Defiance of the Fall

The unforgiving divinity of Arcadia shone with golden splendor, creating a pocket of light in the darkness of [Eye of Desolation]. The axe of [Arcadia's Judgment] could barely be called a blade since being upgraded to D-grade, nor were there any signs of the wooden hand from before. Instead, the huge gash in the sky had become the actual attack. When the light descended, so did the judgment.

The large suppressive magic circle was also gone, though its effect remained and was stronger than ever. Arcadia's influence now reached wherever its light did. Gaseous clouds of distant dreams poured out of the hulking behemoth to teleport away or hide within a dreamscape. It accomplished nothing. The golden rays dispersed the clouds the moment they formed, rejecting all falsehoods and preventing anything from coming between themselves and their target.

There was no escaping judgment, and the pugilist was no exception. His actual strength was roughly on par with Zac's, and not even a Peak D-grade Cosmic Core could rally enough energy to easily combat the power of a Void-activated Middle D-grade finisher.

Seeing he was stuck with an earthshattering strike descending on his head, the Black Heart Cultist's aura soared even higher. He was putting everything into tiding through the descending strike, including talismans and forming a flesh wall with the help of his curse.

The commotion allowed the second danger to arrive unnoticed from below. It resembled the blade of an upside-down guillotine, sent straight from the King of Hell to end the desperate struggle of whoever had been marked by Death. Dense runes covered its gleaming edge, and it looked like an actual gate to the underworld formed wherever it passed.

The scene was only visible to Zac's eyes. Its form was obscured within the darkness of [Eye of Desolation], and not even [Judgment of Arcadia] could pierce through its innate gloom. Furthermore, its aura was almost perfectly contained within the blade, making it incredibly difficult to discern when the cultist's immediate surroundings were drowned in torrential amounts of energy.

Its subdued appearance was a stark difference to the skill's form in the E-grade, where it conjured wings and later spheres. Zac had done away with all of that, even the skull that delivered the final strike. All the focus was on increasing speed and lethality. That wasn't to say Zac saw no changes from activating [Desperation's End].

A pitch-black scroll had emerged from a deathly vortex to his side. It was covered in lines written in blood, using scripts completely alien to Zac. Their meaning was still clear; it was a line of names whose time had come. A new line had already been added, and Zac could feel a hint of the pugilist's aura within.

It was like Zac had become the controller of the pugilist's future the moment his name was engraved. The scroll didn't restrict or bind. It only showed a glimpse from the river of fate, allowing Zac to adjust his strike as needed to accomplish its goal.