Astaroth: Ten percent.
The words didn't echo.
They engraved.
The land didn't quake—it wept. Soil bled steam, mountains in the far distance cracked, birds mid-flight simply stopped and fell. The sky itself bent forward like it was paying respect. Ten percent wasn't power.
It was a correction.
Dark's body was already limp on the ground. His left arm twisted the wrong way, his ribs shattered, one horn cracked near the base and dripping with thick, tar-like blood that sizzled on contact with the dirt. His wings were gone. Nothing but fractured bone and scorched stumps.
But he stood.
Because that's what he did.
He stood.
Each movement was wrong. Not because he was weak—but because everything in his body was telling him to stay down. Muscles locked. Bones refused. But his soul didn't care. His soul had died once already—it didn't fear the idea again.
He rose slowly.
Staggered once.
And stood upright.
Dark: (gritting) That all you got?
Astaroth didn't laugh.
He didn't smile.
He simply moved.
Ten percent was no longer passive.
It moved.
And that movement rewrote the rules of pressure. He was in front of Dark instantly. Not teleportation. Not speed.
Dominance.
Dark swung—
But Astaroth didn't let him.
His knee shattered Dark's sternum before the punch left his shoulder. A follow-up elbow cracked against his jaw so hard his teeth dislodged. Blood sprayed. Bone followed. Dark's body folded inward like paper soaked in flame.
Then the ground vanished beneath him.
Literally.
Not because he fell—Astaroth's strike deleted the terrain, punching a hole through the world itself.
Dark tumbled into it. Ragged. Mangled. Half-conscious.
Astaroth descended, walking on air like the concept of gravity was too beneath him to obey. He didn't pursue for the thrill—he pursued because that was what this was. A purge. A fire meant to test the core of a flame.
Dark slammed into the bottom of the crater.
There wasn't a bottom.
Just more impact.
Stone liquified. Crust folded.
Then silence.
Then—
BOOM.
Dark erupted upward again, fire peeling off his body like skin. But this wasn't magic—it was madness. Raw instinct. His demonic form flickered, trying to stabilize. The wings reformed—barely. His eyes bled.
He screamed.
Not in pain.
In power.
Dark threw his hand forward—and the sky bent.
An infernal beam surged outward, wide enough to consume the horizon, built from nothing but compression. Every ounce of rage condensed into one line.
Astaroth stood there.
The beam hit.
The ground vanished. Mountains melted. A fault line snapped open. Lava poured skyward.
But through the light—
A silhouette.
Still standing.
Still smiling.
Astaroth walked through the beam, burning away the attack like mist.
Astaroth: This... is thy full form?
Dark staggered back.
He wasn't breathing anymore. His lungs weren't responding. His heart was beating out of sync. He tasted blood. Every organ inside him had moved or shattered.
But he didn't stop.
He lunged again—claws first, teeth barred, eyes wild.
Astaroth headbutted him mid-air.
Dark's skull split down the middle. The skin of his forehead cracked open. A new horn snapped. His body twisted on impact like a falling corpse caught mid-prayer.
But then—his hand moved.
He grabbed Astaroth's face.
Gravity magic. Not controlled. Just released.
And everything dropped.
Both of them vanished into the pit again, slammed into the molten core of the wasteland beneath. The sky pulled downward. Air howled. Birds in nearby continents flew into the sea. The world tilted.
Inside that crater, where no light reached—
They kept fighting.
Punches too fast to see. Bones snapped. Reformed. Magic tore through space. Pressure rippled like planetary waves. Demonic flames ignited against hellfire laced with time.
Dark wasn't winning.
But he wasn't dying either.
And Astaroth?
Astaroth was grinning.
Not mockingly. Not cruelly.
But like a god remembering how it felt to bleed.
Like someone who had ruled for far too long without ever being touched.
He floated above the molten trench Dark had carved into the world—arms relaxed, shoulders still loose, but his body radiating pressure now thick enough to blister the sky. The temperature didn't rise. It suffocated. Color bled out of the landscape, reds dulled into gray, and the sky turned the shade of a cauterized wound.
