A faint tremor rippled through the air.
Ery lifted his gaze toward Vashka, a slow and confident smile spreading across his lips.
"You’ve shown yours..."
He raised his hand, letting shadows coil between his fingers like living ink.
"...now let show you mine."
He ignited the power of Khaos within. The floor beneath his feet darkened instantly, as though an abyss had opened beneath him. A wave of black light pulsed outward, swallowing the hall’s warm illumination.
Twilight vines around him shuddered as the darkness rged with them, thickening into a dense, swirling mist. The vines split, snapped, twisted into shapes. A low, resonant hum vibrated across the chamber.
Three forms erged, each towering nearly four ters tall, like night itself had been sculpted into beasts.
One with colossal, tattered wings that dripped shadow.
One with writhing tentacles sprouting from its spine.
The last, skeletal and gaunt, radiating deathly hunger.
Their ergence shook the room.
Vines tore apart. Wind howled. Cosmic energy recoiled.
And then—
ROOOOAAARRR!
Three roars overlapped like a storm of mountains collapsing. Even Athar staggered. Annara’s breath caught in her throat. The puppets froze mid-attack. And Vic—poor Vic—fell onto his back with a yelp.
Vashka’s face drained of color.
"T-those—those are... DRAGONS!?"
Ery opened his eyes, the spell fully settling into place. His pupils shone with swirls of twilight and void as he declared calmly:
"Allow to introduce my friends...
Killgragah. Chututlhu. Daurgototh."
The three abominations turned their heads slowly, surveying the hall. Then, with only a whisper of command, they moved.
Killgragah lunged first, wings beating violently as he slamd into the winged lion puppet mid-air. The two beasts tumbled across the upper platforms, ripping chunks of stone out as they collided.
Daurgototh stepped forward, skeletal jaws clicking as frost spread beneath his feet. In seconds he intercepted the charging bear-like puppet. Its massive claws t frozen aura, slowing as ice crawled up its limbs.
Chutulthu stayed in the center, tendrils shifting around Ery and the others like protective serpents. His unblinking gaze locked onto the spiked lizard puppet lurking in the back.
These were no simple summons.
They were the results of years of training and survival within the Leviathan Beast’s belly. Using the Summon Nature Familiar spell as the foundation, the Twilight Vines as physical diums, and the increasing synergy of the Khaos power. He had constructed temporary bodies for the three Khaos Guardians.
The result: three god-level beast summons, each with their own terrifying might.
"Don’t get overexcited," Ery warned sharply. "Finish them quickly!"
The chamber exploded into chaos.
Killgragah slamd the winged lion into a wall, biting its tallic neck. Daurgototh froze the ground completely, restraining the bear puppet. Sparks erupted everywhere from their clashes, mixing with frost, fire, and shadow.
Vashka watched with a mix of fascination and irritation.
"so you are a summoner?... And those beasts—what are they?"
Ery exhaled, shoulders loosening.
"It’s complicated," he replied. "But you don’t need to worry about them..." His eyes sharpened. "Worry about yourself."
As soon as the words left his lips, Ery’s form blurred. Space folded around his body, and in a single step he vanished—reappearing right in front of Vashka.
A shockwave burst outward from his arrival point.
His half-transford arm, layered with glowing veins, swung forward with devastating force.
BAMMMMM!!!
The impact thundered through the hall. Her arms, wrapped in layers of reinforced spirit threads, absorbed the blow—barely. The force sent her skidding across the floor, strings whipping frantically behind her to stabilize her footing.
The puppeteer clicked her tongue, clearly shaken.
Ery lowered his stance, muscles tightening, his transford hand still steaming from the impact. He could feel it clearly: in pure physical strength, she was miles below him.
It wasn’t surprising. Not really.
Vashka was a puppeteer—one who had pushed her spirit and cosmic pools to the extre, and most likely left her physical body comparatively fragile. Her strength lay in control, manipulation... not in direct confrontation. Her true weapons were her constructs.
And now she knew he could crush her in hand-to-hand.
Fear flickered behind her eyes—imdiately masked by fury.
