With every passing heartbeat, Sarusos felt his warped form fraying, the overwhelming [Energy] clawing at him from within—yet he wasn’t the only one racing the inevitable. He could halt it, perhaps, if he could squeeze out that final push toward advancement before his body gave way.

  ‘Five minutes? That should be enough,’ Sarusos calculated, though his elongated frame was already webbed with fine fractures, each one whispering of the toll [Realized Torment] was exacting. Grey [Energy] seeped from those cracks like bleeding shadow, every drop a stark reminder that his borrowed strength carried a probable lethal cost.

  As Sarusos closed in on the divine beast, its entire bearing had altered. Gone was the serene, unshakable air of absolute dominance; in its place, the [Aura] twisted and lashed with frantic intensity—the unmistakable stench of a foe sacrificing its own life force for a fleeting surge of strength.

  ‘Peculiar,’ Sarusos remarked, his thoughts edged with the cool curiosity of a surgeon noting an anomaly. The Church’s edicts condemned sacrificial skills outright, branding such acts as sacrilege so severe that even an offender’s kin could face retribution. For divine beings—vessels of their gods’ own power—the prohibition was ironclad. And yet, before him stood undeniable proof of that sacred law being broken.

  Whatever force had compelled the Hero to permit such reckless extremes could be dissected later. In this moment, Sarusos’s purpose narrowed to a single, unwavering point—destroy the threat before it could lay another hand on the young nobles who had already bled and burned for this fight.

  “Hello there~”

  Sarusos blinked into existence directly before the divine beast as it wrenched itself free of the wall, his grotesquely altered form still wearing that unnervingly theatrical cheer. Yet the instant he arrived, the world seemed to congeal—time thickening like honey, each heartbeat dragging into an endless stretch as an unseen dome of force sealed the two of them in a suffocating cage.

  Temporal manipulation. Divine power at its most terrifying.

  ?Yes,? the divine being replied, its tone stripped of the crushing weight of absolute command yet still steeped in lethal intent. One metallic hand settled against Sarusos’s chest with almost tender precision, the gesture belying the violence it promised. ?Hello… and goodbye, filthy animal.?

  BOOM

  The seemingly effortless push collapsed Sarusos’s chest like brittle parchment, his hoarded [Energy] erupting in a violent cascade that ripped through the air behind him like a hurricane of annihilation. Stone walls buckled and split, debris spun outward in lethal arcs, and even the air itself howled in protest.

  Sarusos’s monstrous form buckled and folded in on itself, collapsing like a house of cards. His elongated limbs retracted to mortal proportions as the last shreds of awareness slipped away. The abyssal voids of his eyes flickered, then bled back into their usual ruby glow before he toppled with an oddly soft thump, like a predator finally brought to rest.

  ‘Job done~,’ he thought with fading clarity, the edges of his vision collapsing inward as darkness closed around him. A faint, blood-smeared smile lingered on his lips, equal parts triumph and exhaustion, as consciousness finally slipped away.

  The divine beast barely registered his fleeting satisfaction. What mattered was the outcome—its might had crashed from the [Second Conjecture] to a tenuous grasp on the [First], that fragile hold draining away with each breath, like water slipping away through cracked fingers.

  ?I need to move faster,? it growled under its breath, fist tightening as divine [Energy] bled off in visible, smoking wisps. The temporal dome shuddered and warped around them, each flicker a drain on its focus and strength.

  With slow, grinding effort, it wrenched itself free from the caved?in wall and stepped to loom over Sarusos’s still form. Each breath rasped with strain, and the once?pristine gleam of its metallic skin was marred by spreading stress fractures that wept golden ichor.

  The dome still clung stubbornly to life, though its surface shimmered and faltered. Dissolving it was unthinkable—those insects had already blindsided it too many times. Even with the temporal field bleeding away precious power, it convinced itself there was more than enough strength left to crush most of them. Or so it believed.

  ?They fled?? Its expression twisted, confusion sharpening into mounting rage. The reality jarred against everything it had been told about such creatures. ?Since when do beastkin abandon the fight like this??

  From the infused memories gifted by higher powers, it knew canines fought to the death for their pack—especially the Guard Households, whose loyalty often burned with fanatical devotion. Yet now the chamber yawned empty, stripped of the righteous fury it had expected.

  ?All gone.? It cast its divine senses wide across the expanse, scouring every corner, yet found only the cold echo of bare stone and the restless scatter of debris. ?I should hurry… perhaps I can still run them to ground.?

