’If that Great One truly wanted to kill Crimson... then why didn’t he isolate him inside one of the labyrinths while the First Upper was moving alone?’
Marvas pondered silently, trying to decipher the intentions of that strange Great One.
After all, by turning the Door Labyrinth into the battlefield itself, he had willingly risked outside interference.
The entire situation felt deeply suspicious.
And so, Marvas could do nothing but wait and see how events unfolded.
Meanwhile, Crimson remained trapped within that overwhelming tide of monsters, fighting savagely and without restraint.
Kingslayer had transformed into a massive greatsword, tearing through the flesh of the beasts with terrifying force.
The amount of aura Crimson poured into the weapon was monstrous, and every swing unleashed gigantic arcs of explosive power.
His strikes landed cleanly against the Aether Beasts and would have killed them instantly... were it not for the World of Mist reviving them the moment they died.
As a result, the battle felt endless.
Crimson himself continuously healed and maintained his vitality through the abilities of both his armor and weapon.
The first restored aura based on the damage he inflicted.
The second converted incoming damage into restorative force that healed his wounds and increased his endurance.
And after an entire hour of relentless combat...
The battle still remained deadlocked.
Throughout all that time, the Great One of Krat had stayed far away, standing atop the Eagle Owl’s head while silently observing the battle from afar.
His eyes never left Crimson for even a single moment.
’He’s enduring far better than I anticipated...’
That was the Great One’s first thought as he watched Crimson fight.
Despite swinging his sword hundreds of thousands of times, the First Upper Demon showed not the slightest trace of exhaustion.
And strangely enough, the Great One himself appeared no different.
He had not moved even once since the battle began.
The Great One slowly turned toward the domains.
The crimson and gray realms were still evenly matched, colliding endlessly in their struggle for dominance.
’He can maintain his domain while fighting all those creatures...’
For the first time, the Great One of Krat considered intervening personally and increasing the pressure further.
Yet he hesitated.
Crimson had not suffered enough damage yet.
Among all the monsters surrounding him, Crimson’s eyes had never once left the Great One himself.
Even amidst the endless assault, he continued watching him.
The First Upper Demon was lethal.
Approaching him recklessly was not a wise decision.
Across the entire Material World, the only beings more dangerous than Crimson were Agaroth... and Nameless.
Ironically enough, one was a monster born from an artifact beyond the world itself.
The other was a Writer who did not belong to the Material World to begin with.
Unlike them, Crimson possessed no external source of power.
Everything he wielded came purely from aura alone, without even a trace of Aether.
The Great One decided to wait longer.
He would let the First Upper Demon accumulate more damage first.
And that...
Was his fatal mistake.
After an entire hour of brutal combat and endless endurance beneath that storm of attacks...
Crimson’s expression finally changed for the very first time.
A terrifying smile spread across the First Upper Demon’s face.
"I see it now... I finally see it!"
His thunderous voice echoed across the battlefield as his aura exploded outward with far greater intensity, expanding until it engulfed the entire battlefield itself.
The Great One felt it instantly.
That monstrous surge of aura.
Crimson’s aura spread everywhere, taking full advantage of the fact that his reserves rivaled those of the Demon King himself.
The First Upper Demon extended his aura further until a circular crimson flame covered in shadows formed within his grasp.
"Shadowfire Domain."
Crimson released that seemingly small flame.
And in the next instant...
The entire domain ignited without warning.
Shadowfire spread everywhere, swallowing every inch touched by Crimson’s aura.
It burned.
And burned.
Until every corner of the battlefield became consumed by it.
And for the very first time...
Crimson’s attacks finally reached the Great One himself.
The Great One burned.
And alongside him, every single one of his monsters ignited simultaneously.
The battlefield transformed into a raging inferno cloaked in shadows.
"This is... the fusion of two transcendent abilities?"
The Great One frowned while shielding himself from the flames.
Although the attack itself caused him no real damage, it was something he had never witnessed before.
Crimson had never used anything like this during his battles against Agaroth.
Even so...
Despite the unexpected attack, the Shadowfire fused with King’s Presence still should not have changed the outcome.
The World of Mist could heal the monsters consumed by the flames.
Meaning the attack should have been meaningless.
"That... is probably what you think, you naive Great One."
Gripping his weapon tightly, the First Upper Demon’s body erupted with a blinding crimson radiance.
Another form of aura entirely.
A power unlike anything anyone had ever witnessed before.
"I’m done charging."
"And now... it’s time to unleash this explosive power!"
Crimson lunged forward.
The air itself exploded from the sheer speed and force of his acceleration.
The First Upper Demon became a dark crimson beam of light that pierced through the monsters one after another.
He ricocheted between them endlessly, tearing through their bodies over and over again, riddling them with holes until the Aether Beasts appeared trapped inside a gigantic crimson spiderweb.
From the very beginning...
His fusion of two transcendent abilities had only served one purpose.
To slow the monsters down and catch them off guard.
The real attack had come afterward.
The crimson beam pierced through every Aether Creature with perfect precision after Crimson had spent an entire hour studying them and learning their abilities.
And the instant he destroyed them all...
Kingslayer reached its final target.
Crimson destroyed the Eagle Owl.
Then drove straight through the Great One of Krat himself.
His weapon pierced the Great One’s chest, annihilating everything inside before bursting out through his back.
Crimson had finally reached the Great One of Krat.
And around them, the summoned monsters began falling from the sky like dead flies.
Burning within the Shadowfire, their bodies were riddled with holes as though they were nothing more than pincushions.
Even after his chest had been pierced open, the Great One of Krat showed no signs of pain.
Instead, his face resembled that of a man overcome with confusion, unable to comprehend what he had just witnessed.
"Your fatal mistake, Great One... was blindly believing that I revealed everything against my king."
Crimson poured even more power into Kingslayer, intending to detonate the Great One’s body and erase him completely.
"You spent years spying like a coward, building your strategy upon flawed information... and today, those mistakes will be the cause of your death."
The first thing the Great One of Krat failed to realize...
Was Crimson’s ability to fuse transcendent powers together with absurd ease.
And the second...
Was his complete ignorance toward the ability Crimson had just unleashed.
The ability born from his weapons themselves.
Kingslayer... and the Blood Armor.
By wielding both simultaneously, Crimson gained access to an additional power altogether.
A power that allowed him to accumulate all the damage he inflicted and all the damage he received... before releasing it in a single catastrophic strike.
Crimson had spent an entire hour charging that ability.
For a full hour, he attacked and was attacked thousands upon thousands of times.
And the result...
Was a devastating blow that annihilated every monster at once and allowed his weapon to finally reach the Great One himself.
"I see now... so that is what happened."
The Great One of Krat spoke softly as the corner of his mouth curved into a faint smile.
The First Upper Demon had surpassed his expectations by far.