Niara shot forward like a white lightning bolt across the swamp. The sea beasts kept attacking to try and stop her, but… something was clearly off. They should've been able to move just as fast as her in the sea, and their numbers were without a doubt overwhelming in that swamp.

But as Niara pushed forward, the attacks started thinning out.

Within minutes, she could already see the other side of the swamp. They had gone in the opposite direction from where they came.

She smiled. In front of her, in the sea, were hundreds of thousands of sea beasts. They had just been lightly attacking, only to slow them down a bit, stalling until all the beasts could gather and surround them on the path they were heading.

And already on solid ground, outside the swamp… thousands of beastly figures were waiting. Among them, Niara spotted a bull, his eyes burning with endless hatred.

"Just as expected. They've got something that helps them move and leave the lake quickly. I'd say everyone from that island came," Darian muttered.

Beasts were known for growing fast. And since that place had that special fruit around, all beasts born there were fed and reached adulthood in just a few months, ready to fight. That's why all of them had come to wipe out their mortal enemies.

As for these sea beasts, they were the ones the bull called "wild ones." But obviously, they weren't really enemies at all.

They were all allies of the Risen, and whenever a threat showed up, they had to unite to take it down. This had nothing to do with the fruits — that was just an excuse the bull made up. You didn't need to think too hard to understand Niara and Darian were dangerous people that had to be captured.

Niara didn't slow down — in fact, she sped up, getting excited.

When she was five hundred meters from the massive army…

*KILL THEM!!!*

Frenzied roars echoed everywhere as they all got ready to attack.

All those beasts had power around the level of a three-ringed Spiritual Guardian. For Darian and Niara, someone like that was less than a bug. Even a four-ringed one wouldn't be much of a threat.

If they felt like it and had the time, they could wipe out all those beasts with ease. But… Darian wanted to test something that might be really useful.

He smiled and activated a spatial artifact.

In that universe, there were only natural things or movement inscriptions. Spiritual Guardians couldn't bring artifacts from their own universes like Darian could; all they had was whatever existed there.

Inscriptions took forever to activate and gave off tons of fluctuations. Runes would pop up around the person, and if they were destroyed in time, the whole thing was wasted. That's why the beasts were sure that if he tried using one, they could just attack and interrupt it. But…

*Whoosh!*

"NO WAY!"

They vanished right before everyone's eyes.

"Oh? Easy there. I just got here, I'm not leaving that fast." A mocking voice echoed behind them all.

Hundreds of thousands of beasts turned around in near-perfect sync — almost comically.

Up in the sky, just a few hundred meters on the other side of the swamp, floated the white Dragoness and the colorful dragon coiled around her.

The bull was stunned. Why the hell didn't they run away? Why did they stop?

Niara opened her arms. Her body shifted, and her scales turned black.

Darian loosened his coil a bit and moved slightly off her shoulder.

Their eyes turned pitch black. The whole sky and horizon went dark like ink. It was like no light could exist in front of them.

A bone-chilling cold swept through all the beasts. A dense black aura spun around the two, gathering above and growing bigger and bigger.

It looked like a black sun. Every second, it grew like crazy and pulsed, shaking the skies with the weight of time and space. Countless space rifts cracked in all directions, unable to handle that level of concentrated power.

An invisible pressure made every beast tremble, frozen in place. To their eyes, that black sun looked like it could destroy the whole world.

In less than five seconds, compared to that sun, Niara and Darian looked like tiny ants.

Back when Darian got his second ring, he was already able to use a destructive, explosive strike — something like a dragon's breath. To do that, he had to combine his dark power with the dragon bloodline he got from Niara. But after that, he never used it again, since it burned a ton of energy all at once, took too long to charge, and he didn't have full control over it yet. (Chapter 162)

But... after seeing the 'Demonic Sun' that Vanh used against him in the tournament, a few ideas came to mind. Vanh used that thing with the power of his blessing to stabilize the energy. And the spherical shape of that sun was also intentional, meant to give the user more control.

With the third ring and the boost in his body's capacity, Darian asked Niara to test it together... yeah, he didn't train with her, because he knew Niara wasn't the type to train. For her, the heat of battle was the best time to practice.

He pulled out nearly 80% of all the dark power he had stored up. Then she used her Bloodline to forcefully stabilize it.

Niara pushed herself to the limit, until blood started dripping from her eyes, ears, and mouth.

"This is the limit. But it's already enough."

Darian muttered. It was only five seconds, but she managed to reach a really thin line of stability. If they took a second longer or added more dark power, it would've exploded on them.

The technique used dark power, combined with Niara's Bloodline pushed to its max. That fusion turned the dark power into something else: explosive with flames, but still as evil as pure dark power.

Niara moved her hands and slowly released that black sun. It dropped slowly, and as it did, it floated with a warped motion, clearly unstable.

They both tensed up when they saw it. It was obvious it would blow up before reaching the enemies. But... Darian could fix that.

Without hesitation, he activated the rings on his fists and forced the energy to stay under control.

The sea beasts trembled and were the first to react. Suddenly, they all turned in panic and dove into the swamp.

"We need a good name! This is our combo technique!" Niara said quickly. "I GOT IT!"

The beasts on land reacted too, turning to flee in desperation.

"Cursed Sun of Divine Annihilation!!"

She shouted, and that power was already closing in on the enemies in a second.

Before it even touched the swamp, the surface twisted and evaporated. Countless gigantic beasts, looking like fish covered in mud, were suddenly exposed.

The swamp couldn't protect them when the Cursed Sun of Divine Annihilation dropped.

**RUMBLE!!**

The moment it exploded, all color vanished from the world. For a second, every beast felt like they'd gone blind... but it only lasted a second, because what they'd lost, in truth, was their life.

After that apocalyptic sound, Niara and Darian saw a fractured scene. Fragments of space-time were out of place. The world below had fallen into chaos.

But the next instant, everything snapped back. Their vision cleared, revealing a gigantic crater — half inside the swamp, half outside. It looked like a meteor had hit.

Nothing was left...

Niara was breathing heavily. Darian, on the other hand, despite everything, felt excited about the terrifying level of that power.

To use it, they needed an absurd amount of dark power, and there was no way to use much less. No way they could pull it off twice. But... it was a great area destruction move to keep up their sleeve.

"We can polish it more over time," Darian muttered proudly.

"Those bastards gave me poisoned food! Trick me once, and you'll get tricked later. You deserved it!" she scoffed dryly.

Darian scoffed too. Not even the corpses remained. But they'd already taken a dozen of the best herbs and plants from that place, along with hundreds of those fruits. With what they had, they could grow half and use the rest.

Added to the items from the previous lake, they could say they'd harvested the best this world had to offer. Those gentle beasts had worked hard to leave everything ready for them to take.

Besides that, they probably caused a huge blow to the enemy's strength. The beasts had lost at least half of their power. Now, they just had to find the main one...

"Let's go," he said, and Niara flapped her wings, flying off.

The central region of the battlefield was only a few kilometers ahead.

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