Northern’s skull crashed against Kryo’s with the recoil of every absorbed strike. The world seemed to rupture—the mountain itself caved inward, ridges shattering and peaks collapsing as a wave of annihilation burst outward. Valleys split open like wounds across the land, and the heavens shook with a deafening roar.
Kryos reeled backward through the air, rolling across clouds with unstoppable momentum before suddenly halting himself mid-motion.
He moved his hand while suspended in the air and touched his nose, then brought that single finger to his eyes. There was a smear of silver liquid on it.
Kryos’s expression twisted darkly as he muttered:
"A human... made... me... bleed?"
His stone-cold expression cracked for the first time, his gaze narrowing with genuine malice. His body trembled with barely contained violence, as though his own essence had been turned against him.
Northern stumbled forward, his body shattered yet blazing with terrible vitality. His teeth bared through blood, his eyes swirling with manic light.
He laughed.
"Ahahaaa, this feels better than any blow I’ve ever landed. I headbutted some sense into you, didn’t I?"
Kryos’s face darkened even more savagely.
"You profane being!"
Northern laughed even harder, screaming:
"That’s more like it! That is how the Origin of Madness should sound!"
The one thing that had unsettled him from the beginning of this battle was how calm and collected Kryos had been. The Origin of Blood, War, Madness, and Chaos was just too composed for him to be considered one.
And it was because the bastard still had everything going well for him.
Even when he bled from the fight with Ul, his perfectly cool countenance remained intact. But now a single attack from Northern was striking him in places he couldn’t hide.
There was no doubt about it. This had to be a mental battle as much as it was physical.
At that moment, Northern realized he would have to attack the Origin’s pride to make him lose control enough for a mistake to happen.
He smirked at his realization. But still, could he last long enough?
Northern roughly wiped the blood dripping from his nose, leaving a crimson smear on his cheek.
’I am as resilient as my will to survive.’
Kryos exhaled slowly, crimson smoke hissing from his lips.
"Foolish human. You dare..."
The Origin’s hand stretched outward, and the space around Northern collapsed inward. Forest, stone, and even the scattered lightning shards bent toward Kryos’s palm, pulled into a gravitational vortex that sought to crush Northern into nothing.
Northern struggled. He gritted his teeth and immediately spawned a spiraling torrent of ice that exploded outward, feeding the black hole something to devour.
He erupted with tremendous flight force, expecting to escape the range. But he had gravely underestimated the gravitational pull. The ice he shot at it consisted of solid fragments, yet they flowed out like a frozen river—all of it instantly swallowed.
He was only able to move an inch higher and was now being dragged back with fierce intensity.
Northern gritted his teeth.
’Where is that bastard!’
A vicious black arrow suddenly streaked past him and sent the Origin’s head snapping back. Kryos froze in that position—his hand stretched out, his head knocked back with a black arrow protruding from his eye, his hand poised to catch...
Northern was startled for a moment.
’He missed it.’
He glanced down at the Chaos Prince, who was grinning at him with a thumbs up.
Northern frowned as something cold crawled across his body. He quickly focused on escaping the Origin, vanishing from the pulling vortex with desperate speed.
Northern glowered from the distance amidst the clouds and erupted with fury.
The winds and heavens responded with the same level of vicious wrath.
The sky rumbled with a thick, wrathful sound, as if the clouds were being rolled by a colossal hand forged of steel. Lightning rods streaked down in jagged patterns, connecting to Northern’s hands.
At the same time, the winds picked up like titanic steeds and rushed forward, obliterating the forest far below.
To the north of the forest lay a vast desert plain that separated the wall of Luinngard Empire from the scene where Northern and Kryos battled.
But the desert was stirring with a sandstorm as the winds answered Northern’s fury.
The Chaos Prince, who was amidst the forest, cried out as he ran through the crumbling woodland:
"Hey! Hey! Your partner is here! Hey!"
His eyes widened as a torn tree hurtled toward his face—mere inches from his widened eyes before he suddenly dropped into a crouch and let it fly past.
The ground trembled violently, and immediately the Chaos Prince lunged into the air, sprouting large black wings that seemed delicately carved from liquid darkness with intricate detail.
He breathed for a moment, closing his eyes. But as he opened them, a streak of lightning split across the sky, slamming into him, coursing through his entire body, and flinging him skyward.
The entire air crackled with lightning that charged toward Northern as he descended upon the Origin of Chaos—lightning spreading behind him like an enigmatic cloak.
Kryos, with cold fury, opened his palms and hurled them forward.
The two clashed. And the world paused for a moment to process... the... devastation.
Then havoc.
Veins of lightning—blue and brilliant, black and crimson—spread outward with tremendous force and speed. Even the Chaos Prince had to curl his wings over his face to shield himself from them.
The blue and brilliant lightning immediately seared his wings to a crisp, while the crimson lightning caused them to corrode and mutate into something else, becoming grotesque—quickly sprouting horns at their edges and extending beyond normal length.
But as soon as the grotesque transformation began, he frowned, and immediately the horns—as though terrified of something even more sinister—sank back inside. His wings returned to normal in an instant.
He looked at his left wing, half of which had been burned away by Northern’s lightning, and sighed.
Then it regrew instantly.
The normal lightning and the corrupted version that Kryos had tainted continued to surge forward, crashing into the forest and racing onward like rabid beasts until they collided with the massive wall of the small empire.
Thanks to the wall, the entire civilization of Luinngard was saved from being consumed by madness.
However, the worst had happened.
Where the lightning struck to destroy, its maddened version struck to drive beings to madness.
The entire desert and the wall of Luinngard rose as something different. Something vile that should not exist.