Of course, the sky didn't literally rip apart. That would have required more paperwork. But anyone looking up at that mont would have been forgiven for thinking soone had taken a celestial can opener to the heavens and pried them open just a crack, just enough to let sothing truly unpleasant through.
That sothing was Vorgath Ironmaw.
Pope of the Savage Communion, Warlord of the Ten Thousand Dismbered, and general enthusiast of mayhem, bloodshed, and axes roughly the size of mid-sized vehicles. The mont his weapon ca down, it didn't feel like an attack so much as a statent—naly, this planet is in my way.
And yet, Grand Marshall ilyn Potan—stoic, practical, terrifyingly composed ilyn—t it. One swing. One block. And for a breathless heartbeat, the world didn't end.
Around her, the air rippled with summoned power.
A Dullahan shimred into being beside her, head held beneath one arm and eyes glowing with cold detachnt. An Arch Lich rose on the other side, tall and ancient and slightly offended to be summoned at this hour. And anchoring them all was the most impressive of the lot—ilyn herself, clad in an armour of interlocking deep blue bone, swirling with energy so dense it made Erebus look like a first-year illusion spell.
'Kraken's skeleton,' Luna whispered in my head, voice unusually subdued.
Right. A Kraken. A nine-star beast. One of those creatures people tell horror stories about at military academies, usually right before sending students into a forest with a butter knife and a prayer. And ilyn had worn it. Like a jacket.
Her scythe crackled with enough power to power a small city—or at least wipe one off the map—and her face was as impassive as always, like she was scolding a particularly unruly vending machine.
Vorgath, of course, looked delighted.
The Pope of the Savage Communion—one of the Five, a butcher in the body of a mountain with miasma seething from every pore—stood with his axe humming with both miasma and mana, as if it couldn't decide which apocalypse it preferred and had settled for both.
Why was he here?
That was the question.
Because this wasn't supposed to happen. Not now. Not yet. This wasn't in the novel.
So why here? Why now?
The vehicle was going further away, but what was the point?
I knew.
ilyn was monstrously strong but she wasn't a Radiant-ranker.
She hadn't taken that step.
She was weaker than Vorgath.
She would die in this fight.
The truth of this realization hit like a physical blow even as the hovertruck continued to retreat. Rachel's fingers dug into my arm, her eyes wide with horror as she watched what was unfolding. Rose's face had gone pale, her usual composure cracking. Even Clana was fully awake, her expression grim.
"We have to go back," I said, the words torn from before I could think better of it.
"You heard the Marshal's orders," the driver replied, not taking his eyes off the path ahead. "We're to return to the outpost and report."
Behind us, the battle began in earnest.
ilyn moved first, her scythe carving a perfect arc through the air as she activated her Scythe Domain. The space around her warped, reality bending to accommodate her mastery of the weapon. Each swing didn't just travel through space but seed to define it, creating zones where her control was absolute. It wasn't the highest level of martial ability—that would be Unity, the perfect lding of self and weapon—but it was close.
Vorgath parried with contemptuous ease, his Axe Unity allowing him to counter as if the weapon were a natural extension of himself. Where ilyn's Scythe Domain created zones of control, his Axe Unity simply ignored them, cutting through the fabric of her technique with the casual disregard of soone swatting a fly.
"Is this all the Western Continent can offer?" he taunted, his voice like gravel being crushed. "Their second strongest?"
ilyn didn't bother responding with words. Instead, darkness gathered around her—not the purple-black of conventional dark mana, but the absolute void of Deepdark. It pooled around her like liquid night, then surged forward in jagged spears aid at Vorgath's heart.
The Axe King laughed, a sound like mountains collapsing. Fire erupted from his body—not natural fla but miasma-infused inferno, sick green and sunset orange intertwined in a blasphemous dance. The Deepdark spears t his fire miasma in a catastrophic collision, the resulting shockwave flattening the terrain for half a kiloter in all directions.
The Dullahan and Arch Lich moved in perfect synchronization with ilyn, as if the three shared a single mind. The Lich hurled spells of such complexity they resembled mathematical equations made lethal, while the Dullahan's sword left trails of absolute cold in its wake. Together with ilyn's scythe, they created a three-pronged attack that would have annihilated most opponents.
Vorgath was not most opponents.
