"Matter Technique: Magenta Shatter!" Lapis roared, thrusting his hands forward. A concentrated blast of Divine energy surged toward the monster, vibrating with the power to deconstruct molecules.
Gudmaro didn't move. He opened his chest plates, and the red aura swirled like a hungry mouth, drinking the Magenta energy until the air was silent again. "Useless," the virus rasped. "Give me a challenge."
Lapis's heart hammered against his ribs. 'I'm empty...' he thought, sweat dripping from his brow. 'My Honored Eyes can't see his future—it's like he exists outside of time. And my Space Warping... it's like the air around him is frozen. If this fight continues, I'm dead.'
"My turn," Gudmaro hissed. "Galaxy Delusion."
A beam of concentrated void-fire erupted from Gudmaro's palm. It hit Lapis dead-on, the gifted child's scream lost in the roar of the explosion as he was sent spiraling into the dirt, his robes scorched and his aura flickering like a dying candle.
"LAPIS! NOOO!" Techyon's voice shattered the smoke.
With a crack of static, Yoru materialized beside the fallen Lapis, her eyes burning with a cold, green fire. Techyon rushed to Lapis's side, but Yoru stood firm, facing the Galaxy Eraser.
'This woman again,' Gudmaro thought, his tail lashing. 'I will erase her first.'
"I'm going to hit you so hard," Yoru said, her voice a calm, deadly whisper, "that your cells won't have time to learn how to adapt."
Gudmaro laughed—a sound like breaking glass. "Then let us test your resolve. Cosmic Sphere!"
In his palm, a sphere of swirling nebulae and dying stars manifested, growing until it was the size of a building. The gravity around it began to crush the trees into splinters.
"Reflect this if you can, woman," Gudmaro sneered, his eyes glowing. "If you dodge, this sphere hits the core of the world and everyone dies. If you stay... you die with the planet. Choose."
He hurled the sphere. It didn't move fast—it moved with the weight of an entire galaxy, locking onto the ground beneath Yoru's feet.
The Cosmic Sphere roared through the air, a miniature sun of destruction aimed at the heart of the planet. But Yoru didn't move. She didn't flinch.
As the sphere made contact, she simply raised her right hand. The air screamed as the energy pressed against her palm, but there was no explosion. Instead, the cosmic fire seemed to hit a void. With a sharp, sudden flex of her fingers, she crushed the sphere. It shattered like glass, its remnants dissolving into harmless sparks.
"You think this kind of technique is going to work on me?" Yoru asked, her voice cutting through the silence.
Gudmaro's red eyes widened. "What—"
CRACK.
Before he could finish the thought, Yoru was gone. A millisecond later, she was in his personal space. Her fist connected with Gudmaro's jaw with the force of a tectonic shift. The "Galaxy Eraser" was sent hurtling backward. Yoru didn't stop. She appeared above him in mid-air and delivered a heavy downward kick, sending Gudmaro crashing into the earth like a football kicked by a God.
Gudmaro struggled to his feet, black space-dust leaking from his cracked armor.
'I can't drain her... I can't even sense her,' he thought, his mechanical mind racing for a solution. 'And that teleportation... she moves without leaving a trace in the mana flow. But even a ghost has a home.'
Gudmaro's aura flared violently as he took flight, heading back toward the Northern Abyss—back toward the prison where Mayanee had sealed him 30 years ago.
Yoru landed softly on the shattered ground, her breathing steady. She looked back at Techyon, who was kneeling over the scorched form of the Divine Arcon.
"Techyon!" she commanded. "Take Lapis to the Tree of Life. See if he is still alive or if his core has been breached. I'm going after that virus. I won't let him reach his territory."
Gudmaro sliced through the atmosphere as he neared the Northern Abyss. 'My prison was never just a domain,' he thought, his mechanical eyes scanning the energy ley lines. 'The Arcon of Life used her foundational barrier power to create this seal. If I can't consume that ghost-woman, I will let the Arcon's own power hold her for me.'
"Where are you running, coward?!" Yoru's voice echoed behind him. She was a blur of golden static, closing the gap with terrifying speed.
Gudmaro stopped dead in mid-air. He looked down at the jagged canyon below—the site of his 30-year slumber. "If you want to fight me," he rasped, "fight me down there."
Yoru slowed, her eyes narrowing. 'This is a trap. I can feel the change in the air pressure. I have to be careful.' But Gudmaro didn't give her time to think. He dove straight into the darkness of the canyon floor. To Yoru, it looked like a desperate retreat. She didn't know the layout of the abyss; she only saw an opening to end the threat once and for all.
"Stop!" Yoru screamed, her hand reaching out to grab his celestial armor. "Where do you think you're going?!"
She was a millisecond away. Her fingers were inches from his neck. Suddenly, Gudmaro's body twisted in a way that defied physics. He executed a perfect mid-air dodge, letting Yoru's momentum carry her forward—straight into the mouth of the shimmering, invisible barrier of the Northern Prison.
With a roar of effort, Gudmaro delivered a brutal, downward kick to her back, slamming her into the center of the seal.
[SYSTEM ALERT: ANCIENT ARCON BARRIER ACTIVATED. TARGET: LOCKED.]
The prison walls slammed shut, humming with the Arcon of Life's golden energy. Yoru hit the barrier, her physical strikes doing nothing against the conceptual lock.
Gudmaro hovered above the pit, his breathing heavy. "I knew it would work," he hissed, his armor glowing a deep, malevolent red. "I would kill her now, but I must reach my Perfect Form first. I lost my true self to that purple-haired woman thirty years ago... but now, no one is left to stop me."
He looked toward the horizon, where the Tree of Life pulsed in the distance. "It's time to become a God again."