"Heh… Hahaha… This is it…! This is how it should be!"
His ragged breathing echoed, his form outlined in a faint red hue as Overclock continued pushing his body beyond its limits.
Liera's narrowed eyes flickered between his stance and the weapon in his hands. She could feel it—something ominous, something unstable.
That sword wasn't just gathering mana.
It was devouring it.
Ray lifted the blade, a grin stretching across his face—twisted, manic, almost euphoric. The darkness in his pupils deepened as power coiled along the sword's edge, warping the very air around it.
[Void Severance.]
Without warning, he swung.
A shrieking crescent of void energy tore through the space between them, moving faster than before.
Liera blurred backward, her form flickering in and out of sight as she narrowly avoided the slash. The very air groaned from the attack's sheer force, and where the arc of energy met the dungeon wall—
KRRRRRHHH!!
The stone erupted. The impact carved through the solid rock like butter, splitting the chamber in two. Jagged debris rained down from the ceiling, sending tremors through the ground.
Irene, Nathaniel, and Vince barely managed to stay on their feet.
"H-How many times can he do that?!" Irene choked out, her face pale.
"He's pushing his body too far—this is insane…!" Nathaniel clenched his fists.
But Ray wasn't stopping.
Before the dust could even settle—
[Void Severance.]
Another swing.
Another crescent of pure destruction cut through the battlefield.
Liera dodged again—just barely. The energy grazed the edge of her cloak, disintegrating part of it instantly.
"Tch—" she grit her teeth.
There was no hesitation in Ray's strikes.
Just relentless, ceaseless slaughter.
[Void Severance.]
Another slash—faster, stronger and more unstable.
The energy curved midair this time, bending unnaturally as if it had a will of its own.
Liera flickered sideways, twisting her body mid-air. She felt the attack sing past her, a razor-thin line of destruction skimming her ribs.
Then—
[Void Severance.]
Another.
[Void Severance.]
And another.
[Void Severance.]
Liera barely managed to evade, but Ray was like a storm given human form, swinging wildly, recklessly—an unstoppable force of destruction.
The chamber lay in ruins, its once-solid walls cracked and crumbling, debris strewn across the bloodstained floor. The air was thick with dust and the lingering scent of scorched stone.
Ray tore through it all, a force of destruction given form, his movements wild and unrestrained.
He didn't stop.
He didn't think.
He didn't care.
Whether friend or foe, nothing mattered.
He moved like a storm, each step cracking the ground beneath him, each swing of his blade sending shockwaves through the already fractured chamber.
The walls groaned under the strain, the very dungeon trembling as if recoiling from his unrelenting wrath.
Irene covered her mouth with both hands. "This isn't a fight… He's hunting her."
Vince exhaled sharply. "And she's running."
Liera's frustration mounted as her body flickered through the chaos.
She needed to counterattack.
But how?
Every time she tried to get closer—
[Void Severance.]
Another slash forced her back.
She wasn't like the pure-blooded demons who knew no limits, wielding both long-range and close-combat abilities with terrifying ease. She had no such luxury.
No devastating spells or overwhelming magic—only raw strength, sharpened instincts, and the sheer brutality of close-quarters combat.
The ground beneath her was a ruin of deep fissures and craters, evidence of Ray's unrelenting assault.
And then—
It happened.
Ray's grip on his sword tightened.
His entire body trembled, veins bulging against his skin. A deep, ominous hum resonated from his blade as void energy coiled around it, more concentrated than before.
He wasn't just firing off another attack.
He was preparing something deadly.
Liera's pupils shrank. Tch—That's not good!
A single step—Ray vanished.
[Flicker Step x Void Severance.]
A shockwave burst from where he stood, the sheer speed of his movement cracking the stone beneath him.
Liera had barely an instant to react.
Ray appeared before her, too fast for her eyes to follow. One moment he was standing across from her, the next, he was right there—his sword already descending.
She tried to move, to block, to counter.
But time stretched unbearably thin.
For a split second, everything was silent.
Then—pain, a searing pain assaulted her,
A wet, sickening sound filled the air as something was torn away.
A severed arm spiraled through the air.
Dark crimson blood sprayed in an arc, splattering across the cold stone floor.
Liera's eyes widened in shock. A sharp, searing pain bloomed through her body as she staggered back, her left arm missing from the elbow down.
She barely had time to register it before—
Ray laughed.
A deep, broken, breathless laugh.
