Lily drew a slow breath.
She spread her arms slightly. White lightning stread along her shoulders, down her arms, and off her fingertips in constant rivulets. Behind her, the corpse-white giant projection sharpened, its outline growing clearer by the second.
It was made of pure energy, yet the pressure it gave off felt almost physical—like if it solidified just a little more, it could step into this world for real.
"After being gone for so long…" Lily murmured. For the first ti, her voice carried an emotion she couldn't quite hide—sothing tangled and complicated. "Didn't think I'd run into sothing from The Infernal Abyss again, here of all places."
Her eyes stayed locked on the bird.
"But the stench on you makes sick. I want to rip you apart right now."
The bird pushed its power to the limit too.
It clenched its teeth. Blood-red lightning erupted wildly around it, and the red giant behind it rapidly took shape.
That aura was even more dangerous than before—more violent, more explosive—like if it was given one more second, it could erase the entire canyon beneath them.
"Then try it," the bird said, voice low and icy. "Let's see who kills who first."
It lifted its head slowly, eyes brimming with venom.
"But I'll tell you this up front—when it's over, I'm the one still standing."
The instant the words fell, the giants behind them moved.
No buildup. No wasted motion.
The two colossal beings—condensed from different energies—stepped forward almost in the sa second, then slamd into each other.
At the mont of contact, the sky looked like it got shredded into pieces by so invisible force. World-ending power blasted outward in every direction.
The upper air cracked open again and again.
The ground caved in again and again.
Shockwaves rolled out in rings like solid tides, forcing the distant onlookers to stumble back repeatedly, even making it hard to breathe. This wasn't a normal fight anymore—it felt like two different worlds' laws were tearing at each other face-to-face.
Ethan's breathing sped up despite himself.
Only now did he fully understand: this bird wasn't just a strong enemy.
To trade blows with Lily at this level—and to carry such thick infernal aura—ant it almost certainly had deep ties to The Infernal Abyss.
Feylora, standing nearby, looked like she'd gone stiff.
Head tilted back, she stared up, shock filling her eyes as if she'd forgotten how to breathe. That tier of power had blown past everything she'd ever understood.
"Master…" Her voice ca out thin, trembling despite her best effort. "Is this… the power of The Infernal Abyss?"
She paused, eyes still unmoving.
"Will we… ever be able to wield power like that soday?"
Ethan stared at the sky being torn apart over and over, and the light in his eyes only burned brighter.
"We will," he said, low but iron-hard. "One day, we'll break into The Infernal Abyss and take everything there—every last bit of it—for ourselves."
And in the brief ti it took him to speak, the battle overhead had already teetered over the edge.
The two giants crashed again. Their energies squeezed and ripped at each other, and at the point of contact, a rupture burst open—one that led into the depths of another dinsion.
That tear wasn't like an ordinary spatial vortex spewing chaotic turbulence. Instead, sothing seeped out slowly—an aura so dark, so ancient, it felt like it had been waiting since before ti.
The mont it appeared, Ethan's expression changed.
He stepped forward on instinct, releasing all the power in his body at once.
White lightning and Dark Abyss energy pulsed around him together. And the shadowy aura leaking from the rupture—like it sensed sothing—suddenly lunged straight at him.
The next second, it slipped into his body without any resistance at all.
Ethan jolted from head to toe.
Then his eyes flared with excitent so intense it was almost out of control.
"The Infernal Abyss…"
He whispered the na, heat in his voice he couldn't suppress even if he tried.
He'd never expected that just the collision of two forces could briefly rip open a seam leading to The Infernal Abyss.
The tear was wildly unstable and only existed for an instant—but for him, that was enough.
On the other side, Lily had clearly sensed the sa thing.
Her eyes lit up almost instantly.
These past days, she'd been searching at any cost for a way back to The Infernal Abyss. Now that she'd finally brushed up against that door—there was no way she could stay still.
She lunged out without hesitation.
But just as she was about to reach the dinsional tear, the surrounding energy suddenly dropped off a cliff.
