I activated my new movement skill.
[Chrono-Severance Step]
Time bent for a heartbeat.
My body blurred and reappeared right in front of Number One. Before the phantom could even react, my knee shot upward and crashed into its chest.
BOOM!!
Cracks spread across its deathmist armor. The impact launched it back like a falling star, smashing straight through the phantom standing behind it. Both of them tore through the tower’s top floor, exploding out the other side before finally slamming into the asteroid with a thunderous crash.
The entire base shook violently. The remaining phantoms froze, shock clear even through their featureless forms.
I didn’t give them time.
With one smooth motion, I swung my sword in a wide horizontal arc.
Space trembled. Black cracks rippled outward. A crescent blade of void-edge Essence shot forward, screaming toward them.
The phantoms panicked and raised their weapons, shields of deathmist flaring desperately. Dark clouds spun around them, thick enough to smother sight.
It didn’t matter.
My slash carved through their defense as if it didn’t exist, and three phantoms were cut cleanly in half, each one sliced horizontally, their upper and lower halves drifting apart.
I stepped once and appeared between the falling pieces.
"Devour," I muttered, raising my left hand.
The Star of Origin trembled deep inside my Dawn Core, and a violent suction force erupted outward. The six twitching halves of the three phantoms began shaking as if something was ripping them from the inside.
Then they burst. Deathmist, fragments, cores everything was torn apart and dragged straight into me. Every particle vanished into the Dawn Core and merged with the dormant Star of Origin.
A faint hum echoed through my chest.
Their greatest weakness in front of me was simple, they were creatures of deathmist. And now I carried something inside me that devoured deathmist like a starving beast.
The Star of Origin was a magnet.
And these phantoms were fuel.
The remaining phantoms didn’t stay still after witnessing that. In a burst of motion, they flashed around me, forming a loose circle. One after another, their voices echoed through the trembling air.
"Domain."
"Domain."
More voices followed as the space around me warped and darkened. Their domains materialized, twisted pockets of deathmist, crushing pressure, and warped gravity. Each one layered over the next, trying to pin me down, trap me, or slow me.
I ignored them. My focus shifted entirely to Number One.
Its aura erupted like a storm. The deathmist around its body thickened until it looked like a compact mass of pure darkness. Then, with a violent burst, it shot forward, a black comet streaking through the sky.
Deathmist erupted behind it like the tail of a rocket, tearing through space and shredding the lingering mist. It blasted through one of its own allies’ domains without hesitation, scattering the thick clouds with sheer force.
Number One didn’t slow down after appearing in front of me. Its arms swung outward, and two massive hammers formed in its grip, pure deathmist condensed into solid black metal. The moment the weapons appeared, the phantom’s body began to rotate.
In an instant it turned into a spinning storm.
The twin hammers blurred into a cyclone of darkness as they came crashing toward me from every direction. I raised my sword just in time, and the first clash erupted.
CRACK–BOOM!!
A shockwave tore through the air.
The second strike came before the first one’s echo even faded.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Hammer against sword. Pressure against pressure. Each hit landed faster than the last, the blows coming so quickly that the air became a thunderous blur. Every clash sent vibrations down my arms, the sheer weight behind its strikes enough to shatter mountains.
I stepped back once. Parried.
Stepped back again. Parried again.
My sword moved in tight arcs, redirecting each hammer swing by a hair’s breadth. Sparks of black Essence scattered around us, lighting the sky like falling stars.
Another clash. Another shockwave.
We moved so fast the other phantoms couldn’t keep up. Even their domains wavered under the pressure.
Then, in a sudden burst of speed, Number One dropped low. I saw it a fraction of a second too late. Its knee smashed into my chest like a cannon.
THUD!
The impact hurled me backward through the air. I grunted, body sliding several meters before I halted myself with a burst of Essence.
Number One didn’t give me a moment.
It brought both hammers together in front of its chest. The weapons locked, forming a kind of focusing frame. Deathmist surged wildly around its arms. Black lightning crackled across both hammerheads, dancing in jagged arcs.
A tiny point of darkness formed between the hammer surfaces - dense, compressed, unstable.
Number One roared, "Supernova."
The point detonated outward. A massive beam of black lightning erupted straight toward me, tearing space open in its path.
Instead of dodging, I raised my sword.
I swung downward with both hands.
BOOM!!
The beam slammed into my blade, shaking the sky itself. My arms vibrated violently, but I forced my essence into the sword and twisted my stance.
Slowly, inch by inch, I angled the flow of the attack.
The beam bent, shifted and finally redirected. It roared past my shoulder and slammed into the asteroid below.
For a moment, everything fell silent. Then the surface erupted.
A blinding explosion spread outward, vaporizing thousands of abominations instantly. Their bodies tore apart like paper in a hurricane.
I fixed my gaze back on Number One. The phantom spread its arms wide, deathmist boiling around it like a rising storm.
"Paradox Bloom," it whispered.
In the same instant, two enormous runic circles ignited, one above me, one below me. Both spun with jagged symbols I had never seen before, each carving itself deeper into the air. Black lightning crawled across their surfaces like roots.
I tried to move.
My body didn’t respond.
A cold realization clicked into place: the runes weren’t binding my limbs, they were binding the space around me.
My senses tingled a heartbeat before both circles detonated. Twin beams of black lightning fired downward and upward simultaneously, aiming to crush me between them.