Raven clung to Bardi's left forearm, but the agony coursing through his body was so intense that he couldn't even feel her warmth against his skin.
He stretched out his right hand toward her. Jagged bone spurs jutted from his fingers, their tips stark white, sharp, and protruding, grotesque and bloodstained. His fingertips reached for the ball of light in Raven's hands.
Raven instinctively flinched. Her fingers curled inward, pulling the Lost Armor's radiant sphere slightly away.
She didn't want him to use it.
Her face was stricken with hesitation and fear, her body trembling beneath her cloak. Tears welled in her eyes, her voice barely a whisper.
"Don't…"
She didn't want Bardi to die.
If he took the Lost Armor, it ant he only had one minute left to live.
She couldn't accept that.
But Bardi didn't hesitate. He took the ball of light from her hands, even as his sharp bone spurs scraped against her fingers. Though her skin remained unbroken, the searing pain shot through her like a dagger to the heart.
A deep, aching sorrow spread through her, sinking from her chest into her blood, leaving her weak and overwheld. Tears spilled freely, falling in silent grief.
Her hands grasped at the empty air.
The ball of light drifted away from her fingers, slipping beyond her reach.
She caught nothing.
Maybe… from the very beginning…
I should never have asked Bardi for help.
Bardi pressed the Lost Armor's sphere against his chest. The radiant orb—nearly the size of a football—sank into him without resistance, vanishing into his body.
"STOP!!"
Trigon's six crimson eyes widened in fury. His enraged roar shattered the silence, a thunderous detonation that reverberated like a nuclear blast.
The sheer force of his voice sent shockwaves rippling through the air, powerful enough to rupture the eardrums of ordinary beings—strong enough to shake a human brain into hemorrhaging.
To Trigon, Bardi was his—a rare and irreplaceable delicacy, essential to his future ascension.
And now, seeing Bardi choose destruction once more, the demon lord's fury was beyond words.
His crimson skin swelled, thick veins bulging grotesquely across his hundred-ter-tall fra like rivers on a map. His entire form was monstrous beyond comprehension, a terrifying, pulsating horror.
"STOP, OR I WILL DESTROY EARTH!"
Trigon bellowed again, his rage boiling over.
He had already condescended to spare Raven. He had already agreed to leave Earth untouched.
He had given Bardi everything he fought for, everything he had suffered to protect.
What more do you want?!
Trigon considered himself more than generous.
He was the Demon Lord who had road the cosmos for countless eras. He had obliterated entire star systems, yet he had chosen to let Earth live.
Bardi should have been grateful. He should have knelt in surrender, gladly offering himself as a martyr, a hero sacrificing his life to save his world.
But now, watching Bardi defy him once again, choosing death, Trigon was overco with wrath, fear, and disbelief.
It was absurd.
A demon lord who had slaughtered civilizations now stood here, using Earth as a bargaining chip—all for the life of a single man.
He only wanted one thing.
For Bardi to stop choosing death.
But Bardi's expression was grim, his icy gaze unwavering.
How could he ever beco Trigon's puppet?
How could he let himself be taken, just to be turned into food?
He was not a hero.
So if Trigon wanted to destroy Earth?
Then let him.
A world without Bardi had no value to him.
In an instant.
The Lost Armor fused into Bardi's body.
Azarath's ultimate weapon—the relic of faith, prayer, and divine protection—had fully integrated with him.
For a mont, his body froze.
The ball of light seeped into him, disassembling into countless spiritual factors, weaving into his genetic structure. A network of prayers, sacred energy, and protective power intertwined with his mind, connecting every neural pathway he had forged through sheer force of will.
The Lost Armor was more than a relic.
It was a massive energy quantum network, stabilizing his collapsing genetic structure, rging seamlessly with his consciousness.
It instantly synchronized with his cells, diving past the cytoplasm, into the nucleus, accelerating his body's functions down to the subatomic level.
It beca his new foundation.
In that single heartbeat.
Everything changed.
Bardi's mind felt light—free of pain.
The agony vanished.
His eyes, once clouded with suffering, now held a calm, almost serene clarity.
Within him, light surged—faith, hope, protection—filling his body, guiding his every movent. His cellular structure ignited with a radiation of pure power, his tabolism skyrocketing a thousandfold.
In re seconds, his body fully absorbed the 380 solar capsules that had been raging inside him, their energy seamlessly converting into a new, ultimate genetic state.
He began to grow.
His seven-ter fra expanded.
The jagged bone spurs that had protruded from his skin were pushed out, falling away like shattered shells. Thick layers of dead tissue crumbled from his body like discarded armor.
Beneath them, new, powerful muscle fibers surged—reshaped, reinforced, unstoppable.
His entire form shook, as if an earthquake raged within him.
It was like a seed breaking through the soil, completing decades of growth in an instant, erupting into the sky like an unshackled titan.
Raven, still clinging to his forearm, felt the shift.
His arm thickened, bones stretching, muscles expanding.
The jagged protrusions fell away, replaced by smooth, dense flesh.
What was once an arm beca an entire battlefield—so vast that she, who had once dangled from him, could now stand on it.
He was no longer human-sized.
He was monolithic.
A giant that towered over a hundred ters, his white jade-like body now perfected, his scars standing sharp against his skin, the mark on his cheek a symbol of his unyielding will.
Bardi felt everything.
The whisper of air against his skin.
The subtle shifts in atmospheric pressure.
The gravity of the planet tugging at him with pinpoint precision.
The microscopic details of the world around him.
The Lost Armor had fully awakened his genes.
For just one minute, he existed in a state beyond anything he had ever known, a level of absolute clarity, where he could see, hear, touch, and comprehend everything in perfect harmony.
This was the apex of his power.
His eyes no longer held pain.
No longer held cold fury.
Instead, there was only an indifference, the kind that cos from one who has seen through life and death itself.
Raven's heart clenched.
He was beyond pain. Beyond fear.
And he had only one minute left to live.
Without hesitation, Bardi lifted Raven from his arm.
A golden energy shield enveloped her, locking her away despite her screams, despite her fists pounding against it, her tears falling like endless rain.
He didn't look back.
He simply threw her, sending her hurtling away from the battlefield, soaring through the golden light, far into the distant sky.
"It's windy here. You should leave first."
(To be continued.)
***
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