Smoke sizzled off Raven’s scaled shoulders as he stood atop the mound of demon corpses.
The glowing rivers of magma running through his obsidian-black body pulsated with chaotic energy. His claws flexed slightly, twitching.
The demons were coming, and Raven was thinking about how he should kill them this ti.
But then—
His breath hitched.
"Ghh!"
He groaned in pain.
Omni, who had been marveling at the scene, finally broke out of his thoughts when he saw Raven wince.
"Is it the pain?" He asked quickly. "That slight discomfort the system warned about—it’s hittin’ now, ain’t it?"
"Yeah," Raven nodded. "But it wasn’t that bad."
"See?" Omni chirped with a smug little pulse. "Told ya you were stressin’ for nothin’, man."
Raven paused at those words, his voice coming out low. "...Did you just jinx—"
He couldn’t complete his words as a flicker of static flashed across his vision.
The world twisted.
His senses distorted, and ti seed to lt like wax over fire.
Then ca the voices.
Not from the outside but from within.
"Rip them open."
Raven shook his head, trying to swat the thoughts away.
But they didn’t stop.
"Feed. Break. Burn. Scream."
"Bro?" Omni asked carefully, his voice quieter than usual. "What’s happenin’, man? Talk to ."
Raven, however, couldn’t hear Omni’s voice. The only voices he could hear were the whispers in his head.
"You don’t deserve your power. Let us take control."
"Devour the weak. You are evolution incarnate."
"These demons taste good. Eat them."
"Raven!" Omni yelled in his head, voice cracking with urgency. "Man, talk to !! Don’t go quiet on now!"
He knew Raven couldn’t hear him.
Heck, the blade, capable of reading Raven’s mind, could tell what he was seeing.
Raven’s eyes widened, those glowing molten-red orbs flickering erratically.
For a breath, he forgot where he was.
Who he was.
The power that surged within was not just dragonic. It was void-warping, soul-churning, and identity-devouring.
"Raven. We’re mind buddies, man—you gotta give sothing!" Omni pleaded with worry. "Say the word, anything. Maybe I can help!"
He felt like he was responsible for this, as it seed like he jinxed it.
In response, however, he got nothing.
Raven’s mouth opened. Smoke curled out.
His hand trembled slightly, claws twitching like a broken machine trying to reboot.
"Ah, yeah!"
Omni’s voice flared with sudden excitent, an idea sparking to life in his sword mind.
"Try channeling your soul energy to shield your mind! C’mon, it might actually work!"
Then, as if Raven had heard his words, a light shone within his chest.
Red, blue, green, black—souls.
The orbs he’d absorbed monts ago spun around his core like stabilizing gyroscopes, forming an ethereal ring inside his soul.
It was a system of harmony amidst chaos.
"Stabilize."
His will surged back like a hamr slamming shut a door.
Raven blinked, clarity snapping in.
A thin trickle of blood slid from his nostril.
"...Damn, Omni," Raven muttered, wiping the blood off his face. "Didn’t know you could co up with such good ideas."
"BROOOO!!! That’s the first thing you say?!" Omni practically scread inside his head.
"Do you have any idea how freakin’ worried I was?! And you could hear this whole ti?!"
His ntal voice cracked like a betrayed best friend.
"Man, I was about to write a eulogy!"
"Haha," Raven chuckled. "My bad, and yeah, I could hear you but couldn’t respond."
However, they couldn’t continue the conversation because the flicker of his instability hadn’t gone unnoticed by the demons that were rushing toward him.
They saw the tilt of his stance. The blood. The twitch.
They mistook it for weakness.
They charged.
All of them.
Magic flared from clawed hands and mutated staves. Blades glinted. Demonic howls surged.
A war cry in unison.
Over seventy demons, all level six or above, surged at Raven from all sides.
"RAVEN!" Clara shouted, panic lacing her voice.
Selena stood, her hand already glowing with shadow energy. "We have to help—!"
Jessy’s mouth dropped. "He’s surrounded—!"
Jake summoned his scythe, ready to dive into the shadows.
But before any of them could move—
CLANK.
Dozens of weapons and spells collided with Raven.
Blades scraped his scales.
Fireballs burst on his skin.
Spears of shadow pierced his chest—or at least that’s what it seed.
In reality, nothing happened to Raven.
Not a single scratch.
Raven, standing dead center of the storm, didn’t flinch.
His head tilted slightly. Slowly.
His glowing eyes narrowed.
"...Did you just..." His voice ca out distorted, deepened, and laced with reverb, like ten ancient dragons speaking in chorus. "...poke ?"
A beat of silence.
Then Raven twitched.
BOOM.
He kicked the ground.
The earth exploded beneath his foot.
A crater ford where he once stood while he ascended.
It seed like he was flying, but he wasn’t.
He was rely propelling himself upward.
He shot straight toward the sky like a teor in reverse—smoke trailing, flas flaring, like a crimson cot tearing through the heavens.
