Chapter 301: Final Attack

The world held its breath.

The ravaged borderlands, a canvas of scorched earth and shattered stone, became a silent, consecrated stage for a conflict that transcended mortal understanding. Three beings, each an embodiment of absolute power, faced one another across the epicenter of the devastation they had wrought.

The Ten-Armed Ruin God Ingranad was a monument to primordial terror, a living apocalypse of obsidian, shadow, and soul-fire. His ten arms, four spectral and six terrifyingly real, moved with an unnatural, independent grace, each hand crackling with a different flavor of damnation.

Beside him, the Infinite Void Embodiment Bartolomew was a hole in reality, a humanoid rift in space whose very presence made the light bend and the laws of physics weep.

And facing them, a defiant beacon of azure and gold, stood Alaric Steele, or rather, the Azure Elemental King he had become. His avatar, a fusion of a majestic spirit lion and the raw, untamed power of all five elements, radiated a pressure that was not of ruin, but of sovereign, untamable creation.

The silence was a physical weight, heavier than any sound.

It was Alaric who broke it, his voice not a shout, but a sharp, clear command that cut through the charged atmosphere, directed not at his foes, but at the Archmage who still stood, stunned, at the edge of the immediate conflict zone.

“Zylle! Back off! Now!”

Zylle Mordan, her Nether Bird form a whirlwind of barely contained fury, flinched as if struck. Her violet-glowing eyes, filled with a mixture of hatred and a strange, unwilling awe, snapped towards him.

“This is a battle of avatars, Archmage,” Alaric’s voice echoed, devoid of its usual teasing or possessive undertones, now holding only the cold, hard finality of a true commander. “Your presence here is a liability. Your power, while impressive, cannot withstand the collateral energies of this clash. You will fall back, protect the main army from the shockwaves, and coordinate with Priscilla. That is an order.”

Rage, hot and immediate, flared in Zylle’s chest. A liability? After she had just held three Archdemons at bay? After she had come to his aid? The sheer arrogance!

But then, she looked again. She saw the way reality itself was warping around the three figures. She felt the catastrophic power coiling within them, a power that made her own formidable Archmage aura feel like a flickering candle in a hurricane. He was right. She would be vaporized by a stray thought, a misdirected pulse of energy.

Her pride warred with the cold, pragmatic training of the Phantom Assembly. And beneath it all, a new, terrifying emotion stirred: a desperate, unwilling hope that this arrogant, infuriating, magnificent bastard would actually win.

With a snarl that was part fury, part frustration, and part a reluctant acknowledgment of his absolute authority, Zylle beat her shadow wings once, a sharp, angry crack of displaced air, and shot backwards, retreating towards the distant, shimmering shields where the main armies watched in terrified silence.

She cast one last look over her shoulder. A complicated, unreadable expression crossed her beautiful face. ’You better win this, Steele,’ she thought, her voice a low, venomous whisper. ’Because if you die, I will personally hunt down your soul in the abyss and make you regret it.’

With Zylle’s retreat, the stage was finally set.

The clash was not a sound; it was a concussion, a silent detonation of reality.

Ingranad moved, his ten arms a symphony of annihilation. “Primordial Chaos Barrage!” he roared, his psychic voice a wave of pure static.

From each of his ten hands, a different horror was unleashed. A stream of soul-devouring fire. A volley of void-lightning that erased matter. A wave of plague-frost that froze and rotted simultaneously. A beam of pure chaos that warped causality. A storm of obsidian shards that tore through space itself. It was an overwhelming, multi-vector assault designed to shatter any singular defense.

Bartolomew acted in perfect concert. “Labyrinth of a Thousand Cuts!” he shrieked, his void-like form pulsing. The space around Alaric’s avatar fractured, becoming a kaleidoscopic maze of spatial rifts. Each of Ingranad’s attacks was refracted, multiplied, coming at Alaric not from one direction, but from hundreds simultaneously.

Alaric’s Azure Elemental King did not flinch. It did not erect a single, simple shield. It became the shield.

“Azure King’s Dominion: Prismatic Bastion!” Alaric’s voice was a calm, focused point in the heart of the storm.

