The creature's roar had degraded into a broken, guttural vibration—no longer a declaration of dominance, but the dying tremor of something unraveling.
Its second form was collapsing inward. Armor split apart in jagged lines, fissures dimming one by one as the crimson threads continued draining it dry. The massive frame that had once bent the air around it now trembled under its own instability.
But Draven's eyes narrowed slightly.
"…There."
He saw it.
Not the leaking channels.
Not the unstable surface fractures.
Deeper.
Beneath layered, bone-like plating and condensed Abyssal tissue—
A core.
A crystallized convergence point.
Its magic crystal.
The anchor of its manifestation.
The true heart of its existence in this world.
Draven stepped forward.
The creature tried to move.
Tried to raise a claw.
But its limbs trembled violently, weakened by the relentless siphoning of its power.
Too slow.
Draven placed his hand flat against its chest.
For a moment—
Nothing happened.
Then his fingers curled.
The folded mana within him sharpened and compressed, condensing into a focused edge rather than a flood.
His hand sank through armored hide.
The plating fractured inward like brittle stone collapsing under internal pressure.
The creature's scream tore across the sky as Draven's arm drove deeper into its torso. Crimson light flared violently through the cracks spreading across its body, racing along the splitting fissures like lightning trapped beneath glass.
He reached inside.
Past ruptured channels.
Past writhing, unstable currents lashing against his arm like dying serpents.
And he felt it.
Dense.
Cold.
Violently compressed.
The magic crystal pulsed against his palm like a second heart, its rhythm erratic and furious, as though aware of the hand that sought to claim it.
The creature convulsed. Both massive hands slammed weakly against Draven's shoulders in a desperate attempt to dislodge him.
The blows landed—
But lacked force.
The strength that had shattered mountains minutes earlier now felt hollow, fading.
Draven's crimson eyes burned brighter.
"You should've stayed on your side," he said evenly. "But good for me that you didn't."
His fingers closed around the crystal.
And he pulled.
The sound that followed was not flesh tearing.
It was structure collapsing.
A deep, resonant fracture echoed through the battlefield as Draven ripped the magic crystal free from its chest in a violent spray of fractured energy and splintering Abyssal matter.
He withdrew his arm smoothly and landed lightly as the creature staggered backward.
In his hand—
A jagged black-and-crimson crystal roughly the size of a human apple.
It pulsed erratically.
Cracked with unstable light.
The moment it left the creature's body—
Everything changed.
The massive form froze mid-motion.
The fissures across its armor flickered rapidly.
Then dimmed.
Its second form destabilized completely, collapsing inward as the animating force sustaining it vanished. The towering frame began disintegrating from the inside out—armor flaking into ash, limbs fragmenting into dissolving shadow.
The roar faded into a hollow echo.
And then—
Silence.
Where the creature had stood, nothing remained but a cratered clearing and drifting black residue evaporating into the air.
Draven turned the crystal slowly in his hand.
It pulsed with heavy, compressed light—far denser than the crystals he had taken before.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"…It's bigger."
The surface was not merely larger in size.
It was thicker.
Layered.
As if multiple condensed cores had been fused into one unstable convergence.
The crystals he had taken from ordinary masters had been refined, stabilized—almost clean in structure.
This—
This was raw Abyssal compression.
Untamed.
His thumb pressed lightly against one fractured edge.
The crystal resisted.
Violently.
It thrummed in his grip as though aware of the threat, its internal spirals shifting defensively beneath the surface.
"…Not something I can just swallow," he muttered.
The folded mass inside him responded instinctively. Threads brushed against the crystal's surface—but instead of merging smoothly, the crystal pushed back.
Dense.
Foreign.
Stubborn.
Draven exhaled slowly.
He would need to break it down first.
Behind him, Aldric stepped forward cautiously, eyes fixed on the core in Draven's hand.
"…That wasn't just some random spawn," Aldric said quietly.
Draven did not look back.
Aldric swallowed.
"That was *Vaeroth the Rift-Breaker*."
The name lingered heavily in the air.
Lyriana stiffened slightly.
"A named entity?" she whispered.
Aldric nodded.
"An Abyssal that carved its own territory on the other side. Not a mindless beast. Not a summoned pawn. It had rank."
He glanced toward the crater where the creature had disintegrated.
"And you killed it like it was nothing."
Draven's gaze remained on the crystal.
"It wasn't nothing."
Aldric continued, his voice tightening slightly as he processed what he had witnessed.
"That thing was easily equivalent to a high B-Rank monster. Maybe even pushing the threshold of A-Rank if it had fully stabilized."
He shook his head slowly.
"But that's not the real problem."
Draven finally shifted his eyes toward him.
"It's the mana," Aldric said.
"That wasn't normal mana. It wasn't just dense. It was layered with Abyssal alignment—corrosive, self-adaptive. It rewrites what it touches if left unchecked."
Lyriana added quietly, "Even its leaking pressure was destabilizing the land."
Aldric nodded.
"And that crystal…" His eyes returned to it. "That's the condensed heart of that alignment. It's not just energy. It's a fragment of the Abyss itself."
The crystal pulsed again in Draven's hand—heavier now.
As if reacting to the words.
Draven's expression did not change.
"…Good."
Aldric blinked. "Good?"
Draven lifted the crystal slightly, studying the spiraling layers within it.
"It's still mana," he said calmly. "No matter what you call it."
The folded structure within him shifted again—slower this time, more cautious. It did not attempt to swallow.
It studied.
Mapped.
Calculated fracture points along the crystal's internal lattice.
Draven's fingers tightened slightly around the core.
"It's dense because it's unrefined."
His crimson eyes glowed faintly brighter.
Aldric stared at him.
"You're not seriously thinking of absorbing that whole."
Draven's lips curved faintly.
"I already said I can't just swallow it."
The crystal pulsed harder, reacting to the proximity of his internal structure.
"So I won't."
He shifted his grip.
Thin crimson threads began forming around his fingers, weaving carefully along the crystal's existing fractures instead of forcing entry. They slid into microscopic cracks, tracing stress lines and weak points.
"I'll dismantle it first."
The air around him grew subtly heavier as he began isolating its layers—separating Abyssal alignment from raw density, identifying unstable nodes within the compressed core.
Vaelith landed lightly nearby, observing in silence, her gaze sharp.
"The longer you hold it intact," Aldric warned, "the more likely it is to attempt reconstitution. Named entities don't dissolve quietly."
Draven's eyes flicked upward briefly.
"It won't."
The crimson threads tightened.
A faint cracking sound echoed from within the crystal—
Internal pressure shifting as its layered structure began to fracture under precise, calculated dismantling.