Max's face turned dark the mont he felt the shift. The pressure bearing down on him was no longer sothing that could be asured by concepts or ranks alone. It was heavy and suffocating, as if the world itself had decided to stand behind Mark and crush everything that opposed him.
The flow of energy around Mark was no longer chaotic or unstable. It was vast and inexhaustible, pouring into him directly from the veins of Acaris, turning him into a walking incarnation of the planet's will.
"He is using the essence of the world to power himself," Freya said with a deep frown as she struggled to maintain her footing in the distorted space. Every heartbeat of the planet echoed in her chest, and she could feel her connection to her own laws being forcefully suppressed. "If previously he was at our level then now his current strength has surpassed all of us."
"This is bad," Lucien said with a low sigh as he raised both arms to reinforce the collapsing space around them. The strain was obvious now. The effortless composure he had maintained earlier was gone, replaced by focus sharpened to its limit. "If he continues drawing power like this then killing him might truly be impossible."
"Die, you three!" Mark roared with manic laughter as he spread his arms wide. In that instant, the sky shattered. Massive rifts opened above them, pouring torrents of crimson divine energy downward like apocalyptic rain.
Each drop carried the weight of continents, and where they struck, the land was erased without resistance. Mountains vanished, seas boiled away, and the ground beneath Max, Freya, and Lucien cracked apart despite the layers of spatial reinforcent Max had already laid down.
Mark thrust his hand forward and the world responded. A colossal wave of planetary force surged toward them, ford from compressed earth, oceans, and atmospheric pressure twisted together by divine authority. Max stepped forward and unleashed his fifth level concept of space at full power, erecting a multilayered barrier that bent reality itself.
The wave slamd into it and the impact still sent Max skidding backward through the air, blood spraying from his mouth as the shock tore through his body despite his defenses.
Freya moved at the sa ti, releasing her most intricate laws in rapid succession to dismantle the incoming aftershocks. Her attack was elegant and terrifying, layers of interwoven power cutting apart fragnts of Mark's assault before they could reach them.
Even so, her face paled as the recoil tore through her ridians, and cracks of light spread across her arms from the strain.
Lucien followed imdiately, his presence flaring as he countered a second strike that Mark had launched without pause. This ti it was a collapsing sphere of gravity condensed from the planet's core, dragging everything toward its center. Lucien forced it apart with raw authority, but the mont it shattered, the backlash sent him crashing into the ground, carving a canyon miles long before he finally ca to a halt.
Mark did not stop. He did not slow down. Each movent he made reshaped the battlefield on a planetary scale. He summoned storms that devoured light itself, oceans of divine fire that burned without heat, and crushing forces that warped ti locally under the weight of the world's essence.
The trio struggled to keep up, their defenses overlapping, reinforcing, shattering, and reforming again and again as they were pushed steadily onto the defensive.
For the first ti since the battle began, the gap between them was undeniable. Mark was no longer rely stronger. He was overwhelming. Each of his attacks carried the authority of an entire world, and defending against them was no longer a matter of skill or comprehension but a desperate struggle against extinction itself.
Moreover he was constantly being powered by the essence of the world. He had beca connected to the very world of Acaris making his power at a level no mortal power could fight against.
"Big Sis, Lucien. Back away," Max shouted, his voice steady despite the storm beginning to rise around him. "I want to try sothing."
Freya looked at him in shock. She couldn't understand what abilities Max still had that could contend against the current form of Mark. Still, she trusted him. Gritting her teeth, she retreated, tearing herself free from the battlefield and placing as much distance as she could between herself and what was coming.
Lucien did the sa, though his expression was far more complex. His eyes narrowed as he withdrew, not out of fear, but out of recognition.
Mark tilted his head, amused, though the amusent no longer reached his eyes. "What? You have sothing that can contend against now?" he laughed, the divine power of the crown flaring arrogantly as the world continued to pour its strength into him.
"I do," Max said calmly as he took a deep breath.
The mont he exhaled, the world scread.
Violet lightning erupted from Max's body, not the faint and unstable trace he had once barely controlled before, but the true and complete form of it.
This lightning carried an ancient authority, sharp and rciless, filled with the will of judgnt itself. It was followed imdiately by indigo lightning, deep and heavy like condensed law, then blue lightning crackling with absolute clarity, then green lightning pulsing with vitality and destruction intertwined. Yellow lightning followed, radiant and domineering, then orange lightning blazing with violent resolve, and finally red lightning surged forth, ferocious and wrathful, burning with the intent to annihilate.
The seven colors did not scatter chaotically. They rose together, spiraling into the sky, tearing through clouds, space, and atmosphere as if none of it mattered. The heavens split open as the lightning transford, each color shaping itself into a colossal dragon that roared with the voice of divine punishnt.
Seven dragons coiled through the skies above Max, their bodies made entirely of lightning that embodied judgnt, balance, destruction, and inevitability.
These were not ordinary lightning dragons. They were manifestations of the Seven Colored Lightning of Divine Punishnt, the very lightning used by the Wraith of the World to erase beings who defied the balance of existence. For countless ages, this lightning had been sothing that descended upon mortals without rcy. Now, for the first ti, it answered to a human.
The entire world trembled.
Mountains in distant regions collapsed without being touched. Oceans churned violently as tidal waves rose and froze in place under the overwhelming authority filling the skies. Even the red cloud calamity, far away in the distance, slowed its advance as if sensing sothing that even it should not provoke.
Mark's expression finally changed.
He could still feel the world empowering him, could still feel the crown pouring divine authority into his body, but this lightning was not part of the world's essence. It was sothing higher, sothing that judged worlds rather than served them.
Max stood at the center of it all, his body wreathed in seven colors of lightning, yet unbroken. This was sothing that would have destroyed him in the past. When he had first used the violet lightning, his body had barely endured even a fragnt of its power.
But now his physique had been tempered by the Giant Dwarves, reforged beyond mortal limits. The opening of the first of the Seven Divine Veins, the Vein of Origin, had granted his body a foundation capable of withstanding primordial forces. Above all, his fifth level concept of lightning allowed him to understand and command lightning not as energy, but as law.
The seven dragons lowered their heads toward him, acknowledging him as their master.
Max raised his gaze to Mark, his eyes reflecting all seven colors at once, calm and rciless.
"For all eternity," Max said quietly, his voice carrying across the world, "this lightning has judged others on behalf of the world. Today, I will use it to judge you on behalf of everything you destroyed."
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