There was no other choice. These creatures were the ones who broke the code of honor first. And in his very blood flowed the hunger for victory!
But right now, the situation was not so simple that he could freely unleash Wind Spirit Moon Shadow.
The warriors were still locked in battle with the Astel creatures.
No matter what kind of power he used—even the storm itself, which was the force he commanded most deeply—if magnified through Wind Spirit Moon Shadow, it would inevitably sweep them all into the aftermath.
So he had to drive them away first. They needed to leave, and leave far, far away.
Most of the warriors were obedient, for they knew well enough that lingering here would be of no help.
Bernahl and the so-called Old Knight had already lost interest in this fight and departed long before.
But Blaidd and Iron Fist Alexander were unwilling to retreat.
And beyond them, there were still others—Leda, Freya, and the like who refused to go.
They had stepped in to take the place of the weaker fighters, circling close to Astel and keeping it contained.
Lucian understood their goodwill, and his opinion of them rose greatly.
But still, again and again, he raised his voice in harsh command, ordering them to withdraw.
When they still showed no sign of yielding, Lucian sighed heavily.
The warriors of the Lands Between were truly brimming with martial spirit. If only they were not so stubborn.
Clashing with Astel even as he spoke, Lucian called out once more, his tone sharper than before:
"Go! Leave this to me! I have my own way to destroy them!"
"I possess a secret art that can raise my strength in an instant—but if I use it, I will not be able to keep its force from striking you down as well."
"If you keep tangling yourselves with Astel here, you will only die meaningless deaths in the aftershocks!"
"So go! Go as far as you can, as quickly as you can!"
Hearing him speak so, the group hesitated, their hearts still heavy with misgivings. But surely Lucian had no reason to deceive them.
So, one by one, they seized their moments and drew away from Astel's reach.
At last, only Leda remained nearby, still holding one of the Astel creatures in check.
With graceful leaps and nimble dodges, she lured that Astel closer and closer to Lucian.
Turning her head, she cast him a soft blessing:
"Lord of Storms, may you find success."
Lucian gave a firm nod, and in his heart his esteem for this Needle Knight of Miquella grew all the more.
"Thank you."
Having dragged the other Astel close, Leda at last slipped away.
That Astel still tried to give chase, but how could Lucian possibly allow it?
With a bellow, he once more invoked the Starscourge, pulling both Astel creatures into the grip of gravity.
The colossal greatsword of shattered stars came crashing down, striking against the lashing tail of one Astel.
But even taking the blow head-on, the tail showed only cracks, nothing more.
Though Astel's bone-like body was not indestructible, those chains of orbs around it were incomparably resilient.
Another tail whipped across Lucian's body, hurling him through the air.
He tried to call on the storm mid-flight, to steady his posture—but one Astel had already flickered into place behind him.
Its massive hand struck him squarely, and the dark vibrations surged unrestrained throughout his body.
In an instant, his organs tore and ruptured under the shock, and his whole body was flung away like a cannonball.
Waiting for him ahead was a mouth already brimming with charged sorcery.
A beam of violet light lanced out, straight toward him as he hung in the sky.
Lucian shrank his form at the last instant, letting the blast graze past by the narrowest of margins.
This time Astel had poured tremendous mana into its attack; the ray carved across the heavens and in an instant erased the distant sand dunes.
Feeling the searing energy brush past his very skin, Lucian broke into a cold sweat.
Without a flask of crimson tears at hand, a single direct hit could mean the end.
He cast a glance at the host of warriors still sprinting away into the distance.
They had already gone far, but not far enough.
Taking a deep breath, he let his falling momentum carry him downward, swinging heavily at the gaping maw waiting below.
"You want to devour me? You don't have that skill!"
His twin blades locked against Astel's jaws in a contest of strength, but almost at once he abandoned the struggle.
For within its throat, that Astel was once again gathering violet radiance, and its tail was already thrusting forward.
The instant he landed, the other Astel flickered into place, its arms sweeping through the air and leaving a river of starlit sorcery behind.
Raising the Starscourge Greatswords in a crossing guard, Lucian just barely managed to block the ensuing blast.
Seeing how doggedly he resisted, both Astel creatures grew agitated, their maws unleashing shrill, grating cries.
Then one Astel flickered high into the sky, coiling its body as a vast void portal unfurled above it.
