Northern stood suspended in the night sky, his gaze fixed on the colossal hand with a tense, serious expression.
Paragon Raizel had made a lot of sense—and Northern agreed. The Paragon had to fight Dante either way and he had no desire to be part of the battle.
He exhaled softly, inhaled, then exhaled again.
'Now... now... what exactly can make this hand crumble?'
A cold, subtle blue light flickered to life in Northern's eyes.
"Let's go... gently, first."
He raised one hand, narrowing his gaze at the massive limb as if locking onto a target then shut his eyes.
Every one of his talent or attribute abilities carried a spectrum of damage, determined by how much Void essence he chose to channel into them.
Northern had only wielded Soul essence briefly, before his contact with the Void. So, his understanding of the soul remained limited. But the Void—he knew that far too well. It was an amplifying force like no other.
Essence, in essence, was meant to be sustenance. It powered talent activation. Of course, deeper studies revealed it wasn't just that—it was a fundamental energy that composed the world and its entities. A form of life, in and of itself.
But Void essence defied that understanding.
Void essence was lifelessness, embodied. And yet, it existed. By existing, it became its own twisted form of life.
This contradiction left Northern baffled, still piecing the puzzle together. But he had come to understand one thing: this life of lifelessness imbued his talents with a stark, devouring nothingness.
It hollowed out his abilities, consumed their vitality—and in doing so, granted them the Void's livelihood. With their essence consumed, they became unnaturally amplified.
To make things even more complicated, his system had updated.
Now, he could combine talent abilities at will.
He could take an ability from Frostheart and fuse it with an ability from Whispering Gale.
Or he could extract an attribute from Chaos Flame and merge it with an ability from Phantom Strike.
The possibilities were endless—so endless, in fact, that deciding on just one felt like a battle on its own.
So, Northern chose a simpler path: test everything.
Test his mind. Test his body. Test every ability, every combination... until the hand shattered.
Until he found the one that could break the Leviathan's hand.
Northern breathed gently, his eyes turning deathly cold as he lowered his raised hand and muttered,
"Black Lance."
A terrifying warping sound engulfed the sky, and an oppressive weight crashed down on the atmosphere. Everyone felt it. Their knees buckled as they collapsed beneath the unseen force. Even the darkness of night trembled, disturbed by the sheer, unreasonable magnitude of tension that bent the very air.
Then, something blotted out the night.
No one—absolutely no one—could've imagined the sky itself would be split by a deeper darkness, one that erased existence.
It was as if a vast portion of the night's blanket had been torn open, leaving behind a gaping void. It wasn't light. It wasn't shadow. It was absence—pure, stark emptiness. The grey that lingers between the edge of dawn and the retreat of night.
The Black Lance tore through the stars in a jagged arc. And for a fleeting moment, the heavens didn't shimmer—they shuddered, recoiling as the streak bled shadows across the firmament. It wasn't a beam. It was a void made visible—a gash in reality where light itself went to die.
The dark clouds didn't part. They vanished, evaporated in utter silence, consumed along the lance's path. Everything halted, even the air. Movement ceased—like marionettes with severed strings. Time faltered, stalling as if the sky itself struggled to comprehend what had just been released.
Below, the earth didn't quake. It listened, holding its breath.
For what comes next when the sky bleeds black?
Chaos.
And it crashed into the Leviathan's hand.
For a single moment, the world turned pitch black. Sight vanished. Sound followed. Nothing could be seen or heard.
Then… a tremble.
Not in the ground, but in reality itself. The air vibrated, like the threads of existence were being tugged toward rupture. Those standing on the rooftop felt it—an alien vibration seeping into their blood, crawling through their bones, cloaking them in unexplainable dread.
Then, slowly... subtly... the world reassembled.
The air regained its balance. The grey void faded, and the rift among the stars began to mend. The night sky stitched itself back together, as if nothing had ever happened.
But the expressions left behind were far from composed.
Gasps hung in the air, mouths frozen mid-breath, eyes wide and vacant.
Rover—Roma's elder brother—stood pale, his gaze narrowed in disbelief, his face dripping with sweat, shoulders subtly trembling.
He turned to Sage Mack, whose face remained blank with a dazed expression. Then to Ascendant Zion—the gentle, composed man now caught in the fever of pale, uncomprehending shock.
Every Drifter who had witnessed it stood frozen. Emotionless. Wordless. Their minds had yet to decide how to respond.
Even Paragon Raizel was frowning—his expression wary, baffled, pale, and mesmerized. At this point, his mentee could no longer surprise him.
But a question had begun to burn.
What the hell did he have to go through to gain a power like that?
'What is his talent? What's his true name? What does he know that we don't?'
The Paragon's mind screamed silently beneath a storm of unanswered questions. But his face betrayed only a calm frown.
Northern, meanwhile, was unimpressed.
He stood with a cold frown of disdain—eyes still locked on the hand.
Northern's eyes flickered with anger. The light in them was dangerous—chilling.
The hand…
The damn Leviathan hand…
In all his history of wielding Black Lance, this was the most Void essence he had ever poured into a single strike. He had emptied an entire clone's worth of gathered Void essence just to execute that attack.
Which meant, if not for the clones stationed within the Limitless Void, continuously serving as conduits to channel essence into him, he would've been completely drained—left essenceless and vulnerable.
And yet…
The damn Leviathan's hand… survived it.
Northern gritted his teeth.
"Now I'm mad."