Merek shot backward, still in motion from the strike of the axe… As much as the old man wanted to stop himself, he just couldn't.

There was something strange in that impact… energy he hadn't felt in centuries.

No, wait.

He had felt one of these energies before. When he'd been trapped inside Yggdrasil, sealed away in that prison of living wood and ancient roots, he'd sensed this exact signature pulsing through the tree's heartwood.

He had coined it divinity back then.

'So this boy…' Merek's eyes widened as he spun through the air with his staff raised defensively. 'This half-elf is wielding divinity? Not just one… but multiple divine sources layered together?'

The realization hit harder than the axe had.

'I must capture him. Study him. Decipher how he—'

BOOM.

The air itself exploded.

Merek barely had time to position his staff before Azel crashed into him like a meteor wrapped in golden light.

The axe pressed against the gnarled wood of his staff, and both of them were launched backward through the forest once more.

Trees blurred past them.

Elf Guards stationed on the higher branches saw the streak of gold and black tear through their domain.

Some reached for their bows and others simply dove for cover which was a smart choice.

Merek gritted his teeth, feeling the divine energy eating away at his destruction barrier like acid through paper. His arms shook from the pressure.

"You obsolete elven foo—"

CRACK.

Azel's fist connected with his jaw before he could finish the insult.

Saliva sprayed from Merek's mouth as his head snapped to the side and pain exploded across his face, white-hot and humiliating.

He slowly turned back to face the half-elf, and his eyes… changed. The pupils dilated into pinpoints of absolute void.

Pure, unadulterated destruction radiated from them like heat from a forge.

His staff began to glow. It was not the soft luminescence of magic, but something darker… something that made reality itself recoil.

The sky darkened overhead as if someone had drawn a curtain across the sun.

Birds scattered.

The elves in the trees looked up at the gathering darkness and immediately began running, leaping from branch to branch in pure terror.

They knew what was coming.

Azel used the staff as a springboard, pushing off it with both feet and flipping backward through the air.

His crimson eyes tracked Merek's every movement as the old man raised his staff skyward.

"Be destroyed!"

A beam of pure destruction erupted from the staff's tip.

It didn't just shoot forward… it erased the space between them, a column of annihilation that turned air molecules into nothingness.

The sound came after, a screaming roar that shook the forest floor.

Azel gripped his axe like a longsword as his muscles tensed.

'Second Style…'

The beam was three meters away.

Two meters.

One.

He swung.

The axe blade caught the destruction beam at an angle, and against all logic, all reason, all known laws of magic…

It reflected.

The beam shot back toward Merek, who stared at it with an expression of pure shock frozen on his ancient face.

"Impossible—!"

He twisted his body at the last possible moment.

The destruction beam screamed past his shoulder, missing him by centimeters, and crashed into the ground below.

BOOOOM.

Everything within a twenty-meter radius simply… stopped existing.

Trees, earth, rocks, even the magical ambient mana in the air… gone.

Replaced by a perfectly smooth crater that looked like someone had scooped out reality with a divine spoon.

Smoke rose from the edges, faintly purple and smelling of ozone and something older.

'His element sure is powerful.' Azel thought, falling through the air with his axe still raised. 'But he's weak in close combat. If I tried to match him in pure magical output, I'd lose in seconds.'

His eyes narrowed.

'So I'll just have to beat him with my fists.'

Merek whirled around, staff already charging another beam… but Azel was gone.

He had not turned invisible…

The space where he'd been standing was empty, filled only with dissipating shadow that leaked downward like oil in water.

'What…?' Merek's mind raced. 'The only person who could do that is…'

A face tried to surface in his memory. It was female and someone important, someone whose name brought crushing sadness whenever he thought of her…

But he couldn't remember.

He never could.

WHAM.

Two boots slammed into his back with enough force to crack ribs.

Merek's eyes bulged as he was launched upward, shooting through the canopy like a catapult stone.

Leaves exploded around him as branches shattered and waiting for him above the treeline with her arms crossed and floating on a cushion of wind…

Anastasia.

The Elf Queen smiled sweetly.

"Hello, Merek."

He had no time for pleasantries.

Merek thrust his staff forward, and seven orbs of concentrated destruction materialized around him in a perfect heptagram.

Each one pulsed with enough power to level a city block.

"Begone, woman!"

All seven orbs launched simultaneously.

But Anastasia simply exhaled.

Her mana exploded outward in a sphere of absolute control, so dense it was visible… a translucent emerald dome that encompassed the entire airspace around her.

The destruction orbs hit the barrier and… were redirected.

One by one, they shot downward into the ruined earth below.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Geysers of rock and soil erupted skyward with each impact, turning the battlefield into a chaotic mess of flying debris and purple smoke.

