The first thing Northern could vividly perceive was the lines that separated talent abilities.
It was a deeply metaphorical line. Talent and their abilities existed as a relationship—so alike, yet so distinguished. This was why DiY had actually managed to cross that line, which should never be possible.
But right now, in the depths of his soul, Northern could sense every talent with crystal clarity. It was as if he understood how they connected and wove into the strange whirlpool of his essence. Which was bizarre.
Because of this vivid sensing, he could also tell that the relationship between each talent and their abilities felt like a pool.
A pool of inherently the same properties, but also quite distinguished in their quantities.
And this pool scattered throughout his soul. Now he felt like he could easily break them into each other—which, of course, was what DiY had been doing before.
But the difference was that Northern felt he could purely do it on his own, which was far easier to perform than DiY. Of course, this rendered DiY useless, but also made Northern realize that this actually couldn’t be all there was to DiY.
He would think about all that later. Right now, though, there was something else demanding his attention.
He stared down at the creature, chilling light radiating from his eyes, his sword raised in his right hand. Northern considered the use of Will he had discovered moments ago.
But decided against it. He didn’t want to become dependent, especially since his body had suffered heavily for it and the ability was dangerously intoxicating.
Instead, he breathed and seized active control of that pool—no, all the churning pools inside him. Everything became insanely formless the moment he grasped it with a metaphorical hand.
That hand was his consciousness. There was an amusing willingness to be bent that talents had never possessed before.
Northern smiled.
’This is too sweet.’
Then from the point where his blade met the handle, a radiance of flame erupted. The flame raced along the blade to the tip but didn’t stop. It exploded from the sword and stretched into the sky, instantly doubling the length of the weapon and transforming it into a sword of pure flame.
The flames pierced through the clouds and beyond, tearing through the atmosphere and into the space beyond the world. Then the flame condensed into a thin radiance of fire light, maintaining the size and shape of the illusioned Hefter’s blade.
The sword gleamed with wicked silver light and the next moment vanished completely—only the hilt in Northern’s hand remained visible.
Northern smiled once more.
’This is truly incredible...’
Since the sword couldn’t be seen, the attack couldn’t be anticipated. No one could even tell where it was coming from. The thought of blindsiding his opponent filled him with savage delight.
’Let’s test this shit now, shall we?’
Northern brought his hands down.
The moment Northern’s hands descended, space, time, and even the winds seemed to hold their breath.
The invisible blade carved through the air with surgical precision, leaving no trace of its passage—until it struck.
The Leviathan’s second ridge, the massive outcropping that connected to its mountainous head, simply... separated. There was no dramatic clash of steel against stone, no thunderous impact. Just a clean, devastating severance that defied the laws of physics.
But Northern’s flame sword didn’t stop there. The invisible blade, extended far beyond its physical form by the condensed fire essence, continued its arc through the landscape beyond.
Where the overextended sword passed, the very earth split apart in a perfectly straight line that stretched to the horizon and beyond.
Mountains in the distance were cleaved in half as if they were made of butter, their peaks sliding away with grinding roars that echoed across the entire continent and beyond.
Through the vast desert, across Luinngard, and extending into the oceans.
The cut was so clean, so absolute, that for several moments the severed landscapes hung suspended, defying gravity until physics finally caught up.
Then everything began to collapse at once.
For a heartbeat, the severed ridge hung suspended in the air, as if the world hadn’t yet processed what had occurred. Across the landscape, mountain peaks tottered on the edge of oblivion. Luinngard’s wall, over a hundred kilometers away, groaned under its own weight, threatening to collapse carelessly, and the very earth seemed to pause in confusion at the impossible line that now divided it.
Then gravity reclaimed everything at once.
The Leviathan’s severed ridge plummeted earthward with apocalyptic force, joined by a cascade of destruction stretching to the horizon. Mountainsides collapsed in sequential thunderclaps, creating an avalanche of stone and ice that rolled across the land like a tsunami.
The colossal mass of the ridge’s shadow raced across the snowscape, accompanied by the shadows of a dozen falling peaks, turning the day into apocalyptic twilight.
When the ridge struck the frozen ground, the world convulsed. But this was only the beginning of the cataclysm.
The impact sent a seismic shockwave rippling outward in perfect concentric circles, joined by dozens more as the severed mountains struck the earth in rapid succession.
The land bucked and heaved like a living thing in agony. Where Northern’s overextended blade had carved its invisible line, the earth split open in a chasm so deep that no bottom could be seen—a wound in the world itself that stretched beyond the horizon.
The very air ignited where the invisible flame blade had passed, leaving a trail of fire hanging impossibly in the sky, marking the path of destruction like a scar across reality.
Northern stared in stunned silence at what he had wrought.
He thought he had peaked with the landscape of the desert he’d rewritten into ice, but this was different.
That one had been intentional, a terrible splurge of essence... this... this was the aftermath of an attack, completely unintended!
Where once there had been a continuous mountain range, now there was a perfectly straight canyon that seemed to stretch forever. The cut was so precise, so geometrically perfect, that it looked almost unnatural against the organic chaos of the surrounding destruction.
But it was the Leviathan’s reaction that truly showcased the attack’s devastating effectiveness.
The creature’s massive head, now freed from the ridge that had anchored it, tilted violently to one side. Even though the head had been completely liberated from the vicious weight, it seemed that had inherently destroyed the abomination’s balance entirely, and the walking mountain began to topple.
Each step it tried to take to steady itself only made things worse, its remaining appendages struggling to support the suddenly uneven distribution of its titanic mass.
Northern watched from above, his invisible blade still humming with residual energy.
Where the ridge had fallen, a crater nearly a mile wide had formed, its edges still glowing with residual heat from the impact. Steam rose from the wound where his blade had cut through the creature, the flesh cauterized so cleanly it looked like polished obsidian.
’Holy shit! This new essence doesn’t mess around.’
The Chaos Prince’s voice reached him across the distance, filled with genuine admiration:
"Now THAT is what I call making an entrance! Though you might want to finish it off before it figures out how to get back up!"
Indeed, despite its catastrophic wounds, the Leviathan was far from defeated. Its remaining mass writhed and shifted, already beginning the process of adaptation that made these creatures so terrifyingly resilient. But for now, it was grounded, vulnerable, and very, very pissed.
Northern tightened his grip on the invisible blade’s hilt and prepared for the next phase of the battle.