On the ground, the other pressed all six of its hands against the land, its body blazing with bright violet power.
It tore its hands free and shrieked piercingly—and in that instant, the land for hundreds of meters around was caught within a field of gravity sorcery.
Lucian braced himself, ready to pit Starscourge against the pull of that force.
But to his surprise, the magic did not crush him with weight—it robbed him of it entirely.
His body lost all gravity, rising helplessly along with the sand and stone as Astel lifted everything into the air.
And above, the yawning void poured forth meteor after meteor, falling in a storm that filled the sky.
The heavens themselves seemed to burn as the countless meteors rained down—none could doubt the devastation this would bring.
This was Astel's ultimate killing art.
Lucian had only just begun to adjust to the sudden weightlessness, preparing to hurl himself clear with the storm.
But at that very moment, the Astel below slammed its palms down again, and with it, an opposite force of crushing gravity smothered him.
The abrupt swing from weightless to crushing nearly broke him outright. He could barely move.
"...Hah. So be it."
"If anyone has yet to escape this range, I can only wish them luck."
'Wind Spirit Moon Shadow!'
'Super Damage—release!'
Clang!
The Starscourge Greatswords in his hands blazed with a light fiercer than ever before.
The sheer surge of gravitational power seared Astel's sensory organs in an instant.
Lucian raised the twin blades high and roared toward the sky.
"You fought well just now. But now—it's my turn!"
Violet radiance flared outward from the blades, engulfing nearly the whole of the Wailing Dunes.
Under that supreme weight, everything was forced into stillness.
The yawning void sealed shut at once, meteors hanging frozen in mid-air.
The Astels too were immobilized, straining to break free with their own gravity but finding even their mana locked down.
Lucian exhaled deeply, guiding the gravitational pull to drag them before him.
The moment the thought formed in his mind, both Astel creatures—and all the suspended meteors, were drawn together.
Their bodies slammed down before him, only to be held motionless once more.
Blinding radiance enveloped the Starscourge. Without flourish, without hesitation, Lucian brought the blades down.
A vast orb of light erupted upon the Wailing Dunes, casting a violet glow across the night sky.
Stars glittered in the darkness above—and then the world itself seemed to convulse as the explosion tore everything apart.
A cataclysmic torrent of power vented outward, reducing all nearby to nothing but dust.
Purple lightning of gravity shot skyward, bursting like a thousand fireworks that lit the heavens, but within them was only annihilation.
The dunes cracked open, stone plates shattering and rising into the air, then disintegrating piece by piece into nothingness.
The shockwave swept everything flat.
At last, a towering violet column pierced the heavens, tearing through the clouds before slowly fading.
The two Astels were obliterated in an instant, leaving behind only a vast crater kilometers wide.
The blast had punched through the lands itself, and at the crater's floor, seawater began to surge forth.
Lucian let out a long breath, leaping down into the pit to collect the shattered remnants of Amber Starlight.
That golden amber had not survived intact beneath such a blow. That any fragments remained at all was surprising.
But those few shards were nothing compared to the whole, shining orbs that had existed before.
Still—it was something. Better than nothing.
Gazing upon the fragments, Lucian recalled the words his teacher Sellen had once spoken:
"The so-called glintstone is but amber formed of the stars."
For those sorcerers born from the tradition of stargazers, the heavens were their source of all strength.
Even these amber shards of starlight would be enough to drive the sorcerers of the Lands Between into frenzy.
Golden amber, infused with the remnants of primordial life, held the ultimate power sought by sorcerers.
And the complete amber within a full-grown Astel—such a thing had never once been seen in the Lands Between.
Were it known to exist, sorcerers would tear one another apart to possess it.
For almost no one in these lands even knew of the full-grown Astel.
There had only ever been two used as divine punishment: the "Naturalborn of the Void" and the "Stars of Darkness".
After they laid waste to the Eternal Cities, they vanished without a trace.
What the people saw instead were incomplete forms—the Fallingstar Beasts, the Full-Grown Fallingstar Beasts, the Malformed Star.
But none of those bore golden amber; their bodies were colorless.
Only a true, mature Astel carried the radiant hues of the starry sky.
If Sellen could see complete golden amber, surely it would aid her in her quest to find the primeval source.
For the sorcerer's staff and sorcerer's stone—those "crystals", were but crude imitations of the life of the stars themselves. How could they compare to a true cosmic being?
