Malkor—the self-proclaimed conqueror of the stars, whose dark authority had effortlessly brushed aside humanity's finest captains earlier—stumbled backward.
His feets squelched through a thick, spreading puddle of his own blood.
His magnificent dark coat was shredded into fluttering ribbons, hanging loosely off his bruised shoulders. His nose was broken at a grotesque, crooked angle, and his chest heaved in frantic, ragged, uncoordinated gasps.
For the first time since valkhyre, Malkor's eyes were wide, dilated, and shivering with a very human, very primal terror.
Elias advanced.
His ash-colored skin absorbed the flickering crimson light of his crown of flames, and his burning red eyes locked onto the conqueror with a terrifying, hollow emptiness.
He was fueled by an ocean of unadulterated rage, every muscle in his frame coiled with lethal intent.
There was no triumphant shout, no grand monologue. Just the relentless, crushing pressure of a ghost returned from the dead.
Malkor didn't wait. With a furious grunt, he thrust his hand forward, executing a sudden time lag to freeze the space immediately around Elias's knees, attempting to trap his lower body in a pocket of stagnant temporal pressure.
Elias didn't even slow down.
The moment the temporal restraint clamped down, a sharp chime rang out above his head.
The glowing inscription carved into his floating halo instantly changed, rewriting itself.
The trapped energy dissolved into crimson sparks before it could take hold, his body instantly adapted to the delayed constraint.
He closed the distance in a fraction of a second, dropping his shoulder and driving a devastating, high-speed hand-to-hand strike straight into Malkor's ribs.
*CRACK!*
Malkor gasped as the crushing impact shattered his side, sending him staggering back three paces.
He retaliated instantly, sweeping his arm in a wide arc to unleash a time-lagged shockwave directly into Elias's chest.
The shockwave hit dead-center, throwing Elias back slightly.
The force of the blow slammed into his chest, and another bright chime echoed from above as the inscriptions on his halo spun and rearranged themselves, instantly hardening his physique against the kinetic backlash.
Before Malkor could blink, Elias used the rebound to spin mid-movement.
He whipped his leg around in a vicious, high-speed roundhouse kick that caught Malkor squarely across the jaw.
*BANG!*
Teeth clicked together, and a spray of warm blood misted the open air.
Malkor caught himself against a jagged stone pillar protruding from the planet's crust, his hands glowing with dark, twisting energy as he tried to manipulate the local gravity to crush Elias down.
The gravity in the sector multiplied a thousandfold, slamming downward like an invisible mountain. The natural stone beneath Elias's boots groaned and splintered into dust, threatening to force him down onto his knees.
As the crushing pressure bit into his shoulders, another sharp chime rang from his halo. The inscriptions flared blindingly, shifting once more to counter the immense weight.
Instead of being crushed, Elias relaxed his frame, instantly redistributing the heavy gravity evenly across his entire body.
He stood straight up through the invisible mountain, locked his burning red eyes with Malkor, and sprinted forward across the cracked ground as if nothing were holding him back.
Malkor's eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated disbelief. "How?!"
Elias didn't answer. He materialized directly inside Malkor's guard, launching a blistering, high-intensity flurry of hand-to-hand combat that turned the air into a blur of red ash and flying dirt.
Left jab! Elias drove his fist straight into Malkor's cheek, snapping the conqueror's head sideways with a sickening thud.
Right hook! He followed up instantly, catching Malkor on the temple and sending him stumbling wildly off balance.
Spinning back-fist! Elias pivoted on his heel, his forearm crashing into Malkor's collarbone with bone-crunching force, fracturing the bone beneath the skin.
Knee strike! Before Malkor could recover, Elias grabbed him by the remaining shreds of his collar, yanked him forward, and drove a brutal knee straight into his stomach.
*BOOM!*
Malkor coughed up a thick torrent of blood, his eyes rolling back in absolute agony as the wind was utterly blasted from his lungs. He tried to swing wildly with a desperate, uncoordinated left hook, but Elias effortlessly ducked underneath the clumsy punch, stepping deep into Malkor's stance.
Elias grabbed Malkor by the throat with his right hand, lifting the towering conqueror completely off his feet with terrifying, overwhelming strength.
"You don't remember me, do you?" Elias whispered, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that cut through the roaring winds of the battlefield.
Malkor choked, his fingers digging frantically into Elias's ash-covered skin, his boots kicking uselessly in the open air. "Wh... what..."
" Remember this words, *you're next*" Elias said he voice cold and dangerously calm.
Malkor's breath hitched. Through the haze of pain and terror, the memory flickered—one insignificant, slaughter among billions across his endless conquering.
"I remember." Malkor wheezed out, blood bubbling from his split lips, ". But. In a universe of trillions..lives... fade like dust..."
"Then let me turn you to dust," Elias whispered, his red eyes blazing like twin fires.
Not far away from the frontline, huddled behind a natural ridge of jagged rock and exposed tree roots, the sidelines watched in stunned, breathless silence.
Renji leaned heavily against a boulder, clutching his ribs, his eyes wide as he stared at the terrifying display of dominance playing out before them. "I... I can't even process what I'm looking at," Renji muttered, shaking his head. "Malkor was untouchable. He walked through our entire attack like a ghost. And now... Elias is treating him like a ragdoll. Damn it Elias how far will you go "
Sloane knelt nearby, her hands still faintly glowing as she finished stabilizing drakye void.
She swallowed hard, her voice trembling as she watched the crimson aura pulse across the battlefield. "Renji. Look at Elias's face. That's face .... It's a face of death, what's happening to Elias?."
Nearby, NYX gripped her daggers tightly, her knuckles turning white. "He's consuming his own soul to do it," she whispered, her voice laced with deep sorrow. "Every time Malkor fights back, that halo above Elias's head... it changes. It's like his entire existence is rewriting itself on the fly just to match whatever power Malkor throws at him."
Zorin Lyx, leaning against the ground with a grimace, let out a dry, humorless chuckle. " A god killer" .
Zorin wheezed, wiping blood from his chin. " I wonder what's happened to him ".
Lyra, standing alongside Kross and Kahn with the newly arrived 9th Division reserves, watched with bated breath, tears welling in her eyes. "Can anyone even stop him right now?" she whispered, more to herself than anyone else. "Even if he wins... will there be anything left of Elias when it's over?"
Before anyone could answer, the temperature on the battlefield spiked violently.
The air itself began to warp, shimmering with a blinding, golden luminescence that pushed back the surrounding crimson shadows.
Malkor, realizing that his standard techniques, time lags, and gravity manipulations were being dismantled piece by piece by Elias's relentless evolution, decided he had no choice left.
He had to obliterate everything.
With a hoarse, guttural roar that shook the very foundations of the Moving Planet, Malkor unleashed a massive shockwave of pure, unadulterated energy from his body, forcing Elias back a dozen paces.
Malkor landed heavily on his feets, planting his feet wide apart.
His golden eyes burned with a mad, desperate fury. He tore his shredded robes completely off, casting the tattered fabric aside to reveal skin.
"No you will witness the through power of Malkor the conqueror!" Malkor screamed, his voice echoing across the entire continent-sized world. "