The air around the Knight thickened, humming with a pressure that made each breath a conscious effort.
Its new blade, a greatsword of devouring shadow, seemed to bleed darkness into the very space around it.
I could feel its edge from here, a cold promise against my skin.
I didn't wait. Hesitation was death.
Lightning answered my call, not as separate bolts, but as a continuous, roaring downpour.
The arena became a canvas of blinding white light and deafening thunder.
Bolts struck the glassy floor, fracturing it into a spiderweb of cracks, hurling shards like black diamonds into the void.
But the Knight was a ghost. It flowed through the storm as if the cataclysm were a gentle rain, its movements a silent, terrifying ballet.
It closed the gap between us in the space of a heartbeat.
The dark blade swept toward my torso. I twisted, but not enough.
The edge grazed my side, a line of ice-cold fire that seared through my hoodie and into the flesh beneath.
I gasped, stumbling back, and retaliated with a raw burst of lightning from my palm.
The energy hit the Knight square in the chest, punching another hole through the pulsing scales.
The darkness within writhed, knitting the armor back together, but slower this time.
The impact forced the creature back a step. A single step.
It was enough. The Knight raised its massive blade high.
The air around the weapon darkened, coalescing into a sphere of absolute nothingness.
Then, it unleashed it. Not a slash, but a wave.
A silent, expanding ring of negation that caused the very Null to shudder.
The ground rumbled, and for a terrifying second, I felt the fabric of this reality crack. Then, an eerie, profound silence fell.
The message was clear. The gloves were off.
I was a worthy opponent, and it would not hold back.
A grim smile touch my lips
Now this is a challenge.
I closed my eyes. I stopped trying to control the power and instead dove into it, sinking deep into the infinite well within.
The mana wasn't a stream; it was an ocean, and I was the hurricane.
When I opened my eyes, the world was tinged with blue.
Lightning didn't crackle around me, it was me.
It danced across my skin, arced from my fingertips, set my hair standing on end with its static charge.
The ground at my feet glowed with trapped energy, and the air thickened with the smell of a world about to be born, or destroyed.
I didn't attack. I simply… let go.
The storm that answered was not an attack.
It was an event. Bolts of lightning, each as thick as an ancient tree, lanced down in a continuous, deafening barrage.
They didn't just strike; they unmade. The Knight, for the first time, recoiled.
Its fluid movements became jerky, desperate.
My lightning has transcended it speed.
It was forced into a retreat, its dark blade deflecting blasts of energy that cratered the ground where it stood.
I advanced, a conduit of pure annihilation. The obsidian spires, which had survived the first storm, vaporized under the onslaught.
The glassy floor melted and boiled away. The Knight's armor cracked, then erased under the relentless punishment.
It fell to its knees, its blade breaking apart into motes of shadow.
But a cold, logical part of my mind, the part that had learned the rules of this hellish place, refused to relent.
It regenerated before. From a hole through its core.
That kind of healing isn't natural. It can recover from erasure of body, existence, mind, and concept.
If I stopped, even for a second, it probably would come back. Whole. Stronger.
So I didn't stop.
The storm raged on, my control slipping, the power becoming a wild, indiscriminate holocaust.
My lightning was no longer just destroying it; It was transcending, and destroying the very concept of it being capable of regenerating, then scouring the Forgotten Knight existence.
The Knight's form disintegrated under the torrent, the darkness of its body scattering like ash in a gale.
But still, I poured more power into the place where it had been.
The arena could take no more. With a final, groaning shudder, the ground beneath my feet gave way, the entire structure collapsing into a swirling vortex of nothingness.
The act of destruction broke the fever dream of my rage.
I stood panting on a small, floating island of debris, the last arcs of lightning fizzling out around me.
Below was an infinite drop. The Knight was gone. Truly gone. The arena was a memory.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of my ragged breathing and the faint crackle of dying energy.
Then, the chime.
Ding!
[Stage Seven Complete. Proceed to the Gate.]
A doorway swirled into existence before me, its light a soft, almost gentle gold.
An invitation to an even greater unknown.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, the scent of ozone clinging to me.
With a final glance at the smoldering ruin I had created, I stepped through the gate.