinned, sharpening to vertical slits, and a low growl rolled in her throat. Fingernails elongated in a breath, curving into dagger-like claws. Blue bled across her skin in patches, scales surfacing along her arms and collarbone like a second, harder skin.

I was stunned looking at her, the resemblance in transformation to her daughter—other than the scales, but it didn’t end there.

Wings tore free from her back with a wet, sick sound. They were sleek and leathery, more dragon than bird. They snapped open once, throwing slivers of frost from the air around her, as if repulsing that cold energy.

i gasped, letting her mother’s sleeve go. “M–Mom…?”

Ai didn’t answer. Her eyes were sharp now. Predatory and fixed on the three elves.

Drema still stood between his two elders, smirking, frost crawling like veins from their feet across the tal floor and up the walls. The chanting from the older two deepened, harmonizing into a rumble that shook the air. Their lips moved without pause, hands tracing intricate, repeating patterns.

And sohow, even while chanting, they moved.

One elder slid to the side, boots leaving no prints on the forming ice. The other stepped diagonally, widening their formation.

One elder slid to the side, boots leaving no prints on the forming ice. The other stepped diagonally, widening their formation.

Serith moved at the sa ti.

She didn’t give any warning. There was no shout or signal. One breath she was standing in front of us, and the next she was gone. The air popped where she’d been as if space itself snapped back into place.

Dark tears split open around Drema.

Three at first, then a fourth ring of narrow, vertical slashes in the air, each one rimd in a deep, pitch black. The pressure in the chamber spiked as they settled into place around him.

Pulse-beams of dark matter fired from them in rapid succession, lancing toward Drema and the elder at his left side from multiple angles. She had hung what was basically guns in the air, letting them fire all at once.

Drema’s smirk barely shifted.

He flowed between the beams, body tilting and turning with minimal movent, just enough to avoid damage. Like a ghost skipping through solid walls, he was efficient. Ethereal. Ice burst and reford around him, the elder at his back dragging up slabs and plates of frost with each flick of his hands, patches of it thickening into armor as the beams struck.

At the sa ti, more portals blood around Serith herself. Two at her shoulders, one at her feet, another just ahead of her chest. She jumped through them with no understandable pattern, appearing in a blink at the flank of the older elf.

Blades of darkness ford around her hands, long and curved, thin as razors and absolutely black. The flashed at the rim with white, rotating like saws. She cut downward, a precise twin strike aid to end the fight in one movent.

But even then, the chanting never stopped.

Ice surged up from the floor in a layered do, catching her blades. The impact sent a deep vibration through the chamber. Cracks spiderwebbed through the ice as they strained against Serith’s power.

Drema’s voice rolled out over it all, calm and amused. “You really don’t understand,” he said, eyes tracking Serith and Ai both. “Even now. Your insistence on fighting like that is why you can’t win.”

He inhaled the next mont, chest expanding like a toad.

The air around his mouth warped, condensation freezing in place before it could drift away.

Then he roared.

But what left him wasn’t just sound. It was a torrent of cold so violent the tal floor beneath him cracked, bending at the will of the power. Frost raced ahead of the blast.

Serith pivoted, one of her portals snapping open behind her. The breath-attack slamd into it and vanished, swallowed whole, and then reappeared, funneled out through the smaller portals still hanging around Dream like an orbit.

The ice-blast hit him from three directions at once.

For a split second, his eyes widened. Frost erupted around him, wrapping his form in wild, uncontrolled sheets. Both elders shifted focus to assist, but Serith forced the other to stop.

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Ai took that mont.

She was gone from my side in a blur of motion. Her beast-half carried her forward, wings tucking close, claws flashing.

She broke across the space like a mirage, her outline stuttering as she pushed against the frozen air. One instant she was mid-run; the next she was already in front the remaining elder, dagger-like claws arcing down toward his chest.

He smiled, his assistance perhaps already complete.

Hands continued their intricate patterns, fingers weaving sigils into the freezing air.

Clang!

Sothing stepped between them.

A humanoid figure ford out of the frost. It towered over her form, armor layered thick across its body, all of it a deep, unnatural blue. A knight of solid ice, helm smooth and faceless. It raised its arm as it finished coalescing, a shield snapping into being just in ti to et Ai’s strike.

The impact was difficult to describe. All of it was. Not the sights themselves really. But the power behind it all. Very blow shook space. Every strike sent a wave of motion that forced a step back. It was all I could to even keep my footing, while assuring i’s as well.

The frost knight didn’t shatter. It held, feet grinding lines into floor as it was pushed back. It reacted just after, moving with unnatural coordination.

A longsword of the sa frozen blue flicked into its other hand. The blade blurred as it slashed for Ai’s side.

CRACK!

It struck her scales with a sharp sound which sliced clean through the layered chaos of the battle.

Ai hissed, a mix between a human exhale and an animal snarl, staggering half a step.

“Mom!” i scread, voice breaking, fingers clawing at my arm.

Ai’s head tilted just enough to see her, expression softening for the barest fragnt of a second when it landed on her i. Then it hardened again. She pushed forward.