His avatar’s light intensified, expanding into a massive, multifaceted sphere. Each facet of the sphere shimmered with the energy of a different element, constantly shifting, adapting.

The soul-fire slammed into a facet of pure, soul-chilling ice, the two energies annihilating each other. The void-lightning was met by a wall of golden, grounding earth, its unmaking energy harmlessly discharged. The plague-frost was countered by a swirling vortex of cleansing wind. The chaos beam was unraveled by a complex, shifting matrix of pure, ordered arcane energy.

The Prismatic Bastion held, a defiant jewel against a tide of absolute damnation.

The collateral energy from the clash was apocalyptic. The ground for miles around the duel was pulverized into a fine, glassy dust. The sky above was a canvas of warring colors, a silent, beautiful, terrifying aurora of destruction.

Far in the distance, the Jorailian and Steele forces watched in stunned, horrified silence.

“Shields! Full power!” Queen Ondine’s voice was a sharp, desperate cry from her command post. “Reinforce the wards!”

The combined magical might of her legions and Alaric’s elite factions was barely enough to hold back the shockwaves. The ground bucked beneath them, and the very air seemed to scream.

“My Lord…” Ondine whispered, her hand clutching the arm of her throne, her knuckles white. She had craved power, but this… this was beyond power. This was the clash of nascent creation and absolute ruin. Her decision to serve Alaric now felt less like a strategic choice and more like a simple, primal act of survival.

“He… he is holding them,” Meng Yao breathed, her Martial King aura a flickering candle against the distant storm. “Alone.”

“He is our Lord,” Ceanna said, her voice filled with a quiet, unshakable faith. “He will not fail.”

Priscilla watched, her face pale, her professional analysis utterly shattered. ’This is not a battle of Archmages,’ she realized, her mind reeling. ’This is something else. Something… more.’

Back in the heart of the storm, Alaric knew he couldn’t maintain a purely defensive posture. The Prismatic Bastion was draining his reserves at an alarming rate. He needed to go on the offensive.

He shifted his stance, and his avatar mirrored him. The Azure Elemental King was no longer just a source of light; it became a warrior.

“Magic Martial Arts: Five-Element Dragon Weave!” he roared.

The avatar’s massive, ethereal limbs became wreathed in elemental fury. Its claws ignited with azure flame. Its tail became a whip of crackling lightning. Its wings shed a storm of razor-sharp ice shards.

He met Ingranad’s next charge not with a shield, but with a flurry of blows that were both physical and magical. The Spirit King’s flaming claws met Ingranad’s obsidian ones, the impact a deafening explosion of light and shadow. Its lightning tail lashed out, momentarily disrupting Ingranad’s chaos energy.

But Bartolomew was a constant, insidious threat. “Spatial Inversion!” he rasped.

Alaric suddenly found his avatar’s right claw, aimed at Ingranad’s head, appearing behind him, aimed at his own back. He was forced to twist, to contort his avatar’s form in an impossible, agonizing maneuver to avoid striking himself.

“You are predictable, Steele!” Bartolomew’s voice echoed from a dozen different rifts at once. “You rely on direct, overwhelming force! But space itself is my weapon! You cannot strike what you cannot reach!”

Alaric snarled in frustration. He was being played, his immense power turned against him by Bartolomew’s cunning spatial manipulations. He needed to change tactics. He needed to be as unpredictable as his foe.

He deliberately moved the battle, his avatar taking to the sky, drawing Ingranad and Bartolomew with him. He flew directly over the largest concentration of the demonic legions, who were still trying to regroup after Zylle’s initial, devastating assault.

“If you wish to play in my domain,” Alaric’s voice boomed, “then you will abide by my rules!”

He didn’t attack Ingranad or Bartolomew. He attacked the ground.

“Azure King’s Judgment: Elemental Rain!”

From his avatar’s blazing form, a storm of pure, destructive elemental energy rained down. Not on his foes, but on their army. Spears of ice, bolts of lightning, spheres of fire, and shards of razor-sharp wind descended upon the demonic hordes.

The lesser demons shrieked, their formations shattering as they were incinerated, frozen, and torn apart by the relentless, widespread assault. It was a massacre.