  Divine [Energy] gathered in its palm, knotting into a crackling lance of condensed ruin. The weapon thrummed with a predator’s impatience, its power straining against the confines of form, hungry to be unleashed. Once the foxkin was erased from existence, it would tear down the dome and run the fleeing nobles to ground.

  ?This should be over in moments.?

  As it lifted the crackling lance for the final, merciless strike, an anomaly cut through the moment—something it had not foreseen.

  Clank

  Out of nowhere, a throwing knife inscribed with stark black symbols bounced harmlessly off its metallic hide—yet within the syrup?slow currents of the temporal dome, the blade hung suspended in mid?air, as though trapped between two heartbeats. Stranger still, a crude, rough?hewn device clung to its handle, its surface beginning to pulse with a dangerous scarlet light.

  ?How is this—?

  Before it could register the sheer impossibility, the device latched to the throwing knife blazed to life in a sudden, searing burst of light.

  BOOM

  The explosion detonated point?blank, slamming into the divine beast with brutal force and hurling it backward as shrapnel shredded through the confined space. The blast lacked killing power, but the sudden shock and searing pain carved fresh fractures across its already?splintering form.

  ?It was… what?? The creature reeled, its mind straining to grasp the impossible. Nothing should have pierced its temporal barrier—let alone moved freely within it—yet something had cut clean through its defenses.

  ?It can’t be…? Its gaze snapped toward where Sarusos had lain, suspicion flaring—only to find nothing but empty stone where the foxkin should have been.

  Clank

  Another throwing knife slammed into its back, the etched blade igniting in a vivid scarlet glow the instant it touched metal.

  ?You little pest! I will—?

  BOOM

  The second explosion rattled the dome, bleeding away more of its carefully guarded [Energy]. Impossible—only divine power should endure within its temporal field, yet something was striking at it with crude, physical weapons… augmented by what, exactly?

  Before it could fully register the unfolding danger, jolts struck at its feet and shoulder—two more devices, each burning with that same ominous light. But this time, it anticipated the trick. In a surge of urgency, it collapsed the dome and flashed away from the brewing twin blasts.

  ?Where... what—?

  As it reappeared several meters away, a sharp, undeniable tug of a targeting spell sank into its awareness. The knives weren’t merely dropping—they were hunting, driven by the same acceleration magic it had seen the young nobles wield. Each blade bore one of those crude yet dangerously effective explosive devices, their surfaces pulsing with lethal crimson light.

  BOOM

  The twin explosions churned dust and debris into a suffocating storm, blinding sight and muddling its divine senses. With a wild, sweeping arc, the creature slashed its lance through the haze, scattering the cloud by sheer force—but its motions were growing jagged, its strikes betraying a mounting edge of desperation.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  ?Come out, coward!?

  Its voice wavered on the edge of a snarl, thick with rising fury, as it spun in place, desperate to pinpoint the unseen attacker. This was not the way of divine combat—never meant to be hunted like common prey by unseen foes wielding such crude, vexing tricks.

  ?Damn it!?

  With a roar thick with frustration, it flooded the lance with [Divine Energy] and loosed a beam blindly, its only aim to flush out the elusive tormentor. The blast scorched a molten trench through the chamber wall—but before the glare had even dimmed, a prickling, all-too-familiar heat began to coil behind its head.

  BOOM

  ?You little worm!?

  Another explosion—sharper, heavier than the rest—rocked the creature off balance. It lunged through the fresh billow of dust toward the spot it guessed the strikes were coming from, hurling a frantic beam that scoured everything in its path to molten ruin.

  BOOM

  Before the assault could finish, the ground beneath its feet erupted in a blast far more violent than before. The shockwave smashed it to its knees, forcing it to bleed away precious [Energy] to shield itself from the scything shrapnel and bone?rattling concussive force.

  ?I will find you and rip you to pieces!?

  Yet even in its fury, the creature’s strength leaked away in steady, merciless increments. What had once stood firm at [First Conjecture] now clung precariously to Tier 6—and even that grip was loosening with every breath. It had to finish this now; each heartbeat squandered meant less power left to hunt the other nobles.

  ?There you are!?

  With a triumphant flash, it reappeared behind what seemed to be an unremarkable boulder, its divine senses at last locking onto the faint thread of [Energy] concealed beyond the stone. A savage grin twisted its features as it swept its lance down in a vicious arc, cleaving the rock cleanly in two.

  The silhouette it had taken for a concealed dragonkin unraveled in the air, dissolving like ink in water—nothing more than a carefully crafted decoy.

