A voice, one Kaelen knew well, then spoke "Nixbolt," he said, his tone laced with a detached analytical note, "I still underestimate how strong a Six-Tier figure is."
Kaelen’s eyes widened in confusion. Before he could even form a question, a searing wave of energy shot through him. A sickening crack echoed, the sound of an eye, or perhaps a core, shattering. Kaelen looked down. A gaping hole now bore through his stomach and chest, his core within crumbling into irreparable fragments. His gaze, clouded by pain and imminent shutdown, lifted to the familiar yet utterly unfamiliar Ratman before him.
Kaelen, his vision dimming, managed a weak, rasping chuckle. "It seems you’ve been playing us this whole while." His eyes, once vibrant, flickered once more before the light within them finally extinguished.
The Ratman, or rather, Rattan, heaved, his body wracked with pain from Kaelen’s final, desperate strike. With a grunt, he pushed Kaelen’s lifeless form off him. The Cube, floating steadily beside him, pulsed with a bright flash of mana, confirming it was the true source of the finishing blow.
A complex magic circle shimmered into existence on Rattan’s palm. He pressed it against the gaping wound in his stomach, and at the expenditure of his mana, the flesh began to knit together with unnatural speed, the gruesome injury closing inch by agonizing inch.
He stared up at the desolate abyss sky, a slow, ragged chuckle building in his chest, quickly escalating into a hysterical, echoing laugh. He had survived. He had manipulated, strategized, and endured. He, Rattan, had emerged as the undisputed victor. The greatest winner of all.
"Guardian, proceed as planned," Rattan commanded, his voice raw but resolute. As he spoke, his shadow stretched out, expanding rapidly to swallow Kaelen’s lifeless figure whole. A familiar, satisfying sensation washed over Rattan.
In the now desolate, cold abyss plain, with Rattan’s figure the only one left standing, a profound shift took place. In a sickening cascade of tearing flesh and reforming bone, the Ratman’s form twisted, expanded, and solidified. Where the Ratman once stood, now loomed an Ogre—or, more accurately, the resurrected Kaelen.
Rattan, now inhabiting his new, colossal body, stretched, testing the limits of his stolen form. The mage’s robes that had adorned him moments before rippled, shedding their illusionary form to reveal their true nature: Abyssal Armor. The dark, living metal writhed and adjusted, conforming perfectly to the Ogre-like scale of Kaelen’s body, taking on the same menacing, powerful aesthetic as his original armor.
Hours earlier, when the Imperial army first breached the Abyss, it was a familiar sight of steel and screams. The earth trembled underfoot as legions clashed, a symphony of destruction resembling the countless battles that had come before. Yet, this time, a new, dissonant note joined the chorus. High above, beyond that of mortal eyes, Sixth-tier figures waged a war of their own, their immense power ripping at the very fabric of reality.
To Rattan and his demon brethren, the true nature of this celestial conflict was incomprehensible. Their senses, attuned to the immediate, the tangible, could not grasp the scale of the power being unleashed. All they registered was the sudden, horrifying shift in their world. A shadow, vast and impossibly swift, plunged from the heavens. Then, the ground convulsed as a mountain-sized rock or what felt like it obliterated a section of the battlefield, turning warriors, both Imperial and Abyssal, into paste.
Panic, cold and visceral, seized the demonic ranks. To such selfish being, this was no longer a battle; it was an annihilation. The Imperial invasion, brutal as it was, had always presented a clear objective: fight or die. But this? This was different. This was a force that didn’t care about their struggle, their goals, or their very existence. Survival, in its purest, most desperate form, became the only law. Each demon, in that moment, was striving only to escape the impossible, unseen threat.
Unfortunately for the demons, the Empire’s army was driven by a different, chilling resolve. They had come to the Abyss not merely to conquer, but to sacrifice, their lives already forfeit for the glory of the Empire. As the demonic lines fractured and began to fall back, a desperate, chaotic retreat, the Imperial legions, surprisingly intact and unyielding, pressed their advantage. They became the hunters, their disciplined pursuit turning the rout into a massacre.