Below, Dark rose again.
He should've collapsed.
His legs were barely legs anymore—torn muscle, blackened bone. One shoulder dislocated, right eye blind and sagging with blood, left horn split down the middle, wings twitching like broken memories of flight. His demon form was holding together by hate alone. And yet—
He stood.
Because of course he did.
Dark: (quietly) Ten percent... huh...
He spat blood.
Not red.
Black-red.
Steam hissed where it landed.
Then he exhaled—and with it, the last bit of restraint inside him burned off like dead skin.
His claws expanded, elongating into hooked talons laced with violet energy. His spine cracked into place. His back muscles surged, forcing his wing stumps to extend—sharpening now, jagged, skeletal, malformed like the nightmares of a child who had seen war. His jaw unhinged for a moment, revealing teeth that didn't belong in any species known to gods or demons.
And when he spoke, the voice wasn't just his.
It layered.
Dark: I'm not done.
The ground beneath him detonated—but not from movement. From presence. His aura alone reversed gravity for a second. Ash floated upward, and every loose stone nearby cracked from the sheer hatred vibrating off his body.
He vanished.
Not movement.
Absence.
And reappeared directly beneath Astaroth, his claws already buried deep into the Emperor's abdomen. He didn't strike for pain.
He dug.
Astaroth's body jerked slightly—not from damage, but from acknowledgment.
Dark snarled and twisted—claws tearing upward, slicing through muscle, through bone, dragging heat and marrow in a vertical, upward carve that split Astaroth's torso open like a fruit left too long in the sun.
But it didn't bleed.
It boiled.
Astaroth's chest erupted with fire, lighting the sky red again, casting jagged shadows across the broken earth. Dark was flung back from the eruption, skin peeling from his chest, eyes half-melting from the heat—but even in mid-air, he didn't falter.
He twisted, using the momentum to somersault through the air, digging his claws into the stone to catch himself. His feet tore into the terrain, carving a line fifty meters long.
Astaroth hovered above the fire.
Still split open.
Still smiling.
He raised one hand—and snapped.
The wound closed.
Perfectly.
Not healed.
Reset.
Astaroth: Eleven percent.
Dark's body screamed at him to stop.
But his soul roared louder.
He dashed forward again—this time bending light behind him. The sheer friction of his speed turned the wind to static. Every step left behind scorched footprints that refused to cool.
He ducked low, spinning, and slammed his claws into the side of Astaroth's leg, dragging them across the thigh like he meant to peel it clean off. Astaroth's leg cracked, and Dark followed up with a rising knee so sharp it pierced Astaroth's chin, lifting him momentarily from the sky.
Blood poured from the Emperor's mouth.
But the grin never left.
Astaroth twisted mid-air and sent a hook into Dark's ribs. The sound wasn't a thud. It was a clap. Like thunder getting punched. Dark's body folded inward, vomited black fluid, and was launched a hundred meters across the field.
He hit a cliffside so hard the mountain bent. Then he dropped.
Collapsed.
Silent.
Astaroth raised a hand.
Brought it down.
Hell came with it.
An ocean of molten fire descended from the sky—no spell. No summoning. Just command. Lava poured like rain, flame seared from every corner, and the crater became a furnace. Demons would have wept.
Dark stood again.
His body half-burned.
Skin gone from one arm.
But the fire didn't kill him.
It fed him.
He screamed, and the roar was a weapon. It cracked open the clouds, it split the hilltops, it shattered the laws of what a scream could do.
And then—
Dark lunged.
Faster than before.
Smarter than before.
Evolving again.
His body blurred into eight afterimages. One was real. Astaroth blocked five, dodged two.
The eighth claw—hit.
Right in the throat.
Astaroth coughed blood and laughed.
Astaroth: So this is thy path...
He caught Dark's wrist.
Crushed it.
Dark bit through his own lip to suppress the scream—but his knee rose fast enough to dig into Astaroth's gut again.
Astaroth caught the knee.
And snapped the leg.
Then elbowed Dark in the chest again.
