Unholy Player

"Huh? They really are quite strong." Adyr took in the scene with steady focus: the giant Serpent held motionless, as if frozen, with a fresh, long gash across its head, spraying blood into the air. The sight drew a genuine spark of interest from him.

What hooked him most was Brakhtar's power-up. The invisible hands pinning the Serpent did not feel like a Spark skill at all, but a fusion of innate ability and bloodline talent working in tandem.

From what Adyr understood of that talent, it acted like a passive buff that multiplied his [Sense] many times over while also sharpening any mind- or soul-related skill, giving those skills a new, keener edge.

Those transparent hands did more than inflict physical damage. They seemed to carry a hidden effect that attacked thought itself, freezing the minds they touched and leaving the targets unable to move—as if their will had been locked shut. It was the kind of deadly technique anyone would want to avoid, even Adyr.

Yet a problem remained.

To everyone else, two Rank 3 Practitioners looked as if they had the upper hand, battering a Rank 4 Spark. In Adyr's eyes, the reality was very different. He had seen a Rank 4 Spark fight before—Collossith—and he knew how many innate abilities such a creature could hide. This Serpent would not be so weak, not for long.

So far, it had shown only 1 skill: Fear Bind. It's time for it to get serious, he thought, choosing to keep watching with no intention of intervening yet, his attention sharpening rather than easing.

—

"Lunari." Brakhtar's left head turned toward Thalira, lightning wrapping her like living energy and crackling along her outline. A faint frown tightened his features. His right head added in a low, steady voice, "Be careful. It will make its move soon."

Thalira met the warning with a quick smile. Electricity shimmered in her eyes, the thrill of battle burning there. "I'm aware."

She acknowledged the caution, but nothing in her posture suggested retreat. Instead, she readied her next strike, weight settling, breath tightening. In the next heartbeat, her body became silver lightning, flashing forward in a tight zigzag toward the Serpent.

She aimed for the earlier wound, intent on carving it deeper to draw even more blood from the creature's head, and brought her lightning-charged rapier down without mercy.

But unlike before, when the blade found its mark, this time it cut only air.

"What happened?" The shift was so sudden that her target was no longer there. A threatening pressure rose in her chest as she pulled back on instinct, gathered herself, and slipped into a defensive stance to cover any blind angle.

"It disappeared." Brakhtar felt the same absence where his transparent hands had been holding firm. His expression hardened as his 2 heads swept the void in disciplined arcs, searching for the Spark's new position. "Looks like it has something like a teleportation skill."

Dread rippled through the onlookers at once. Hearts clenched. Breaths hitched. The balance of the battlefield had just shifted.

"Okay, watch time is over. I'm leaving now." Loudbark did not hesitate. He pivoted hard and ran for his life.

Everything had seemed manageable while Brakhtar and Thalira pinned the Rank 4 Spark, striking and dealing damage, until he heard it had a teleportation skill. Loudbark had never witnessed anyone use such an ability, and he had no intention of staying to observe it in action.

Maruun and Rhadak reached the same conclusion without argument. They began to fall back at once, deciding there was nothing more they could do in the face of an enemy like this.

Rhadak and his team were in no state to fight anyway. After shedding their wall forms, cracks laced their bodies, edges crumbling as if the stone itself were exhausted. They needed rest and time to recover their health; joining a battle now was out of the question.

But it was already too late to retreat. The Serpent had no intention of letting anyone go. It began to use its third ability.

At first, the void around them gave a slight, almost imperceptible shift, as if the emptiness had turned dense enough to feel against the skin.

The black expanse seemed to thicken, and the air took on a grain, like fine sand moving in slow currents.

"Oh, fuck, no, no." On his giant Shiba Inu, wings beating hard, Loudbark felt their motion hitch. Each stroke of the wings met a quiet resistance, as if the space itself had turned to syrup. Instead of gaining distance, he sensed a pull drawing them back toward the heart of the battlefield.

"As I thought, it is not a Spark from the Ignis Path." Brakhtar, registering the change spreading through the void, sounded as if something had just clicked into place.

They all looked around. The distant floating landmasses were still visible on every side, drifting in the dark. Yet perspective no longer behaved correctly.

Horizons bowed inward. Edges curved where they should have run straight. The islets stretched thin, then shrank, then slipped farther away, as if the space between points were being added to with every breath.

Lines of sight bent into arcs, and anything at the limits of vision smeared like paint being pulled toward a drain.

The pull strengthened. Sound dulled and pressed inward, the way it does underwater. A low hum rose at the edge of hearing. Hair lifted on forearms and necks. The skin felt both heavy and weightless at once, as if some invisible hand had gripped the world and given it a slow twist.

"Brakhtar, can't you stop it?" Thalira's voice cut through the pressure, sharp with the sudden understanding of where this led.

If they were dragged into another dimension like this, it was a death sentence.

As it turned out, Brakhtar wasn't the solution. He shook both heads. "It's a space-related skill, and I have no skill to counter it."

But it was not without an answer, he added. "Our only chance is to attack the space itself and try to disturb it before it completely pulls us in."

Thalira lifted a single eyebrow, trying to understand, as she approached the two-headed ogre. "Explain."

Brakhtar looked absent-minded for a second, then gathered his thoughts and chose his words. "If our assumption is correct and the Serpent is currently creating its own dimension to pull us in, we just need to show it something massive so its pull is disturbed and the dimension being created crumbles even before forming." After another pause, he added, "I can give the example of the Legacy Domain for you to understand."

His solution was quite simple. Like the Legacy Domain, which only Rank 2 Practitioners could enter because it was a fragile dimension on its own and could not handle more than a certain power level, the dimension skill the Serpent was currently using was similar.

"And how much power are you talking about to be able to disturb it?" Thalira asked, following the logic.

The answer she got, though, was not something she wanted to hear.

"If we consider the Serpent a Rank 4 Spark, then we need something equal to that power." Brakhtar's eyes narrowed. "We need at least the attack power of a Rank 4 Practitioner."