The clash between the two S-Ranks triggered a reaction that immediately affected the environment. The raw mana pouring from their bodies created intense pressure, causing the very ground to tremble. Cracks spread across the surface like a spiderweb, and chunks of earth began to rise and fall unnaturally, unable to remain stable under the force of conflicting magical fields.
Alexia raised one hand toward the sky. Her control over nature was absolute. In response, atmospheric pressure plummeted. Dark storm clouds formed instantly, spiraling in wide columns overhead. Several massive tornadoes dropped from the sky in quick succession, each one rotating violently and carving deep trenches into the earth where they touched down. They weren't naturally formed—they moved with purpose, as if guided by her will.
Simultaneously, lightning surged through the sky with abnormal frequency. Dozens of bolts struck the ground every second, targeting the area around Lucius. It was not random; it was controlled, precise, and aggressive. There was no rain—only unrelenting lightning discharges, concentrated and repeating, like artillery fire from above.
Without lowering her hand, Alexia swept her other arm downward. In response, the ground beneath Lucius began to bulge and shift. Enormous roots broke through the earth and rapidly grew into towering trees—each one as thick as a castle wall and dozens of meters tall. They grew straight into the sky, twisting and branching as they expanded, forming a rising wall of living wood.
At the same time, the surrounding mountains began to split. Sections of solid rock cracked apart and lifted into the air as if gravity had been reversed. Entire ridgelines were pulled upward, drifting weightlessly as they rotated in place. Some of the smaller mountain fragments were the size of buildings, while the largest hovered hundreds of meters above the battlefield.
Leo, watching from a distance, saw a controlled disaster unfolding. None of it was accidental. Everything—the storms, the lightning, the trees, the levitating mountains—was directed entirely by Alexia. She wasn't unleashing nature; she was using it like a weapon system. To him, it looked like the end of the world.
In response, Lucius remained still for a moment. Then, two massive arms erupted from his back, formed entirely from condensed blood magic. Each was easily the size of a large tower, constructed crimson mana.
The first blood-arm struck one of the floating mountain fragments from above, smashing it into pieces with a single impact. The other swung horizontally and tore through five tornadoes at once, dispersing them with pure force. The air pressure dropped sharply from the impact of the shockwaves.
But Alexia's onslaught didn't relent. As quickly as Lucius destroyed the constructs, more replaced them. New tornadoes formed, more lightning fell, and fresh trees erupted from the soil. The floating mountains shifted position to keep him boxed in.
After several minutes of continuous countering, Lucius's blood-arms suddenly disintegrated. Not from damage, but by choice. His expression shifted from focused to relaxed. He reached into his coat and retrieved a small amulet.
The amulet was round, made of an old bronze-like material, and embedded with a smooth, blood-red gemstone in its center. Faint inscriptions encircled the gem—ancient characters glowing softly.
"Apologies," Lucius said, his tone casual. "I'd like to play longer, but my time is limited."
He activated the amulet with a short incantation.
"No external magic will function here," he said firmly.
Instantly, a pulse radiated from the amulet. It wasn't a physical shockwave, but something deeper—an anti-magical override. The world responded immediately.
The tornadoes evaporated mid-rotation. The lightning ceased. The floating mountains lost their lift and began falling back to the ground. The massive trees stopped growing, and their movement froze completely. Even the clouds began to dissipate. In mere seconds, everything Alexia had summoned was undone or neutralized.
Alexia stared at the amulet. "The Amulet of Divine Judgment," she said, flatly.
On Lucius's back, a pair of wings unfolded—each one several meters wide and made from dense, black-red mana. Without delay, he launched forward. His speed increased exponentially with each meter, so fast that to any normal onlooker it would've appeared as instant movement. He conjured a long, sharp sword from his own blood as he moved, its blade perfectly formed, the point aimed directly at Alexia's heart.
She sidestepped the attack with precision. Lucius was clearly expecting resistance, but not evasion at that level. He immediately followed up with multiple consecutive slashes, each faster than the last—but none of them connected. Alexia's movements were efficient and minimal, conserving energy while avoiding every strike.