His body glowed midair, spinning once with a flourish.
From below, it looked like a god rising in defiance of gravity itself.
Then, about fifty ters up in the air, he paused.
He hovered.
Eyes closed.
His mouth opened just a little.
A hiss of smoke leaked out from between his jagged teeth.
The air warped around him. The pressure shifted.
Ti itself seed to halt.
Raven’s eyes snapped open.
Then—
He exhaled.
"RAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
It was a dragon breath.
But what ca out was not just fire.
It was judgnt incarnate.
A colossal beam of molten black-red fla, tainted with the void, crashed down from the heavens.
It didn’t just burn; it destroyed.
The forest, once green, was now turning into a hellish plane.
Everything below vanished in a wave of divine, unholy, atomic obliteration.
Demons scread for less than a second before they were gone—burned partially from existence.
The earth below was scorched into obsidian. Trees disintegrated. Even the clouds above trembled.
The group could only watch in stunned silence.
Even Siris, who had just monts ago wanted to be stepped on by Raven, could only whisper, "...He’s too cool. I can’t breathe."
Lia had almost fainted standing up. Her eyes were swirling hearts.
Clara’s hands were on her cheeks, completely red. "I love him. Again. And again."
Selena muttered, "This must be what the sun feels like... if it decided to date ."
Jessy just stared, her voice flat. "So... we’re just background characters now. Got it."
...Says the one who can now manipulate magnetic fields.
Jake nodded. "Respect."
Alex wiped a tear. "That’s my boy."
Nibbles squeaked like he was praising a god.
Even Rufus, still scribbling notes, paused mid-sentence and wrote, ’I am witnessing history.’
Raven, on the other hand, couldn’t hover in the air any longer.
Smoke trailed behind him like divine robes as he fell toward the ground.
Woooooooo—BOOM!
He crashed into the ground with a loud explosion but remained unhard.
"Well, that was a nice landing." He dusted himself and stared at the surroundings.
A massive crater surrounded him, corpses reduced to ash. No demon remained.
But it seed like one was still alive.
"Lucky fella," Raven muttered, approaching the guy.
The demon tried to crawl away since its legs were shattered, but Raven moved faster, blinking before the guy, and crouched down.
"Where are you going, man?" He asked, poking the demon like they were buddies.
"You ca here without asking, and now you want to go without a word?" Raven grumbled like a friend who wanted to play more.
"You gotta tell that you’re running away, right?"
The demon, on the other hand, gasped, "Wh... What are you...?"
It already knew it wasn’t going to live, so it might as well get so answers before dying.
"?" He said, tilting his head.
"I’m just a guy who hates tireso tasks yet ends up doing them anyway."
The demon tried to speak again, but Raven touched its head with a claw.
"You don’t get to ask questions."
Then, with a whisper of heat, the demon twitched and burst into flas.
Raven stood up, stretching.
However, he wasn’t done yet.
"Soul harvest," he muttered.
All the leftover souls rose.
Hundreds of them.
Wisps of color.
They spiraled toward Raven like cots caught in orbit.
He extended one hand lazily.
The souls sank into his body like drops of water absorbed by a drought-stricken field.
His cracks glowed. His aura shimred. His scales glead brighter.
"You don’t have to say that every ti, do you?" Omni’s voice rang out, laced with genuine confusion.
"Like, seriously—doesn’t that make you cringe just a little?"
Raven paused, his jaw moving as he tried to say sothing but decided that keeping quiet would be in his best interest.
That was until he saw another horde of Demons coming toward him.
"Huh..."
He frowned. "Now, this isn’t normal."
He turned toward the rest of the group and made a hand gesture as if telling them that he was going forward.
Before the others could even react to it, he was gone, a streak of red left in his wake.
The group, left behind, rely stared at the red streak for a second before—
Selena adjusted her hair calmly, eyes glowing faintly violet. "If I could bottle that mont, I would, but I suggest we follow him for now."
Clara nodded, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves. "I agree."
Siris giggled, twirling a strand of hair. "He moved like a stab. I love stabs. I love him more."
Lia was so stunned by the dragon’s breath a few seconds ago that she couldn’t even speak.
Graye had stars in her eyes and flexed her biceps. "I WANNA FIGHT HIM. AND HUG HIM. THEN FIGHT AGAIN."
Jessy deadpanned before she shook her head, deciding that silence was the best treatnt for everything.
Rufus unexpectedly wasn’t scribbling. He tapped his nanocore, and the nano suit covered his body.
"I’m ready," he said.
Jake, with his scythe clenched in his hand, also nodded in agreent.
Alex, still staring wide-eyed at the dragon breath’s effect on the forest.
"Blargh," he whispered silently. "Can you do that?"
Blargh’s voice muttered from his chest. "A mini version of that is possible."
"...cool," Alex nodded.
Nibbles, on the other hand, had already instructed his subordinates to move, and within seconds, the rest also moved.
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