From a colossal black vortex drifted ribbons of shadowed vapor, and each ribbon knit itself into a strange, ink-dark creature. Sky and earth teemed, a crawling tapestry of forms, like the Night Parade of a Hundred Spirits spilled from a legend.

Pulling back again and again, Fia’s group noticed a law in the chaos: once a monster stepped into the Divine Kingdom they’d just left, it aged in a blink and unraveled into black mist. Crossing the border back in, the heavens weren’t torn anymore, and the vortex was nowhere to be seen. A crimson sky floated with Divine Bloom like petals on still water, time pinned at a single, aching moment.

A strange kingdom, a strange sky, a strange clock—everything silent, everything uncanny.

Inside this Divine Kingdom, Fia and the others felt a thread of safety, a lantern-glow in the dark. Out on the shattered edge of the continent, the creatures spewing from that black whirlpool had been countless, a storm of talons and teeth that made even them shiver.

In this kingdom where they’d met the man in black, a hidden force lay over everything like frost. Monsters couldn’t linger long beneath it. The ones with wit steered wide; the witless ones drifted in, their bodies gnawed by that mystery until they crumbled like ash on the wind.

Time slid by. More monsters gathered around the kingdom’s rim, and more slipped inside in fits and starts. At first only mindless beasts wandered its streets; later, thinking creatures began to appear, their will a thin shield against the kingdom’s pressure. With every day, they stayed longer.

During that stretch, Fia found one path forward—repair the kingdom’s teleportation gate. The Divine Kingdom lay in ruins, but the gate had survived without mortal damage, as if some hidden thread still pointed to it as the only road out. Even so, fixing it wouldn’t be a day’s work with her strength. While Fia wrestled with the gate, Augustine and the others refused to sit idle.

Those monsters were powerful, but standing under this sky bled their strength drop by drop. Augustine’s crew began hunting stragglers, picking off the weakened like wolves in snow. They kept it cautious. They swarmed as a pack. It went smooth.

Later, Augustine ditched the crowd. He’d move alone.

“Maybe this is how I climb to the Divine Throne.” He stood on a shattered highrise like a lone spear, Durak’s greatblade in his hand, his eyes sweeping the ground like hawks tracing currents.

He hadn’t seen much of life yet; his road still ran long and rough. But the urge to ascend didn’t dim—it burned steady, like coals under ash. He’d planned to settle, travel worlds, and gather the breadth of his insight. Plans met change. Fia’s gate still stalled. Even if it opened, they wouldn’t jump back to their time right away.

At this knife’s edge, if he could claim the Divine Throne, their odds of surviving ticked up.

In the distance, a black beast roared—a serpent’s long body, bull-like horns, and twin wings like a dragon’s thunderclaps. Augustine had watched it from afar before, out beyond the kingdom. Lately other beings had been prowling too, strong as mountains. They fought the monsters like lightning splitting the night. Once he’d seen a twelve-winged angel clash with that very fiend; the memory told him how terrible it was.

Those other beings didn’t seem to notice the Divine Kingdom at all. Or—maybe they couldn’t. A creature had once strode across this broken continent to fight, walked toward the kingdom, and never stepped in; it vanished from one edge and reappeared at the other as if the Kingdom were fog. To them, Augustine’s refuge didn’t exist.

Yet these monsters could enter. Why?

He shook his head and dragged his focus back. Even weakened, a god-body wasn’t a foe to toy with.

At that instant, the fiend saw him too. It roared, wings beating like drums, and lunged.

“Fine. Let me show you Augustine’s blade-work.” He ran a thumb along the knife’s spine, breath sharpening. My greatblade’s starving.

He leaped, choosing the first strike.

They met in midair, iron against storm. His confident cut fell—clang—and his greatblade snapped in two like a brittle icicle. Memory flashed, sharp as pain: Durak was a fine smith, yes—but for mortal wars. Even pared down, the beast’s bones sang divine; gods don’t wear cheap steel.

Thump—the fiend’s tail whipped him, launching him across the ruins like a leaf in gale. For a heartbeat, he looked into its eyes and felt naked, an insect under boots. Language failed, but meaning didn’t: in the moment it broke his blade, its gaze said, clear as thunder, You gotta be kidding me.

“Cough… miscalculated.” Augustine dragged himself up the slope, dust in his mouth. Close quarters were out. He’d kite it, bleed it slowly, and let time’s hand tilt the scales.

In a flash, he flung a string of fireballs, beads on a burning rosary. The fiend blew them out in one cold breath. Augustine used that blink, widened the gap, and ducked behind a broken wall, his pulse drumming.

The beast lost his silhouette and roared, smashing buildings with blind fury. It couldn’t pin him by scent or some net of perception. From that, Augustine knew its hunting sense was cruder than its claws.

Fireballs budded from his palms one by one, little suns bobbing like lanterns. The Fireball spell was the most basic magic; in the Origin World, even kids learned it. Few knew this: compress countless fireballs into one tiny ember, and that ember turns god-slaying.

When that idea first lit him, he’d gone to ask Agas. Agas set him a problem. After tests and the math, Augustine proved it: compress ten million fireballs to the limit, and the instant blast could slay a god. Talent, and a stubborn mind—because of him, Demon King Academies across the Origin World started teaching the Extreme Compression Theory. A whole school rose from it—the Mad Ruination school—championing magic at its breaking point.

Take the lowest Dust-raising spell: a breeze, a brush for grime. Compress it by the tens of thousands, and the breeze turns knife. In the Demon King Academy of the First Region, a club tested it on a lifeless world; one million Dust-raising spells compressed to the edge lifted mountain ranges like cloth.

Now Augustine kept condensing fireballs. At his speed, one per second felt easy, a steady heartbeat of light.

The energy jittered the air like heat over stone. The fiend finally tracked him, its mouth smoking. Black vapor packed tight, and a dark shell blasted toward him like a cannonball.

“Time Slow!”

He cast one-handed, and the shell dragged like molasses. He slipped aside, light as a feather on a breeze.

Hovering in the hollow sky, he pressed the compression, breath synced to the squeeze. “Not sure you understand me,” he said, voice iron, “but there’s nothing a single Fireball can’t beat.”

He hurled it. Boom—a mushroom cloud unfurled, and the earth peeled back into a tremendous crater.

“Damn. This one’s got wit. I thought it would tank it like the dumb ones.”

Another miscalculation. The fiend sensed the terror in that ember and chose the wind over the blow. In that dodge, Augustine saw his own rawness, the gaps where battle-truth hadn’t sunk in yet.

“I’ve got a long road ahead. My teacher told me to travel worlds—makes sense now.”

Gritting his teeth, he gathered a thousand more embers. His arms felt heavy. He kept the chase alive, like a fox teasing a hound.

“I need a way to condense uninterrupted, and it needs a cage around it.” He ran scenarios. No clean trap without prep. If he had teammates, they’d buy him the seconds. But this was the point—to face a strong foe alone and rise under pressure.

He fled and forged at once. Give him ten thousand embers gathered in peace, and he’d cripple the beast. Battle never grants peace.

“How… To pin that thing? Tricky. I’d need groundwork… or use the shape the land already offers.”

His eyes lit. He glanced back at the crater his blast had carved, and a plan snapped into place like a drawn bow.

“Heaven-Heart Locks the Moon!”

From the crater’s rim burst a storm of chains, iron serpents hissing through dust. The fiend’s bulk betrayed it; it couldn’t twist clear. The chains wrapped tight, bit deep, and dragged its thrashing weight down into the pit.