Diov made a choice. It was not a clever one but a desperate one.
With a roar that tore through the half-formed sky, he called the Sinking Void back to himself. What little void remained was ripped free and absorbed into Diov's body in violent spirals. Diov began to swell not in size alone, but in density. He was a walking singularity of void authority desperately trying to assert relevance in a realm that was no longer his.
Luke's presence made it worse.
The Landscape Turtle continued his transformation without pause with meadows expanding, hills locking into place and the artificial sun stabilizing overhead. The Sinking Void was being overwritten by existence itself and Diov was forcibly absorbing what should have already ceased to be.
A beam of void erupted from his chest. Vastarael didn't move. She raised one hand. Her Divinity of Protection activated fully. A perfect sphere formed around her. Around it, dozens of Protection Mystic Circles snapped into place.
The beam hit and stopped. Shockwaves rippled outward, flattening terrain for miles, but the sphere around Vastarael didn't even tremble. Inside it, she sighed.
"Still trying brute force, huh? You really didn't learn anything."
Diov howled in rage, unleashing everything he had left. Void projectiles, attacks layered on top of attacks, all of it designed to bypass, overload or undermine defenses through sheer variety.
Vastarael didn't block harder.
Some Protection Circles rotated to absorb kinetic force. Others destroyed the void using Soul Energy. A few deliberately collapsed, triggering controlled detonations that neutralized incoming attacks mid-flight before they could even touch her barrier. She was managing her defense like a battlefield, not a wall.
This was where Vastarael was terrifying. In terms of defense, he was stronger than most Divines.
She was reading Diov in real time. His casting habits, his emotional spikes and the subtle delay whenever he pulled too deeply from the void that was no longer there. Every attack told her something. Every failed strike narrowed her understanding of his limits.
"You're panicking. You absorbed too much too fast. Your authority's unstable."
Diov snarled and charged, abandoning ranged attacks entirely. Void condensed around his limbs as he tried to tear her apart directly. Vastarael let him come. At the last second, her barrier opened just enough to let him pass through a single layer, then snapped shut behind him.
Diov realized his mistake too late.
His void energy weakened instantly, crushed under her Divine Presence and her Soul Energy.
A sapphire-coated fist slammed into Diov's chest, forcing his own void energy to recoil inward violently. Cracks appeared across his form as he screamed, staggering backward.
"You had a realm," she said, landing another blow. "Authority. Time to plan."
She struck again.
"And you still thought intimidation would work on me."
Diov's form kept unraveling as the last remnants of the Sinking Void burned themselves out inside him. Vastarael exhaled slowly.
"As much as I'd love to keep playing, this is getting inefficient. The longer I drag this out, the more you'll adapt. And I don't do extended fights against monsters that learn."
Diov screamed her name like a curse.
"DAMN YOU VASTARAEL! OVERWRITE — UTTER ANNIHILATION!"
The remaining authority of the Sinking Void detonated outward from Diov's core. The ground beneath him blackened instantly. Meadows Luke had just formed began to decay at a conceptual level. Grass withered into nothing as a thick, crawling black fog spilled outward in waves.
Vastarael flew backwards as the fog moved toward her, devouring terrain, light and even sound. Where it passed, the surroundings vanished. She clicked her tongue.
"Figures."
She hovered above the spreading annihilation zone. She was too composed for someone staring down a Sixth Enlightenment Overwrite.
"You're Sixth Enlightenment. Impressive—for a human."
Diov snarled with the void pulsing violently around him.
"But that's also your problem. You're still human. Immortal, yes. Empowered, sure. But not Divine."
She gestured at herself with one hand.
"I'm Fourth Enlightenment and I'm Aeterium. Race matters. It always has. It does not matter how strong you are. As long as the race is superior, you can be able to fight lesser species in a fight due to race quality. It's that simple. Also, I'm using the very energy that completely decimates yours so you're the one in a disadvantage here."
The fog surged again, higher this time. Diov screamed back in rage.
"I WILL NOT LOSE THE REALM MASTER VASREVEILDER GAVE ME!"
