Word spread fast at the Grand Observatory Hall. First it was a few Psychic Fire Eye Clan disciples leaning over Dimitri's viewing orb… then a dozen curious spectators… then dozens more. By the time the murmurs reached the far hall, hundreds had clustered in, their whispers sharpening into gasps and low curses as they saw what Dimitri was fighting.
A Disaster Eye.
A colossal floating eyeball, the size of a warship, its surface sheathed in craggy stone plates that pulsed with ancient heat. From the top of its head erupted hundreds of writhing serpents, each one hissing in perfect, terrible unison.
The viewing orb shimmered, showing its stats for those who could read them:
HP: 500,000
Resist: 5,000
Strength: 13,000
Abilities: Physical Slam, Flame Breath, Restore, Stone Torch, Fire Lance, Poison Blow, Prismatic Missile.
Weakness: None.
"That thing's a nightmare…" one Iron Fang disciple muttered. "Not just a nightmare — a battlefield commander," another replied grimly. "It can bring allies back from the dead. Kill it too slow, and you're fighting its whole army again." Onscreen, Dimitri darted between boulders as the serpents lashed downward like whips, hissing jets of venom that sizzled against the stone.
The Disaster Eye's Flame Breath blasted out in three rolling waves — unblockable, each one slamming the ground hard enough to melt the sand into glass. Dimitri's vitality-consuming mind flames burned along his arms, his eyes were alight with eerie gold fire. He spun in place, snapping his fingers — a serpent burst into psychic fire, writhing into ash! Then the boss retaliated — the central pupil locked on him, and with a searing blink, it unleashed a Stone Torch beam.
The crowd gasped as the beam washed over Dimitri, turning the plant life around him around him to brittle grey statues. He slipped free by a hair's breadth, cloak smoking, grinning like a madman. The Disaster Eye shuddered, then unleashed Prismatic Missiles, sending a volley of holy stars through the trees, narrowly missing him but leaving molten scars where they struck. In the crowd, a Dusk Spire elder leaned in, muttering under his breath,
"He's not just fighting… he's reading it. Every attack pattern. Every rhythm."
The murmurs rose to a fever pitch — Dimitri was about to close the distance.
The Disaster Eye's pupil constricted — the moment every experienced cultivator recognized. It was about to Restore. Near by one of its slain lieutenants — a three-headed basilisk — twitched, preparing to reawaken at full strength. The crowd in the Observatory murmured. "No one can stop Restore—"
"Unless you kill it in the same breath…"
But Dimitri… didn't rush in. Instead, he casted out two spheres of his golden mind flames into the air. They didn't fly at the boss — instead, they vanished into nowhere, slipping through cracks of psychic space like stones dropping into black water. Onscreen, the basilisk's corpse convulsed — then screamed silently as the mind flames erupted inside the baslisk skulls, burning its consciousness to nothing!
The crowd exploded. "He pre-burned the corpse!" "He's targeting souls, not bodies!"
The Disaster Eye's pupil flared bright red! Its Restore completing… but when the basilisk rose, it was hollow-eyed, its movements empty, like a puppet without strings. One of the serpents atop the Eye hissed in frustration. Dimitri didn't waste the opening. He surged forward in a streak of golden fire, sliding under a whip of serpents, planting his hand against the rocky sclera. Psychic fire roared from his palm, eating into stone and flesh alike. The Disaster Eye's entire form jerked violently, serpents snapping in all directions.
But it wasn't enough to finish it — the beast slammed him with a Poison Blow, sending him skidding across molten ground, cloak and arm hissing with venom. The crowd collectively held its breath — Dimitri staggered upright, grinning through the blood on his lip.
"Your tricks don't work on me, old thing," he murmured into the viewing orb's scryfeed.
The Disaster Eye screamed — a piercing, mind-rattling sound — and the jungle around them began to collapse under the sheer force of the next exchange. The Disaster Eye's veins bulged and glowed like molten stone, power charging another Restore. Its serpents writhed, and the jungle floor split as Restore reached full power.
