The sky did not split this time.
It shattered.
Not like glass.
Like law.
Every hunter on Earth felt it at once — the same suffocating pressure, but magnified beyond comparison. Oceans stalled. Tectonic plates groaned. Mana currents across the planet froze mid-flow as if reality itself held its breath.
Far beyond the atmosphere—
Something descended.
Not a fragment.
Not a scout.
Not five percent.
Twenty.
Twenty percent of Antares' true authority compressed into a war-avatar.
The clouds burned away as a colossal figure formed in orbit, its silhouette carved from living annihilation. Wings of black-gold energy unfolded, each feather a blade of conceptual erasure. Where its shadow passed, satellites blinked out of existence without explosion.
It did not rush.
It did not roar.
It simply arrived.
And Earth trembled in understanding.
The Monarch Who Refused to Kneel Twice
The Blood Monarch stood alone atop the ruined skyline of Warsaw.
He felt it before he saw it.
This was not punishment.
This was correction.
He exhaled slowly.
Crimson mist spiraled from his body, pooling across streets and rising like a second atmosphere. Every living creature within thousands of miles felt their heartbeat sync momentarily with his own.
He looked toward the sky.
"So you finally take me seriously."
The war-avatar opened its eyes.
Golden suns without warmth.
Its voice was not loud.
It did not need to be.
"Deviation must be erased."
The Blood Monarch laughed.
Not arrogantly.
But honestly.
"You always were predictable, Anthony."
The name echoed across continents.
Hunters froze.
No one called Antares by another name.
The avatar's aura intensified.
Mountains in the distance cracked from gravitational distortion alone.
First Contact
The avatar extended its hand downward.
A vertical pillar of annihilation descended toward the city — not fire, not lightning, but pure subtraction.
The Blood Monarch did not dodge.
He slammed both palms into the ground.
Every drop of blood within a thousand kilometers answered.
Not stolen.
Offered.
Hunters gasped as thin crimson threads rose from their bodies — not draining them, but linking them.
The Blood Monarch's authority expanded into a planetary circulatory system.
The annihilation beam struck.
And stopped.
Held mid-descent by a sphere of condensed life-force so dense it warped space.
Buildings disintegrated at the edges, but the core held.
The ground beneath him cratered for miles.
Veins burst along his arms.
He grinned through the pain.
"You forget. Life resists."
The avatar's expression did not change.
It lowered its hand slightly.
The beam intensified.
Crimson shields fractured.
Across Europe, thousands collapsed from strain as their life-energy channeled through him.
He felt it.
All of it.
Every heartbeat.
Every fear.
Every will to survive.
And he understood something too late.
He could not win.
But he could choose how he lost.
Twenty Percent Unleashed
The avatar stepped fully into the atmosphere.
Reality peeled around it.
Air could not decide whether to exist near its presence.
With one motion, it unleashed wings of annihilation outward.
Entire sections of sky turned black.
The Blood Monarch countered by expanding upward, forming a colossal crimson titan made of condensed blood-mana.
Two conceptual giants collided above the planet.
The impact did not create sound.
It created silence.
Oceans recoiled.
Cities far away shattered from pressure alone.
The crimson titan punched first — a strike fueled by every living pulse in its range.
The avatar absorbed the blow.
Its chest cracked slightly.
But instantly repaired.
It retaliated.
One horizontal sweep.
The crimson titan's arm ceased to exist from shoulder to fingertip.
The Blood Monarch screamed — not from pain, but from strain.
He was burning through life-force too quickly.
And the avatar had not even escalated fully.
The Truth of Twenty Percent
The war-avatar raised both hands.
Above it, a sphere formed.
Black-gold.
Rotating slowly.
The size of a continent.
Hunters worldwide felt dread beyond instinct.
They understood without explanation.
If that sphere fell—
Earth would fracture.
Not explode.
Fracture.
The Blood Monarch saw it too.
And finally—
He smiled.
Because now the path was clear.
He withdrew every crimson thread from humanity at once.
Hunters collapsed as the link vanished.
The life-force did not return to them.
It condensed into him.
His body expanded, then compressed, then crystallized into something denser than any previous form.
A singularity of blood authority.
He rose alone toward the descending sphere.
The avatar observed.
"You cannot nullify annihilation."
The Blood Monarch replied calmly.
"I don't need to."
The Final Strategy
Instead of attacking the avatar—
He attacked the sphere.
He dove directly into its core.
Annihilation began consuming him instantly.
Skin peeled into nothing.
Crimson essence evaporated.
But he forced his authority outward, infecting the annihilation construct from within.
Blood is life.
But it is also memory.
He embedded his sovereign imprint into the structure of the sphere.
Turning it from pure destruction—
Into conversion.
The avatar realized too late.
The sphere destabilized.
Its annihilation matrix inverted polarity.
Instead of subtracting—
It absorbed.
The Blood Monarch's voice echoed from inside the collapsing construct.
"If I die…"
The sphere compressed violently.
"…then Earth will inherit everything."
The war-avatar surged forward.
Too late.
The sphere imploded inward, swallowing the Blood Monarch completely—
Then detonated upward.
Not as annihilation.
As release.
A wave of crimson-gold energy expanded across the planet.
Not destroying.
Rewriting.
The Bang That Shook Heaven
Forests pulsed with sudden vitality.
Oceans shimmered with stabilized mana density.
Fault lines sealed.
Atmospheric layers thickened conceptually.
Earth's evolutionary threshold jumped again — violently.
The war-avatar was thrown back into orbit by the backlash.
Its wings shattered.
One arm erased entirely.
Twenty percent faltered.
For the first time—
The avatar bled golden light.
Far beyond reality—
Antares paused.
Not in anger.
In calculation.
The Blood Monarch's existence had not merely ended.
It had been distributed.
Integrated.
Weaponized.
Against him.
The Last Words
As the crimson wave settled, a final echo lingered across the battlefield.
Not to Antares.
Not to the Monarchs.
But to humanity.
"Do not kneel."
Then—
Nothing.
No corpse.
No remnant.
Only wind.
The Aftermath
The war-avatar hovered in orbit, damaged but not destroyed.
It assessed the planet below.
Mana density increased by 17%.
Structural durability increased exponentially.
Resistance to annihilation recalculated.
The avatar's remaining wing flickered.
Mission incomplete.
It began withdrawing.
Because twenty percent was no longer sufficient for immediate erasure.
And committing more would require Antares himself to move.
Across the World
Hunters felt it.
The planet felt heavier.
Stronger.
Alive in a new way.
Jinyoung looked up at the sky, understanding fully what had happened.
The Blood Monarch had chosen extinction.
But not meaningless extinction.
He had converted his authority into planetary reinforcement.
A dead Monarch now pulsed within Earth's core.
Not ruling.
Protecting.
In the Void
Antares finally spoke.
"Sentiment."
It was not said with hatred.
It was said with curiosity.
Because something unexpected had occurred.
A Monarch had died willingly.
And weakened annihilation in the process.
He turned his gaze toward Earth.
Not angry.
Not rushed.
Just aware.
"Then I will descend personally."
The void around him fractured slightly.
Not yet.
But soon.
Very soon.
Earth had survived twenty percent.
Barely.
And it had cost a Monarch's life.
The next descent would not be partial.