Chapter 758: The Power Of A Paragon
[You have changed your name]
Northern, like a violent gale, streaked across the wind, tearing through the currents in a fleeting, incomplete second. He flew past the blades before they could react, colliding with the monster's body with a force that made the entire mountainscape wail in grievous protest.
The impact sent a seismic tremor rippling through the mountain, as if the very earth itself shrieked in agonized protest.
Their collision carved a ruinous path through the land, scouring everything in their wake with the ferocity of a meteor's descent.
Jagged fragments of stone, each massive enough to entomb warriors, erupted in chaotic volleys, battering the mountainside and shattering into countless lethal shards.
The monster tumbled like a ragdoll, flung helplessly by the force, until it finally slammed into a towering boulder-a crude, sedimented stack of rock that had, by some cosmic joke, formed a monolith resembling a snowman. If one had the imagination, a pair of twigs would have completed the illusion.
Northern stood amid the ruined ground, his chest rising and falling, flames of anger burning viciously in his eyes. He locked eyes with the monster, his body tensing, ready to advance- but then, he stopped.
Something shifted.
His frame became rigid, muscles aligning with unnatural precision beneath the exposed sleeves of the Spirit Linen ensemble, as though sculpted by an unseen artisan.
The earth trembled beneath his weight.
Northern threw both hands forward, meeting the terrifying speed of the incoming blades with equal ferocity. The ground groaned in protest, splintering as another shockwave tore outward, blasting through the winds and scattering the sparse trees in the distance.
His eyes burned-defiant, boiling. And now that he focused, he felt it. The blade wasn't just a weapon. It was the creature's eyes, its deadliest instinct given form.
A flicker of hesitation pulsed through the steel. The creature had expected Northern's hand to break under the weight of its attack, not resist it.
Of course. Right now, Northern was the most unyielding bulwark in the world... maybe.
His fingers clenched around the blade's edges.
'The edges aren't even that sharp.'
The crude thing was just heavy.
Even with two talent abilities reinforcing him, Colossal Force amplifying his strength to inhuman levels, the sheer weight of the metal tested his limits. His muscles strained. His stance held firm.
He dug his feet deeper into the shattered ground. With a guttural growl, he ripped the blades from their position, flinging them sideways. The weapons spun violently, crashing into the fractured rock, shattering further on impact.
Then, large hands shot from the debris cloud beyond.
Northern met each one with a destructive blow, turning flesh and bone into a maroon paste.
The hands kept coming, faster.
So did Northern's fists.
A blur of relentless motion, a cacophony of impacts, a melody of unnerving speed-both sides clashed in a violent rhythm that drowned the battlefield in chaos.
Northern did not relent. His blows fell like an unending storm, each strike painting his mask, his body, and the ground beneath him in thick, maroon ichor. The battlefield reeked of blood and ruin.
Yet, the Rift Guardian was no less merciless-hundreds of hands lanced through the air, stretching at unnatural angles, whipping toward him with terrifying speed and force, seeking to crush him where he stood.
Teeth gritted, Northern's fists blurred into a whirlwind of destruction, each strike ending a monstrous limb in a brutal, decisive instant. Yet even as he fought, his gaze pierced deeper into the thinning cloud of debris.
'That bastard... is buying time to recover.'
Surely, the monster's blade-its very eyes-must have sustained some kind of damage. If not, it would have already been on him again.
Which meant he had to close the distance. End this. Now.
For a brief moment, Northern considered abandoning Titan's Reckoning. But the answer was obvious. His body-mighty as it was would crumble beneath the sheer force of the blade's assault.
'I could resort to dodging and prioritize the main body.'
The blade was fast. Deadly. But the body remained its weakness. And it would do anything to protect itself.
It would not let him reach it.
But that only gave him more reason to change.
Strength meant nothing if it slowed him down. He could feel it-the weight anchoring him with every step. If he shed it, his body would regain its lightness, allowing him to surpass the blade in speed.
Or maybe... he wouldn't even need to. With shadow step, he could traverse space without paying heed to distance. Moreover, he now had a couple of talents that were more than enough to finish this from a distance.
Northern's eyes flickered with cold menace as his decision became cemented. Without hesitation, he withdrew-his form flashing upward, shattering the ground in his wake. Higher, into the sky, into the clouds. He stopped and hovered for an instant.
[You have changed your name.]
Then he plummeted.
Faster. Like a needle slicing through the heavens, his body cut through the winds-an imperceptible blur until, suddenly, he landed before the monster.
The impact sent debris skyward, not as catastrophic as before, but still a shockwave of undeniable force.
orthern stood tall, his voice cool, dangerous.
"Twilight Phoenix."
The air convulsed. Northern-though-had to dissolve into the shadow to dodge the incoming blade, coming out from the shadow cast by the large looming form of the monster itself, imperceptible to the blades for a moment while the disaster began to unfold.
A low, resonant tremor suddenly rippled outward, igniting something primal, something
ancient.
The world seemed to exhale-a deep, guttural breath-as flames erupted from the space above the rift guardian, coiling into existence with a sentient hunger.
They did not roar like ordinary fire; they hummed, a reverberation that quaked through the bones of all who bore witness.
The inferno surged upward, expanding, shifting-taking blades.
Wings, unfurling like banners of sheer annihilation, cast their colossal shadow across the frozen landscape. In the span of a single heartbeat, the pale daylight was drowned beneath an ethereal blaze-deep violet, wreathed in ember-red and streaks of incandescent silver. The sky reflected its colors like the dawn of the world's final hour.
The Twilight Phoenix rose, colossal, its mere presence distorting the very air, warping reality into a trembling mirage of unbearable heat.
Then it dived.
The instant it moved, the temperature spiked, not in mere increments but in cataclysmic
leaps.
The once-frozen mountainscape recoiled, the pristine snow boiling into thick geysers of steam before it ever had the chance to liquefy. The jagged, snow-capped peaks surrounding the battlefield cracked, their icy fortresses no longer impervious but betrayed by heat they
had never known.
Beneath the descent of the Phoenix, the frost-cloaked stone turned black, then orange, then a blinding, molten cantaloupe glow-like metal pulled fresh from a divine forge.
The crisp, ice-laden trees that had stood undisturbed for decades, perhaps centuries, ignited
in an instant, their bark charred to cinders as embers leapt from trunk to trunk in a relentless,
rolling inferno.
And then...
The world detonated.
The mountain quaked-not from tremors, but from sheer obliteration. The snow-laden slopes gave way, collapsing into avalanches of molten rock and charred ice, surging downward like an apocalyptic flood of fire and ruin.
The impact of the Phoenix's descent cracked open the mountain's core, spewing forth rivers
of magma that should have been buried deep beneath the crust of the world.
A shockwave howled outward, a tide of destruction so colossal that the distant peaks fractured, shattering like brittle glass, their glaciers crumbling in cascading fragments under
the sheer magnitude of the force.
The land, once a frozen expanse of pristine white, was now a scorched abyss, a graveyard of obsidian and cinders where snow had no memory of ever existing.
The sky burned.
Smoke and embers coiled upward, igniting the heavens in a tempest of fire, twisting the
once-clear sky into an aurora of smoldering ruin.
Clouds, once heavy with frost and snow, transformed into streaks of burning plumes, seared
away by the wrathful heat of the Phoenix's passing.
The aftermath of the Twilight Phoenix was not like ordinary flames-it did not fade. It
lingered. It festered. It etched itself into the world, embedding its embers into the very stone
and ice, flickering with an unnatural persistence, as if waiting... to be reborn.
And amid the ruin, Northern stood... shocked.
He blinked several times.
"Hoo-oly crap!"