The shockwave of their bruised pride slammed through the Spirit Realm like a massive wall of compressed air. The millions of pink cherry blossom petals that had been drifting peacefully through the atmosphere caught fire in a single heartbeat. They transformed into a downpour of purple and golden-white lightning sparks that crackled violently as they shattered across the mirror floor. The combat beat thundering from the stone chest abruptly accelerated into an aggressive, pumping tempo. The bass vibrations hit so hard that the black energy water beneath their boots shot upward in wild, swirling patterns.
Odr gripped his oak staff with both hands. His eyes blazed with a fierce, deep-blue light that morphed his face into an unyielding mask of divine authority.
“You think a few quick reactions and raw strength make you right?” Odr spoke, his voice a low, vibrating undercurrent that thundered deep in Silarias’ chest. “You have no idea what the true weight of an ancient spirit world actually entails!”
With a hard, dry crack, he slammed the butt of his staff onto the mirror floor. A ripple of heavy, dense runes shot outward from the point of impact, forming a massive, rotating circle directly beneath Silarias’ boots.
“Stasis Pulse!” Odr barked.
The space-time surrounding Silarias solidified instantly. The thin air around him gained the density of liquid glass. Every single muscular movement he attempted required a hundred times more physical exertion; the adrenaline surging through his veins slowed to a thick, warm syrup. Silarias clenched his teeth so hard his jaw muscles cramped, but his forward leap was locked in a sluggish, near-frozen animation.
What is this pressure?! raged through Silarias’ mind, as he barely managed to keep his eyes locked on Odr. My legs… it feels like entire mountain ranges are chained to my ankles! I can’t even shift my mass!
“Now, Freya!” Odr shouted without breaking his focus.
Simultaneously, Freya shot dozens of meters into the air. Her streamlined form was engulfed in crackling, golden-white lightning that stood out sharply against the twin blood-red moons in the sky. She twisted her body mid-air, pulled her right arm far back, and gripped her spear so tightly the metal began to sing from the sheer buildup of tension.
“Let me see how fast you modulate when the heavens rain down upon you, Liberator!” Freya screamed, her voice dripping with the pure fury of a goddess who refused to be denied.
With a rapid, wild sweep of her arm, she unleashed not just a single spear, but a full hail of dozens of energetic lances. The glowing projectiles whistled down at a deadly, sound-barrier-shattering speed, all dialed precisely onto Silarias’ delayed, defenseless position.
The two teenagers were instantly forced deep into the defensive. The Norse gods were completely out of their minds with rage over their wounded pride, blowing off steam at maximum output.
In the center of the approaching apocalypse, Nyx remained motionless. Her eye sockets spewed silver void energy that curled upward like liquid smoke along her cheeks. Deeper within her irises, the mathematical clockwork lines and gear patterns of her Time Keeper blood slid over each other at insane speeds. They ticked in perfect harmony with the heartbeat of the dimension. The six silver dots of her Seals capped her maximum output and choked her breathing, but her analytical vision operated at peak efficiency.
The acceleration of the lances is constant… twenty-three degree angle of entry… Odr’s runic field relies on a centrifugal frequency, Nyx analyzed in a fraction of a millisecond, as the world around her seemed to slow down. If we don’t break the stasis pressure, Silarias will be impaled before his biological regeneration can even react.
“Silarias, hold your ground! Do not fight against the pressure!” Nyx called out in a cold, unwavering voice that cut cleanly through the roar of the lightning.
With a swift, fluid flick of her wrist, she activated the Ice Anting on her iris. The black ice spheres of compressed void energy floating around her shot forward with a dull thud. They morphed mid-air into a massive, multi-faceted ice prism: a Spatial Anchor that embedded itself firmly into the energy floor right in front of Silarias.
Odr’s blue runic frequency slammed hard against the prism. But instead of shattering the ice, the spatial delay was caught, refracted by the geometric facets of the prism, and reflected straight into the sky as a blinding, purple-silver beam of light.
The crushing pressure around Silarias vanished instantly. Within that exact microsecond, Freya’s first lightning lances struck the top of the prism with a deafening explosion. The ice cracked, and the heat of the discharge scorched the air.
Silarias felt the heat of the blast cut past his face, but his Hydra instincts took over immediately. The light burns on his forearms and neck split and repaired themselves on a cellular level; the fine, tentacle-like rings in his irises pulsed heavily while his flesh pulled shut on the spot.
“My turn!” Silarias roared, his voice raw from the surging adrenaline.
He didn’t wait for the smoke to clear. Taking advantage of the upward shockwave from the shattered prism, he planted his boots onto the thick wooden branches of the cherry blossom tree still looming over the field, and launched himself. The wood cracked and splintered beneath his weight as he shot into the air like a black-and-gold meteor, aimed straight at the descending Freya.
Freya, convinced he would try to parry her attack with a weapon or a magical shield, raised her recovered spear for a ruthless finishing blow. “One more step and I’ll skewer you, aiii—!”
Silarias had zero intention of defending. With his bare right hand, fully wrapped in the fiery, black lion’s mane and claw structures of Bansaday, he grabbed the razor-sharp shaft of her spear right below the blade.
Freya’s eyes went wide with pure shock. The high-frequency lightning surging over the metal scorched his palm down to the bone, but his Hydra regeneration matched the damage fraction for fraction in real time. The blood that escaped instantly evaporated into golden steam.
