Absolute reality descended upon Mercyros.
The almighty Monolith, the supreme governor of an entire conceptual branch of human commerce, received a direct, physical blow.
The red fist traveled straight through the empty air and slammed violently into the golden barrier. The divine shield shattered into invisible dust before the physical impact even fully registered.
The devastating strike connected solidly with the exact center of the deity's chest.
The resulting kinetic explosion completely defied all known logic.
Mercyros was punched so incredibly hard that his massive physical form launched backward at terrifying speed.
The deity tore through three giant solid marble columns. The impact pulverized the ancient stone into fine, useless powder.
He crashed entirely through the elevated stone platforms. His ruined, glowing figure finally embedded itself deep inside the rocky face of a distant, artificial mountain located at the very edge of the domain.
The deafening boom of the final impact echoed endlessly across the red-tinted chamber. Large chunks of rock rained down from the ceiling.
Ayame had been released from temporary stasis, stood completely wide-eyed amidst the settling dust. She stared at the total destruction with sharp shock.
"He broke a god," Ayame stated plainly.
Arthur remained resting heavily on his armored knees. He looked directly at the red mist swirling around the victorious figure. He offered a genuine, deeply exhausted smile.
His stric posture finally melted away completely.
Arthur closed his eyes slowly and collapsed forward onto the cold stone floor.
Absolute clarity had finally arrived amongst their complete hopelessness.
Lucid had arrived. The solid marble platform swayed dangerously under his feet. The thick stone cracked loudly as he shifted his weight.
The structural failure sent deep, jagged fissures running across the entire foundation, tearing apart the ancient masonry.
The ambient noises of the surrounding environment vanished entirely. The constant, demanding voice of Alice inside his mind became completely muffled, eventually fading into absolute silence.
Lucid felt a raw surge of physical energy coursing through his body.
This internal power felt completely unlike anything he had ever experienced during his training.
He accessed the immediate memories of his recent banishment. He remembered the dark nebula of pulverized dust and highly condensed star matter.
The dimensional rift had ripped his physical body apart.
The extreme gravity had stretched his muscles and torn his cellular structure down to the molecular level.
He did not perish in the dark vacuum.
He tilted his head slowly to the right. His neck bones popped with a sharp, mechanical sound that echoed across the ruined platform. He focused his vision on the hovering deity in the distance.
"You wanted to show mercy," Lucid stated calmly, his voice projecting clearly across the distance. "You claimed it was too expensive for us to afford. I will pay that exact price for you right now. You are absolutely dead."
Arthur watched the boy from the distant debris. The veteran paladin tightened his grip on his heavy weapon and evaluated the shifting battlefield.
"Hold your current ground," Arthur commanded, his voice friendly but laced with undeniable authority. "Do not interfere with his forward trajectory. He operates on a completely different physical scale now. We must observe and provide tactical support only if he requests it."
Ayame stood nearby, wiping a thick streak of blood from her chin. She stared at Lucid with blunt, sharp calculation. She analyzed his movements with cold precision.
"His physical mass is completely wrong," Ayame observed coldly. "He currently moves with the momentum of a solid mountain, but he accelerates rapidly like a fired bullet."
The air directly in front of Lucid rippled violently. A massive, glowing clock face manifested between the boy and the deity. Mercyros initiated a powerful temporal stasis spell.
The divine magic attempted to freeze the localized space around the anomaly, halting the flow of time to trap the boy.
Lucid did not attempt to evade the magical attack. He simply planted his back foot and drove his right fist straight forward into the exact center of the spell.
The sheer kinetic output of his physical punch shattered the magical construct instantly.
The invisible barrier forming around the clock collapsed into useless, scattering sparks that faded quickly into the red mist.
Mercyros floated upward from the ruined rubble. The deity reached his dark hand into the empty space and tore the actual fabric of the dimension.
He pulled backward and brandished a massive, glowing metal blade from the spatial tear. Lucid pushed off the broken platform.
His legs generated a massive shockwave that turned the stone beneath him into fine dust. He dove straight up through the red sky to meet the deity.
