God Crafter

The Abyssal Lance caster hadn't moved from where it had first struck him.

Kai found it through Soul Umbral Sense the instant he had breath to spare for anything beyond the fight directly in front of him — thirty meters back, submerged to the eyes, watching. Not retreating. Not re-engaging either. Conserving Mana the way Voss had conserved his own, the two of them apparently operating on the same cold logic while the other six had thrown themselves at him one instinct-driven exchange at a time.

*Smart,* he thought, filing it away between heartbeats. *The ones holding back are the ones I should be worried about.*

Three more stood between him and either of them — untested, watching the water where four of their kin had died in the space of what felt like minutes and had probably, from their own perspective, felt like considerably longer.

"Formation," one of them said. Not a question. A decision, delivered flat.

The remaining three didn't argue. They spread — not the chaotic individual angles from before, but something deliberate, triangulated, each one taking a position that left no clean line of retreat and no single direction he could commit to without exposing his back to the other two.

*They learned that fast,* Kai thought, and didn't let himself feel anything about how little time that had taken.

---

He didn't wait for them to close the triangle.

He called Shadow Realm Step —his body dissolved into shadow he appeared from the shadow of the one on the left side of the triangle formation his dagger conjured and was ready to strike it's vital point but it sensed the attack mid way and blocked it with it's own claw and in another swing raking it against Kai's torso expecting to meet the futile resistance of flesh and bones but phase existence activated and the claws passed right through leaving it exposed Kai took the chance and created another dagger and stabbed it into its eye trying to kill it in one blow by piercing its brain but two massive energy signatures were closing in on him the massive raw chaotic mana was closing in on him he teleported out of the danger zone and reappeared thirty meters away his breathing becoming even more laboured now his stamina was running low now.

He spread his mana sense and locked unto the one on the right and pulled him through the shadow network

The pull took hold. He felt the creature's entire existence resist it, real will pushing back against the pocket dimension's attempt to claim it, the half-power suppression the only reason the resistance didn't simply win outright. It was like dragging something twice his size through mud that fought back — his Mana bleeding out in a steady, alarming current, the strain worse than anything else he'd spent tonight, worse even than the Cascade against the collapsing trench.

But it worked.

The creature vanished from the triangle mid-step, wrenched sideways into the pocket space coextensive with his Domain, and for five full seconds it simply wasn't part of the fight at all — no attacks landing from it, no coordination, one-third of the formation gone as completely as if he'd killed it.

The other two didn't hesitate to exploit the gap he'd left in trade, even though one had its eyes were gouged out it was using pure fury to suppress the pain, Kai went for him again to finish the job but this time he played a little trick.

They came together, no longer waiting for him to make the first move, twin strikes arriving from angles that the collapsed triangle should have made impossible to defend both at once.

But he tried something he had not considered doing before, this had better work or else I'll be screwed this time he dissolved into shadow again reappearing again from their shadow this time when they saw him dissolve into shadow they had expected him to re emerge from their shadow but this time they were ready they paused their charge and turned around noticing him they struck him in the heart he coughed up black blood there was almost manic and cruel smile on their faces but there was only confusion in their eyes as there was two of him before any of them could react both their head rolled away the purple flames devouring both of them with glee

*Some seconds ago*

The moment Kai dissolved into shadow he activated shadow step but instead of him stepping through the shadows to come out of the creatures shadow like expected in a split moment before shadow step took hold he created two constructs that looked exactly like him with both his aura and killing intent and sent them towards their shadows creating a diversion while he casted eternal fade hiding from their senses taking advantage of their momentary confusion he channeled his mana once more activating both void blood and the purple flame to his katana decapitating them in one swing.

*Now*

That was a very crazy gamble his heart was beating like a drum in his ears his breathing coming in shallow breaths now

The attributes gained from both of them added to the already monstrous points.

The pocket dimension released its captive the same instant, the five seconds' hold finally spent, and the creature reformed in the water gasping, disoriented, its Mana signature ragged in a way that told him the pocket space had cost it something too — not just time, something structural, the same way holding a genuine A-rank against its will had cost him.

He didn't give it time to recover fully.

He was already moving.

---

The last one of the three fought differently than anything he'd faced tonight — not with a named technique, not with brute coordination, but with pure, desperate cunning, using the water itself as camouflage, submerging and resurfacing at angles his Sense could track but his body couldn't always punish fast enough to matter.

It bought itself almost a full minute of survival that way. Longer than any of the others had managed since the real fight started.

It wasn't enough.

He cornered it eventually against the edge of his own Domain — the one place in three hundred meters where fleeing further simply meant crossing back into a territory that had already proven it belonged to him completely — and finished it with both blades at once, the way he'd finished the tangled pair earlier, purple fire and native shadow steel meeting in the same strike.

The points ticking up even more

Seven of the original nine, dead.

It remained two more.

The Abyssal Lance caster hadn't moved at all, still watching from its submerged position, conserving.

And Voss.

---

Voss finally rose fully out of the water, and Kai felt, through Soul Umbral Sense, the casting that had been building slowly and deliberately since the standoff began finally reach completion.

It wasn't a technique this time. It was something quieter, and worse for being quiet — a restructuring of Voss's own Mana signature, the exhaustion from the first cast folding inward and compressing rather than dissipating, the same principle Kai himself used when he compressed a layer's foundation before letting it break through.

*He's not casting at me,* Kai understood, with a cold certainty that settled somewhere under his broken ribs. *He's breaking through.*

Voss's signature deepened, darkened, the water around him drawing inward the way it had drawn inward around all nine of them when they'd first entered the Domain — except concentrated now into one body instead of spread across nine.

"You've killed seven of us," Voss said, voice steady, almost gentle, nothing like the rage from the first exchange. "That has never happened. Not once, in five hundred years, has a human killed seven of the King's chosen in a single night."

"Is that supposed to scare me," Kai said, though the honest answer was that it already had, a little.

"No," Voss said. "It's supposed to explain why I'm about to stop holding back."

The water around him rose in a column, dark and dense, and Kai felt the realm-gap pressure spike sharply enough that his own Domain's suppression strained visibly against it — the same fifty percent handicap, but applied now to something that had just made itself considerably larger than it had been an hour ago.

*He's pushing his own threshold,* Kai realized. *The same way I've been pushing mine all night.*

Two beings, on opposite sides of the same desperate arithmetic, both trying to become more than they'd started the night as before the other one finished the job first.

Kai raised both blades, ribs grinding, blood still running freely down one arm, and didn't let any of it show in his voice.

"Then let's see which one of us finishes breaking first," he said.

**To Be Continued…**