Dark fell—hard.
A crater formed inside a crater.
And then—
Astaroth descended.
One leg.
One stomp.
It landed on Dark's chest.
The sound wasn't just bone.
It was spirit.
Dark's eyes rolled. Blood sprayed. His demon form cracked. His horns crumbled, and one of his wings exploded into smoke.
Astaroth: Thou art not ready.
And then he stepped off.
Let Dark breathe.
Dark's lungs heaved like they were fighting the air itself. Blood trickled from his mouth in thin streams, threading down his chin, coating his broken chest. Every breath was knives. Every pulse was fire trying to crawl out of his body.
And still—he didn't move.
Astaroth had stepped back, given him room. Not mercy. Just space.
A gift.
Or maybe an insult.
Dark's fingers twitched against the cracked ground, dragging through the ash and scorched stone. His claws were ruined, bones exposed at the tips. But they curled anyway. They closed around nothing but pain and pressure.
Then—
Dark's voice broke out.
Low.
But rising.
Dark: Ready...?
He coughed. Spat blood. Growled.
Dark: Ready for what?!
His voice cracked with something worse than pain—wrath. That unspoken scream that builds behind every scar, every betrayal, every moment someone stronger looked down and said "not yet."
He tried to push himself up.
His arm shook.
Snapped.
Refused.
Dark: You think this is some... lesson?
Dark: You think I'm gonna kneel and beg for strength like some disciple at your altar?
The ground quaked beneath him—not from Astaroth, but from the force of Dark's soul rebelling against its own limits.
His voice deepened. Not demonic this time. Not quiet.
Just real.
Dark: I don't need your permission.
The ash around him lifted.
Dark: I don't need your validation.
Stone cracked beneath his palms.
Dark: And I sure as hell—DON'T NEED TO BE READY FOR YOU!
He roared.
And the world shook.
Not a growl.
Not a yell.
A roar from deep in the core of everything he was, everything he'd lost, everything he'd killed, and everything he still refused to become.
The crater exploded upward in a geyser of black flames and violet lightning. Dark erupted from the wreckage, body still broken, but eyes alive. Red. Bright. Blinding.
He screamed mid-air and his body changed again—not just the demon form.
It twisted. Sharpened. Condensed.
His wings reformed into spears of spiraling ash and ether, cracking with unstable force. His shattered horns straightened, longer now, pulsing red with every word that came out of his mouth.
Dark: I've died before.
Dark: I've lost everything.
Dark: And I'm STILL HERE.
He flashed forward, claws dragging energy from the air like they were shredding through dimensions.
Dark: I AM MY OWN FLAME, ASTAROTH!
He slammed into the Emperor mid-sentence, crashing into him with enough force to send shockwaves across the wasteland. Entire valleys split. The ocean miles away receded.
Astaroth was hit.
Fully.
Square in the chest.
He slid back.
Two steps.
Dust flared beneath his heels.
He looked down at the claw marks etched into his chestplate.
And for the first time—
He didn't smile.
Dark wasn't done.
He dropped from the sky like a cannonball of hatred, landing behind Astaroth with a backhand swipe that bent light. Astaroth spun to counter—Dark grabbed his arm mid-spin, twisted, and drove his knee into the Emperor's ribs hard enough to make the world hiccup.
Crack.
A sound escaped Astaroth's mouth.
Not a laugh.
A grunt.
Dark spun, one claw uppercutting, one slicing horizontally. Sparks of reality peeled away where the slashes met.
He roared again.
Not because it helped.
But because the rage needed out.
Dark: I AM DARK!
Another strike.
Another.
He didn't stop.
Dark: AND I'LL TEAR DOWN EVERY FUCKING GOD IF I HAVE TO!
He struck again—
—and this time, Astaroth was bleeding.
Properly.
From the mouth.
His head tilted back. He wiped the black fluid from his lip and stared at it.
Then looked at Dark again.
And whispered:
Astaroth: Twelve percent.
Dark: THEN BRING IT!
To be continued.
End Of Arc 6 Chapter 7.