Northern had neither time nor tolerance for mobs—Ascendants or otherwise.
The moment he stirred, Oblivion's Mark activated: Absolute Lock.
Unlike Jeci's conventional Lock, this evolved talent operated on an entirely different principle. Northern didn't need proximity or a maintained connection—he simply cast the Lock, and their talent ceased to exist. Frozen. Inaccessible. Unusable. Until he chose otherwise.
Jeci's version had conditions. It required closeness, and once the target broke that radius, their talents returned.
But Absolute Lock ignored such trivialities. Distance held no bearing. Once locked, their talent remained sealed—permanently—until Northern decided to lift the shackle.
As he moved, their talents withered. From his fingertips spilled ice—slow, creeping, whispering serpents of pale frost slithering across the floor before exploding upward in jagged fury. Shards of crystalline rage erupted into the sky like frozen spears, carving through the ground with deafening force.
Before the two Ascendants could react, they were buried—trapped inside a spiraling prison of razor-edged ice. A mausoleum of glacial knives.
Northern spared them only a glance—chill and indifferent—then vanished.
Just as he disappeared, he reappeared.
A four-legged, ferocious monster was seconds away from sinking its rows of jagged, cruel teeth into a helpless civilian.
Illusioned Hefter rang out—a cold, hollow hymn—and cleaved through the beast's gaping maw, splitting its jaw with a clean, brutal line.
Northern reached the civilian in the same motion, grabbing him by the collar and hurling him through the air.
At that exact moment, one of his clones materialized, catching the old man midair before leaping out of the coliseum. The clone darted past swarming monsters, weaving through chaos to get the man to safety.
Northern was already gone—blurring to another corner of the battlefield with terrifying precision. His speed was sharp. Surgical. He didn't waste a single motion.
The entire coliseum drowned in a grueling, terrible cry of battle.
Screams rang out. Blood sprayed into the air in vicious arcs as monsters surged from shelter to shelter, tearing through the crowd with terrifying power.
Students and civilians fell alike. Though the instructors fought, their efforts barely scratched the chaos. The students didn't even come close.
The best among them—those hailed as the strongest—could do nothing more than stagger back, fending off death one shaky breath at a time.
Protecting others wasn't even an option.
At some point, Northern stopped. He stood still, his expression beginning to fracture.
He would've loved to disperse all his clones right then, scatter them across the battlefield to ease the madness, to rescue what lives he could.
But it was pointless. Or so he told himself. There was nothing he could do.
'No! No! To hell with that thinking!'
Yes, he was weakened—drained after unmaking the Hand of a Leviathan. But was that all it took to shatter his will? To make him fold? Was that the measure of his resolve?
With all the power he had gained…
The problem wasn't ability. It was mindset.
Perhaps this was what Roma was addressing?
That subtle resignation—always approaching danger with caution, always holding back—was the reason he still stumbled, the reason he hovered in mediocrity despite his overwhelming potential.
There was no one—no one—like him in the whole of the Central Plains. And if he was being honest? Perhaps not in all of Trael.
So why, in the middle of carnage, did he see himself as small?
Northern scowled and exhaled.
"I have no choice, then."
The air behind him shimmered—rippled like a blade tracing the edge of reality.
With chaos all around, few noticed what was happening. The shimmer ruptured, tearing a quiet rift into existence.
And from that small rift, two figures emerged—clad in black, lustrous armor, their movements silent yet imposing.
Northern glanced at them and let out a slow, tired breath.
"Using the two clones meant to serve as essence cables… this will definitely be costly."
Which was why he would return this clone to the Limitless Void—so at the very least, it could channel essence to the others.
More importantly—this was a first.
Northern intended to try something he'd never dared before: not letting his clones act on their own, but fully controlling two simultaneously.
This wasn't delegation.
He was going to divide his consciousness between them—inhabit both bodies, control both minds. Live as two at once.
It sounded abrupt. But in truth, it wasn't beyond him.
He had simply never pushed himself this far. Never stretched Omniform this actively. He'd been saving it—always saving it—for a moment when everything else had failed.
But now? His body was too weak to wield Void. Too brittle to channel Chaos.
And after what the Prophet told him about where those powers truly came from…
Northern found himself hesitating.
Not out of fear. But something more raw. More personal. Like rejection—like shame.
Still, that didn't matter now. Whatever his feelings, his current condition made it impossible to use Chaos or Void. His clones couldn't bear their weight either.