But the sixth-tier figures, high above, remained utterly indifferent to the petty squabbles unfolding on the ground. Their attacks were not precision strikes; they were an overflowing of power, a careless expenditure of force that paid no mind to friend or foe. Sometimes, it was not only a mountain of stone that plummeted from the sky, but a colossal, iceberg-sized shard of pure, frozen energy, shattering landscapes and lives with equal, detached ease. To Rattan and the others, this was not war; it was the world itself, casually and inexplicably, trying to unmake them.
The mountain-sized rock, then the iceberg of ice, these were tangible horrors. But then came an attack far more insidious, one that defied perception. Without warning, an unseen force descended, a sudden, crushing increase in pressure. It wasn’t a physical impact, but as if the very air had solidified and tightened. Around Rattan, demons and Imperial soldiers alike buckled. Their armor groaned, then warped. Flesh bulged, eyes bulged, and within seconds, those caught in the immediate area were squeezed into pulp, a sickening mess of meat and shattered bone. There were no screams, only the wet, grotesque sounds of bodies collapsing inward.
Witnessing this, any lingering spark of arrogance within Rattan, his confidence in his own survival, was utterly extinguished. The thought that he could safely navigate this war, seemed ludicrous. He understood, with a chilling clarity, that compared to the beings in the sky, his continued existence or his demise held absolutely no meaning. He was an ant, caught in the wake of gods.
Rattan found himself in this churning, meat-strewn mess, thrown left and right by unseen forces, by the concussive echoes of distant impacts, and by the desperate scramble of others. Sometimes, he lashed out with his own attacks, a reflex to defend against a perceived threat, a desperate attempt to create space in the chaos. Other times, it was simply to push himself further from the epicenters of the invisible annihilation.
Amidst the pandemonium, the sheer overwhelming numbers of the demonic horde began to take their toll on the Imperial army. Though disciplined, they were finite, and the Abyss, it seemed, was limitless in its monstrous inhabitants. Slowly, brutally, the Imperial lines buckled and broke. The demons, despite the unseen horrors, now turned their full, desperate might on their earthly invaders, and one by one, the Empire’s soldiers were taken care of their final cries swallowed by the monstrous roar of the Abyssal host.
By this time, Rattan, his spirit broken and his instincts screaming for survival, had hidden himself beneath a pile of corpses. He lay motionless, praying to whatever powers might listen that he would remain unseen, especially by the victorious demons now swarming over the fallen Imperial troops.
Unknown to Rattan, a primal shift occurred within the demonic ranks once the Imperial army, which had been holding them back, was fully dealt with. The immediate threat gone, their bloodlust gave way to a deeper, more profound terror. They forsaked the ritualistic pulling out of souls, the leisurely feeding on flesh. All that mattered was escape from this battlefield. The unseen attacks from above, the crushing pressure, the random, landscape-altering impacts these were not the signs of a war they could win, but a place where existence itself was a precarious gamble.
The demons, for all their savagery, understood they were under heavy risk staying around. The Abyss, their home, had become a death trap. It was at this precise moment of frantic, uncharacteristic retreat that Lyra, a figure whose presence suggested a connection beyond the immediate conflict, felt a deep, bone-chilling wave of cold spread throughout this entire Abyss layer, an ominous ripple from the impossible conflict raging in the heavens. The casual destruction had intensified, and this layer itself was beginning to feel its chill.
The chill began subtly, a creeping sensation that Rattan, huddled beneath the gruesome blanket of corpses, initially dismissed as a natural consequence of the Abyss’s oppressive atmosphere. But it intensified, an unnatural, gnawing cold that sank into his bones, far beyond the ordinary bite of the void. He shivered, trying to burrow deeper, yet the frigid embrace only tightened until it became utterly unbearable. With a desperate heave, he pushed himself up from under the corpses, gasping, his breath clouding in the sudden, profound cold.
What he saw next rooted him to the spot, his body locked in a violent tremor. The head of the corpse he’d just been hiding beneath began to freeze over, frost blooming like a macabre flower across its lifeless features. He tore his gaze away, scanning the chaotic landscape. The retreating backs of the demons, previously a tide of terrified flight, were now frozen in their steps, grotesque statues mid-stride, their desperate cries silenced, their forms encased in glittering ice.