Chapter 1002: Sun Legacy [part 1]
Northern was flooded with bewildering thoughts and froze for a millisecond as day suddenly plunged into crimson night.
He levitated there, paralyzed and drenched in sweat. For a moment, dread crashed over his senses and body—as if no matter what he did, the monster would never die.
A Leviathan was simply too powerful to be defeated, even by someone like him. Perhaps retreating to Chaos and Void was his only option.
Without Chaos and Void, he was nothing.
However, after that millisecond of doubt, Northern snapped upright with fierce resolve. He might be a coward in several areas, but he had never proven to be mentally fragile.
His mental fortitude was unbreakable. Since being born in Trael—the first time, of course—this was the first instance he’d felt it waver with such intensity, and even that hadn’t lasted a full second.
Northern covered his face with his palm, grinning behind it.
"Well, damn. Leviathans are definitely not your average monsters."
Northern lifted his face to the sky with a grimace as crimson darkness smothered everything.
There was a sudden drop in gravity, then everything plunged into pitch blackness for a moment. Northern felt something in the atmosphere he could only describe as an inversion.
Like the world had been flipped inside out.
When the darkness dissolved, giving way to the crimson veil, the world he saw bore no resemblance to what had existed just a millisecond before.
Something was catastrophically wrong.
First, there was no land beneath him. Instead, an ocean of flowing crimson smoke churned and rolled like an ominous sea of primal evil, waiting to devour everything.
Mountains jutted from the crimson ocean like arrowheads dipped and drenched in blood.
The tide flowed endlessly to the realm’s edge. The mountains themselves seemed to be the source of whatever catastrophe this realm harbored.
But there was no way to tell for certain.
Northern exhaled and fixed the monster with a death glare.
"Oh well, to be dragged into a monster’s soul world. What an honor."
This was his first time witnessing a Soul World live and direct. But it wasn’t so different from Burning Storm’s—in fact, Burning Storm’s soul world had seemed far stronger.
This one felt bland, hollow, and dying.
Being inside it confirmed something Northern had suspected all along.
He touched his chest with a soft frown, then surveyed the entire realm with a calm expression.
’Really... Chaos?’
The entire realm suddenly bellowed and roared.
Northern snapped out of his thoughts and fixed his attention on the Leviathan.
’Good. Perhaps I can learn from you how to handle a soul world.’
Northern slowly exhaled, and steam began leaking from his body.
"Solar Ascension."
Whoooom!
The heat blazed and formed a second skin around his body. His skin began cracking as molten veins of volcanic fire streaked across his surface. His hair slowly rose, the white color shifting as it radiated power.
His eyes blazed with flames and ignited with radiance that seemed to consume his humanity. The molten veins spread across his body, even onto his face.
Then his hair flowed upward and began to dance, slowly transforming into fire.
His hair became a complete altar of flames that danced subtly. His eyes burned, his skin darkened and hardened with searing heat, and golden metallic liquid flowed over his arms before solidifying.
His armor was destroyed by these transformations, but Northern didn’t need to worry about that.
This was what Sun Legacy truly was—Northern’s strongest talent, perhaps second only to One True Self.
Northern locked eyes with the Evil Dragon.
"I’ve been hesitant about using this because of the environment. It’s incredibly powerful, and I don’t want people caught as collateral damage. But dragging me into your soul world was the perfect move."
He raised his chin and smirked.
"Show me... just how strong you are."
Northern surged forward, but the distance between him and the Leviathan suddenly stretched infinitely.
His feet blazed with comet trails of flame, exploding him forward with even more force, yet he couldn’t seem to close the gap.
Instead, something bizarre happened.
The world suddenly inverted, and with lightning speed that Northern couldn’t react to, a mountain slammed into him.
As he plummeted, he was falling toward the crimson ocean of mist below.
The jagged peak crushed into him with devastating force. Northern managed to use the heat waves around his burning body to create a shield in the final second before impact, preventing the mountain from pulverizing his body on contact—but he couldn’t counter the overwhelming force of an entire mountain.
He was hurled groundward at alarming speed, powerless to resist the momentum.
Northern grabbed the side of the jagged peak, like an ant clutching the roof edge of a falling building.
It was a spectacle to behold.
However, that ant suddenly blazed with a torrent of fire that surged backward with explosive force, creating a mountain of flames that mirrored the stone mountain driving him earthward.
The opposing forces entered a stalemate for a moment, and Northern gained enough power to counter the mountain’s momentum.
Moreover, a flood of ice lances—not hundreds, not thousands, but an absolute deluge—materialized in the air and began flying into the mountain, crushing against it as ice spread across its surface.
But the mountain wouldn’t break. It blazed with molten heat that instantly evaporated the ice, turning it to scalding steam.
It flared with even greater force, fighting against Northern’s resistance.
The Evil Dragon swooped down and landed on the mountain’s slanted surface, adding even more weight and power to the crushing force.
Northern was driven back ten meters before his own mountain of flames blazed more powerfully. The fire radiated in all directions, burning with ferocious intensity and crashing into the ground, forcing the ocean of crimson clouds to retreat and flee from the impact zone.
From all around them, thousands of fire comets ignited and began streaking toward the mountain. Within moments they collided, and a thunderous explosion consumed the enormous peak, shattering it further.
Northern groaned as he crushed the sides he was gripping.
"Ashen Eternity."
Instantly, his hands radiated power, and the mountain began to crumble, decompose, and dissolve into ash beneath his grasp.
The Leviathan launched itself from the mountain, wings beating powerfully against the air currents.
It hovered and seemed to bore a fierce stare into Northern, whose hair blazed as he dusted the ashes from his body.
Northern finished and fixed the monster with a glare of his own.
"What? You thought you were the only one with trump cards?"