So he would do this instead.
[You have changed your name]
As the rift sealed behind him, one of the Northern clones dissolved its armor, the black lustrous metal cracking away like ash in a silent breeze.
Then, from that same space, dark flying sparks began to spiral and cling—wrapping around the clone's form, forging a new shell.
When the sparks died down, a warrior stood in molten armor—black plates veined with glowing magma. The helm was brutal, with a visor that didn't reflect light, but heat—like a volcano about to breathe.
Beside him, the other clone stood the same as before.
Two blue flames blazed from his eyes—four in total, stacked in a cruel vertical line. A sleek black tail curled from behind, coiling like a serpent. A vicious, jagged horn jutted forward, crowning it with devilish elegance.
One radiated raw, monstrous strength.
The other, an abyss of talents—endless, shifting, dangerous.
The Molten-armored Northern raised a thumbs-up to the Night Terror.
Night Terror returned the gesture with a crisp salute—then stumbled a bit as his body trembled.
He caught himself almost instantly, steadying his frame with a soft laugh.
"This... is definitely going to take a while."
They both spoke the line at the same time, voices overlapping in eerie unison.
The Northern in Molten armor sighed and gently slapped his own forehead.
He had meant for only Night Terror to say that.
But now, Northern was beginning to see it clearly—it was possible.
Because of Omniform, he could divide his consciousness with startling ease. Slip into another body like shifting into a different stance. It wasn't just theory anymore.
The only real challenge… was getting used to it.
'Wait… could I actually control all of them? Every clone? Thousands—simultaneously?'
It sounded impossible. Felt impossible.
Yet something deep in his core whispered otherwise.
It wasn't just wishful thinking—it was intuition. A quiet truth waiting to be proven.
It wasn't a question of possibility. It was a question of readiness.
He wasn't there yet. But someday…
For now, that dream could wait.
Right now, people were dying.
And the two Northerns had work to do.
The Night Terror waited.
Meanwhile, Molten Northern launched into the air, the sheer force of his ascent shattering the ground beneath him. The coliseum trembled as he rose, and when he came crashing down—
A thunderous impact tore through the arena.
Stone erupted. Chunks of marble and steel launched into the air, crashing down like meteors.
Northern didn't pause.
He was already moving—wielding the warhammer he had taken from Nyssira.
It swung with ruinous momentum, tearing through monsters like paper and hurling their bodies aside as though they were weightless.
But the shockwaves that followed told a different story.
Those creatures were heavy. Densely built. Brutal in form.
The hammer's devastation wasn't due to light enemies—it was proof of the overwhelming strength of its wielder.
Then, Night Terror Northern moved.
He didn't leap. He vanished—a blur of motion, a conceptual flash, like speed itself had taken form.
He appeared beside a hulking beast in an instant. No warning. No noise.
Just presence.
His hand snapped forward, gripping the monster's head. Frost bloomed at the point of contact—webbing outward like veins of ice, burrowing into the creature's skull.
In less than a second, the beast became a statue of frozen horror.
Night Terror cloaked his hands in roaring blue flames—flames that rose like a pillar, licking the sky with violent grace.
And then, he punched.
The impact exploded with a shriek of fury. The flames surged forward in a cataclysmic blast, reducing the creature not just to cinders—but to nothing.
But the fire didn't stop there.
It raced forward, devouring every monster in its path. A flood of blue inferno swallowed the battlefield—unstoppable, cleansing.
And yet, strangely…
Within the storm, the students felt safe.
As the inferno died down, the results were clear.
Every Student, Civilian, Drifter were still standing.
Every monster?
Burnt to ash.
The students and civilians stared at the figure who had saved them.
They recognized him, of course—how could they not? They had seen a similar power unleashed during the duel.
Now, seeing it again in the midst of chaos, their eyes lit with gratitude, and their hearts surged with hope.
But Night Terror Northern paid their gazes no mind.
In truth, he disliked the look in their eyes—the awe, the admiration. It made his skin crawl. So he simply turned away and focused on what mattered: fighting.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, the scene was much the same.
As more instructors, students, and civilians were rescued by the fearsome figure in molten armor, their fear slowly gave way to awe.
Watching him crush the monsters with thunderous might, they couldn't help but admire the terrifying, unstoppable force that now fought on their side.
To them, he wasn't just a Drifter.
He was a hero.