Azel burst through one of the geysers, his body coated in shadows that peeled away like burning paper.

He kicked off a floating chunk of earth and launched himself upward with his axe raised for a devastating overhead strike aimed at Merek's exposed back.

'Got you—'

"Merek!" Anastasia's voice rang out, it was high-pitched and very cute. "Be gone by the wind!"

What followed was anything but cute.

The wind itself came alive.

It didn't just blow… it grabbed them both, Azel and Merek, wrapping around their bodies like invisible chains made of hurricane force and condensed mana.

Azel tried to shadow-step out of it.

His body flickered, half-turning to darkness… but the wind adjusted.

It knew where he was going before he did, sealing every shadow in the vicinity with pressurized air that turned each escape route into a dead end.

'Shit—!'

Gwendolyn's ghostly form materialized beside him, reaching out with spectral hands to pull him into the safety of the shadow realm.

Too late.

BOOOOOM.

The wind exploded outward in a directed burst that shattered the sound barrier instantly.

The shockwave flattened what was left of the forest below.

Both Azel and Merek were launched like cannonballs, shooting across the sky so fast they became blurs of light and shadow.

Anastasia lowered her hands slowly, watching their rapidly disappearing forms arc toward the distant ocean.

Her hair settled back down around her shoulders, and she smiled apologetically at the empty air.

"Ah~ Sorry, love."

…

The landscape had changed over the centuries.

Merek spun through the air, trying to orient himself as unfamiliar terrain rushed past below.

Where there had once been plains, now a dense forest stretched toward the coastline. He could hear the ocean roaring in the distance.

'How long was I sealed…?'

The thought was bitter.

He raised his staff to stabilize himself with a levitation spell…

CRACK.

A boot connected with his face.

The world spun as Merek backflipped involuntarily through the air with his limbs flailing. He caught himself just barely, spreading destruction outward in a omnidirectional wave.

BOOOOOM.

The forest below… stopped existing.

Trees, undergrowth, animals, insects… everything within a hundred-meter radius was simply erased, leaving only that same smooth crater of absolute nothingness.

But Azel survived.

He burst through the destruction wave like it was nothing more than smoke, his entire body coated in layered divinity that sparkled gold and silver and crimson.

His eyes burned with determination and he was falling toward Merek like a meteor.

"Are you mad, elf?!" Merek roared. "Get your filthy hands off—"

Azel wrapped both arms around his midsection in a crushing bear hug.

The momentum was catastrophic.

Both of them shot forward through the air, the force of Azel's charge carrying them toward the ocean at speeds that made the wind scream.

Merek felt his ribs creak under the pressure.

"Get… OFF!"

He brought his staff down on Azel's back with all his strength, aiming for the spine. The sharp underside of the weapon, forged from ancient darkwood and reinforced with destruction magic, should have split him in half.

Instead…

It passed through empty air.

Azel had turned to shadow mid-embrace, his body dispersing into darkness for just a fraction of a second… just long enough for the staff to pass harmlessly through and then he was solid again.

Behind Merek now.

The old man's white hair was grabbed in an iron grip.

"Down you go, old man."

Azel spun once, twice, building momentum like an Olympic hammer thrower.

Then he released.

Merek was launched downward with enough force to make him glow from air friction. His eyes went wide as the ocean rushed up to meet him, it was blue and vast and unforgiving.

'This half-breed… he's stronger than I thought!'

He was three hundred meters from the water.

Two hundred.

One hundred.

At fifty meters, Merek stopped completely.

The ocean below him parted like someone had split it with an invisible blade, waves pulling back to reveal the sandy bottom thirty meters down. Fish flopped in confusion.

"Fucking bastard," Azel muttered from above.

He gripped his axe with both hands, coating the entire weapon in layered divinity until it glowed like a fragment of the sun itself. Heat radiated from the blade in visible waves then he threw it.

The axe became a golden comet.

Merek saw it coming and extended one hand, destruction magic coalescing around his palm in a sphere of absolute erasure.

The axe entered the sphere.

And…

CRACK.

It shattered completely. Fragments of divine metal scattered in every direction, dissolving into motes of light.

But Merek's eyes widened in horror.

Because Azel was already there.

He'd followed directly behind his own thrown weapon, using it as a distraction, and now his body tore through the smoke of destruction magic like it wasn't even there.

His boot connected with Merek's stomach.

BOOM.

All the air left Merek's lungs at once. His destruction armament… the passive barrier that destroyed anything that physically touched him… it did nothing.

The divinity coating Azel's body overpowered it completely.