A sickly green light shot into the sky — and the dead began to stir. From the cracked earth, skeletal Rib Foragers hauled themselves free, chittering mandibles snapping as their twisted ribs flared into jagged bone spears. Behind them, Necro Centipedes, each as long as a wagon train, poured from burrows, their many legs scraping the stone with a sickening hiss. The crowd in the Observatory leaned forward, a mixture of horror and excitement.
"That's too many!"
"He's surrounded—"
Dimitri's expression didn't change. He simply closed his eyes, fingers curling into a meditative seal. The ground under his feet blackened — and then split open into a spiraling void of pure nightmare fire.
"Void Flame Psychic Rift."
A silence fell, unnatural and heavy. Then—
Whhhhhhmp!
A spiraling rift of gold-and-black fire ripped into existence; The crowd could only watch in shock as the foragers and centipedes froze mid-charge… their bodies twitching violently as their spiritual cores were sucked into a black tear in space! The Rift expanded, engulfing the undead swarm in a sphere of anti-light. Shapes flickered in its depths — memories, fears, fractured soul-images — before it collapsed in a single soundless implosion, leaving behind only scorched outlines on the jungle floor.
The Disaster Eye recoiled violently, its serpents thrashing in blind panic. Dozens of them burst into flame just from being too close to the psychic aftershock. Gasps rang through the viewing hall. "That… wasn't just an attack. He erased them."
"That's why he's called the Psychic Fire Eye's heir…"
Dimitri raised his gaze to the monstrous pupil. "Your army's gone. Now it's just you."
The Disaster Eye shrieked, stone fragments crumbling from its body as it unleashed a Prismatic Missile barrage, lightning and poison crackling across the jungle. But Dimitri was already in motion — golden psychic fire trailing behind him like the comet-tail of a hunter on the kill. The Disaster Eye reeled, its serpents curling inward as psychic scorch-marks crawled across its stone shell. Its singular pupil dilated wide — not from strategy, but fear. Dimitri's stance shifted — one palm extended, the other forming a knife-hand before his brow. A corona of ghostly embers ignited around his head like a burning crown.
"Mindfire Oracle Beam."
A sound like shattering glass rang out, not from the jungle, but from within the minds of every watcher. The Disaster Eye froze, serpents going slack as a thin line of white-gold light lanced from Dimitri's forehead directly into the pupil. The beam wasn't physical — it was truth made lethal. Images flickered within it: visions of every victory Dimitri had ever claimed, every failure his foe had ever suffered, condensed into a single unbearable instant.
The Eye's stone plates cracked outward, glowing from the inside. Then—
WOOOOOM!
It detonated in a burst of molten fragments and ichor, leaving only smoking roots where it once hovered. Fourteen brilliant Tokens shot from the explosion, curving like comets before settling into orbit around Dimitri's already-hovering collection. Thirty-Six now spun around him, each glowing faintly with psychic flame.
Gasps and murmurs flooded the Observatory. "He's… matched Ash's count." "That was surgical. Not a wasted motion." A mysterious voice spoke just then in the little world.
"Fatality Flawless Victory!"
Dimitri exhaled slowly, the psychic crown fading, and without looking at the screen, began walking toward the jungle's shadowed interior — already hunting his next beacon. From the ruin of the Disaster Eye's shattered core, the ground trembled. A deep thoom-thoom-thoom echoed up through the Little World's soil, and then—
FWOOSH!
A pillar of prismatic light exploded skyward, tearing through the cloud layer and painting the sky in rippling psychic fire. The Inheritance Beacon roared like a silent bell in every cultivator's soul, marking Dimitri's claim for all to see. Outside, the Observatory stirred like a pot boiling over. The crowd that had been trickling toward his viewing sphere now surged, hungry to witness the man who'd felled a monster most would flee on sight.
Marla let out a sharp whistle. "Well I'll be damned…the mind-flame boy can fight." Faeluxe's eyes narrowed, but her lips curved in the faintest smile. "That was no brawl. He dissected it… piece by piece. Ash should be wary — this one's brain burns hotter than most men's swords." The screens around them flickered as new challengers sprinted toward their own targets, the air buzzing with the rush to light more beacons.
But for a few heartbeats, all attention belonged to the man standing beneath the psychic blaze, seven tokens orbiting lazily above his head.