No! I don't want to be a Super Necromancer!

A third tried to unleash a wave of solar fire, calling down a burning meteor from the heavens.

Damien lifted his hand.

Space bent.

The meteor curved, just a fraction, just enough. It slammed back into the caster with a thunderous roar, his own attack devouring him whole.

The golden path wound on, like an ancient road only he could see, and Damien followed it without pause. His spear spun in his hand like a sentient being eager for blood. Every thrust pierced a heart. Every sweep tore through multiple bodies. Every breath was calculated. His elemental energies flowed not like tools, but instincts.

He shifted his footwork and infused his next strike with time.

The world slowed.

Flames froze mid-air. The screaming warriors moved in slow motion. Damien moved like a phantom among statues, and each precise movement of his spear carved death into waiting flesh. When time snapped back to normal, seven heads rolled at once, followed by a wall of collapsing bodies.

They broke.

The warriors began to scream for real now, not war cries, but cries of disbelief, of terror. They had been the proud elite of the Celestial Blaze Sect. Each one handpicked, battle-hardened. They had come to erase a threat, to avenge their wounded young master.

Instead, they were dying.

Damien advanced, one foot always landing along that radiant golden trail that shimmered before him like the will of fate itself.

Someone tried to escape, soaring upward on twin jets of flame. Damien snapped his fingers and released a pulse of space energy, compressing the air above them. The fleeing figure crumpled like a fly hitting glass, then plummeted to the cloudstone below, neck snapped and smoking.

The flames came thicker now, more desperate. One elder roared and unleashed a hellfire spiral, the divine flames coiling inwards in a burning whirlpool. It would have incinerated a city.

Damien walked through it.

His fire immunity, born of divine treasures and tempered through trials, shrugged off the heat. His skin glistened only faintly with sweat, his breathing unchanged. The elder's scream was swallowed by his own attack as Damien stepped out of the fire, untouched, and stabbed the man through the chest, twisting the spear as light faded from his eyes.

The scent of charred blood and ozone thickened the air.

The battlefield was now soaked in it.

And Damien didn't stop.

With each enemy he felled, the path extended. The golden trail guided him to the weakest point, the fastest kill, the next strike that would break morale, and he followed it with the devotion of a sculptor shaping a masterpiece. Blood sprayed across his face. Sparks burst from clashing elemental barriers. His spear whirled in perfect arcs, each movement an equation of violence perfected by divine understanding.

Screams. Flames. Shattering bones. Gurgling deaths.

All of it merged into a song.

And Damien was its composer.

One by one, the last few Celestial Blaze Sect survivors turned to flee. Pride abandoned. Formation forgotten. They soared backward, screaming commands and names and pleas.

And Damien raised his spear one last time.

It spun in his grip, then stilled—its point aimed forward, crackling with deathlight and threaded lightning. He let it go.

The spear roared through the sky like a bolt from heaven, shrieking with fury and intent. It passed through one fleeing man's spine, then burst into seven fragments of condensed annihilation, each fragment seeking a different soul.

Seven corpses fell from the air like burning leaves.

And then, silence.

No more flames. No more enemies.

Only Damien, standing amidst the corpses of the elite, the divine, the untouchable, drenched in golden light and the fading heat of glory.

Behind him, far off on a neighboring platform, Lyrisa let out a soft laugh.

Nyxara, arms crossed, gave a single nod.

Lyrisa leaned back, one leg swinging as she hummed to herself, her scimitar resting on her lap. "He did that thing again." she said.

"What thing?" Nyxara asked, not taking her eyes off the massacre.

"Where he plays with his food before burning the whole kitchen down."

Nyxara said nothing.

Because it was true.

Amid the carnage, Wu Jinhai rose to his feet, swaying, pale, his remaining hand clutching a strange golden orb. His lips trembled with fury.

"I will kill you!" he shrieked. "You think this is my limit?!"

He crushed the orb.

Instantly, light erupted from Wu Jinhai's body.

Not flame, not heat, but something far more ancient, far more terrifying.

It was light, but not the gentle kind that warms the morning or guides the lost. This was divine light, untainted and absolute, the kind whispered about in forbidden scriptures and hidden chapters of ancient cultivation manuals. It burst outward in a tidal wave of purity, unrelenting and judgmental, carrying with it the weight of celestial law and unspoken wrath.

It was not fire. It did not burn.

It erased.

The moment it touched the air, the space around Wu Jinhai began to fracture, folding in on itself as if reality could no longer tolerate his presence. The clouds above hissed as they dissolved into shimmering particles.

The light did not explode like a flame; it pulsed like a divine heartbeat, each wave expanding with surgical precision, cutting through spiritual residue, dissolving lingering energy, flattening every trace of death that Damien had carved into the battlefield.

Wu Jinhai floated within it, eyes turned a blinding white, devoid of pupils or iris. His skin glowed with a flawless brilliance, veins filled with radiance instead of blood. His voice vanished, replaced by silence, a silence so deafening that it made the world itself seem muted.

Damien's eyes widened.

Because this was something else entirely.

This was light energy in its purest, most refined form. Not elemental, not weaponized in the way most cultivators used it, this was divine authority given shape, a fragment of heaven's will housed in a mortal shell. It moved like judgment. It glowed like vengeance.

And it was far, far beyond him.

His necromantic core, built from death, lightning, time, space, and recently enhanced through the stairway's legacy, recognized it instantly.

And recoiled.

There was no resistance.

No immunity.