Her right hand began to glow, fire leaking from her fingers in wild tongues. At first it was the deep, familiar orange of normal fla, but it condensed fast, sucking in on itself, growing smaller and impossibly bright.

The color shifted from orange to yellow to a searing white that hurt to look at. The air around her palm warped, the edges of her claws blurring, heat so intense it turned the frost around her to steam.

She punched the golem. There was no sound this ti. Existence itself refused to tolerate the summon. With a touch, it vaporized.

The knight’s forearm and shield disappeared in an instant, that whole section of its body turning to mist and scattering. The remaining ice couldn’t hold form. Fractures raced across it from the point of contact, and the entire construct exploded into glittering light.

The elder’s chant faltered, a syllable catching in his throat. His expression twisted, control slipping. He went pale.

But only for a mont.

His jaw clenched, hand moving to slice the other open. He forced the cadence back into place, words resuming at a faster, almost desperate pace. His hands blurred as his pallor grew even whiter.

Two more shapes rose from the ice at his feet.

More knights. Each one slightly different. One broader, shield larger; the other leaner, sword thinner and longer. Both charged Ai at once with frightening speed.

Ai t them head-on, wings flaring, claws igniting in residual heat as she darted between their swings and thrusts. Each clash sent out rings of sound and energy.

The battlefield had beco too terrifying. The difference was too clear. I was nothing to these people. Serith’s past indifference made sense. Beyond sense—it was natural.

Her dark tears and beams carved lines through the air; Dream and his other elder turned the environnt into a shifting fortress of ice. Ai was locked in a brutal, close-quarters dance with summoned frost warriors, fire and scaled flesh against living ice.

And ?

I held i close, my arms tight around her shoulders, keeping her pressed against my chest.

I was shaking.

Not from the cold, but from helplessness.

I knew why this was happening. It tugged at from within. The sa way the Kingdom’s attack on the island did. This is because of .

If there had been a plan laid out before, a conflict building, then it had been hurried at most. But even that I doubted. Sothing had shifted because of my presence in the layer of creation, because of what I was.

Drema didn’t care about so treasure on . I was the treasure.

Not a weapon to wield or a tool to bargain with, but food for sothing beyond him. A demon from a higher plane that saw as a nothing more than a resource to be consud.

Anger twisted with fear. I didn’t know what to do.

Luna’s presence was quiet at the edge of my mind. Wyrem’s coiled inside , his usual bragging nature gone. They’d both told the sa thing. Keep back. Protect the girl. Don’t be stupid. I could feel their emotions too. They weren’t unlike mine. We all felt… useless.

So I stayed where I was.

The ground shook under another collision.

Ripple.

It rolled through . A feeling in the air. In my empty surroundings. But it was—sothing was off.

The sounds of the battle pulled thin for a heartbeat, like they were being dragged away down a deep bog.

Step. Step.

The sound was faint. But it felt wrong. Distant yet close at the sa ti, like it was happening in another room but bleeding through the walls. I tried to turn my head toward i.

Nothing happened.

My neck wouldn’t move. My eyes stayed fixed ahead. My fingers dug into i’s shoulder, but not because I told them to. It was like my body had been caught mid-action and pinned there.

Terror spiked through .

It was familiar. Carved into from my ending mont. I had felt this before death.

Kris.

His power. Ti was locked down. And yet, the god-like beings moved without care. Only i and I were frozen.

Energy began to circulate inside in slow, stubborn loops. Force, pushing against the invisible pressure that held everything in place. Panic overwheld .

Move.

My thoughts didn’t reach my internal passengers as I tried asking for any kind of help I could.

Move.

Step. Step.

The steps ca closer.

Step.

Step.

They stopped just behind .

I scread at myself in my own mind.

MOVE!

Force surged inside my body, straining against whatever Kris had done. It moved faster than ever before, breaking so restraint I’d never felt before. Water, Natural, and Fire Force suddenly twisted with one another, threads tightening.

Sothing inside clicked.

Changed.

Connected.

Harmonized.

I blinked.

My vision had changed. A river of flow and color. My Spiritual Sense detecting sothing pushing against it from behind.

Then, I moved.

My arm snapped back on instinct, body twisting with a speed that I’d never experienced. My hand closed around sothing solid mid-swing.

A hoof.

It was inches from i’s head, frozen there, muscle bunched in the middle of a kick that never landed.

Fury blood within .

My promise was forgotten.

Kris’ eyes were wide with a shock on his twisted face.

I didn’t think.

I pushed that energy within . Using the clarity of this breakthrough to its full advantage.

Force roared down my arm in a perfect mixture of Water’s smoothness, Natural’s grounded assistance, and Fire’s explosive bite. It converged in my palm, wrapping around the hoof like a vice.

Cr—cr—crackle.

BOOOOM!!

The detonation shook the chamber.

Light and pressure exploded outward in a focused blast. Kris was hurled back, skidding across the tal.

“AHHHH!”

A raw scream tore from his throat as he clutched at his leg, now a brutalized mass of shredded flesh and shattered bone where the hoof had been.

Finally, the chanting had stopped.