Chapter 276: Beyond
The crimson-and-black wave crashed across the top floor of the shattered skyscraper.
The concrete floor, the titanium load-bearing pillars, and the thousands of shattered mirror fragments dissolved into nothingness as the wave passed over them.
Hide crossed both arms before his chest His draconic scales hardened into dense, obsidian plates across his skin, forming an overlapping carapace thicker than ever before.
Yet, the moment the waves brushed his guard, Hide’s scales fractured like dried leaves.
A concussive, ungodly shockwave drove him straight through the ceiling, throwing him out of the tower into the open, smog-choked sky.
He spun through the air, coughing up a mouthful of blood that instantly evaporated in the heat of Odo’s aura. His newly healed right shoulder screamed in agony as hairline fractures spiderwebbed across his collarbone.
‘I am a S-Rank…’ Hide thought, his teeth gritted. ‘And I couldn’t even deflect a single casual wave?!’
Down below, the colossal monolith of the International Exterminator Corporation’s headquarters groaned in its death throes.
The entire lower half of the skyscraper gave way as millions of writhing serpents burst from the depths. Two hundred stories of steel, glass, and marble buckled, collapsing in an apocalyptic roar that sent an ash cloud soaring a thousand feet into the clouds.
Hovering amidst the falling ruins, was the Lord of House Odo.
The entity had no eyes, no nose, and no mouth, yet Hide could feel the mockery radiating from that smooth alabaster face.
“Mortal evolution is a neat little trick,” the genderless voice called out. “Wartz gave your vessel a seed of our domain, hoping an insect might learn to sting. But an insect remains an insect.”
Odo raised two fingers.
The sky above the capital ripped open. Hundreds of jagged, blood-red tears tore through the dimensional fabric, converging directly upon Hide in a panoramic web of some intangible material.
Hide twisted and turned towards the the plaza, where everyone had stopped their fights to see the falling building.
He hit the marble paving stones in a low crouch, cracking the ground beneath his boots.
Across the smoke-filled courtyard, his friends were still standing. Sora was running directly toward him, her rapier lowered and her dark eyes wide with horror.
“HIDE!” Sora screamed over the deafening roar of collapsing towers. “What is that thing?!”
“GET OUT OF HERE!” Hide roared at the top of his lungs.
Sora froze mid-sprint.
“Hide, we’re not leaving you—”
“RUN!” Hide bellowed, his eyes wide with a frantic terror he hadn’t shown ever before. “This isn’t a Calamity Lord! It’s a fucking God! YOU CANNOT FIGHT THIS! TURN AROUND AND GO!”
Before Sora could protest, Gideon’s massive hand clamped firmly down on her shoulder.
The veteran warrior’s face was drenched in cold sweat, his sharp instincts recognizing the impossible presence hovering in the sky. He looked at Hide, saw the blood coating his chin.
“Move!” Gideon barked hoarsely, hauling Sora backward. “Move, all of you! We will only get in his way!”
“Gideon, no! Let me go!” Sora cried, struggling. But she was thrown back by overwhelming strength.
Kai grabbed Ryan and Toma, dragging them back. Kiko cast a frantic web of threads, hauling the struggling Sora along as they plunged beneath the city streets, vanishing into the underground shadows.
Hide let out a ragged, shaking breath.
They were clear. For now.
Above him, the air screeched.
Odo’s blood-red tears snapped shut.
SWOOSH!
A column of pure crimson annihilation—wide enough to swallow an entire city block—plummeted straight toward Hide’s head.
Hide raised the katana with both hands.
“ABYSSAL HELLFLAME!”
Black flames erupted from the blade. Following that Hide activated abyssal Will and the flames spiraled with dark mana ripples to form a massive, hundred-meter dome over the plaza.
It was the strongest defensive matrix Hide had ever forged in his life and it lasted less than half a second.
CRACK-SHATTER!
The divine pillar punched straight through the Abyssal HellFlame as if it were harmless mist.
The concussive force struck Hide. The katana shivered violently, the steel groaning under the pressure but coated with Hide’s dark mana, it held. Hide was driven to his knees, the marble beneath him disintegrating into a crater. Blood poured from his nose, his ears, and his mouth before it was over.
Hide fell onto his palms, wheezing on his own blood, unable to lift his arms.
The faceless god drifted down, hovering above the crater rim. He looked down at the battered silver-haired youth with indifference.
“Wartz’s gamble ends here,” Odo’s voice echoed, extending a pale index finger directly at Hide’s skull.
Divine mana gathered at Odo’s fingertip, condensing into a needle.
Hide closed his eyes, his fingers clawing into the pulverized gravel.
‘Is this it…?’ Hide thought, despair threatening to swallow his soul. ‘After all of it… after… after everything… I die here?’
ROAAAAAAAAR!
