Chapter : 875
And then, the Jahl’s arm simply… ceased to exist.
Lloyd’s blade did not cut it. It did not shatter it. It unmade it. The pure, conceptual fire of his Transcendent spirit, the fire of absolute annihilation, did not burn the Demon’s physical form; it erased it from reality, atom by chaotic, elemental atom.
The Jahl let out a new sound, a sound that no one in the three-hundred-year history of the Challenge had ever heard before. It was a scream. A high, thin, and utterly terrified shriek of pure, unadulterated pain and disbelief.
It staggered back, clutching the smoking, cauterized stump of its shoulder, its fiery maw a perfect, round ‘O’ of pure, cosmic shock.
The crowd did not cheer. They did not have the capacity. Their minds were simply… broken. They were watching a reality that was not supposed to exist. They were watching a man dismember a god with the casual, effortless grace of a master chef jointing a chicken.
Lloyd stood his ground, his sword of solar fire held in a low, ready guard. The calm, serene, and almost beautiful expression on his transfigured face had not changed. The first step of the new dance was complete. The lesson had begun.
---
The Jahl’s scream of pain and terror was a raw, jagged tear in the fabric of the arena’s stunned silence. The creature, which had been a symbol of absolute, unbeatable power for three centuries, was now a wounded, terrified, and deeply confused animal. It looked at the stump of its shoulder, at the clean, cauterized wound where its massive, molten arm had been just a moment before, and then it looked at the silent, glowing titan who had so casually and so completely unmade it.
The fear in its ancient, elemental soul was now warring with its even more ancient, and far more powerful, rage. It was a cornered god, a wounded king, and its terror was beginning to curdle into a final, suicidal, and apocalyptic fury.
It let out another roar, this one not of triumph, but of pure, nihilistic hatred. The dark-crimson fire of its Commander-Class form, which had been so terrifying just moments before, now seemed almost pathetic in comparison to the clean, white-hot, solar fire of the being before it. But it was all the Jahl had left.
It gathered all of its remaining power, all of its rage, all of its pain, into a single, final, and desperate attack. Its entire, thirty-foot-tall form began to glow with a malevolent, pulsating light. It was no longer just a creature of fire; it had become a living, breathing, and highly unstable bomb.
<IF I AM TO BE UNMADE,> its voice shrieked in their minds, a raw, chaotic blast of pure, suicidal intent, <THEN I WILL TAKE THIS ENTIRE, PATHETIC WORLD WITH ME!>
It was going to self-destruct. It was going to unleash its entire, contained, Transcendent-level power in a single, indiscriminate, and city-leveling explosion.
In the Royal Box, the Princess Amina’s face went pale behind her veil. The Royal Mages, who were stationed around the arena, began to frantically chant, their hands glowing as they tried to reinforce the ancient binding wards, but they were like children trying to hold back a tsunami with a picket fence.
The crowd, which had been frozen in a state of awestruck terror, finally broke. A wave of pure, screaming, animal panic erupted in the stands. People began to scramble, to climb over each other, a frantic, desperate stampede of humanity trying to escape a doom that was already upon them.
The entire arena, the entire city, was on the brink of absolute, fiery annihilation.
And in the center of it all, in the heart of the impending, self-inflicted apocalypse, the Fire Knight, Lloyd, remained perfectly, serenely, and beautifully calm.
He watched the Jahl’s suicidal power-surge with the cool, detached curiosity of a scientist observing a predictable, if dramatic, chemical reaction. He had anticipated this. He had, in fact, counted on it.
He raised his greatsword of solar fire, not in a defensive posture, but in a gesture that was almost… a welcome.
“You have danced your last, little flame,” his dual-resonant voice said, a low, calm, and utterly final pronouncement. “Your rage is a beautiful, and a tiresome, thing. It is time for it to be… quiet.”
And then, he showed them all the true, breathtaking, and utterly incomprehensible scale of his own, true power.
He did not charge. He did not dodge. He did not even seem to move. He simply… expanded.
Chapter : 876
And then, the white, holy fire washed over the Jahl.
The Demon’s suicidal, world-ending explosion, which had been on the very verge of detonating, simply… stopped. The malevolent, blood-red fire of its form was met, and consumed, by the clean, white fire of the Fire Knight.
It was not a battle. It was an absorption. A purification.
The Jahl’s final, terrified, and disbelieving shriek was not a sound of pain. It was a sound of dissolution. It was the sound of a being of pure, chaotic rage being unmade, not by a superior force, but by a superior concept. Its hate was being consumed by a will that was so pure, so absolute, and so utterly beyond its comprehension that it simply… ceased to be.
The entire, colossal, thirty-foot-tall form of the Demon of Jahl, the terror of the kingdom, the unbeatable god of the arena, dissolved. It did not explode. It did not burn to ash. It simply, silently, and beautifully, unraveled, its chaotic, fiery essence breaking down into a billion shimmering, harmless motes of pure, golden light, like fireflies in the twilight.
The motes of light hung in the air for a moment, a beautiful, silent galaxy of a god’s last, dying breath. And then, they too faded, leaving nothing behind.
Nothing.
The arena was silent. The crowd was silent. The world was silent.
In the center of the now-pristine, white-crystal floor, the Fire Knight stood, his greatsword of solar fire held at his side. He was alone. The Demon was gone. The monster was erased. The devil servent was dead.
And the hero, the saint, the slayer, the man who had just saved them all, had not even broken a sweat.
---
The silence that followed the Jahl’s beautiful, silent annihilation was a new and even more profound kind of quiet. It was the silence of a world that has been fundamentally, irrevocably, and completely broken and then remade in a new, terrifying, and magnificent image. The seventy thousand spectators in the stands were no longer just a crowd; they were a congregation of silent, traumatized witnesses to an event that had transcended the very concepts of battle and victory. They had not just watched a man defeat a monster. They had watched a god calmly, quietly, and artistically erase a lesser, and much louder, god from the very fabric of existence.
The concept was too large, too profound for their minds to process. They could only stare, their faces blank, their mouths agape, their souls ringing with the silent, echoing thunder of the miracle they had just witnessed.
The Fire Knight, the being that had once been Lloyd, stood in the center of the now-pristine, white-crystal arena floor. The pillar of divine, white-hot fire that had erupted from him had receded, collapsing back into his four-meter-tall form, but the overwhelming, almost holy, aura of his power remained, a palpable, physical pressure that seemed to make the very air thick and heavy as honey.
He looked at the empty space where the Jahl had been, at the few, lingering, shimmering motes of its dissolved essence, and he gave a small, almost imperceptible nod, a gesture of a craftsman who is satisfied with his work. The performance had been a success. The message had been delivered.
But the final act was not yet complete. The victory had to be sealed not just with a display of absolute, transcendent power, but with a final, magnificent, and utterly unforgettable flourish. The legend needed its final, glorious exclamation point.
He turned his gaze from the empty space and looked down at his own discarded spirit, Ifrit, who still lay in a smoking, but now fully healed, heap near the arena wall. He had a role to play in this final, theatrical act as well.
With a thought, the Fire Knight sent a silent, mental command to his other, still-hidden partner. ‘Fang Fairy. The stage is yours.’