  BOOM

  The ground erupted with cataclysmic force, hurling the divine beast high into the air before swallowing it in a roiling cloud of debris. Its once-imposing form was now visibly failing, fresh stress fractures crawling across its metallic skin like a spreading plague.

  ?You dirty animal! I will—?

  The words caught and withered in its throat as dozens of throwing knives burst from the swirling dust, each trailing a comet?like streak of scarlet light as they converged from every angle. Crude explosive devices clung to each hilt, their synchronized pulses forming a lethal constellation poised for imminent detonation.

  BOOOOM

  The cascading explosions were weak in isolation—each device a mere sting—but together they merged into a relentless storm of force and shrapnel that drove the divine beast to its knees. It was death by a thousand cuts, the cumulative toll succeeding where no single strike ever could.

  As the smoke thinned, a solitary figure sat motionless upon what first appeared to be a throne carved from living stone—though a closer look revealed it as an elegantly shaped seat coaxed from the cavern floor by practiced magic. Narsiz remained still, eyes closed, his tail swaying gently like a pendulum, a faint smile curving his lips—a smile mirroring his teacher Sarusos, yet sharpened by the calculating precision and quiet pride of noble blood.

  ‘One hundred and forty?three left,’ Narsiz calculated, the battle unfolding according to plan—well, mostly. His initial intent had been for the group to overwhelm the creature under a unified assault, but true strategy thrived on adaptability. The earlier chaos had yielded its own rewards: several crude yet invaluable explosive devices, which were beforehand surgically stripped from captured enemy soldiers.

  With a few quick alterations through his [Masterful Writing] craft, the crude bombs had been reborn as guided explosives, each tethered to his will by threads of mana ink. Compared to the layered enchantments he could weave with time and care, the targeting spells were mere trifles. Initially, he had toyed with the idea of a single, overwhelming blast—but watching the divine beast flail and scramble under a relentless barrage proved not only more effective, but far more satisfying.

  “What about the massive explosion?” Mathilda’s tone dripped with theatrical disappointment as she slouched against her bastard sword, using it as an impromptu prop. “This is boooooring—like watching?paint?dry boring.”

  Narsiz cracked one eye open, regarding her petulant pout with the faintest flicker of amusement before letting his gaze slip shut again, his focus snapping back to the divine beast’s increasingly erratic motions. A moment later, another knife struck true, its explosion staggering the creature mid?stride.

  BOOM

  “Patience always wins,” he replied with low, almost smug satisfaction. “Didn’t Alex ever entertain you with that little tale about the tortoise and the hare during one of your rendezvous?”

  “That was stupid!” Mathilda stomped her foot in frustration, the impact dull under the silence spell cloaking their position. “Come on! Let me at it—can’t I fight it?! It’s barely hanging on!”

  BOOM

  She jabbed a finger toward the distant, faltering figure of the divine beast—its power clearly withered to around Tier 4—but Narsiz only gave a faint shake of his head, eyes remaining closed in unbroken focus.

  “No,” he replied, his voice edged with unyielding resolve. “I don’t gamble.”

  BOOM

  “You’re as boring as Alexander! Come on!” she huffed, hand twitching toward his shoulder before she stopped herself—aware that breaking his focus could spell disaster for them all. For all her hotheaded bluster, Mathilda knew when restraint was the wiser choice. “Are you a knight, or just some coward?! Please—”

  BOOM

  Before Narsiz could answer, still threading his knives through their deadly dance, Styx’s hand shot out and clamped onto Mathilda’s shoulder with a grip so tight it drew a sharp wince from her.

  “Shut up, you little twerp!” he hissed, the words riding a wince as fresh agony tore through the hole in his chest. The healing talismans were working—painfully slowly—and every abrupt movement sent a white?hot spike through his ‘damaged lung.’ “Can’t you see how many injured we’ve got? I’m barely hanging on,” he added in a harsh, breath?tight whisper.

  BOOM

  Mathilda turned toward him with a smirk that balanced on the fine line between condescending and instructive. “Are you stupid?” she shot back, voice dripping with false innocence. The vein in Styx’s forehead throbbed as she continued, “We’re inside a dome where no sound escapes from our side, and since we’re coated in mana, no divine sense can’t pick us up.”