Lucius increased his speed again, pushing to maximum output. Just then, a staff materialized in Alexia's hand. It wasn't summoned with flair—it simply appeared, fully formed, as if it had always been there. She pointed it directly at Lucius's striking hand. When the staff made contact, a suppression field activated.
Lucius's movement slowed—not entirely stopped, but enough that his momentum dulled.
Alexia didn't hesitate. She tightened her grip, pulled her fist back, and struck Lucius directly in the face.
The blow landed with full force. Lucius's body flew backward at high velocity, crashing into one of the large mountain fragments that had just begun falling. The stone cracked on impact.
"I should have expected it…" Lucius's voice echoed out from within the debris of the shattered mountain slab. Dust and gravel shifted, and his figure stepped forward through the haze, completely unharmed. His coat was torn in a few places, but his expression was composed, with only a trace of irritation beneath the surface.
"That one of the Grand Magisters would possess one of the ten legendary artifacts," he continued, eyes fixed on the staff in Alexia's hand. "The Timeworn Scepter. Said to control the flow of time. A dangerous tool… but not above mine in tier."
He held up his amulet again—the same bronze artifact with the glowing crimson gem in its center. "In the hierarchy of ancient relics, the Amulet of Divine Judgment is ranked higher. It doesn't just bend laws. It enforces them. It overwrites reality."
Alexia didn't react outwardly, but the tension in her stance sharpened. "Only if you have the brain to use it," Alexia replied, her tone cutting and precise.
Lucius's grin widened. "Your words wound me, Lady Clayden."
He lifted the amulet again. The gem pulsed twice—bright and steady—before a wave of mana radiated outward from it like an invisible shockwave, distorting the air around them. Then he spoke clearly and directly, his voice not loud, but absolute in tone.
"The Void is allowed to walk here."
Alexia's eyes opened wide in alarm. She recognized the danger instantly. The Amulet of Divine Judgment allowed its wielder to set a single rule upon reality within a controlled area. That rule didn't need to follow normal magic or logic—it just had to be clear and direct. Once spoken, it would take effect, no chant or ritual needed.
But the critical restriction was that only one such rule could exist at a time—and it would remain active until canceled or overwritten by the user. It was a power that demanded both restraint and calculation.
And Lucius had just invoked a rule with catastrophic implications.
Allowing "the Void" to walk—referring not to a person but a dimensional state—meant introducing an unstable metaphysical layer into the current plane. Voidwalking entities, places, or effects were inherently corrosive to structured reality. Space would weaken. Boundaries would thin. Magical stability across the region could collapse entirely.
Depending on the range and duration, this one declaration could, in theory, unmake part of the kingdom itself.
Alexia didn't wait. She took a single breath and then closed her eyes. Her lips moved barely above a whisper.
"The Shifting Realms."
A second pulse rippled through the environment—but it wasn't violent. Instead, the temperature dropped, and the sound around them dulled as though the world had been submerged underwater. Above them, the clouds that had reformed after Lucius's suppression began to change shape again. Their centers twisted unnaturally, and then—out of that distortion—a solid structure began to emerge.
A single spire—black, narrow, and ancient-looking—pierced through the upper atmosphere like a blade stabbing through cloth. It descended slowly, but with certainty, pushing its way through the sky with a dimensional weight that didn't obey normal physics.
It was the tip of a tower. But it wasn't part of their world.
Lucius's eyes narrowed slightly. The Reverse Plane was Alexia's domain. Rather than counter Lucius's reality rule, it shifted the battleground itself. She wasn't trying to resist the Void's presence. She was creating an isolated layer—a battlefield tethered to the real world but operating on mirrored parameters. Within it, Lucius's rule would still function, but its effects would be localized. Contained.
Not even the Amulet of Divine Judgment could override the architecture of the Reverse Plane—because its rule, once cast, applied to this plane, and Alexia was dragging them into another.
And that was the critical difference. From the distance, Leo saw the spire coming through the clouds. It wasn't like the mountains or the trees. It wasn't natural at all. It looked… wrong. Not hostile, but disconnected. As if it didn't belong to the sky, or to the earth beneath it.
