Just as the allied forces reached the precipice of a miraculous victory, the fickle hands of fate cruelly snapped the thread of their hope. The celebratory roars of the students were instantly silenced by a suffocating pressure that descended from the heavens, a spiritual weight so immense that it forced even the Order One masters to tremble in sudden fear. The Dragon Prince, who had been observing the chaos from his hovering obsidian throne with the bored detachment of a god, finally decided to intervene. He did not shout, nor did he cast a flashy spell; he simply stepped down into the void and released the full, unbridled majesty of his cultivation base. The sky above the battlefield turned a sickly shade of purple, and the clouds swirled into a vortex of despair. With a casual flick of his finger, a shockwave of pure, condensed darkness swept across the front lines, obliterating the defensive formations that the humans had fought so hard to establish. The Sword Master Hyunbo tried to intercept the attack, but he was swatted aside like a persistent fly, crashing into a mountain face with enough force to shatter the peak. The Great Summoner's eldritch giants vaporized instantly under the Prince's gaze, and the Miracle Magician's water wave evaporated into nothingness. In a single heartbeat, the tide of battle did not just turn; it was utterly annihilated. The Dragon Prince floated above the devastation, looking down at the ants beneath him, and spoke a single word that echoed in every human mind: "Kneel." The sheer dominance of his presence shattered the morale of the army, turning their disciplined advance into a rout of screaming, terrified children who realized far too late that they were fighting a monster they could never hope to defeat.
"Impossible... he already reached step 3... it is over," Sword Master Hyunbo rasped, the despair evident in his trembling voice as he stared up at the godlike entity floating above them. The Dragon Prince's aura was an insurmountable mountain that crushed their spirits into dust. However, amidst the encroaching doom, the Great Summoner's eyes hardened with a resolve born of absolute desperation. He exchanged a solemn, knowing nod with his three companions, a silent pact that acknowledged the terrible price they were about to pay. Without a word, the Miracle Magician, the Fortune Teller, and the Sword Master flashed to his side, their bodies forming a perfect geometric formation around him. They placed their hands on his back, pouring every ounce of their remaining life force into his meridian channels. The Great Summoner bit his thumb, slamming his bloody palm onto the ancient, crumbling scroll of the God of Summoners. "With the god of summoner's treasure, I summon 9 heaven's light, fallen angel Michael!" he screamed, his voice tearing through his vocal cords. The world seemed to pause. The Dragon Prince's suffocating darkness was suddenly pierced by nine pillars of blinding, holy radiance that shot down from the troposphere. The clouds were torn asunder, revealing a gateway of pure platinum light. From within the celestial tear, a figure descended, wrapped in six magnificent wings that were not white, but a terrifying, metallic grey. Michael, the Fallen Angel, had answered the call. He stood suspended in the air, a being of breathtaking beauty and cold judgment, holding a spear of light that made the sun look dim. The sheer magnitude of his presence pushed back the Dragon Prince's aura, turning the battlefield into a standoff between two monsters of legend.
In the midst of such a dire and chaotic situation, the vindictive Xuan family had hired a ruthless mercenary to eliminate Aldo. A mysterious figure clad in black garments moved with rapid, blurring speed as he entered the dormitory hallway to observe the surroundings. He meticulously checked the area to ensure that there was absolutely no one left within the academy walls. Once he was fully convinced that the building was completely abandoned, he silently entered the room where Aldo lay unconscious. He looked down at the helpless boy and whispered menacingly, "Kid, they did not want you to die easily, so now you will spend your entire life in the agony of this poison." He retrieved a round, green medicinal pill that emitted a strong, suffocating smell of venom from his pocket. He roughly pried open the mouth of the unconscious Aldo and forced him to swallow the toxic pill. After completing his dark task, he immediately exited through the open window and vanished into the distance.
The battlefield had transformed into a veritable hellscape of absolute destruction. The sky was split between platinum light and abyssal darkness. Michael, the Fallen Angel, tore through the atmosphere, his six metallic-grey wings slicing the air with terrifying power. He hurled a spear of pure light at the Dragon Prince, a weapon moving faster than the flow of time itself.
The Dragon Prince, clad in obsidian armour, met the strike with contempt. Huge claws made of darkness collided with the holy spear, and the resulting explosion shook the entire continent to its very core. The shockwave pulverized mountain peaks located hundreds of miles away. Soldiers and students were pressed into the earth by the pressure, their hearts stopping due to the overwhelming divine aura.
"You are still just a fallen angel, nothing more!" the Prince roared, his voice resonating like thunder across the blood-soaked plains.
He dodged Michael's attacks and countered with direct strikes. They fought for hours, destroying mountains and altering river paths. Holy fire tried to melt the dark armour in vain, while the dragon's breath swallowed the angel's light with ease.
