Lapis hovered in the magenta-tinted sky, his eyes scanning the digital flicker of Gudmaro's evolution bar. 'I have to end this now,' he thought, his pulse racing with a mix of madness and calculation. 'I'm in a comfortable spot because I've only shown him Magenta. He's adapted to that, but he hasn't seen the rest of my arsenal. I have to erase him before that timer hits zero.'
Lapis raised his left hand, and the air began to glow with a violent, searing amber light. "Antimatter Technique: ORANGE."
A beam of concentrated orange decay roared toward the virus, screaming with the sound of a thousand suns.
Gudmaro didn't flinch. He thrust his palm forward, and a massive pillar of pressurized water erupted to meet the orange beam. "HYDRO CANNON!"
The two forces collided, creating a wall of boiling steam that clouded the battlefield. Lapis's eyes widened behind his magenta glow. "What?! How are you using that technique? That belongs to the Hydro Arcon!"
Gudmaro laughed, a wet, mechanical sound. "Looks like I've completely integrated your friend's essence. I didn't just take his mana, Lapis—I took his authority."
Gritting his teeth, Lapis vanished and reappeared in Gudmaro's shadow. He went for a high-velocity strike, but Gudmaro was ready. The virus reached out and caught Lapis's leg mid-air, his grip crushing the fabric of space itself.
With a roar, Gudmaro swung a massive fist aimed directly at Lapis's face.
Lapis tilted his head, the wind of the punch whistling past his ear. Using the momentum, he channeled the lingering Antimatter Orange energy into his own fist. His hand glowed with a blinding, sunset hue as he planted a demonstrating blow directly into Gudmaro's chest.
BOOM!
A shockwave erupted that cleared the clouds for thousands of miles. The force was so immense that Gudmaro was launched like a meteor, hurtling all the way back to the original battlefield where the Northern Abyss began.
Lapis stood in the air, his fist trembling slightly. 'He's still taking it,' Lapis thought, a cold sweat breaking out. 'He absorbed the kinetic energy again. If he hadn't dampened the impact, that punch should have cut the entire Earth in half.'
[Status Window Alert]
[EVOLUTION STATUS: SECOND FORM — 98.42%]
Lapis didn't give the virus time to breathe. With a crack of displaced air, he teleported directly in front of Gudmaro's face, his hand burning with the destructive amber glow of the Antimatter Technique: Orange.
"Begone, virus!" Lapis roared, thrusting the orange sun toward Gudmaro's core.
Gudmaro didn't retreat. A twisted, mechanical grin split his face. "If you want to play with the laws of the universe, boy... then let's see how you handle your own medicine."
Gudmaro's aura turned a violent, familiar shade of purple. "Matter Technique: MAGENTA."
The collision was catastrophic. When the Antimatter Orange met the stolen Matter Magenta, it created a total annihilation event. A flash of white light blinded the entire continent. The explosion that followed was a nightmare of physics—a blast more powerful than 60 billion nuclear bombs detonating at a single point.
The shockwave tore the clouds from the sky and leveled every mountain range within five thousand miles. The ocean at the edge of the horizon was pushed back by the sheer atmospheric pressure.
As the blinding light faded, a massive sphere of warped space remained at the center of the crater. Inside, Lapis stood perfectly still, his eyes glowing with a calm, magenta fire. Not a single thread of his robe was singed. He had warped the space around his body so tightly that the 60-billion-bomb explosion had simply flowed around him, like water around a stone.
From the thick, black smoke on the other side, a heavy, metallic footstep echoed.
Gudmaro walked out of the smoldering ash, his armor glowing red-hot and his mechanical wings scorched, but his eyes were brighter than ever. He let out a raspy, triumphant chuckle.
"That..." Gudmaro said, his voice vibrating with the energy he had just absorbed, "was massive. Truly a gift, 'Gifted One.'"
[Status Window Alert]
[EVOLUTION STATUS: SECOND FORM — 99.10%]
[Scene Shift: The Northern Abyss]
Alya was screaming, her muscles tearing from the effort. Her mana was burning blue-hot, focused entirely on the tip of her blade. Finally, with a sound like a hairline fracture in a diamond, a tiny scratch appeared on the golden seal.
"I'm through!" she gasped, her eyes bloodshot. She didn't hesitate. She poured every remaining drop of her essence into a single point. "AQUA PRESSURE!"
The scratch began to glow. The prison of the Arcons was finally starting to bleed light.
[Scene Shift: The Battlefield]
Back at the crater of the 60-billion-nuke explosion, the air had turned into a vacuum. Lapis looked at the smirking virus and felt a cold, divine stillness take over his mind.
"Enough," Lapis whispered. The word didn't travel through the air; it vibrated in the fabric of reality itself.
Lapis folded his hands into a complex, ancient sign, his fingers interlocking like a puzzle. The space around them turned a deep, crushing violet.
"Domain Expansion: SPACE OF DIVINITY."
The world vanished. Gudmaro found himself suspended in a white void where "up" and "down" no longer existed. Suddenly, the virus let out a screech of agony. His celestial armor began to flake away, and his very cells began to vibrate and shatter at a molecular level. In this domain, Lapis was the law.
"I'm not done yet," Lapis said, his voice coming from everywhere at once.
In his right hand, a sphere of Matter Technique: Magenta manifested, swirling with the weight of a planet. In his left hand, the burning amber glow of Antimatter Technique: Orange ignited, screaming with the power of a dying star.
Lapis began to bring his hands together.
The two opposite forces—creation and decay—began to grind against each other. The space between his palms turned a terrifying, pitch-black color. A gravity so intense that it began to swallow the light of the domain itself started to form.
"This is the end, Gudmaro," Lapis declared, his eyes glowing with the light of the multiverse.
The two orbs touched. The screen faded to black as a high-pitched ring echoed through the void.
[Status Window - FINAL GLIMMER]
[EVOLUTION STATUS: SECOND FORM — 99.89%]