His axe blurred, becoming less a weapon and more a concept—the idea of severance made manifest. Where it passed, connections broke. The Lich's spells unraveled mid-flight. The Dullahan's sword strikes hit nothing but air. And ilyn's scythe, eting the axe directly, shuddered under the impact.
For a mont, they were locked together, power against power. ilyn's face remained impassive, but sweat beaded on her forehead, the first sign of strain I'd ever seen from her. Vorgath's expression was one of fierce joy, like a connoisseur sampling a particularly fine vintage.
"You fight well, human," he acknowledged, pushing forward. "Few can stand against for even this long."
ilyn disengaged, leaping backward as her summons regrouped. The Kraken armor around her flickered, parts of it crumbling under the strain of channeling so much power. She raised her hand, and the Deepdark responded again, this ti forming complex geotric patterns that rotated around her like the world's most lethal mathematical model.
"Vorgath Ironmaw," she finally spoke, her voice steady despite everything. "You're a long way from your temples."
"The world is my temple," he replied, rolling his massive shoulders. "And all battlefields my altar."
He raised his axe high, and the sky itself seed to darken in response. Fire miasma spiraled around the weapon, condensing until the blade glowed white-hot. At the sa ti, he channeled pure mana through it—not the refined, controlled mana of human mages, but raw, primal power that made the air itself groan in protest.
"But enough talk," he said, his voice dropping to a rumble. "Show what the Grand Marshal of the Western Continent can really do."
The attack that followed defied description. It wasn't just an axe strike; it was annihilation given form, a concept rather than a physical action. The air split, the ground beneath it sublimated, and reality itself seed to protest.
ilyn t it with everything she had.
Deepdark erupted from her in a catastrophic wave, her summons dissolving into it, lending their power to hers. The Kraken armor fully activated, ancient runes blazing across its surface as it channeled power that no human fra should have been able to contain. Her scythe, wreathed in both Deepdark and death energy from her Gift, swept up to et Vorgath's descending axe.
The collision was beyond spectacular—it was nearly biblical. Light and darkness, fire and void, miasma and mana, all crashing together in a single point of cosmic absurdity. For one impossible mont, the two forces balanced, neither yielding.
Then, slowly, inexorably, Vorgath's axe began to push through.
ilyn's defense cracked. The Deepdark wavered. The Kraken armor fractured along ancient fault lines. And still, her expression remained composed, accepting, as if she'd always known this would be the outco.
With a sound like the world ending, her defense shattered completely.
The backlash hurled her backward, her body carving a trench through the earth before coming to rest nearly fifty ters away. Her scythe lay broken beside her, its blade cracked clean through. The Kraken armor hung in tatters, more suggestion than substance now.
Vorgath lowered his axe, looking almost disappointed that it was over. He approached slowly, savoring the mont, his massive form casting a long shadow over ilyn's fallen figure.
"You fought well," he repeated, and there was genuine respect in his voice. "Few humans have ever forced to exert myself to this degree. Had you taken that final step—had you reached Radiant-rank—perhaps this would have ended differently."
ilyn struggled to her knees, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Her golden eyes remained defiant despite everything.
"It's not over," she said quietly.
"No?" Vorgath raised his axe once more. "Then show ."
She gathered what little strength remained, Deepdark flickering weakly around her hands. But it was clear to everyone watching that it was over. The gap between peak Immortal and low Radiant might seem small on paper, but in reality, it was an unbridgeable chasm.
"Why?" she asked, staring up at him. "Why co yourself? Why now?"
Vorgath's massive head tilted slightly. "Because change is coming. The balance shifts. And I wished to see for myself what the Western Continent could offer against that tide."
The axe began its descent, a perfect execution stroke that would separate ilyn's head from her shoulders with surgical precision.
I don't rember making the decision to move. One mont I was in the hovertruck, watching in horror; the next, I was standing between ilyn and Vorgath, Erebus drawn and raised to et his axe.
The impact when our weapons t should have shattered every bone in my body. Should have. But it didn't.
Erebus blazed with a light I'd never seen before, absorbing and redirecting the catastrophic force of Vorgath's strike. My arms trembled, my legs threatened to buckle, but sohow, impossibly, I held.
"Well," he said, his voice sowhere between amused and intrigued. "What do we have here?"
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