A shriek tore through the heavens, accompanied by the violent crack of thunder that drowned out Odo’s divine humming.
KRA-BOOOOOM!
A colossal pillar of dark-violet lightning slammed down from the bruised clouds, striking directly between Hide and the descending God!
The discharge blew back the serpentine shadows, throwing Odo’s shroud of twilight into disarray.
Coiling through the lightning-charged air, its magnificent scales humming with raw electric fury, was Drogon. The colossal Eastern dragon phantom roared with earth-shaking majesty, its razor-sharp horns gleaming as it wrapped its serpentine body around the perimeter of the crater, forming a wall of lightning between Hide and the Primordial Ruler.
“MY LIEGE!”
A telepathic voice, smooth, deep, and ancient, resonated inside Hide’s mind.
WHOOSH.
Stepping gracefully out of the swirling shadows behind Hide was the Doom Overseer. The majestic feline beast stood tall, its ribbon-like antlers glowing with a brilliant, soothing radiance.
“You…” Hide gasped, coughing blood as he struggled to sit up. “Drogon… Doom Overseer… you’re back…?”
Outside the lightning barrier, the Lord of House Odo tilted his featureless head, expressing what felt like boredom.
“Pestilent pests,” Odo said softly.
The god simply swept his arm forward.
CRACK!
A shockwave of divine pressure smashed into Drogon. The dragon phantom roared in agonizing pain as hundreds of its scales were ripped away, dark mana spraying across the plaza as its titanic frame was forced backward.
“Listen to me, My Lord!” the Doom Overseer barked, its telepathic voice turning sharp and urgent. “You cannot fight a God with mortal flesh! The Heavenly Principles forbid him from destroying Earth entirely, but you cannot endure another direct strike!”
“Then what am I supposed to do?!” Hide rasped, clutching the tarnished silver ring on his finger.
“The ring!” the Doom Overseer’s eyes locked onto the band of metal. “The master key to the Boundary Pusher! The relic lies within the Vault of Hubin—the floating continent drifting in the sky of Rilth! Only the Boundary Pusher can shatter the limits of your soul and elevate your class to true divinity!”
BOOM!
Drogon took another devastating hit, one of its majestic horns snapping in half under Odo’s relentless assault. The dragon looked back at Hide, its eyes burning with unyielding devotion as it coiled tighter around the god’s descending hands.
“Use your talent, my Liege!” the Doom Overseer urged. “Enter the Dark Realm! From within the fold of the Dark Realm, your spatial coordinates can breach the directly into Rilth! Drogon and I will buy you the seconds you need!”
Hide’s chest tightened. “Drogon will be destroyed—”
“He is a phantom of the Dark Liege.” the Overseer smiled. “He lives to serve our sovereign’s will! If you die here we will too, so please, GO!”
Hide looked at the titanic dragon fighting tooth and nail against a literal deity, buying him life with every drop of its dark mana.
Hide activated his talent and dissolved into a violent vortex of black particles, slipping clean through the dimensional fabric into the timeless vacuum of the Dark Realm.
In the Dark Realm, there was no air, no gravity, and no sound.
Only an infinite sea of floating crystals that depicted the chaos going on in the living realm along with some fractured dimensional currents.
Hide felt the ring on his finger pulse violently. Acting like a celestial compass, the silver band caught the spatial current, pulling his consciousness toward a massive, distant rift.
Hide threw his entire will forward, punching straight through the tear.
CRACK!
Reality reassembled around him in a blinding burst of violet light.
THUD!
Hide crashed heavily onto solid, moss-covered ground, tumbling across damp earth and needles of some unknown plants before sliding to a halt against the base of an ancient stone pillar.
He pushed himself up onto one knee, coughing the stale dust from his throat and looked around.
The suffocating smog and ruined skyscrapers of the Central Continent were gone.
[Your Phantom Drogon has been Destroyed] The notification appeared in his vision, but he did not pay it too much attention as he knew it was going to happen.
Above him stretched an endless expanse of open, twilight sky filled with drifting nebulae and fractured moons. Around him was a breathtaking, misty forest of giant trees radiating soft purple luminescence, their branches swaying in a gentle breeze.
And floating thousands of feet above the decaying, fractured continents of Rilth below… was this colossal, airborne mountain.
Hubin.
Hide slowly rose to his feet, wiping the dried blood from his chin, his hand resting on the hilt of katana.
At the end of the stone promenade, standing before the colossal, rune-inlaid doors of the celestial Vault, stood a lone figure.
The young man was slender, dressed in simple, dark traveling clothes. On his face sat an unblemished, smiling porcelain mask. Strands of untamed silver hair—identical to Hide’s own—drifted in the cool mountain wind.
As Hide took a step forward, the masked youth slowly tilted his head.
A faint, chilling chuckle slipped from behind the porcelain:
“Welcome home, little brother. I’ve been waiting for you.”