“You dare?!” Ingranad roared, his psychic voice filled with fury. “You would slaughter my legions to distract me?”

“They are your legions, Ingranad,” Alaric’s voice was cold as the void. “Protect them. If you can.”

He was forcing Ingranad’s hand. The Demon King could either continue his focused assault on Alaric, allowing his army to be annihilated, or he could divert his power to shield them, giving Alaric a crucial opening.

Ingranad snarled, a sound of pure, frustrated rage. He made his choice. He was a king, and a king could not stand by while his subjects were slaughtered.

He spread four of his ten arms wide. “Obsidian Canopy of Ruin!” A massive, dome-like shield of pure, solidified darkness erupted from him, covering a vast swathe of his demonic army, absorbing Alaric’s Elemental Rain.

It was the opening Alaric had been waiting for. With four of Ingranad’s arms occupied maintaining the shield, and Bartolomew forced to erect his own spatial wards to protect other sections of the army, their offensive capabilities were momentarily halved.

“Now!” Alaric roared. He focused his entire being, his avatar blazing with a new, even more intense light. He was going to take out Bartolomew first.

“Azure Soul-Shattering Spear!”

He didn’t throw a physical spear. He became the spear. His entire avatar, the Azure Elemental King, condensed, compressed, its form becoming a single, incandescent point of pure, soul-rending azure energy. He shot forward with a speed that transcended physical law, a beam of pure will and power, aimed directly at Bartolomew’s shifting, void-like form.

Bartolomew shrieked, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror. He tried to shift space, to teleport, but the spear was too fast, its spiritual energy locking onto his very essence, making escape impossible. He threw up every spatial ward he could muster, layers upon layers of distorted reality.

They shattered like glass.

The Azure Soul-Shattering Spear pierced through Bartolomew’s Infinite Void Embodiment. There was no explosion, no grand spectacle. Just a silent, terrible implosion. Bartolomew’s form, the rift in reality he had become, collapsed in on itself, consumed by the pure, purifying energy of the Azure Spirit King.

A single, agonized psychic scream echoed across the battlefield, a sound of a soul being unmade. Then, silence.

The corrupted Principal Bartolomew was gone. Not just dead. Erased.

Ingranad roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated fury and loss. His most valuable lieutenant, his key to victory, was gone. And it was his own pride, his own sentimentality for his worthless legions, that had created the opening.

The Obsidian Canopy of Ruin wavered, then collapsed as Ingranad’s full, undivided attention, his full, ten-armed fury, turned upon Alaric.

Alaric’s avatar reformed, its light slightly dimmer, the last attack having taken a significant toll. He was now facing the full, unrestrained wrath of the Ten-Armed Ruin God. Alone.

“You will pay for that, mortal!” Ingranad’s psychic voice was a blade of pure, venomous hatred. “I will not just kill you. I will unmake you! I will feast upon your soul for a thousand years!”

He gathered his power, all ten of his arms raised high. The very air around him began to blacken, to die. This was it. His ultimate attack.

“Primordial Ruin: The Black Sun of Oblivion!”

A sphere of absolute, soul-devouring blackness, a miniature black hole that consumed light, life, and hope itself, began to form above him.

Alaric met his gaze, his own ruby eyes blazing with a defiant, almost mad fire. He was exhausted. His avatar was weakened. But he was not broken.

He gathered his own remaining power, the last dregs of his Archmage mana, the final, blazing embers of his Azure Spirit King’s essence.

“You speak of ruin, Ingranad?” Alaric’s voice was a low, dangerous whisper. “Then let me show you the true meaning of creation. And its final, glorious, terrible end.”

He raised his hands one last time. The five elements answered his call, not as a storm, but as a single, perfect, incandescent point of light.

“Sovereign’s Final Decree: Genesis Nova!”

The two ultimate attacks, one of absolute, soul-devouring ruin, the other of pure, world-creating, and world-breaking, elemental power, were unleashed simultaneously. The Black Sun of Oblivion and the Genesis Nova shot towards each other across the shattered, burning landscape.

They were about to collide. The world held its breath one last time. And in that final, terrible, beautiful moment, everything went white.