Chapter 996: The Force of Will [part 2]
Will.
Will was a devastating force—an answer to everything Northern had wondered about. He hadn’t known much about it before, but he’d always suspected there was something that amplified a Drifter’s power.
A true Drifter—Paragon and above, he believed. Raizel’s last message had given him a clear answer to that silent question.
Raizel had also explained, while he was still alive, how a Monster’s will could influence the world around it. How much it was in their nature to connect with their environment.
Back then, they had only faced a Behemoth. Yet it had stirred the ocean into a storm through sheer Will alone. Now that Northern understood the essence of Will more deeply, he was tempted to call that a soul world.
But it wasn’t. A soul world would work the same for a monster as it did for a human—only more sinister and far more powerful.
A Leviathan’s will. Northern knew nothing about it, but whatever force it wielded was more than enough to cancel his ability. To erase it completely.
Northern wasn’t sure how it worked, but it felt almost like when he used Chaos Flame to erase things from existence. If he had to guess, the monster wielded its will like a blade—cutting through the very essence that allowed his attack to exist.
Making it simply... not be.
To test his theory, he needed to see it again. Feel it again. This time with something not as powerful, but so massive that its disappearance couldn’t be ignored. The last attack had been hidden within a blizzard.
But this one was a descending column of ice that covered the entire sky.
From the distant island, it stretched down from within the clouds like one of the pillars that held up the world, falling from the heavens.
The moment the pillar struck, time cracked.
There was no sound—only silence so deep it swallowed everything. No roar. No howl. No scream. Not even breath.
Then came the impact.
The ice struck the Leviathan with a force that broke the world’s natural laws. It didn’t merely crash—it descended like the judgment of forgotten gods. The instant it connected, a shockwave burst out in every direction. For a heartbeat, the world held its breath.
Then it all froze.
The molten earth—once an ocean of glowing veins and dancing flame—turned solid in an instant. Red became white. Lava became crystal. What had been flame-burned and blackened now cracked and shivered beneath the spreading frost.
Every flicker of heat died. The scorched battle-wounds carved into the academy grounds now glittered with jagged ice. Steam hissed once, then vanished—turning to snow needles mid-air.
The Leviathan let out a muffled roar. For a moment, it seemed about to stop, slowing down. Then suddenly, the monstrous creature surged forward with crushing force and speed, bulldozing through the frozen ground and charging straight toward Northern.
"Damn this bastard."
Northern braced himself and swung his hand forward. The chains wrapped around his arm lashed outward with vicious speed and force, flying around the Leviathan. Though they seemed small at first, they stretched endlessly like elastic bands, crackling with lightning.
As the chains swung over the monster, Northern soared higher into the air, flying in a slanted pattern toward the Leviathan’s back.
He flew all the way around, then continued toward the sky, heading for the section of wall that still stood—the left edge of the Academy. If Northern remembered correctly, that was the depth he’d reached when he first met Professor Heimburger.
He scaled the wall at breakneck speed, everything blurring before his eyes. He finally reached its peak, far embedded in the clouds, then flew over it. At this point, the chain seemed to reach its limit.
Northern landed on the wall and switched his name for the first time in battle.
He switched to Titan’s Reckoning.
He wrapped the chains around his hands and arms, then applied Colossal Force and began to pull.
The chain stretched taut and groaned horribly.
Northern wanted to drag it back toward the wall—maybe crush it through the wall too. Since it seemed strong enough to tear down the academy’s wall, it probably had an even stronger hide.
If this battle was truly going to end with his victory, Northern needed to stop caring about the people around him. The fact that he constantly measured how much he could do because of the instructors and the academy itself was limiting. If he decided to go all out, everyone would have died already.
He honestly didn’t know when he’d begun to care. But it was irritating.
That’s why he was going to move the monster. He thought of using his Limitless Void, but that was too risky. Besides the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were in there right now, it was dangerous for him to open the doors of his Limitless Void to any monster—especially a Leviathan.
Northern made a tremendous display of might, walking down the academy wall, pulling the chain with grinding effort.
The wall beneath Northern’s feet groaned as he descended slowly, braced by nothing but will and brutal force. His boots punched shallow craters into the metalwork, every step anchoring him against the impossible weight pulling on the other end of the chain.
The air trembled.
His arms bulged—thick veins rising like snakes under his skin, glowing faintly with the power of Colossal Force. His bones creaked audibly, shoulders shaking with strain, and his back bent under invisible pressure. Steam burst from his elbows, his breath coming out like smoke.
And still he pulled.
The chain snapped taut between him and the Leviathan. It howled with the shriek of metal meeting resistance it had no business enduring. The surrounding clouds warped, bending as though drawn into the tension, and the very air folded inward along the chain’s path.
Below, the Leviathan lurched.
Its feet skidded through the frozen field, tearing rifts in the earth’s icy shell. Sparks flew from its claws as they scraped jagged lines across the crystallized ground, digging in, resisting.
But it was moving.