Sulthar transformed into his dragon form. Damian, Lucian, Sam, and even T'korran were on his back. The cracked magma body of Sulthar was deadly for any normal person, but for a guy made of lava and third rankers, it was a much cooler platform than the scorching fast wind rotating alongside the purple tornado.

Whichever way Sulthar moved, the mad knight forced the purple vortex to turn in that direction. They may be saving seconds here and there with fast turns, but eventually, they would get too close to the wids to end up in the ocean of flames.

The obsidian knight got tired of observing as well and started chasing them, occasionally sending the giant blue arcs of his massive sword.

'He is playing with us,' Damian thought.

And why would he? The mana inside the guy was over five times what Sulthar had. And Sulthar was the strongest high-legendary rank he knew.

Sam threw his most powerful lightning bolt from above, and the obsidian knight absorbed it all as if it were a light snack. Lucian's attacks were already at a disadvantage due to the temperature, but her aura attacks and other element spells were not doing anything that would count. T'korran's lava attacks were utterly useless against a thing that literally lived and commanded an ocean of lava.

Damian also used the paper-thin aura spell sword arcs, and the god-killer spell imbued sword attacks, but the obsidian knight could easily push aside the aura attack, and it had enough sense to dodge the unfamiliar god-killer spell arcs.

The wormholes could be easily sensed by the guy as well, and did nothing to aid Damian and his party. They could only use it to move faster and dodge attacks.

Both Sam and Lucian were attacking from the chill-box using wormholes. For them, the danger was double, and their attacks easily sensed. Damian was done with them though. If they wanted to leave, Lucian's sacrium sword had the unlocked waygate spell on it. They each also had one blazur and sacrium mix alloy mana-generating cube, so he didn't need to care about their mana as well.

Sulthar turned a couple of times to launch his beam of molten fire, but the obsidian knight had its own cyan liquid flames similar to the ones the thing had used to start the vortex. The two fires clashed, and Sulthar was pushed back. Second time, Damian added his own hellfire along with Sulthar's beam, Lucian launched a cold storm, and Sam sent his explosive white lightning sword attacks.

And yet the obsidian knight used his massive dark metal sword to shield himself while he launched the cyan flames to face the two combined flames. The ice storm barely had any effect, and Sam's attacks were thwarted off course by the knight's own cyan sword arcs.

The running and struggle wasn't without a plan though. Damian's three sacrium cubes were working at their limit nonstop and had gathered a massive wave of golden liquid mana. The weird orb of light was still with him, circling him like crazy. He was doing his best to ignore the nuisance.

Using a large portion of liquid mana, Damian created a simple rune of water just scaled to gigantic proportions. He used long mana threads to push the runic circle to the very top of the 40km dungeon height limit. Damian guided Sulthar to move above the swirling purple flame clouds; the obsidian knight followed.

The monster did not care that its attack was useless at such a height. After all, logic dictated that no monster or other entity could fly forever.

The closer to his water rune Sulthar brought him, the more mana threads he could connect from the wave of liquid mana to the over five kilometers wide water rune above. And more efficiently, without wasting much mana.

Before launching the natural catastrophe, Damian covered Sulthar's whole body with multiple air shields, golden barriers, and a thin coat of seven. Naturally, all present on the dragon's back were covered by it too.

Once ready, Damian activated the water rune.

Water comes into existence not as mist or rain, but as mass — a flawless vertical cylinder five kilometers wide, its surface unnaturally smooth for the first heartbeat, light bending around it like it's some twisted light show of nature. Gravity notices immediately.

The water does not fall at first. It realizes it should be falling.

Then the column moves, and the air screams.

Friction claws at the sides, shredding the outer layers into incandescent vapor. The skin of the water boils itself raw, peeling away in explosive sheets while the core remains stubbornly liquid, driven by momentum. Thunder is born continuously along the column — not rolling thunder, but a sustained, tearing sound, like the sky being fed into a saw. Steam blooms outward in roiling spirals, turning the descent into a white-hot shaft surrounded by a hurricane of its own making.