With a sharp inhale, she slamd her palms together.
The air shook as the area was covered with her battlefield domain.
A storm of cosmic strings erupted outward, hundreds—no, thousands—of threads bursting from every pore on her arms and back. They cut through the air like a flood of spinning blades, each thread sharpened to slice through steel.
Ery moved to strike again—only to be t with a black-silver tsunami.
WHIP-WHIP-WHIP-WHIP!
Threads lashed from every angle. He ducked, twisted, and bent space around his body to divert the worst of them, but there were simply too many. Even he had to retreat a few steps as the storm pressed him back.
At the sa ti, Vashka snapped her fingers.
Her four humanoid puppets surged forward.
The air trembled with the pressure of their combined charge—each one a top-tier artifact wielder.
A flaming sword carved an arc of molten destruction toward him.
A spear of compressed wind shot in a straight line, shrieking.
A mace imbued with earth law shook the ground with each stomp.
Water arrows, dozens of them, spiraled into a vortex aid at his head.
All converging on him at once.
Vashka’s voice sliced through the chaos, shrill with rage:
"DIE—DIE!!"
Ery exhaled sharply.
With most of his Twilight Vines keeping the three Khaos Guardians stable, Ery had to rely on sothing else. With a flick of his finger Ery took out his defensive artifact and swiftly four mirror-like shields materialized around him, spinning in intricate patterns. They intercepted the incoming barrage, sending rippling sparks of cosmic light everywhere.
The hall beca a battlefield in an instant.
The three Khaos guardians tore into Vashka’s three beast puppets.
anwhile, the two silver golems surged from the sides toward the remaining trio. Athar’s chakrams whirled in brilliant arcs, carving the air with streaks of blinding light as he parried the crushing tal fists. Annara’s fla whips cracked like lightning, splashing sparks across the chaos. Vic, however, was screaming for an entirely different reason.
"NO—NOT THE GOLEMS!!"
He dove between a collapsing pillar, scrambling on elbows and knees as shards of stone and errant fireballs rained over him. And all the while, Randhal’s twenty dormant golems were battered by stray shockwaves.
Ery grimaced. He understood how precious those constructs were. He wanted this battle finished quickly. But Vashka stayed slippery and distant, always hiding behind another wave of puppets and cosmic strings.
From the far end of the hall, her voice slithered out between clenched teeth.
"Those three summons must drain you terribly... How long can a one-cosmos half-blood like you maintain them?"
Her tone dripped scorn, but Ery only narrowed his eyes.
Unfortunately for her, Ery wasn’t "just" a one-cosmos anything.
And he had seen enough.
He exhaled slowly. "Ti to end this."
Two puppets lunged at him—one wreathed in blazing sword-light from the left, one riding a spiraling spear-wind from the right. The laws they carried clashed violently, their pressure enough to make the floor beneath him crack.
But Ery didn’t brace.
He lifted both arms, casting his [Heaven and Earth Dao].
The wind did not oppose the flas—it bent, drawn inward by the pull. Fire twisted into the spiraling gust, folding into its vortex until the laws shed, fusing into a single, blinding torrent of power.
Ery seized it.
With a shout, he unleashed the combined force in a sweeping arc and slamd into the incoming mace-wielding puppet.
The impact shook the entire chamber.
KABOOOOM
The puppet breaks, shards scattering across the hall like burning hail.
Ery didn’t wait for the debris to settle.
Using the roiling smoke as cover, he twisted space around him—stepping out of one ripple and into another and reappeared right in front of the water-law puppet guarding the rear.
Multiple watery arrows rushed to block him.
He didn’t even slow.
A flick of his wrist—and space distorted.
Each arrows bent sideways. The puppet barely had ti to react before Ery seized it by the throat, slamd it into the ground and bombarding it, with his fist.
BAMM!!
BAMM!!
The floor dented beneath the force, spider-webbing cracks erupting from the impact point until the puppets break apart.
Ery rose over the wreckage and turned toward Vashka.
Her eyes were wide—shocked, furious, and uncertain.
Ery wiped dust from his knuckles and said calmly,
"Two down."
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