Even the youngest Fallingstar Beast, in its lifeform alone, was closer to the stars than any crafted stone of men.
And if one held the golden amber, imbued with the ancient life of a star-born race—then surely Sellen would no longer desire to merge with those two masters into a grotesque sorcerer's ball.
But that was a matter for when he had a whole, unbroken amber in hand.
For now, even these fragments might still aid his teacher, if only a little.
Pocketing the shards, Lucian vaulted free of the crater, now swiftly filling with seawater.
Suddenly, a strange sense overtook him, and he lifted his gaze to the night sky.
In an instant, his consciousness was projected into the distant stars.
When he came to, he stood surrounded by them.
With Wind Spirit Moon Shadow amplifying his gravity sorcery, its power had reached unprecedented heights—greater even than Radahn's.
And so, from amidst the stars, a single celestial body had called out to him.
Around him was nothing but boundless darkness.
There was silence absolute, in which his own being seemed to grow small, his "self" continually eroded away.
The cosmos was strewn with dying stars, faded and useless.
Only endless darkness, eternal and unchanging.
The far-off stars dotted that silence, but each one veiled, as if hidden behind a shroud.
Lucian could glimpse only their vague outlines.
One star shone blood-red, indistinct yet unmistakably writhing.
The Formless Mother—he knew her at once.
Another was cloaked in shadow, flickering and illusory, its nature unknowable.
And there was the moon, shifting phases—yet almost always full or darkened, with the black moon appearing only in rare, fleeting moments.
But none of these were the ones that had summoned him here.
For Lucian's eyes had fallen upon a star that glowed with dim white light.
It was small among its kin, almost insignificant—but from it radiated searing heat, and the very gravity around it bent the space nearby.
Though he had little knowledge of the heavens, this star's nature was plain enough.
If his understanding was true, then surely this was what one should call—a White Dwarf.
The life of a star spent, its core collapsing, its temperature soaring.
Burned out, all that remained was the smoldering core—the White Dwarf.
Low in brightness, blazing in heat, immense in density.
Its surface gravity said to be a hundred thousand times that of the earth…
—
[T/N: Fun Fact Below, you can read everything if you're interested about the White Dwarf.]
A White Dwarf is the dense, Earth-sized remnant core of a star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel, representing the final evolutionary stage for stars with masses not high enough to become neutron stars or black holes, which includes over 97% of stars in the Milky Way. These objects are supported against gravitational collapse not by fusion, but by electron degeneracy pressure, a quantum mechanical effect where electrons resist being compressed into the same state. White Dwarfs typically have a mass comparable to the Sun but are compressed into a volume similar to Earth, resulting in extreme densities—around 10⁹ kg/m³, meaning a teaspoon of their material would weigh several tonnes on Earth. They are initially very hot, with surface temperatures exceeding 100,000 K, but gradually cool over billions of years, radiating their residual heat until they become cold, dark remnants known as Black Dwarfs, though the universe is not old enough for any to exist yet. The nearest known White Dwarf is Sirius B, located 8.6 light-years away.
White Dwarfs are composed primarily of carbon and oxygen (CO white dwarfs), though those formed from more massive progenitors (7–9 solar masses) can be oxygen-neon-magnesium (ONeMg) white dwarfs, and very low-mass stars may form helium white dwarfs through mass loss in binary systems. The maximum stable mass for a non-rotating white dwarf is the Chandrasekhar limit, approximately 1.44 times the mass of the Sun; exceeding this limit can trigger a Type Ia supernova. Initially very hot, white dwarfs gradually cool over billions of years, radiating their residual heat. As they cool, their material may crystallize into a solid state, potentially forming a diamond-like structure of carbon and oxygen. The oldest known White Dwarfs still radiate at several thousand kelvins, providing an observational limit on the age of the universe.
Astronomers have detected rocky debris, including silicon, in the atmospheres of some White Dwarfs, indicating they have accreted material from destroyed planets, moons, or asteroids. This process, driven by the white dwarf's strong gravity, provides insights into planetary systems around dead stars. The first white dwarfs were discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries through observations of binary star systems, with 40 Eridani B and Sirius B being the first confirmed. The term "white dwarf" was coined by Willem Jacob Luyten in 1922. While white dwarfs are among the densest known objects, surpassed only by neutron stars and black holes, they are not as dense as black holes.