“Gotcha!” Silarias snarled.
“What kind of monster…!” Freya gasped weakly.
With raw, physical dominance, he dragged the goddess toward himself by her own weapon, completely shattering her balance in mid-air. From the ground below, Nyx raised both hands at that exact millisecond.
“Formation Void-Bansaday: Discharge!” Nyx spoke with icy precision.
She fired a tightly focused beam of silver-black void energy straight upward. Silarias, in turn, channeled the full gold-orange discharge of his Bansaday release down the shaft of the spear, directly into Freya’s chest plate.
The two opposing forces fused in mid-air into a compressed explosion. A black-gold plasma wave detonated right between Silarias and Freya. The atmospheric pressure blew across the entire Spirit Realm, slamming the Norse goddess back to the mirror floor with immense force, where she skidded back dozens of meters before regaining her footing.
Odr, however, was far from finished. With his eyes wide with pure, bruised pride, the ancient Norse god recovered his staff, enveloped his entire form in a destructive storm of flaming runes, and charged straight toward Silarias for an all-out clash.
Silarias clenched his fist, the amber lion slit in his eyes flickering dangerously as the lion’s mane around his shoulders blazed up. He was a fraction of a second away from slamming head-on into Odr at maximum speed.
“SILARIAS, STOP!” Nyx shouted above the roaring lightning.
“CLASH LATER, KID!” Lucifer thundered through the chaos.
“FINE THEN!” Silarias yelled.
At the exact millisecond before Silarias and Odr would collide—
SNAP.
Silarias clicked the fingers of his free hand.
Gone was the flying lightning. Gone was the howling storm.
In a single heartbeat, everyone was suddenly seated tight, neat, and proper at an immensely long marble table as if nothing had happened. The switch from pure apocalypse to a calm council was so absurdly fast that the figurative skid marks were still hanging in the air.
The contrast was utterly ridiculous.
Odr’s hair was literally still half on fire, with small purple sparks softly smoldering out of his beard. Freya sat bolt upright, her armor torn in dozens of places and smoking from the void discharge. Frey leaned over the table with his shield half-clamped across his lap, while Bansadarius felt his torn battle cloak in utter confusion with his lion claw. Silarias and Nyx sat shoulder to shoulder; their clothes were ripped to shreds, but Silarias leaned his elbows on the marble as if he had just returned from a casual stroll.
Lucifer leaned back at the head of the table on his throne of shadows, waved his hand lazily, and extinguished the flame on Odr’s head with a tiny puff of black smoke.
“Right,” Lucifer spoke in a dry, ice-cold tone, flashing a sarcastic smirk. “Now that the divine egos have taken a little scratch and everyone has blown off their steam… can we actually talk business?”
Odr wiped the soot from his face, looked down at his smoking staff, and let out a deep, resigned sigh. “You truly are no longer children…”
Lucifer folded his arms, his gaze turning razor-sharp and serious. “Good. Remember well what was just said. Nyx… your mother Abysia was an entity born directly from the Big Bang itself. The void within you is the raw material of creation. Those six Seals in your eyes are keeping your human body intact. And you, Liberator… your mother was the previous bearer of my Curse. She carried that weight until her soul buckled under it.”
Silarias’ eyes narrowed. The amber predatory slit in his iris locked tight onto the fallen angel.
“And that brings us to the University,” Lucifer continued, his red irises glowing bright. “Four and a half years. That is your window of opportunity. Nyx must break those six Seals one by one. And you, Liberator… you have four and a half years to master my Curse completely. If you fail, the Curse eats you alive, and you lose your mind.”
Silarias let out a low, dark chuckle. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared Lucifer right into his pitch-black eye sockets.
“Eat me alive?” Silarias spoke with cold, unyielding pride. “I don’t think so. I’m not even going to suppress this Curse. I’m going to break it, bend it, and turn it entirely into my own power. Whatever gets in my way just becomes fuel.”
Lucifer bared his sharp teeth in a broad, amused grin. “I’d like to see you try, kid.”
Bansadarius burst into a loud laugh and slammed a brutal fist onto the marble table. “That’s the spirit of a true Vessel! Hahaha!”
Around them, the Spirit Realm began to dissolve for good. The blood-red sky, the two overarching moons, and the giant cherry blossom tree in the background dissolved into millions of gold-silver light particles.
Odr, Frey, and Freya raised their hands one by one in a final salute, their forms slowly fading into the rising mist.
“Go,” Odr spoke, his voice echoing softly. “Show the University what you are made of.”
FLASH.
With a deep, sharp gasp of air, their consciousness returned to physical reality in an instant.
Silarias felt real gravity pulling on his body once more. The Spirit Realm was gone; the buzzing neon lights and the constant noise of the outside world flooded his senses.
He turned his head slowly to the side.
Nyx was standing right beside him. The spewing silver void energy was gone. Her liquid silver hair fell back over her shoulders in calm, shimmering waves, though the silver dots of her Seals glowed faintly in her irises for one last moment before fading away.
She looked at him. No fear, no doubt left. Only absolute, unwavering trust.
Silarias dropped his shoulders casually, shoved his hands into his pockets, and looked ahead as the giant gates of the academy opened up before them.
“Four and a half years,” Silarias said with a sharp, arrogant smirk playing on his lips. “Time to show this entire University what happens when we go all out.”