Chapter 569: Void Tendrils
As the water below burst forth, it unleashed a massive shockwave that sent all of them reeling in the air.
For Lieutenant Dante, however, everything in that moment seemed to pass slowly. As he reeled-seeming helpless-upwards, his hands moved to his sword and his body twisted in the air, legs folded in as if they were about to run an air race.
His eyes narrowed to a slit as they locked in on the monster.
Then with a small movement, he pulled his sword; however, no one saw him pull the sword out completely. No one except Northern.
The Lieutenant turned into a blur, vicious red lights trailing his afterimages as he shot to his target in the belly of the red mist that the water was causing to be a little sparse.
Barely a second later after that wicked light shot off, a terrible shockwave hit the entire landscape, sending all of them reeling backward along with a powerful upheaval of the ground that exploded outwardly in all directions.
The force was so intense it shattered stone, ripped the ugly trees that were scattered around from their roots, and left the entire battlefield trembling under its weight.
The sky itself seemed to quiver in response, bending with the strain of the Lieutenant's onslaught.
Northern barely managed to stabilize himself mid-air, his senses heightened, his Chaos Eyes attuned to every fleeting detail.
Through the blurring chaos, he caught sight of Dante's figure reappearing-his sword dripping with a faint red aura, as though it had sliced through something beyond flesh and bone.
But there was no time to focus.
The monster let out a sound like splitting metal, a horrid, grating roar that sent shudders down Northern's spine.
The creature's wounds festered with dark, pulsing energy, filling the air with a choking stench.
It seemed to convulse, limbs thrashing, its blood mixing with the murky water below and turning it an even darker red, a grim reflection of the sky above.
Dante landed smoothly on the creature's back, barely touching it before launching himself off again, his movements blurring as he shot toward the monster's head with a vicious determination.
Northern watched the technique with awe and suspicion.
Dante's movements were unnatural, as if he wasn't just fast, but as if the air itself bent to his will, carving a path through the chaos.
The monster reared back, its eyes glistening with raw fury as it turned toward Dante.
But Northern sensed something else. Beneath its rage, there was a flicker of fear-something Northern had rarely seen in a creature of its kind.
He felt it through the Void Sense, a faint pulse of dread that radiated from the monster's soul. Northern clenched his fists with a maniacal grin. This was the opening he needed.
With a swift motion, he tapped into his own power, letting the Void's chilling energy seep through him, resonating with the darkness in the monster's core.
He felt his own body blur, the Void Tendrils snaking out from his arms, ready to pull him into the fray.
He surged forward, matching Dante's trajectory but with his own twist-a silent, lethal force of entropy at his back.
Together, they closed in from opposite directions, Dante's sword a blazing red comet and Northern a shadow of ruin.
As they neared the beast's head, Northern raised his arm, Void Tendrils coiling around his fist, their dark energy thrumming with anticipation.
The monster's head loomed, a grotesque amalgamation of twisted flesh and bone, its maw lined with jagged teeth that seemed to drip with an oily black ichor.
As Northern and Dante closed in, the creature's massive eyes widened, a mix of rage and primal terror gleaming within their depths.
Dante struck first, his sword becoming a blur as he drove it into the creature's skull.
The blade carved through flesh and bone as if they were nothing, red essence flaring from the blade's edge, burning through the creature's skin in a searing, brutal line.
The monster's scream was a guttural, agonizing roar that vibrated through the air, tearing at Northern's ears and sending waves of nausea rippling through his gut.
But Northern was already in motion. His Void Tendrils lashed forward, black and writhing, burying themselves into the monster's exposed flesh, and sinking deep into its open wounds.
A putrid stench filled the air as his void essence spread, corroding muscle and sinew with a sickening hiss.
It was like the tendrils themselves were laced with a different and more insidious kind of
essence.
The creature convulsed, its limbs flailing as it tried to pull away, but Northern held firm, his grin widening as he felt its life force buckling under his grasp.
The Void Tendrils began to twist and coil within the creature's body, unraveling the tissue from the inside.
Northern could feel each muscle fiber tearing, each bone cracking as the Void worked its way deeper, corroding everything in its path.
Blood-thick, dark, and reeking of decay-poured from the monster's open wounds, pooling on the ground below in a sickly black sludge.
Each droplet seemed to hiss as it hit the earth, leaving smoking craters where it landed.
Dante, for a moment, froze in shock as he saw Northern destroy the monster in such a
grotesque way, unbefitting of the flamboyancy of a drifter.
And for that moment, Northern couldn't help but be awestruck.
'Dark beauty... I love it!' His obsession for Northern just seemed to grow wilder.
Dante regained himself and quickly clenched his sword, forcing it deeper into the monster's head.
Echoes of that gruesome stab marinated themselves into the monster's skull with relentless precision, each stroke an explosion of bone fragments and dark, coagulated blood that splattered across the battlefield.
His expression was stoic, almost detached, as if the chaos and gore were nothing more than a dance he'd rehearsed a thousand times.
The monster's eyes rolled back, its last shreds of strength dwindling, yet Northern felt its soul fighting to hold on.
He drove his fist forward, Void Tendrils reaching deep into the creature's cores, where he sensed the deepest well of its energy.
The tendrils burrowed into its soul, sinking in like hooks and ripping at the very essence of its being while curling itself around the cores.
With one final, brutal yank, Northern tore the monster's soul free, forcefully ripping out all
six cores and throwing them into the air.
The monster became a writhing mass of dark energy, pulsing with a deep crimson light, desperately clinging to life.
Northern watched with a manic gleam in his eyes as the soul began to disintegrate, eaten by
the void.
He could feel essence flowing into him, filling him with a dark, corrupting strength that surged through his veins like liquid fire.
As the last remnants of the soul faded into nothingness, the creature's body convulsed once more, then went still, its flesh melting away under the corrosive force of the Void.
Within moments, the once-mighty beast was reduced to a pile of disjointed bones and smoldering ash, a testament to the devastation they'd wrought.
Northern staggered back, his breath ragged, his heart pounding as the intoxicating rush of the
Void's energy settled within him.
He glanced over at Dante, who stood in the aftermath of their battle, his sword lowered, his
gaze unreadable.
There was a brief silence, the air thick with the smell of blood and ash, before Northern's
voice reached out.
"What we had just killed was a Disastrous Destroyer..."
On his own part, he wouldn't call the battle difficult or strenuous. But every moment of it had
been executed with acute timing.
A slight mess might have caused them more time and needless difficulties. Because of the kind of technicality that he had woven into the battle, perfectly blending with Dante, a
flawless victory was achieved.
'This just proves how very dangerous this rift is.'
The battlefield lay in ruins around them, stained with the remnants of their enemy and littered with debris from the shockwave.
But as the dust began to settle, Northern could feel something else in the air-a lingering presence, a dark foreboding that prickled at his senses, as if the monster's death had only served to awaken something far worse waiting beyond the veil.