Right now, Clyde thought it best to inform Asqa. She deserved to know—especially if sothing unexpected was about to happen.
They were allies now who walking the sa dangerous path, and if they wanted to survive whatever ca next trust had to run both ways.
He continued killing down monsters, letting Dusksorrow cleave and burn through the endless tide until, with a final blow when the last creature of this wave dissolved into ash. A faint pulse of energy rolled through him.
He was now Level 533.
He floated for a second in the dust-filled air, catching his breath, then turned toward the far edge of the battlefield.
Asqa was still fighting her own battle.
Clyde hovered in the sky, arms crossed as he waited. Below him, she moved through the chaos like a storm in motion. With her white robes she looks graceful and relentless.
A few minutes later, her final monster died and she rose into the air toward him, brushing dust and blood from her cheek.
"What is it?" she asked, sharp eyes already narrowing with suspicion.
"Graemory, the Demon Duchess, told she wants to et," Clyde said plainly.
"With both of us?" Asqa asked.
"Actually... just ," he admitted. "But we’re in this together now, so we go together."
Asqa’s expression shifted slightly. She blinked once, then smiled. It wasn’t a grin of pride or victory but sothing more personal, warmth that mixed with quiet appreciation.
She didn’t say anything about it but inside, she felt sothing tighten. Clyde was trusting her, letting her step deeper into his ss. Into his life.
"Alright," she said. "When?"
"She said ’soon.’ So once we’re ready, I’ll tell her we’re coming."
Asqa nodded, her aura pulsing once as she hovered beside him.
Clyde reached out with his mind, trying to contact Graemory directly through the telepathic link they had once used. But this ti, the connection felt sluggish and strained.
Sothing had definitely disrupted the artifact Graemory gave him. Or maybe its just broken.
Still, with the strength of the Ancient One now fused into his being, Clyde forced the ssage through the broken link until he feels a short ping, a confirmation.
"We’re comingright now."
Then he opened the portal using the coordinates she had embedded in the earlier ssage.
Space twisted, color bent, and the swirling mouth of a Ruin opened before them.
Without a word, Clyde and Asqa stepped into it and vanishing into the dark.
---
Clyde and Asqa stepped out of the vortex into night that never turned to dawn.
Their boots touched what had once been a city road but now had beca a carpet of ash and fractured glass. They were in one of thr largest landmass floating in the void of this world.
Tower skeletons leaned at impossible angles, their steel bones groaning in the stale wind. Where highways once crossed entire slabs of roadway hung in mid-air, frozen by so half-dead gravity anomaly that flickered like a failing lightbulb.
Nothing moved. No hungry-eyed beasts. No flicker of hostile magic energy.
Even the air felt emptied, thin and brittle as if the world itself had exhaled its last breath centuries ago and never drew another.
Shattered billboards and trees rattled overhead, their paint stripped to ghost-white tal. A dried riverbed of soot split the street and in the distance a cathedral lay on its side with its bell tower snapped like a fallen pike.
Asqa hugged her arms, voice low.
"This ruin is hollow. Like everything died long ago then kept rotting until this state."
Clyde scanned the horizon, shadow pooling in Dusksorrow’s grooves. Burned veins of magic power flickered faintly along the blade but he found no targets.
"The Selection Stage ended here a long ti ago. Maybe even longer than our world," he said. "Whatever monsters survived must’ve starved already or killed each other until so little was left."
They start moving.
A gust stirred sheets of blackened paper that cracked apart the mont they lifted from the ground. Storefronts yawned open, shelves picked clean by ti itself. Every sign of life animal, or monsters, had bleached away.
Still, Clyde kept the sword loose in his grip. Asqa’s bracelet shimred, quietly spinning arcs of magic power along her wrist.
They passed a plaza where a fountain once stood. Only a jagged basin remained, filled with small dust of so magical things that it flowed like liquid under the slightest step.
"They coordinates point were located deeper in this city," Clyde said, spotting a toppled monorail track half-buried in rubble. It ford a dark archway leading toward the city’s dead heart.
Asqa nodded. "Graemory chose this place on purpose. I think noone will bother checking this place."
Beyond the archway the landscape worsened. Buildings gave way to cavernous sinkholes where entire blocks had collapsed into lightless pits.
A mummified titanic monster that looks like part machine and part dragon lay fused to the street. Its ribs bent skyward like broken rafters.
Yet through it all, a faint pulse of Demonic magic tugged at Clyde’s senses. It feels familiar, unmistakable.
Graemory was already sowhere ahead.
He sheathed Dusksorrow, letting it rest but not sleep, and motioned forward.
"Let’s go. She is there," he said.
Asqa lifted a hand, then nodded.
Together, the two walked on and passing the giant corpse of monster.
After few more minutes walking they finally saw Graemory stood on a fractured plaza, under the drifting void light.
Her black gown clung to her like poured silk. Tension knotted on her shoulders.
"We ca," Clyde said simply.
She inclined her head, red eyes flicking to Asqa, then back. "I’m grateful you answered so quickly."
Clyde noticed the slight tremor in her breath—unusual for the Demon Duchess.
"Your ssage felt urgent," Clyde said.
"It is," she replied, gaze sweeping the desolation. "There were so strange news on higher realms. Morvius had ca to us and told us that they had found your whereabout and will be coming to you at full force."
---
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