NOVPUBOzeroth, who had wondered why the Spirit King had suddenly paused, narrowed his eyes, turning toward the source.
'What's that?'
That surge of energy… it was coming from where Zoey was!
Zoey's eyes snapped open. All she could see was purple. All she could feel was… power.
Intense. Unimaginable. In her entire nineteen years of existence, Zoey had never felt this level of power before.
'No… not nineteen.'
In her mind, Zoey saw memories. No. She didn't just see them, she lived through them. Centuries of battle. Centuries of blood and carnage. Centuries of Lumindra, the Enchanting Drake.
The first time Zoey had bonded with Lumindra, she had gone through her memories, or at least, she thought she had. But this… this was different.
She could feel it. This was everything. Nothing was hidden. The things Lumindra had done, and the emotions she had felt while doing them, they were all laid bare.
And Zoey's heart couldn't help but ache.
She saw when the Spirit King's orders came. The reluctance Lumindra felt. The guilt. The pain that came with manipulating her. Everything.
But Zoey… only clenched her fists. Her expression hardened. No tears came. No sign of hesitation. Only coldness.
She had lived through centuries of Lumindra's life, and she had seen how shallow and fleeting it all had been. People died like ants. Entire generations wiped out by the sin of one. Life… was fragile.
It could end at any time.
And from everything she witnessed, two lessons stood out above all:
First, overwhelming power was the answer to all questions. 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓅𝓊𝓫.𝒸ℴ𝓶
Second, life was too unpredictable, too fragile, to be uncertain. If you want something, you go for it.
And in all her life, Zoey had never felt more certain about anything.
She was going to screw this bastard of a king over.
The pillar of violet light tearing through the air suddenly receded, before collapsing down on Zoey with a violent burst of force.
The ground for kilometers around cracked apart, a massive crater forming in her wake.
Zoey rose to her feet, sending out a violent shockwave that shattered the dome enveloping her like it was made of glass.
Her body radiated a vivid, intense purple glow. Her hair hovered in the air like silk caught in a breeze. In that moment, she looked nothing short of divine.
Zoey turned. Her eyes cut through the impossible distance and landed on the Spirit King, who stood in the distance, gazing at her like a god would gaze at an ant.
She raised both her hands toward him, and a violent cascade of purple began to gather in front of her palms.
The energy pulsed. It began to grow, and the light became more intense with each passing moment.
As the moments ticked by, the blinding violet glow around Zoey started to dim significantly. Her rank fell back down to its original state, and every single strand of energy that had coursed through her body gathered at the center, between her palms.
Her icy gaze stayed fixed on the Spirit King.
And then she gave him the middle finger.
With a violent burst of speed, she fired the beam, then fell to the ground, unconscious.
But the beam of annihilation didn't stop.
It tore through the air, flattening terrain, ripping apart everything in its path and carving a deep canyon into the land as it roared toward its target.
However, the one she had aimed at, the Spirit King, didn't even flinch.
As the beam reached his Reality Maw Field, it was as though it had struck an impenetrable wall.
A cataclysmic boom erupted as the beam made contact, dispersing at the edges. Violet energy swallowed the space around the Spirit King, painting it in a storm of destruction.
Ozeroth watched all of this unfold, his gaze sharp.
'How did she…?' he thought.
He understood exactly what Zoey had done. Somehow, she had managed to wake herself from the Spirit King's control, and not just that.
She had gathered every ounce of energy he had been feeding her to grow her power, and concentrated it into a single point before unleashing it back at him.
And what that meant was simple: without that fuel, Zoey's power had reverted to normal. And now, the Spirit King wouldn't be able to harness that massive amount of energy anymore.
Ozeroth clenched his twin hammers, eyes blazing, his aura surging around him.
He wasn't going to miss this chance.
The blinding pillar of purple light receded, revealing the aftermath of the collision.
The Spirit King… was unharmed. Not a single scratch touched his body. The beam had failed to pierce through his Devourer Field and instead…
'He absorbed it.'
Ozeroth's eyes slowly widened as his body tensed.
But in the next instant, the Spirit King's voice boomed. loud and cold.
"Ungrateful insects."
"Aerethis has sheltered you for centuries. I've protected your pitiful lives since before your ancestors even drew breath. And this is how you repay your world? This is how you repay me?"
"Because of worthless lives that won't even last a century, you dare defy me?"
"Treason."
"And for this betrayal… I will erase you. Even if it is the last thing I do."
Ozeroth's gaze narrowed as the Spirit King's Devourer Field began to shift. No.
It was compressing.
His eyes widened.
'He's going to unleash it.'
He realized it instantly; the Spirit King had absorbed Zoey's last attack and was now using it as fuel to take them both out.
Ozeroth's gaze flicked toward where Zoey lay.
"World Step."
In an instant, he vanished, reappearing directly before her. Without hesitation, he scooped her up, turned on his heels, just in time for the Spirit King's voice to reach him once more.
"Abyssal Ruin."
Ozeroth's pupils constricted.
The compressed Devourer Field around the Spirit King trembled… then detonated.
A violent blast of abyssal blackness erupted outward like a collapsing star. It spread fast, wider than anything before, a wave of annihilation that devoured everything in its path.
Ozeroth spun mid air, gripping Zoey tightly as his figure blurred, tearing through the air with all the speed he could muster.
But not even a second passed before he glanced back, and his expression darkened.
'We're not going to make it.'
The blast was moving fast. Too fast. His current speed wasn't enough.
Ozeroth's mind raced. He was already pushing his fastest movement technique. He couldn't go any faster.
'Shit.'
But just as the edge of the blast was about to envelop them, a familiar voice rang out, loud and excited.
"Ozzy!"
Followed by a calm, icy one.
"Looks like you need some help."
Ozeroth's eyes snapped forward, and there they were.
Two figures hovering in the sky.
A white, furry creature with a voice that was far too cute for its current appearance…
And a white haired boy whose gaze was cold enough to freeze entire worlds.
Ozeroth had never been more glad to see anyone in his life.
