The water around Alvian and Drakon turned grey. Colors desaturated. The sounds of the battle—Ignis's roaring, the distant clash of the armies—muted into a dull buzz.

Alvian's hand, pressed against the white scales of Drakon's chest, began to glow. Not with light. With the absence of light. It was a color darker than black, a hole in the visual spectrum.

[Skill Activated: Matter Deconstruction (Tier 2 Talent Ability)]

[Effect: Forces the entropy of a target object to accelerate by 10,000,000%.]

[Cost: 50% Max Mana.]

"What... what are you doing?" Drakon asked. The smugness was gone. He felt something. A coldness that didn't just freeze his skin, but made the atoms of his armor shiver.

"Armor has durability," Alvian explained, his voice sounding like it was coming from a radio tuned to a dead channel. "Steel rusts. Scale rots. Magic fades. It takes time."

He pushed his mana into the skill.

"I'm just speeding up the clock."

"NO!" Drakon tried to pull away. He smashed his free fist into Alvian's face.

Alvian didn't block. He took the hit. His head snapped back, blood spraying into the water. But his hand didn't move from Drakon's chest.

"Accelerate."

"CRACKLE."

The sound was sickening. It wasn't the sound of metal breaking. It was the sound of metal aging.

The pristine white scales under Alvian's hand turned grey. Then brown. Then black. The shine vanished. The magical aura sputtered and died.

"My armor!" Drakon shrieked. "What are you doing to my armor?!"

"Deleting it," Alvian said.

The corruption spread. It raced across the chest plate, up to the pauldrons, down to the greaves. The Legendary-grade [White Scale Armor], forged in the heart of a dragon and blessed by the Syndicate, began to flake away like ash.

[Target Armor Durability: 100% -> 50% -> 10% -> 0%.]

"It's... it's turning to dust!" Drakon clawed at his own chest, trying to scrape off the rot, but his claws simply crumbled the weakened material further. The armor that had withstood a bombardment of spells and the strikes of a Sword Saint disintegrated into a cloud of grey silt.

Drakon stood there. Naked. Vulnerable. The red undersuit beneath the armor was shredded, revealing the pale, scarred skin of the man beneath.

"You..." Drakon backed away, his eyes wide with a terror that transcended the fear of death. He had relied on that armor. It was his identity. It was his godhood. And Alvian had just deleted it with a touch.

"Without your shell," Alvian said, stepping forward, the [Lance of the Void Winter] leveled at Drakon's throat. "You are just a man with a bad attitude."

"STAY BACK!" Drakon screamed. He swung his fist, but without the armor's enhancement, the blow was sluggish, weak.

Alvian caught it easily. He twisted the arm until the bone snapped.

"AHHH!"

"Inefficient," Alvian said. "You relied on gear score instead of skill."

He drove the lance into Drakon's shoulder. There was no resistance. No metallic ting. Just the wet sound of steel piercing meat.

"Ignis! MASTER! HELP ME!" Drakon wailed, scrabbling backward in the sand.

Highlord Ignis, hovering above them, watched in stunned silence. He had seen powerful magic. He had seen divine strength. But he had never seen a human simply decide that a Legendary artifact no longer existed.

"Trash," Ignis grumbled. "You let him strip you."

"He's a monster!" Drakon cried, tears mixing with the seawater. "He's not human! He's the Void!"

Alvian walked toward the crawling Knight.

"Run," Alvian said softly.

Drakon froze. "What?"

"Run," Alvian repeated. "Go back to the Syndicate. Tell them what you saw. Tell them that their armor, their shields, their walls... they mean nothing to me. Tell them that I am the entropy that is coming for them."

Drakon didn't need to be told twice. He scrambled to his feet, clutching his broken arm, and fled. He swam toward the surface, toward the rift, abandoning his King, abandoning his honor. He was a broken man.

Alvian watched him go.

"Why?" Valeria asked, limping up beside him. "Why let him live?"

"Because a dead man tells no tales," Alvian said, watching the retreating figure. "But a terrified man? He spreads fear like a virus. I want the Syndicate to know. I want them to look at their walls and wonder when they will turn to dust."

He turned to Ignis. The Highlord was the only one left.