However, the situation below was dire for the human masters. The four great masters stood trembling and bleeding in the centre, sacrificing their life force to keep the angel in this world. The Great Summoner focused on maintaining the formation with grit, though he was slowly turning into a living corpse from the strain.
Suddenly, Michael managed to land a heavy blow on the Prince's chest. The Prince was pushed back, and black blood rained down. However, a savage smile appeared on his dragon face. His eyes flashed, and he saw the flow of energy—a silver thread connecting the angel to the summoner.
"I see it now," the Dragon Prince laughed, the sound chilling the marrow of all who heard it. "So you are merely a lion on a leash. If I kill the puppeteer, the puppet will fall!"
He ignored the angel entirely and dove toward the defenceless masters like a black meteorite crashing through the atmosphere.
"Stop him! Immediately!" Sword Master Hyunbo screamed with his last breath.
He swung his blade to cut the fabric of space, and the Miracle Magician created a wall of absolute frozen ice. However, the Dragon Prince shattered the sword attack with his bare hands and tore the Sword Master's body into two bloody halves. The ice wall evaporated instantly before his scorching breath. He crushed the Magician and the Fortune Teller into the ground, extinguishing three of humanity's greatest pillars in a single second.
Only the Great Summoner remained alive in the centre, kneeling in the blood of his fallen comrades. The Dragon Prince grabbed the old master's head with a massive claw.
"A valiant effort, insects," the monster said coldly. "But you chose the wrong opponent."
The Summoner looked up at the sky one last time.
"Forgive us..." he whispered.
The claw crushed his skull, and the life of the Great Summoner ended instantly. Immediately, the connection severed, causing the Fallen Angel to freeze in mid-air. Michael let out a silent scream of absolute horror. His platinum light destabilized and began to shatter into fragments. His metallic wings crumbled into dust and faded away. The chain binding him to this world was broken.
The Fallen Angel vanished completely from the dark sky. Silence reigned supreme over the devastated battlefield. The Dragon Prince stood victorious over humanity's heroes, the red fire in his eyes signifying the end of hope. Humanity's final resistance was utterly broken.
"Leave no one, absolutely no one alive; kill them all!" the Dragon Prince commanded, his voice dripping with the promise of genocide as he hovered above the ruin of humanity's leadership. The beast horde, unleashed from all restraint, surged forward like a tidal wave of flesh and fangs to execute the will of their master. The brave students and wise instructors who had marched with hope in their hearts were reduced to broken corpses in the mud, their screams silenced by the relentless advance of the monster legion. The front lines dissolved into a chaotic slaughterhouse where mercy was a forgotten concept and death was the only certainty. Out of the tens of thousands who had deployed to defend their homeland, only thirteen broken souls managed to escape the carnage, fleeing through the mountains with the screams of their dying comrades echoing in their ears. They returned to Astro Hildo, their eyes hollow and their voices trembling as they delivered the news of the total defeat and the fall of the Great Masters. The situation escalated with terrifying speed as the enemy forces swept across the land like a plague, encountering no significant resistance after the destruction of the main army. Within a single week, the glorious empire was brought to its knees, its territories seized and its people massacred without hesitation. Smoke rose from burning villages to choke the sky, and the rivers ran red with the blood of the innocent. Amidst this sea of despair, only four fortified cities remained standing to offer a flicker of resistance against the encroaching darkness. Astro Hildo, Marko Estildo, Qijunbo, and Shinfu became the last bastions of humanity, their walls battered but unbroken as they desperately held the line, praying for reinforcements that might never arrive.
A voice, ancient and familiar, resonated through the deepest recesses of his submerged consciousness, cutting through the darkness like a blade of pure light. "You know that your mission is now going to start, so as my precious student, do not let me down." The words carried the weight of destiny, anchoring his drifting soul to his physical vessel. "I gifted you a Heavenly Restriction, and your Limitless technique can manage it; my precious student, do not lose." As the final syllable faded into the void, a cataclysmic reaction detonated within his spiritual core. The twelve divine elemental energies he had forged surged like a tsunami, crashing violently against the eighteen ancient seals that had bound his soul for eons. One by one, the seals shattered under the relentless assault, releasing a torrent of primordial power that flooded every cell of his being. The Heavenly Restriction, a curse and a blessing given by his master, fully activated, interlocking with his physiology to unlock potential that defied all logic. Although he remained physically unconscious during this internal metamorphosis, his cultivation base skyrocketed past the mortal limits, ascending to a realm that no existing ranking system could possibly measure or comprehend. The air in the room warped around him, unable to withstand the sheer density of his existence, and the universe seemed to hold its breath in anticipation. His eyelids snapped open, revealing eyes that contained the depth of the cosmos and the ferocity of a newborn god. "Teacher, I am back," he whispered into the silence, his voice vibrating with an absolute, terrifying power that signaled the return of the true king.