That made Vastarael's expression finally change to disgust. Her eyes turned briefly toward the void being consumed by Luke's terraformation and the countless souls Diov had ground down into fuel, now becoming part of his void.
"You didn't rule it. You weren't a ruler of the underworld. You were a parasite. Souls aren't meant to be batteries. They're meant to go somewhere. Believe me, the Primordials hate people who use souls as batteries."
She raised her hand.
"This ends now."
Every last reserve if Soul Energy she had left in her pseudo-cores manifested. Hundreds of Plasma Mystic Circles snapped into existence.
Large ones, small ones, interlocking ones, all of them appeared as rotating arrays layered within arrays. Each one was a Ninth Star construct with compressed Soul Energy so dense the atmosphere hot warmer around them. They formed an immense array in front of her over a hundred meters tall. Diov roared and thrust both hands forward. His Overwrite surged to its peak. The black fog condensed into a tidal wave of annihilation, tearing everything as it rushed toward her. Vastarael didn't flinch. She floated in the air.
"Ninth Star Plasma Array."
The Mystic Circles aligned and fired.
A blue colossal beam of plasma erupted from the array. The air was displaced violently. Shockwaves flattened the forming meadows,
Void and plasma collided.
Diov screamed as he forced everything he had into the wave. Every last fragment of the Sucking Void, every soul he had hoarded, every stolen shred of authority he had siphoned from the realm, he gave it his all. The black fog surged forward, devouring the meadows, the sky and the very concept of life in its path. For a fraction of a second, it looked like he was winning before the plasma tore through it. It was as if the void itself were cloth held up to a blade. The Soul Energy purified hue void to nothing but motes of light.
Diov poured more of his power. He felt his Divinity screaming. Still, the beam advanced.
The heat was indescribable. Diov's void Overwrite dissolved instantly. His limbs followed next, eaten away by pure Soul Energy asserting dominance over a being who had forgotten what a soul was supposed to be for. And as the plasma swallowed him whole, Diov's mind finally broke free from obsession.
He remembered an office.
Gray walls. A buzzing fluorescent light that never quite stopped humming. Coffee that tasted like regret. A desk cluttered with reports he didn't care about and deadlines that never mattered. He remembered being tired of being small, being invisible and living a life where nothing he did left a mark.
He committed suicide because of overworking.
Then came Spheraphase.
Master Vasreveilder's voice had been calm. He remembered that now. The offer wasn't power. He was to help guide souls and maintain the afterlife of the Hidden Citadel. He was also one of the few allowed to leave the realms unlike the others.
He had been grateful at first but gratitude turned into comparison. Comparison turned into envy. Envy turned into hunger. The other Reniatsus were stronger and revered. He had been the second weakest after Reynolds and that truth gnawed at him more viciously than any void ever could.
So he cheated.
He told himself it was efficiency. Why let souls pass on when they can fuel something greater? He used and devoured them piece by piece until power finally answered him.
And it was never enough.
Now, wrapped in plasma that peeled his body and soul apart simultaneously, Diov laughed in an almost hysterical voice.
"So that's it. All of that… and I still lost."
His gaze fixed on Vastarael through the collapsing light. He was an androgynous being. She wasn't even giving her all. His final thought was venomous, petty and honest.
"An androgynous bitch… beat me…"
But even that thought dissolved as something deeper surfaced. Those Mystic Circles. That Soul Energy. That authority woven so naturally into her existence it felt unfair..Diov's remaining consciousness whispered the truth as his soul began to disintegrate.
"You really are Lord Vasreveilder's descendant..."
His body vanished first. His physical form was completely atomized. His soul followed as it was incinerated down to its final echo. There would be no afterlife or redemption.
The beam finally dissipated.
The Ninth Star Arrays shattered one by one as Vastarael hovered in the air, breathing slowly. The meadow below was gone, replaced by scorched earth and a long valley caused by his own horizontal beam.
"Obsessed with power and still couldn't see what actually mattered. I better use Omniphage before I get a scolding from Asenane and Phae."