The remaining two tentacles coiled together before Northern, as if studying him with silent calculation.
Northern scratched his hair, heat creeping up his neck.
"How do I explain this..."
He gestured awkwardly.
"I never ant for your buddy to die. Just wanted to slow him down a bit. But I doubt any of you care—after all, you’re just appendages."
Yet he found himself questioning that assumption. The tentacles moved with purpose, behaved as if they possessed minds of their own. Still, the frozen, bone-chilling glare of the Leviathan lood behind him—a stark reminder that his true enemy towered like a living mountain.
’Should I just unleash Chaos and Void? One snap of my fingers, and this could all end.’
But at what price? Now that Northern understood the devastating toll of Chaos and Void, he shuddered at what such raw power might demand in return.
Northern shook his head and steeled himself. He would defeat this thing one way or another. It would be brutal, maybe impossible, and hell—he had no clue how he’d pull it off. But he would triumph over the Leviathan. Death wasn’t even on the table.
That resolve occupied one corner of his mind. The other corner churned with questions about Koll. Had he ventured into the underground Dungeon? How did he know about it? And what might unfold in the next few monts?
Either way, Northern had decided to stop toying with the tentacles.
The damage he was about to unleash wouldn’t be ordinary.
It would be the kind that carved new landscapes.
Drawing from the entire essence reserve his clone possessed, Northern extended one hand. Not toward the tentacles—toward the Leviathan itself, standing like a stone titan.
"Twilight Phoenix."
The sky transford for the third ti today, now burning the color of ripe cantaloupe. Flas seed to rage through the heavens themselves.
Northern had deliberately aid at the Leviathan because of the ability’s sheer destructive force.
He’d witnessed this power reshape an entire mountain range. Without question, it would reduce the academy to ash and rubble.
’Let’s not underestimate the academy. They might have barriers or sothing.’
Northern offered this weak excuse to his conscience.
The clouds grew scorching, their color intensifying as if a silent explosion was already rolling through them from beyond.
Then sothing terrible descended from above.
Its screech ripped through the atmosphere—through reality itself. The piercing cry seed to tear into eardrums, shredding the very organs of hearing.
But that wasn’t even the real devastation. Everyone stood frozen, so shaken by the screech that they couldn’t brace for the true destruction bearing down on them.
’There was no screech last ti... was it because I used more Void essence this ti?’
From the cantaloupe-colored sky, the Twilight Phoenix began to descend.
It wasn’t a bird.
It was calamity given wings.
A storm of fire shaped like a divine beast, its wings a tapestry of sunflare and ruin. Each beat of its wings sent pulses of blistering heat rippling through the atmosphere, turning the air itself into molten glass. Its tail was a flaming cot that split clouds apart. And its eyes—those cruel, radiant coals—burned with knowing sentience, as if it resented being summoned again.
The world held its breath.
As it plumted, the sky folded in on itself, collapsing into streaks of color and heat distortion. Trees ignited instantly across the horizon. The lake behind the academy hissed and boiled into mist. Birds fell from the sky mid-flight, vaporized before they could cry out.
And still, the Leviathan stood unmoving.
Like a god sculpted from the bones of the deep.
Like a monunt to the abyss itself.
It did not flinch. It did not even blink.
The Twilight Phoenix scread again—only this ti, the sound didn’t echo. It shattered. The soundwave broke across dinsions, ricocheting inside skulls, scrambling thought into static. Lesser monsters hiding across the forest of the island clawed at their heads, bleeding from the eyes.
Then it hit.
A collision that wasn’t just heard or seen—but felt in the soul.
The Phoenix collided with the Leviathan’s chest in a blinding detonation. Not just fire, sound, and force.
All of it.
For an instant, the world beca light.
Then ca the eruption.
A wall of fla radiated outward like a nova, disintegrating everything in its radius. The stone beneath the Leviathan turned liquid, then vaporized. Entire swaths of the surrounding terrain buckled and collapsed into scorched craters.
The shockwave reached the academy walls seconds later.
The tall, alloyed-tal walls—engineered by architects of defense and sealed by barrier runes—stood no chance. The first impact rippled through them. The second folded them like paper. Entire battlents twisted, screaming under thermal stress, before exploding outward in molten shards. Towers fell in pieces, crumbling like brittle bones.
Windows across the structure detonated from sheer pressure. Bunkers below ground shook, their protective enchantnts unraveling in sparks and failing glyphs. Alarms wailed—but even those began to warp and die in the overwhelming heat.
And at the eye of the storm...
The Leviathan stood.
Unmoved.
Unscathed.
The flas washed over it like ocean waves over obsidian cliffs. Its hide—deep gray veined with otherworldly silver—didn’t even blacken. The impact had erased cities in the past. But this ti?
It barely made the Leviathan blink.
Northern, still mid-cast, stared in breathless silence. Twilight Phoenix had always been his last resort—his nuclear option. The trump card in his deck. And it had done nothing.
Not a scratch. Not a stagger. Not even a growl of pain.
Only now did he notice it.
A slight tilt of the Leviathan’s head. As if acknowledging him.
Or worse.
Mocking him.
Behind him, firestorms ravaged the forest. The horizon blazed. The very bones of the academy now crumbled like forgotten parchnt in an inferno.
And still, the monster stood.
As if to say: You will need more than this.
Of course, Northern had suspected this would be the case with a Leviathan. He knew what it took to deal with just the hand of one.
He had expected the entire body to exert this much resistance. To defeat this Leviathan, he really needed to outdo himself this ti.
Or just be the sa old coward that runs into the embrace of Chaos and Void.
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