The space corridor that had just been ripped open looked like it was being forcibly erased from the other end. It shrank fast, sealed shut, and then vanished from midair completely.
Lily stopped dead.
Her face darkened on the spot.
Across from her, the bird's eyes went wide too. Its reaction was even more intense than Lily's—those eyes were full of naked craving and restless agitation. Clearly, it had also wanted to use that tear to return to The Infernal Abyss.
The next second, it finally erupted.
"AAAH—!"
The bird threw its head back and roared, its voice packed with hatred and mania.
"It's because of you low, filthy things! Would it have killed you to stay obedient at the very bottom of The Infernal Abyss?! Why did you have to rebel?!"
The blood-red lightning around it surged violently, gathering into a destruction-soaked pressure. The entire sky was dyed a blinding crimson.
"It's because of you—"
It glared at Lily, its voice thick enough to drip blood.
"—that we were exiled! That we'll never make it back to The Infernal Abyss!"
In that instant, Lily's expression turned ice-cold.
She slowly turned her head.
White lightning spread around her in silence—no roar, no theatrics—yet it felt more dangerous than any scream.
"What are you, exactly," she said softly, her voice sharp as a blade, "that you think you can talk to like that?"
Before the last word even finished, she moved.
No fancy wind-up. A tyrannical sweep of white lightning cut across the sky, swallowing the bird's entire body.
This wasn't just suppression anymore.
It felt like punishnt—delivered from a higher tier of existence.
The bird barely managed a short, strangled grunt.
Then its huge body was blasted away.
Lily didn't give it a single breath to recover.
She flashed after it. Before the bird could stabilize, she reached out and grabbed its shoulder. Her fingers sank deep into a structure woven from flesh and energy, and then she tore outward with both hands.
Power exploded.
Half its shoulder—along with a massive slab of flesh and part of its wing structure—was ripped clean off on the spot.
A shriek of agony ripped through the sky.
The bird retreated in a panic, dragging its ruined body back. Blood-red lightning detonated erratically over its skin, and in just a few seconds its aura dropped an entire level. Lily's fury, though, didn't cool in the slightest.
She kept closing in.
A punch. Then another.
Every blow carried corpse-white thunder and that increasingly deep, unnaable strange energy, smashing into the bird with crushing weight.
Cracking bone, detonations, collapsing energy—sounds layered over each other. Before long, the bird that had been able to hold its own against her was forced down from the sky and slamd into the ground.
Its massive body hit the rock shelf and caved the terrain in, cratering the earth.
"If it weren't for you things destroying the original order of The Infernal Abyss—"
Lily straddled it, fists raining down, her voice packed tight with rage she'd been holding back for far too long.
"—that place wouldn't be this chaotic now!"
Another punch.
The bird's chest collapsed further.
"Even the dinsional paths—"
She hit again, harder.
"—won't open anymore!"
Every sentence made her fists heavier.
This anger wasn't just battle instinct. It was sothing buried for too long finally finding a place to pour out.
"All of it—"
She swung again. Corpse-white lightning raced up her arm, and the impact crushed most of the bird's chest cavity inward.
"—should be paid for by you!"
The bird's aura had weakened to the absolute edge.
Its body was nearly embedded into the ground. The huge, once-dominant fra was beaten grotesquely out of shape—flesh and energy layers caving in on each other. Even its struggle had turned feeble.
Even then, Lily still didn't stop.
She bent down hard, plunging both hands straight into the split in the bird's chest.
The next second—
she tore the body open from the inside.
With a ripping sound that made skin crawl, she yanked out a snow-white energy crystal from where its heart should've been.
Pure infernal aura flowed over its surface. The mont it left the body, it gave off a faint, trembling hum.
And once that core was gone, the last trace of life inside the bird snapped out completely.
Only after she was sure it was truly dead did Lily finally stop.
She rose slowly, still holding that snow-white crystal in her hand.
But unlike the near-feral rage from just monts ago, her expression went strangely quiet. There was even a faint, hard-to-na sadness settling over it.
She looked down at the core in her palm.
Her gaze went distant.
Like, through that snow-white crystal, she was rembering sothing.
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