A new doorway materialized ahead, not with a shimmer, but with a violent tear in reality.
It pulsed with a deep, menacing crimson light, a bloody eye in the bleak face of the Null.
Each throb of light seemed to push against the oppressive silence, a heartbeat of pure menace.
As I walked toward it, a primal dread settled in my bones.
This wasn't just another stage. This was the source.
The reason the very air in this place felt like a weight.
Stepping through was like walking into a furnace.
The atmosphere was thick, hot, and heavy with the promise of annihilation.
I found myself in a colossal arena, a vast, circular plain of dark, metallic earth that reflected the hellish glow of a blood-red sky.
Jagged cliffs of the same material rose around the perimeter, forming a natural coliseum of despair.
And in the center, waiting, was my opponent.
It was a monument to destruction. Fifteen feet of nightmare flesh, its body a chaotic fusion of blackened, scarred armor and thick, pulsating veins that glowed with the intensity of molten rock.
Two massive, curling horns swept back from a head that was little more than a bestial skull, and in its grasp was a battle-axe that seemed to bleed heat, its edges flickering with embers that fell to sizzle on the ground.
It turned. Two pits of incandescent orange fire locked onto me.
The pressure in the air became suffocating, a physical force pushing me down.
Ding!
[Stage Five Initiated: Eliminate The Lord Of Destruction.]
The creature didn't just roar; it unleashed sound.
A wave of pure fury that shook the ground and vibrated deep in my chest.
Then it charged. Each step was a seismic event, cracking the metallic earth.
I didn't think. I reacted. My hand came up, and a spear of lightning, thick and furious, lanced across the arena.
It struck the creature square in the chest with a deafening crack.
A hole, clean and deep, appeared in its armor, revealing the fiery veins beneath.
It didn't even slow down.
That's when it clicked. The wrongness I'd felt since arriving in the Null.
The crystalline creatures, the shifting monsters, they weren't just strong.
They were immortal. Not in the sense of being hard to kill.
In the sense that the very concept of death was absent here.
It didn't exist for them. They were entities for which cessation was an impossibility.
My lightning didn't just kill. It erased. It transcended concepts.
It saw a rule like "this cannot die" and simply stepped over it, making death not just possible, but inevitable.
This Lord of Destruction was just a more powerful version of the same fundamental rule.
A rule my power was designed to break.
Its axe came down in a sweeping arc that promised total oblivion.
I threw myself sideways, the heat of the blade scorching my side as it cratered the ground where I'd stood.
The shockwave lifted me off my feet, sending me tumbling across the hard earth.
I scrambled up, my heart hammering. This thing was on a different level.
But if it was a concept of destruction, I would answer with a force that defined annihilation.
I slowly raised both my hands, palms open to the bloody sky, my body a conduit.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, and stopped holding back.
Not a little. Not a lot. Everything.
The air grew thick, humming with the energy I pulled from the infinite well within.
Lightning didn't just crackle around me; it erupted.
A maelstrom of blue-white power so intense the very fabric of the Null seemed to strain.
I wasn't going to fight this creature. I was going to unmake it.
The sky above the arena fractured. Lightning rained down.
Not single bolts, but a continuous, deafening deluge of pure energy.
The world became a strobing nightmare of light and sound.
The Lord of Destruction roared, a sound of defiance and fury, raising its axe to block the onslaught.
It was futile. A bolt struck the axe, and the weapon, a embodiment of ruin, simply vanished, erased from existence.
Another volley shattered its armor, piece by piece, exposing the glowing core of its being.
The creature staggered, holes appearing all over its body, its movements becoming sluggish, then jerky, then ceasing altogether as the storm of lightning pinned it in place.
I didn't stop. I couldn't. The power was a tidal wave, and I was riding it.
The lightning gathered above me, coalescing into a single, massive sphere of crackling annihilation that dwarfed the creature below.
It illuminated the entire arena, bleaching the red sky into white.
Then, I released the sphere.
It fell with silent, terrible grace before detonating.
The explosion was not a sound, but an absence of it, a vacuum of pure force that consumed everything.
The light was absolute. When it faded, the arena was gone.
The jagged cliffs were leveled. All that remained was a vast, smoldering plain of glassed earth.
I stood at the epicenter, my body trembling violently, every nerve screaming from the backlash.
The air stank of ozone and vaporized rock.
Ding!
[Stage Five Complete. Proceed to the Next Gate.]
A new doorway appeared, this one glowing with a soft, almost gentle silver light.
It was a profound contrast to the absolute devastation I had wrought.
I took a shaky step forward, my legs threatening to buckle.
The strain was immense, a hollowed-out feeling that went deeper than bone.
With one final glance at the ruins I had created, I stepped toward the silver light.