Alvian checked his mana. It was half empty from the [Matter Deconstruction]. His health was critical. Kenshin was dead.

But he stood tall. He pointed his lance at the Level 70 Raid Boss.

"Your turn, big guy."

Ignis looked at the pile of dust that used to be the White Scale Armor. He looked at the water where Kenshin had dissolved. He looked at Alvian's violet eyes.

For the first time in a thousand years, the Blood Tyrant felt a chill.

"This world..." Ignis growled, his form beginning to fade as he initiated a tactical withdrawal back to the rift. "This world is broken."

"I'm fixing it," Alvian said.

The Dragon God vanished into the rift, retreating not out of weakness, but out of uncertainty. The battle was over.

Alvian dropped his lance. He fell to his knees. The adrenaline faded, leaving only the crushing weight of exhaustion and the memory of the old swordsman who had given everything for a few seconds of time.

"Cost of war," Alvian whispered, looking at the empty spot where Kenshin had stood. "Inefficient."

But as he closed his eyes, he clutched the [Soul of the Tide] in his hand. Kenshin wasn't gone. He was loot. And Alvian would make sure that loot was used to build a weapon that would ensure no one else had to be sacrificed again.

----

The water in the safe house was quiet, but the silence was heavy with the weight of the recent retreat. Alvian sat on a crate of supplies, his [Lance of the Void Winter] resting across his knees. He wasn't resting. He was analyzing.

The battle with Drakon, the White Knight, had revealed a critical flaw in his build. Alvian was a hybrid, leaning heavily on the magical properties of the Void and the Frost to bypass defenses. [Voidpiercer] ignored armor, and [Frost Descent] ignored temperature resistance. But Drakon possessed [Absolute Nullification]. His white scales simply deleted magic upon contact.

To kill the Draconic Legion, Alvian needed more than just mana. He needed raw, unadulterated kinetic force. He needed to be able to punch through a mountain without using a single spell.

"Inefficient," Alvian muttered, looking at his hand. "My Strength stat is 390. High for a player, but low for a Calamity killer. I need a multiplier."

Valeria walked over. Her arm was in a sling, glowing with the soft light of a healing spell Seraphina had applied. She looked tired, her usually pristine armor scuffed and dented.

"You're brooding," Valeria said, sitting next to him. "We won the skirmish, Alvian. We drove them back."

"We survived," Alvian corrected, not looking up. "Drakon is still alive. Ignis is still alive. And the Draconic Legion is waking up. If we meet them again with our current specs, we lose."

He stood up, the water rippling around his [Vestments of the Void Monarch].

"I need a teacher."

Master Thorne, who was oiling the joints of his quicksilver legs in the corner, looked up. "You mastered my Art in seconds. You mastered the Speedster's Art in minutes. What more do you need, boy?"

"I need to hit harder," Alvian said. "I need a physical damage multiplier that doesn't rely on mana. Who is the strongest physical fighter in Azureus?"

Thorne exchanged a look with Lady Ola. The old Guardian sighed.

"There is one," Thorne grunted. "But he isn't a Guardian. He's a criminal. A hermit who lives in the deepest, filthiest part of the Slums. Moore."

"The Berserker," Ola added, a look of distaste crossing her face. "He was once a candidate for the Hammerhead King's throne, but he rejected the politics. He rejected the weapons. He believes only in the body. He developed the [Abyssal Rage]."

"Perfect," Alvian said. "Where is he?"

The Slums of the Tide were a maze of rotting shipwrecks and coral shanties, but the sector Moore inhabited was worse. It was a graveyard of ships that had been crushed by brute force. Massive hulls of steel were twisted like wet rags. Anchors were bent into pretzels.

It was a garden of violence.

Alvian swam through the wreckage, Valeria and Seraphina flanking him. The locals here didn't look at them with fear; they looked at them with hunger. This was the lawless zone, where the City Watch dared not tread.

"System. Scan for high-density biological signatures."

[Scanning... Scanning... Scanning...]

[Target Identified: Moore (The Unbound Beast)]

[Level: 55]

[Class: Berserker Lord]

[Status: Sleeping]

They reached a clearing in the debris field. In the center sat a massive, hollowed-out engine block of an ancient dreadnought. Inside, sleeping on a pile of shark skins, was Moore.

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