He didn't understand exactly what was happening. But he understood one thing clearly. This was no longer just a duel between two S-Ranks.
As the tower slowly emerged from the sky, circular void-like portals opened across the battlefield—on the ground, in the air, even high above in the clouds. From within them, massive dark purple tentacles began to slither out, writhing unnaturally as they searched for something to grab onto.
"The Void?" Leo muttered under his breath, eyes wide.
But the portals only appeared within a set perimeter. When the tentacles tried to reach beyond that boundary, they slammed against an invisible wall and recoiled. Lucius hadn't restricted the Void's movement—his rule made no mention of containment. That could only mean one thing: Alexia was using her domain to keep the invasion locked within a confined space.
Inside that barrier, the landscape began to shift. Chunks of rock floated into the air, and twisted trees burst from them, growing rapidly. In moments, the entire area transformed into something otherworldly and unstable—caught between nature, magic, and the Void.
…
Lucius watched the battlefield unfold with a steady smile. "The Shifting Realms… one of the most powerful domains. Said to make the Phantom Oracle untouchable for as long as it holds." He rested a hand under his chin, thoughtful. "Which means, if her domain falls—so does she."
That was the whole point of summoning the Void. He knew Alexia—one of the Grand Magistrates—would never allow the corruption to reach the capital. She would trap it within her domain to protect the people. That was the opportunity he needed. Even the gods, in the oldest records, feared the Void.
From the circular portals, misshapen shadow-creatures began to emerge—drifting, crawling, or twisting unnaturally as they stepped into the world. At the same time, from the slowly descending tower in the sky, large humanoid figures leapt down. Their bodies were long-limbed and powerful, with wings like folded cloth and arms that nearly reached their feet. Their faces were hidden behind white, expressionless masks—each marked with a single black question mark.
The two forces collided instantly. The masked beings from the tower engaged the shadow creatures in violent, chaotic combat. Meanwhile, the tentacles continued to thrash at everything they could reach—but the environment itself began to fight back. Trees surged upward, twisting into tight coils that grabbed and crushed the tentacles. Floating boulders launched themselves into the fray, slamming into the invaders. Nature and Void were locked in a brutal war, all held in place by Alexia's domain.
In the middle of the chaos, Lucius sprouted two bat-like wings from his back. His eyes glowed with cold blue light, and a dense red aura of blood gathered around him. A black sword, forged from his own mana, appeared in his hand. Without hesitation, he launched forward, fast enough to blur. His sword slashed into Alexia's figure—but she shattered like glass.
Around him, thousands of identical Alexias appeared, scattered throughout the battlefield. Each stood still, watching him with the same expression.
Lucius let out a short, annoyed breath. "This is going to get irritating."
He moved faster now, breaking through illusion after illusion. In under a minute, half of them were gone. As he launched himself at the next one, a thick branch coiled around his ankle and yanked him mid-stride. His eyes flicked down in surprise. Before he could cut it, debris from all directions flew in—stones, rubble, even pieces of the floating terrain—pummeling him and sealing him inside a dense, rock-hard sphere.
There was a beat of silence. Then a violent explosion of blood shattered the sphere. Lucius emerged from the wreckage, smiling, unshaken. He raised his sword again—but paused as a massive beam of orange flame launched upward from the capital city, tearing through the sky.
Lucius frowned. "Looks like I have less time than I thought."
Without hesitation, he drove his sword into his own chest. Blood gushed from the wound but didn't fall—it flowed upward into the sky. Above the battlefield, clouds began to form. Thick, dark, and heavy and from them, blood started to rain.
Then he vanished—and reappeared instantly in front of one of the remaining Alexias. He looked her in the eyes.
"Found the real you," he said, smiling wide.
Alexia raised her hand, ready to call on her domain again—but Lucius was faster. He activated the amulet once more and whispered with quiet triumph.
"All entities of this land cannot move for the next ten seconds."
The air around them tensed. A stillness swept over the entire space.
Lucius stood face to face with the real Phantom Oracle, and this time—she couldn't move.