They sank into the parted ocean waters, the walls of sea on either side of them trembling from the shockwave.

'This elf…' Merek's mind raced even as pain exploded through his midsection. 'He can hit me even through my destruction armament? How?!'

Azel wound up for another strike.

His fist came in from the right, packed with divine energy and enough force to crack stone.

Merek couldn't dodge in time.

WHAM.

His head snapped to the side as the right hook connected. The shockwave rippled outward through the water, creating a perfect sphere of compressed force that made fish within fifty meters simply… pop.

'Radiant destruction won't work on him… he reflects my beams somehow…' Merek's thoughts became frantic. 'I need something he can't counter!'

His eyes began to glow with destruction itself.

Twin laser beams erupted from his pupils, each one three meters wide and hot enough to boil steel. They shot toward Azel's face with the intent to vaporize him completely.

But Azel's tri-tone eyes… began to glow in response.

His own beams shot out.

BOOOOOOM.

The beams collided mid-water and the temperature spiked instantly. Steam erupted around them as the ocean itself began to boil, bubbles racing toward the surface in massive clusters.

The water glowed red from the heat.

Neither beam overpowered the other. They were perfectly matched, locked in a stalemate of pure destructive output that turned the entire area into a pressure cooker.

Merek gritted his teeth, pouring more mana into his attack.

'Just… a little… more…!'

But he'd made a critical mistake.

He'd forgotten about the other opponent.

…

High above the ocean, Anastasia floated on a platform of compressed wind. Her emerald eyes scanned the water below, tracking the faint glow of the beam clash happening thirty meters down.

"I see."

She raised both hands skyward and began chanting in the ancient elven tongue, words that hadn't been spoken in centuries flowing from her lips like music.

Runes formed in the air around her, glowing green and gold and blue, interconnecting in complex geometric patterns.

They were sealing runes, conditional magic that would trigger only when specific requirements were met and they were currently sinking into the water, invisible and undetectable.

But that alone wouldn't be enough.

She needed something to exploit Merek's current distraction and something powerful enough to end the fight.

Her lips curved into a smile as she used one of the skills granted to her upon her transformation

'Nature Change.'

The instant she activated the skill, everything shifted.

The clear afternoon sky turned black as ink. Storm clouds materialized from nothing, roiling and churning with barely contained energy that made the air itself vibrate.

Thunder rumbled and it was not distant kind, this was the kind that rattles your bones and makes your heart skip beats.

Rain began to fall. Heavy, cold drops that hit the ocean surface like bullets. Within seconds, it was a downpour.

Anastasia's eyes glowed as she located the perfect thunderbolt forming in the clouds above… a massive one, bigger than any natural lightning should be.

It was golden instead of white and she pointed down at the ocean.

The thunderbolt began to descend.

…

Underwater, Azel felt the shift in atmospheric pressure before he saw anything.

His divine senses screamed a warning.

'Lightning strike. Massive. Three seconds out.'

He immediately cut his eye beams off and pushed backward with both legs, kicking off Merek's chest with enough force to launch himself twenty meters away.

Then he dissolved into shadows, his entire body scattering into darkness that bled into the surrounding water.

Merek's destruction beam shot through empty space.

"What—?!"

Then he felt it.

The water around him had become… charged. Every molecule vibrating with electrical potential that made his hair stand on end.

He looked down at his arms and saw them.

Runes.

Dozens of them, glowing softly against his skin, arranged in complex patterns he recognized immediately.

Sealing runes and conditional magic that suppressed mana usage.

'When did he—?!'

He tried to summon his destruction magic to form a barrier.

Nothing happened.

His mana was completely locked.

Merek looked up through the water and saw the golden thunderbolt descending from the black sky above, growing larger with every fraction of a second.

He could see every detail of it.

The way it branched and fractured into smaller lightning bolts. The golden energy that composed its core and the sheer size of it, wider than a house and long enough to bridge heaven and earth.

It was beautiful and it was also terrifying.

It was going to kill him.

The thunderbolt hit the water.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM.

The explosion was apocalyptic.

The ocean split down the middle, parted by sheer force into two massive walls of water that rose a hundred meters into the air.

The thunderbolt carved through it all, golden energy turning seawater into superheated steam that erupted outward in every direction.

Anastasia's hair whipped backward from the shockwave, and she raised one arm to shield her eyes from the blinding light.

The sound didn't stop.

It echoed across the ocean, rolling like continuous thunder, loud enough to be heard from the mainland.

And when the light finally faded…

A crater remained in the ocean floor itself, perfectly circular and fifty meters deep, with steam still rising from the superheated sand and rock.

Anastasia lowered her hand and smiled softly.

"Well… that worked better than expected."

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