"Heh… heheheh… hahahaha!!" His eyes gleamed with wild satisfaction. His grin stretched so wide it was almost unnatural. "This is… this is it…!!"
The sword in his grasp trembled. His fingers twitched. His breathing was erratic.
And then—
His body jerked.
The glow of Overclock flickered violently, like a flame caught in the wind.
His muscles seized.
A deep, agonizing spasm wracked his frame, his knees buckling beneath him.
He gasped suddenly, his breathing became even heavier.
His entire body froze.
And then—
His vision swam.
His mind felt like it was sinking—like he was drowning in ink-black waters.
The last thing he heard was the distant, muffled voices of the others—
And then everything went silent.
Ray collapsed.
His body hit the dungeon floor with a dull thud, his sword slipping from his grip.
The silence filled in the surroundings as
Liera staggered back, her remaining hand clutching the jagged wound where her arm used to be.
Her breaths came in sharp, shallow gasps. Blood dripped steadily onto the fractured stone beneath her, pooling at her feet.
She stared at Ray's motionless form, disbelief flickering in her crimson eyes.
"...What happened?"
Her voice came out hoarse, edged with lingering tension.
Nathaniel, Vince, Selene, Lucien and Irene remained frozen in place, their expressions locked somewhere between awe and horror.
"H-He just… collapsed?" Irene whispered.
Nathaniel exhaled, his fists still clenched. "No. His body gave out."
Vince, who had been gripping his weapon so tightly that his knuckles had turned white, finally relaxed his stance. "Fucking hell…" He let out a slow, shaky breath. "That was not normal."
No one moved for a moment.
Then—
Liera took a step forward, her predatory gaze locked onto Ray. Even now, unconscious and broken, his presence still felt dangerous to her.
His body was spent, his mind fractured, and his grip on his weapon had gone slack. His sword lay forgotten at his side, the madness that had consumed him only moments ago fading into quiet vulnerability.
It would be easy.
Her remaining hand flexed.
One strike.
That was all it would take.
Her foot shifted, her body coiling like a viper preparing to strike. The battle was over, the outcome clear—this was merely the final act, the inevitable end of a weakened foe.
But just as she was about to move,
A shudder ran through the air, an unseen ripple breaking across the battlefield like the surface of still water disturbed by an unseen force. It was not loud, not something they could hear.
It was something deeper, something instinctive, something that sent a chill skittering down their spines before their minds could even process why.
Nathaniel's breath caught.
Vince's fingers clenched unconsciously.
Selene shuddered, the hairs on her arms standing on end.
Something was coming.
Then, without a single whisper of sound—
A figure emerged.
Not from the entrance. Not from the shadows of the ruined chamber.
But from the darkness itself.
Right beside Ray's fallen body.
His presence was seamless, as though he had always belonged to the darkness—a specter stepping into existence from where nothing had been a moment ago.
His cloak, deep as the abyss, flowed with an unnatural stillness, the hood hanging low, his face covered in darkness.
And in his grasp was a sword.
Not just any sword.
It was the Black Knight's Sword.
It did not glow with power like previously, did not hum with overflowing mana—yet its mere presence demanded reverence.
Liera's fingers twitched.
She had not sensed him, not even once.
Was someone following me without me knowing.
It was not stealth.
It was something far worse.
Something absolute.
The hooded figure did not move, did not shift his stance, did not so much as raise his weapon in warning. Yet despite his silence, despite his complete lack of hostility—
Liera could not move.
The weight of his presence crushed down on the space between them, an invisible, suffocating force that made the very thought of stepping forward feel like an impossibility.
***
Few Moments Before...
The moment the gem dissolved on his tongue, a pulse of energy shot through his body like a surge of flowing water.
Ash's vision blurred. His breath hitched.
Then—unbearable pain assaulted him.
It tore through his bones first, a deep, grating agony that made his spine arch involuntarily. His skeleton shifted—no, expanded, compressed, realigned—every bone in his body breaking and reforming in the blink of an eye.
He clenched his teeth, his fingers digging into the shattered ground beneath him, but no amount of willpower could suppress the raw torment flooding his nerves.
But still not a single voice of scream left his lips,
His ribcage snapped inward, then stretched outward, reshaping itself into something more balanced, more perfect.
His limbs burned with an unseen force, the proportions of his arms and legs shifting, adjusting to a harmony that had never existed before.
His very structure was being rewritten.
****