Just as the Leviathan King prepared to descend upon Freya and crush her body, Vlad dashed from the crater, his heart beating once more and filling him with energy one final time. He grabbed the Leviathan King from behind, tightening his grip over the monster’s torso. The Xaos King’s eyes blazed with raw wrath and hatred, yet a gentle smile appeared on his lips as he glanced down at the Viking princess lying on the ground.
"I wish we had more time."
Freya could have sworn she heard those words in her mind, though Vlad’s lips never moved. Something about the conviction in his gaze and the silent heartbreak in his expression conveyed that unspoken message more powerfully than sound.
"ARRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"
An unearthly scream of rage tore from Vlad’s throat as if he channeled the vengeful spirits of all who had perished in the vast war ravaging the continent. At that precise moment, the Inferno Comet Runic Set etched across his flesh began to glow with searing intensity. Flames, lightning, and surges of pure destructive force danced around Vlad’s frame. In the next instant, he propelled himself and the Leviathan King into the sky at a shocking velocity.
From every corner of the battlefield, eyes turned toward the sight: a fiery pillar, like a shooting star of flame and lightning, soared higher and higher into the heavens. Its ascent generated sonic boom after sonic boom, each burst of compressed air marking another threshold broken. The force of their climb shook the atmosphere, surpassing Mach 10 with terrifying ease!
The Leviathan King struggled with every ounce of its power, trying to break free of Vlad’s vise-like grip. Yet the young man refused to relent, all his remaining power and determination fueling this last desperate maneuver.
After nearly a minute of explosive flight, they reached Terra’s exosphere! At that extreme boundary between planet and space, Vlad’s grip on the Leviathan King finally slipped for a heartbeat. The monster momentarily found freedom and attempted to use its propulsion to dash away into the near-vacuum. Vlad, however, refused to let it escape. He lunged, catching the Leviathan King’s left shoulder with his hand, and began to strike it relentlessly as they both started their plummet back down.
"AHHHHH!" The Leviathan King howled in agony as the intense heat of atmospheric reentry scorched its back and limbs. Yet, even while enveloped in the fiery sheaths of air friction, it struck back at Vlad, the force of those counterpunches enough to snap bones.
The Xaos King only responded with a vicious, bloodied grin. He took blow after blow with a grim acceptance, continuing to pummel the monstrous king with his right arm until the bones there began to fracture. Then, running out of usable limbs, he resorted to ramming his own skull against the Leviathan King’s, slamming headbutt after headbutt into the creature’s brow. The monster finally reeled, disoriented by Vlad’s impossible tenacity!
At that point, the Leviathan King’s resistance seemed to dwindle. Vlad closed his eyes for just a second. In that fleeting pause, countless faces rushed through his mind: a small yellow cat, a fierce young woman, a tiny white dog, a steely man with white hair, and many more. All those who fought and bled with him. All those who trusted him to deliver humanity from this final, apocalyptic threat. The images faded, replaced by unwavering resolve in his reopening eyes.
"INFERNO COMET!" The runes covering Vlad’s body flared like a second sun, a blinding radiance engulfing the pair as they careened earthward. Merging the unstoppable drag of gravity with his last vestiges of strength, Vlad dove with the Leviathan King, their speed rising higher and higher. Like a blazing comet of doom, they accelerated uncontrollably toward the ground.
Across the battlefield, humans and Leviathans alike gaped at the descending star of flame and lightning, unable to tear their eyes away. Gouts of fire trailed from Vlad’s battered body, and the Leviathan King locked in his unstoppable grip as they fell to the planet below. At the last instant, they collided with the upper portion of the obsidian obelisk.
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!"
The impact birthed a devastating explosion—an incalculable surge of pure fire that flooded the entire sky with blinding brilliance. A colossal shockwave roared outward, splitting the ground for countless meters, flattening structures, and sending molten shards of obsidian whistling through the air. For an instant, daylight was eclipsed by an inferno of cataclysmic intensity, flames reaching high into the heavens in a monstrous, roiling fireball. The upper half of the obelisk was simply disintegrated, colossal chunks reduced to smoldering fragments as the impact cratered the earth deep below. Luckily, the explosion took place thousands of meters above the ground, or else who knew how many would have died.
"SHRIKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!"
A nightmarish, guttural shriek echoed across the battlefield. No matter its rank or power, every Leviathan began trembling in agony. Some of them bled from their eyes as though they had suffered a psychic blow. Indeed, the destruction of half the obsidian obelisk unleashed a catastrophic shock through the Leviathan Race’s collective consciousness. The hive mind itself shuddered in torment. And for the human army, that spelled fantastic news. But even that felt secondary as all human eyes focused on the two flaming figures blasted into the ground.
Jormungandr and Ouroborus found their monstrous adversaries easy prey. Yet neither the small yellow cat nor wolf minded the powerless creatures in their midst; they raced instead toward the crater where two blazing forms had just crashed to earth.
Upon arriving, the small yellow cat and the white werewolf first saw the Leviathan King. Its body was so mangled it was hardly recognizable. The monster’s neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, half its head missing, and the remainder of its body battered to the point where bones jutted from all angles. The light in the Leviathan King’s eyes was extinguished. A moment later, a monstrous surge of Origin Force erupted from it, dividing into three streams—one massive, one smaller, and one tiny.
Jormungandr and Ouroborus followed the largest current of power and found Vlad. The scene that confronted them chilled their blood: Vlad lay prone on the devastated earth, his arms entirely gone, his left leg missing, and his chest caved in beyond recognition. The surrounding rock and soil were scorched black, reeking of sulfur and charred flesh. Shock and dread widened the eyes of the two Sky Seed Depravitas.
They flashed to Vlad’s side and stared, horrified, into the young man’s face as his eyes lost focus. The fading spark in his gaze flickered, on the verge of vanishing. Their A.I. Chip scans confirmed their worst fears: Vlad’s heart had been obliterated, shredded beyond any possibility of repair.