  Narsiz gave a small, approving nod without so much as a flicker in his focus. Mathilda was entirely correct—this was another of Alexander’s invaluable tricks. During the dramatic confrontation with their father over Sarah’s engagement, he had shrouded himself in mana from head to toe, vanishing from divine senses entirely. Since mana permeated all things as a fundamental force, divine perception often dismissed the most commonplace [Energy]—turning it into a perfect, if unconventional, cloak.

  BOOM

  “Wait.” Styx’s face shadowed over as the implications clicked into place. “You mean no noise, scent, [Energy], or [Aura] is escaping from us at all?”

  As Mathilda nodded with unshaken confidence, a sudden chill knifed down Narsiz’s spine. An awful, crystal?clear realization slammed into him with the force of a physical blow.

  “Prepare—”

  A searing beam of [Divine Energy] ripped through the air and slammed into Mathilda’s chest, the impact precise and merciless. The concentrated force obliterated her heart in an instant, while the lingering [Holy Energy] seeped into the wound, corrupting the surrounding tissue with insidious, golden decay.

  ?Got you!? The divine beast’s voice broke with savage triumph as it hauled itself upright on trembling limbs. Even as little more than a ruin of its former self—barely coherent, crumbling by the breath—it had pinpointed them through the one flaw Narsiz hadn’t accounted for: the conspicuous void where there should have been a trace of life. ?At least one…?

  The creature had found them not by what it could sense, but by the glaring absence where something should have been—a void in the tapestry of life. It was a chillingly elegant deduction, born either of divine insight or the razor edge of desperate cunning.

  “Damn it!” Narsiz’s eyes flew open, a jolt of raw panic shattering the calm precision he’d maintained. The intricate dance of his knives faltered, then collapsed entirely, steel clattering to the ground as focus bled away. “Bring me every talisman and potion you’ve got—now!”

  Moments later, the divine beast crumpled, its stolen strength spent—but triumph soured instantly as a far more urgent crisis crashed down. Narsiz was at Mathilda’s side in an instant, dropping to his knees as she sagged, confusion clouding the light in her rapidly dimming eyes.

  “I… don’t understand,” she murmured, her voice thin and trembling as one hand drifted instinctively toward the gaping wound in her chest. “It… doesn’t hurt…”

  Blood poured from the perfectly circular void where her heart should have been, the [Holy Energy] sealing away any chance of natural healing even as it dulled her awareness of the mortal wound. With trembling urgency, Narsiz tore open her armor, exposing the brutal devastation beneath.

  ‘What do I do?!’ Time fractured into slow, jagged shards as his mind raced, every lesson from Isabella, Sarusos, Green, and Ipe’s medical training flooding back in a desperate rush. ‘The heart isn’t merely destroyed—it’s vanished completely!’

  Using his [Mana Sense], he mapped the injury in brutal detail. The divine beam hadn’t merely pierced her heart—it had erased it entirely, leaving only a hollow void rimmed by flesh that the [Holy Energy] was steadily poisoning and rotting from within.

  ‘First aid protocols!’ His thoughts lurched into overdrive, clawing through every technique Isabella had drilled into them. With neither Ipe nor Green here to provide healing, the burden was his alone to bear. ‘Standard procedures are useless here!’

  He poured healing potions directly into the wound, but the residual [Holy Energy] turned every drop into a futile effort. Golden wisps writhed like living threads, lashing out against any attempt at repair and preserving the wound in a pristine, unhealing state of lethal perfection.

  ‘Damn it… wait?’ Panic threatened to smother his reason until a memory broke through—the first time Alexander had shown him that peculiar theater act: Red Riding Hood. The characters had been wobbly, stupid-looking caricatures, yet somehow they’d moved with a realism that made them oddly beautiful.

  His hands went to his coat, fingers curling possessively around the familiar weight of his mana ink bottles. ‘Why bother healing what’s gone?’ His eyes narrowed to slits, arrogance sharpening his gaze until the rest of the world fell away. With deliberate, unhurried precision, he began coating her inner body in ink. ‘If so?called gods can only destroy, then… I will create.’

  If healing magic couldn’t overcome the divine interference, perhaps precision application of [Masterful Writing] could achieve what brute force could not. The technique would be experimental, dangerous, and entirely dependent on his ability to create something far more complex than he had ever attempted.

  ‘A new heart…’ His smile widened, the [Aura] around him hardening into an unshakable, almost imperial confidence—as though this act of creation were not merely resolve, but a declaration that even the gods themselves could not match his hand.

  Patreon—30 and more advanced chapters for 5$

  RoyalRoad—please rate, follow, and fav!

  Discord—feel free to debate me. I am ready to go for it!