Something was wrong.
I had pushed myself to the limit. No, beyond the limit. I had thrown everything I had at this fight—Void, Starlight, Equinox, every ounce of power I could grasp.
And yet, it wasn’t enough.
Even with Aeliana as the medium, even with her weakening the Kraken’s influence, even though its power had been dragged to something closer to a peak 5-star entity, I still couldn’t overpower it.
I was too strong for it to defeat me outright.
But it was too deeply entrenched in this space for me to kill it.
And that’s when it clicked.
This place—this entire battlefield—was the Kraken’s own creation.
I had been trying to fight it using Void, using Starlight, using the same forces that it was manipulating.
But how could I override its authority?
How could I win when I was fighting on its stage?
I exhaled, blood still dripping from my lips, my one good eye narrowing as my vision blurred and refocused.
Tch. Of course.
I had been too caught up in refining my Void techniques, too obsessed with pushing the boundaries of my [Devourer of Stars] core.
When I had another weapon entirely.
A weapon I had forgotten.
[Sword of Annihilation.]
Why did I not think of that?
I had been cutting.
I needed to erase.
I gritted my teeth, forcing my broken body to move.
I had one chance.
One final moment.
I glanced at Aeliana—her body convulsing, her breath fading, her existence on the verge of collapsing.
This was it.
If I waited any longer—if I hesitated—
She would die.
I exhaled slowly, my vision tunneling on the Kraken as I lifted my blade one last time.
And then—
I did something insane.
I merged them.
The Flame of Equinox.
The Devourer of Stars.
Two forces that shouldn’t have been able to exist together.
One was pure destruction, an all-consuming wildfire that burned anything it touched to absolute nothingness.
The other was Void, a force that devoured, bent, collapsed everything into itself.
And now—
I forced them into one.
BOOOOOOOOM!
My body ripped apart.
Every nerve in my being screamed, my insides fuming, tearing, disintegrating.
This wasn’t a fusion.
It was a collision.
A paradox.
Fire that consumed.
Abyss that devoured.
I couldn’t control it.
I couldn’t refine it.
But I didn’t need to.
Because all I needed was a single instant.
I clenched my jaw, forcing down the agony, my breath sharp as I locked my gaze onto the Kraken.
It was happening.
Aeliana’s body was collapsing.
The Kraken’s connection to her was reaching its limit.
This was the moment.
I grinned, blood dripping from my lips.
“LITTLE EMBER!”
Aeliana’s body twitched.
She was still there. Somewhere, she was still fighting.
“WATCH THIS!”
The power in my core spiraled—a clash of annihilation and abyss, a storm of pure contradiction raging through my veins.
“I PREPARED THIS SOLELY FOR YOU!”
I moved.
BOOOOOOOM!
The world shattered.
The Kraken shrieked, its massive, grotesque form writhing, twisting, distorting.
And then—
I slashed.
One single, absolute cut.
A cut that didn’t just slice through flesh.
A cut that erased.
That devoured.
That burned away existence itself.
「Annihilation Sword. Reverence of Severity.」
And in that exact moment—
When Aeliana was about to die—
When the Kraken was at its weakest—
My blade tore through its core.
And then—
The world collapsed.
The world collapsed.
The battlefield shattered around me, the very space that the Kraken had created unraveling in a spiraling maelstrom of light and void. The cavern faded, the broken stone and debris dissolving into a vast, cosmic expanse.
And there—
The stars.
Swirling, shifting, moving in intricate patterns beyond mortal comprehension. Not the stars of the night sky, not celestial bodies shining in the heavens—but something deeper.
A force.
A connection.
The same feeling as when we were first sucked into this place, when reality itself had bent, twisted, devoured us.
I exhaled, blood still thick in my mouth, my breath shallow but steady.
“How beautiful.”
But—
Something fell.
From where I had severed the Kraken’s core, from the wound my blade had carved through existence itself—
A lump.
A mass of black liquid.
It landed with a sickening, wet splatter, writhing upon the shattered remnants of the battlefield. It was shapeless, formless, shifting in ways that defied understanding.
And yet—
I could feel it.
Something vast.
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Something wrong.
Something foreign.
Something that should not exist.
I stared at it, my pulse steady despite the unshakable weight pressing against my senses.
“Outsider.”
That single word left my lips, quiet, yet absolute.
This was it.
This was the thing that caused everything.
The core of it all.
The reason for the Kraken’s existence.
The reason for this entire mess.
The liquid twitched, convulsing, its shapeless form pulling, reaching—
Not toward me.
Toward Aeliana.
Tch.
At the same time, I heard it—another sound.
A wet, grotesque squelch.
My gaze snapped to her.
To Aeliana.
Something—the same thing—was pouring out of her as well.
Another writhing mass of black liquid, seeping from her veins, from her cursed marks, escaping her body.
Two identical entities.
One fallen from the Kraken.
One purged from her.
And now—
They were trying to rejoin.
To merge.
This is how they operated.
One part of the entity would leech onto a body, slowly embedding itself deeper and deeper, smearing its existence across the host like an ink stain that could never be fully erased.
And the other?
The other half would take that stolen energy, that corrupted vitality, and nurture something else.
Like the Kraken.
This thing had been feeding off Aeliana.
Just as it had fed off her mother.
I exhaled slowly, watching as the two separate masses twitched, convulsed, and reached for one another.
Trying to merge. Trying to survive.
How desperate.
My fingers tapped against my estoc’s hilt, my breath slow, steady.
“Parasitic indeed.”
I reached out, not for my blade this time, but for something else.
A faint shimmer of mana flickered at my wrist, the subtle pulse of a spatial enchantment activating as I reached into my storage.
And then—
A small, ornate blackwood box appeared in my hand.
Golden runes shimmered along its surface, pulsing faintly, the preservation magic still intact.
“Eternal Skyroot Herb.”
A prize won long ago.
A reward I had claimed from the Marquis himself.
A faint memory surfaced.
—
“The Eternal Skyroot Herb,” I murmured, my smirk replaced with a thoughtful smile as I leaned back in my chair. “That’s quite the prize, Marquis. And you’re just… giving it away?”
The Marquis chuckled, shaking his head. “I came into possession of it by sheer luck. It was part of a shipment intercepted from raiders near the northern border of my territory. At the time, I didn’t realize its value. But over the years, I’ve come to understand just how extraordinary it is.”
He gestured toward the ornate blackwood box set on the table between us. “This artifact serves as a preservation vessel. It keeps the herb in a state of suspended vitality, ensuring its potency remains untouched until it is ready to be used.”
Valeria’s composed expression had cracked ever so slightly at the sight of the artifact. Even without opening the box, the sheer potency of the herb could be felt.
I had smirked, brushing my fingers over the golden runes before flicking my wrist. The enchantment on my spatial bracelet activated, and the box shimmered before disappearing into storage.
Tucked away.
Reserved.
For this exact moment.
—
I knew it then.
If I removed the entity from Aeliana’s body, she wouldn’t survive.
The parasite had been feeding off her for years, hollowing her out, replacing pieces of her with itself. If I tore it away completely, her body—which had long since adapted to its presence—would collapse.
Just like her mother.
She would die.
Unless—
I had this.
I exhaled, running a thumb over the runes on the box.
In the novel, this herb had saved the male lead.
And now—
It would save her.
I smirked.
“Guess it’s finally time to use you.”
My gaze flicked toward Aeliana.
“Let’s see if we can bring you back, Little Ember.”
But just then I felt the world spinning.
“Cough…”
———A/N———–
I posted Hunter’s chapter here, and now I need to post another stacked chapter. Well, you guys are eating good today, I guess?