—boom
—boom
—boom
Enzo and the Fire Daemon exchanged blows in the sky, each strike heavy and resounding, the impact of them rolling outward in waves that disturbed the air for a hundred ters in every direction.
Enzo was not as strong as the Fire Daemon.
Not even close.
He kept getting bombarded, the outer shell of the Gore Beast transformation cracking under the sustained pressure, pieces of it fracturing and falling away before the healing factor could fully close what had already opened.
When he first fought the Gore Beast he hadn't noticed its relationship with pain. He had been outside of it, watching it absorb damage and keep moving, reading it as a quality of the creature rather than sothing he would ever feel from the inside.
Now he understood.
Every hit landed. Every burn went through. His flesh ripped apart at the contact points and knit itself back together with a speed that should have felt like relief but instead just ant the next strike had fresh tissue to work with.
He gritted his teeth and kept moving forward.
One thing the Gore Beast had that nothing else ca close to was its resistance to fire.
So despite the pain.
Despite the burns layering over each other at temperatures Enzo had no reference point for, his skin churning and reforming in a cycle that his mind was trying very hard not to fully register.
He pushed forward.
He kept hitting.
Every exchange he closed the distance instead of creating it, pressing into the Fire Daemon rather than pulling back, making the fight sothing the Daemon couldn't manage from range.
"Fucking human!!"
The Fire Daemon coughed up sothing dark and thick, its body registering the accumulated damage in a way it clearly hadn't expected. It tried to create space between itself and Enzo, pushing outward, using fire bursts to force separation.
Enzo pulled himself back in every ti.
The chain ca out once to close a gap that opened too wide. The void cutters worked in close, finding angles that the fire didn't cover, pressing at the Daemon's fra in ways that didn't care about heat.
The Daemon pushed. Enzo absorbed it and hit back.
The Daemon tried to disengage. Enzo followed.
Minutes passed.
Neither of them was willing to give up the ground they were standing on.
Their bodies collapsed toward each other again and again inside the dark do of the Silent Void, the wonderland containing the worst of it, the sound and light sealed inside so the outside world only heard the distant percussion of sothing serious happening without being able to see what.
Until.
[You have slain a Daemon]
[You have received a Divine Spark]
[Harnessing Void Energy]
After a long period of ti, Enzo stood covered in molten blood.
One hand gripped a void cutter.
The other gripped the neck of the Fire Daemon.
He held it for a mont, making sure, then let the body go and stayed where he was, upright by a margin that wasn't comfortable.
"Ha."
He exhaled and collapsed forward, landing against the chest of the dead Daemon, his own chest heaving, each breath slower than the last as his body began recalibrating what had just happened to it.
He lay there.
Seconds passed.
His eyes snapped back open.
He raised his head slowly and looked up as the Silent Void began unraveling around him, the dark do peeling back from the edges inward, the outside world bleeding through in pieces. Sound first. Then light. Then the full scene reassembling itself like sothing being revealed rather than sothing returning.
He was still on the ground.
He had a picture in his head of what he expected to find.
Victoria standing in the cleared space. The remaining Daemons dealt with. Nibbleskin nearby, probably looking composed about it. The field quieter than it had been. Her sword down.
He let himself have that picture for one mont.
A small exhale. Sothing close to a smile.
Then his eyes focused on what was actually in front of him.
In the sky.
Four more spacecraft.
Each one holding Daemons. Each one positioned and facing outward, the new arrivals reading the field, reading Victoria, reading the distance between themselves and whatever resistance remained.
Victoria stood between them and everything behind her.
Sword unsheathed.
To her left Nibbleskin and Gaia had taken position, both of them prepared, the three of them forming the only line that existed between the new wave and the stronghold.
Enzo tried to stand up.
His body didn't cooperate.
He tried again. Got one arm under himself and felt it give. The Gore Beast healing factor was still running but the deficit was too large for the speed it could work at. Everything was responding slowly.
He couldn't move.
He lay there and stared at the scene in front of him and felt it settle across him in full.
Absolute despair.
The word didn't capture it properly but it was the closest available. He had spent everything he had to put the Fire Daemon down and the situation had not improved. It had expanded. Four ships worth of reinforcent against three people and a castle that had been holding on for days already.
Then Victoria turned.
Her eyes found him on the ground, taking in his figure, the disfigured armor, the molten blood, the arm that had stopped trying to push him upright.
She looked at him for a mont.
Then she reached into her space of holding and tossed the disk toward him.
It crossed the distance and landed close, within reach, the treasure of the night sitting there quiet and bright, its field pulsing once as it settled.
She turned back to the sky.
Her wonderland let go.
The red moon above them stopped shining, its color draining in a slow exhale, the yellowish red that had stained the world for the past stretch of the fight fading back into ordinary light. The moon itself followed, withdrawing from the sky it had occupied until there was nothing left of it.
Gone.
The disk in Enzo's hand pulsed again, warr now, like it was acknowledging sothing.
Then the voice arrived in his head.
chanical. Clear. Unhurried.
[Congratulations. You have participated in a battle watched by the entire universe and beca its focal point. You have slain the sons of corruption and erased them from existence.]
A pause.
[Glorious. You have completed your Third Voyage.]
Enzo lay on the ground with the disk in his hand and the dead Fire Daemon behind him and the sound of four spacecraft overhead and read the notification once.
Then again.
His eyes stayed open, fixed on the sky above, watching the scene he couldn't reach from where he was.
Victoria and her sword.
Nibbleskin and Gaia holding the line.
The new wave assembling itself into position.
The disk warm in his hand.
He had completed the voyage.
And he couldn't move.
His vision slowly blurring out into the cosmos.
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