Trillions of tons of water pillar were launched from the very top.

For the first time, the obsidian knight froze in mid-air, ignoring the chase.

From the second the water came into existence, it was already covered by white smoke and was even boiling while falling. The temperature here was certainly no joke.

Even with the tens of layers of protection, being so close to the water rune—the rising temperature, the violent steam, and the powerful gusts of wind could be felt by all.

Though the white steam covered everything and made it easy to hide, Damian could sense the obsidian knight diving down towards the lava lake. It stopped in the middle and sounded like it released the pillar of cyan liquid flames again, but that wouldn't work. It only added to the steam and screams of explosive sounds.

The obsidian knight kept moving down while probably trying to stop the water at any cost, but Damian kept the rune powered up, feeding it liters of liquid mana with over five hundred mana threads. All for the water to keep flowing.

It was only a matter of time before the obsidian knight would come after them. Once it realizes there was no way to stop the water from falling. Damian had a plan ready for that as well. For now, he pumped up as much liquid mana as the enormous water rune needed.

Soon, the knight came flying straight towards them at a ridiculous speed. It just showed how at ease the guy was when the chase was still going on.

The tens of barriers covering them spared them from steam, increased heat, and shockwaves, but they will not save them from that monstrous being.

Damian activated his last failsafe covered by the white steam. The obsidian knight came awfully close, but meters from the stable mid-air party, its mana signature vanished, and then a millisecond later reappeared a hundred meters away from them in the north-west.

The obsidian knight paused for a fraction of a second and rushed towards them once again, but the same thing happened again.

Well, it was no great trick.

Damian had simply shaped six 20-meter-square wormholes and placed it all around them. Boxing themselves in. All of Damian's mana threads were going through the side wormhole as well.

Of course, the structure was not as simple as just six walls stitched together. Damian had to keep gaps for air to let pass for his sacrium mana cubes to work. Fortunately, this high in the dungeon levels, the air was condensed with mana that even second rankers would not be able to stand it.

The obsidian knight kept trying and failing. It had even paused to observe the wormholes, which only benefited Damian and his party. This trick would not hold for long, but it didn't have to. He just needed time.

If the obsidian knight were a better mage, it would have easily used mana-disrupting atmosphere spells to mess with the wormholes. But that was the thing, the guy was a monster, most likely without any memories of his past life. All it knew was this one lava-filled floor of the dungeon.

It was all-powerful but like a naive kid raised in a box.

The monster was learning though. Its interest in the new spells Damian launched revealed it that much. At the very least, Damian learned that monsters, at least the very powerful and dangerous ones, had some control over their will. Even if they were psychotic killer, who burst into uncontrollable rage if anything related to the key point they were programmed to guard was mentioned.

The heat rising from below the water must have been there before the water reached the lava.

From the gaps of the dark box Damian had trapped himself into, he observed the column begin to glow strangely — not with light, but with distortion. Its surface rippled, warped, and convulsed. Detonating outward and leaving caverns inside the falling mass that collapsed instantly.

It was falling and exploding at the same time.

Then the water hits.

There is no splash. Splashes are for sane scales.

Contact lasts less than a second, and in that second, physics gives up.

The leading face of water flashes into steam so violently that it behaves like a solid explosive. A hemispherical shock front punches outward, flattening the lava surface into a bowl before rebounding upward in a wall of incandescent debris.

Lava does not flow anymore — it atomizes. Molten rock is torn into glowing droplets, shattered into blackened glass shards, hurled kilometers into the air like sparks from an anvil.

The steam explosion punches a crater into the lake, briefly exposing deeper, brighter magma before collapsing inward again. Superheated vapor expands faster than sound, slamming into the invisible dungeon walls with a physical force that might rattle stone, peel layers of rock, and send pressure pulses racing through the ground like earthquakes deciding to pick up a rhythm.

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