Chapter 1080: The Skyrender [part 1]
Raven surged ahead of the rest, racing toward the eastern edge of the Ice lands, flying further from the desert and Luinngard Empire. That was where the strange, oppressive energy pulsed from.
Cutting through the air at breakneck speed, her face bore a grave expression. Even Raven, who usually remained stone-faced, couldn’t mask her emotions this time.
Realizing Northern’s true strength was one thing—a jaw-dropping revelation. The fact that they existed worlds apart had shattered her mind, yet simultaneously filled her with immense joy.
She had always meant well from the beginning. Coming to the Dark continent, she watched countless people lose themselves to fear, to the brutal drive for survival, and it cut her deeply. No one understood how thoroughly the survival mindset stripped away one’s potential for greatness.
It had done the same to her. Forced to mature early within her family, she had spent all her years barely scraping by, clinging to existence. Someone like her hadn’t been given any choice. Not until her second awakening, when she chose to truly live—when she chose to grow into her full potential.
That was when she realized how much she’d been missing. It wasn’t about the second awakening itself; it was about her resolve. Life blooms when one believes it will. Life becomes hell when one expects it to be.
The power of perspective is brutally undermined and crushed by reality’s cruelty. Raven understood—reality was merciless, perspective seemed abstract and flimsy against such harshness. But if someone could anchor their mind enough to make their perspective their reality, they would discover they could build immunity to this world’s cruelty.
Raven was no great speaker or teacher; putting these truths into words felt impossible. So the only path she saw was to show people through action.
Coming from a ruthless family like the Kageyama, she somehow excelled at it. She used every method available to reach her goals, and in all earnestness, it was for people’s good.
Yet now, as she reflected, she found herself questioning so much of what she’d done. Especially to Northern.
In the end, she was just like Rughsbourgh.
But Raven wanted to atone for that. She hadn’t known better. She’d only done what she knew how to do best. Regardless, she had hurt people, killed people—at the tender age of twenty, she was already a ruthless killer.
Those weights—the weight of lives she’d claimed with the flood, the people she’d slain out of necessity and weakness—would never leave her shoulders.
It was her burden to bear. She didn’t even hope for redemption. She simply wanted to stop adding to it.
When she compared herself to Northern, she felt deeply flawed. She claimed to be noble, doing everything for people’s good, while Northern was selfish—doing it all for himself.
Yet how ironic that she had ended up alone, while Northern somehow stood surrounded by people.
Was she living a lie while Northern simply lived his truth? Was that the difference?
She felt underappreciated and unrewarded, but she was wise enough to recognize it as the consequence of her choices. It wasn’t as if the same people she’d killed thousands to save had come to rescue her from prison, or even sent a word of thanks.
She wasn’t disappointed things had turned out this way. From now on, she wanted to live for herself—to follow Northern’s example for once.
She wanted to do what felt right, to abandon everything the Kageyama clan had taught her and use Northern as her model for living.
And so, subconsciously, Raven found herself asking:
’What would he do in this situation?’
She hung suspended in the air, held aloft by her long black wing, staring at the vicious concoction of abomination writhing before her.
The creature moved like a living horizon, each step sending shockwaves through the very bones of the earth. Its body was a fortress of living stone and abyssal hide, the scales along its head splitting into jagged ridges that glowed with an ethereal blue fire. From between those ridges poured streams of weaponized energy—as if the wind itself had been sharpened into blades, tearing clouds apart and scattering debris in its wake.
Its eyes were twin furnaces of cold fire—burning not with heat, but with crushing will, staring down at the world like a judge poised to deliver final verdict.
The air around it warped and twisted, dirt and rock lifting from the ground as if gravity itself dared not hold them in its presence.
Each massive limb ended in claws broad enough to pulverize boulders, yet its movements held unnerving precision for something so impossibly vast.
Raven felt the breath stolen from her lungs before such a presence. The creature loomed as large as the world itself, spanning several hundred meters with its body and ridges.
She was nothing more than a speck of ink before it. Even when Eli and Thalen joined her, they seemed no different. The creature dwarfed them to a soul-crushing degree.
Eli’s voice cracked.
"How are we supposed to... kill *that*?"
None of them dared respond. As far as common sense dictated, a Leviathan was something a Transcendent should face—at minimum, a Luminary. A Paragon had no business confronting a Leviathan; they would simply be obliterated.
Eli shot a furtive glance at Raven.
"Lady, got any special powers like your friend?"
Raven’s gaze remained fixed on him, her face a mask of ice. She offered no response, simply turning back to face the Leviathan that awaited them.
At that moment, two more figures descended onto the battlefield. Lynus glided down on glass-like wings while Jeci landed hard on the ground—though the earth beneath was already crumbling under the Leviathan’s thunderous steps.
The reinforcements were welcome, but Eli knew with bitter certainty they would accomplish nothing. The creature could finish them all with a single sweep of those ridges.
Raven hesitated for a moment, then slowly extended her hands. A white orb of light bloomed before her palms like an opening flower.
"We have to try our best... don’t we?"
As she spoke, each petal of light burst forward with a surge of searing radiance. There were eight petals in total—all eight streams of light flowed like blazing pillars and slammed into the abomination’s head.