Lucid did not possess the magical ability to fly. He relied entirely on raw physical power and extreme durability.
He kicked against the floor up to the empty atmosphere.
He expelled so much downward force that the ambient air compressed into a temporary solid surface beneath his soles. He stepped heavily on the compressed oxygen and launched himself higher.
He moved with impossible speed, treating the open sky exactly like a solid staircase.
He appeared directly in front of Mercyros in a fraction of a second. Lucid unleashed a massive barrage of punches. His fists tore through the air, breaking the sound barrier repeatedly.
The rapid strikes formed a wide, chaotic sprawl of simultaneous attacks. The blunt force trauma crushed the head of the deity entirely.
The next immediate impact pulverized the right shoulder of the Monolith into a fine golden mist.
Lucid halted his rapid assault and waited suspended in the air. He stomped his right boot against the empty sky, creating another loud sonic boom that kept his heavy body elevated above the ruins.
Mercyros rapidly reassembled his broken anatomy.
The golden mist condensed and reformed the missing divine tissue within a single heartbeat. The deity seized the momentary pause and swung his massive metal blade horizontally.
The sharp edge struck Lucid squarely in the center of his chest.
The heavy weapon simply bounced off his hardened skin, emitting a loud metallic ring that vibrated across the chamber.
Lucid reached out and touched the flat side of the steel blade with his open palm. He injected his newly acquired gravitational power directly into the weapon.
The sword instantly gained the intense gravitational pull of a small planet.
The sudden, localized weight dragged Mercyros violently forward, completely ruining the perfect balance of the deity.
Lucid twisted his body sideways in the air. He delivered a brutal, sweeping kick directly into the center of the chest of the deity.
The physical impact clearly drove all the air out of the lungs of Mercyros, assuming the divine entity actually required oxygen to function.
The Monolith staggered backward through the red sky, struggling to maintain his levitation.
Mercyros recovered his posture with supernatural speed. The deity swung his heavy sword upward in a desperate, reverse arc.
The intense red aura covering the body of Lucid gave way for a single fraction of a second. The sharp blade cut deeply into the left shoulder of Lucid.
Dark red blood spilled downward into the swirling mist below.
"I am currently afflicted by six major curses placed upon me by my own brethren," Mercyros announced, his voice booming with perfect authority. "Do not think highly of yourself based on this initial exchange. You are merely fighting a severely restricted god."
Lucid registered the physical damage.
His left arm had been successfully cut. However, the specific scene Mercyros observed was a complete optical illusion.
The deity watched the bleeding boy suspended in the air for a brief moment before the image began falling rapidly toward the ground.
The falling body suddenly vanished entirely. It was a physical afterimage. Lucid had traveled with such extreme velocity that he left a solid visual remnant behind to absorb the counterattack.
Something incredibly sharp pierced the lower abdomen of Mercyros. The deity looked downward in shock.
The real Lucid stood right in front of him, slightly below his field of vision. Lucid had driven his bare hand directly through the dense divine flesh.
Thick, liquid gold exited the abdomen and spilled rapidly over the wrist and forearm of the boy.
Lucid withdrew his bloody hand and launched himself upward again.
He grabbed the thick neck of the Monolith, placing the massive deity in a brutal, inescapable chokehold.
He wrapped his powerful legs tightly around the colossal divine body to strictly limit the movement of the upper torso.
He applied maximum physical pressure, attempting to choke the air completely out of the god.
Mercyros did not panic under the physical restraint.
The deity remained entirely cold and calculated. The Monolith announced a final, devastating countermeasure with absolute certainty.
"Heavens Impact," Mercyros commanded loudly.
Absolute reality immediately descended upon Lucid.
The conceptual weight of an entire dimension crushed downward to erase him permanently from existence.
The divine attack bypassed physical durability completely and directly targeted the fundamental laws of nature binding his atomic structure.
A normal human would have disintegrated instantly under the pressure of the spell.
Lucid stood his ground against reality itself. He had absorbed the internal mechanics of a collapsing star.
The physical reality inside a singularity operated on a completely different set of rules than the outside universe.