Amidst this heavy, funereal silence filled with the sound of crushing trees and corpses, the Eclipse Minotaur suddenly stopped walking.
The beast turned its massive head, bearing horns that tore through the air, with an agonizingly slow and nerve-wracking rhythm toward where Dex and Lumia stood rooted to the spot. Its head movement wasn't hostile or swift like a monster catching the scent of its prey; rather, it was a fleetingly curious gesture, like a human pausing for a moment to look at two ants standing in the path of his shoe before continuing on his way.
Its deep black eyes, devoid of whites or colored irises, presenting nothing but a black meteoric void, looked directly at Dex.
In that moment when their gazes met, Dex's heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second. He expected to see in those dark eyes a raging anger, a bloody animalistic savagery, or even a hunger to devour human flesh. But what he saw and read in that abyss was far worse and far more soul-crushing. He saw "absolute nothingness and apathy."
To this colossal cosmic entity, Dex and Lumia were not enemies to be wary of, nor were they even prey worth the effort of chasing or expending energy to consume. They were far less than that. They were merely "dust" or a "microscopic biological obstacle" scattered on the road, something that simply had to be removed or crushed so the march could continue, without any emotional acknowledgment or notable interest. This absolute disregard for Dex's existence crushed his pride as a human and a warrior more than any physical defeat ever could.
Without warning, the Minotaur raised its massive right arm, bulging with muscles like black steel, and opened its palm, which ended in razor-sharp claws.
The moment its arm moved upward, the dense black mana in the air began to gather and concentrate terrifyingly around its open claws. Small, intense vortexes of dark energy began to form, vortexes so dense and possessing a gravitational pull so strong that they distorted the vision of space and bent the path of light behind them, making the trees appear twisted and wavy like a mirage. This gathering of energy was accompanied by a horrifying and sickening sound; it resembled the tearing of an incredibly thick fabric or the shattering of a colossal sheet of glass... It was the sound of the very fabric of spatial reality tearing and groaning under the weight of infinite gravitational pressure.
"It doesn't intend to strike us directly... It's preparing for a centralized 'Gravity Crush' blow... a destruction domain that could reach a full kilometer in radius..." Dex analyzed the situation with lightning speed. His combat instinct was operating at maximum capacity, and his mind was flipping through thousands of scenarios, desperately trying to find even a microscopic loophole or a single way out of this predicament that seemed mathematically and logically impossible.
"Lumia, run! Get out of here now!" Dex screamed at the top of his lungs, turning to place his hand on her back to push her away from the center of the attack with all his might.
But he was shocked to find her body rigid and resistant to his push, rooted to the spot like a marble statue. He looked down, only to see that her slender legs were already sinking several centimeters into the muddy ground due to the escalating gravitational pressure in the air preceding the actual attack.
He raised his gaze to her face. Lumia, the sleeping disaster and the celestial entity, was completely paralyzed. Her red eyes were trembling, and she was breathing with extreme difficulty. Dex realized the deep metaphysical reason behind her paralysis. Lumia wasn't just a powerful girl; she represented the magic of the "void and sky," embodying absolute lightness and the nothingness that cannot be touched or grasped. But this monster standing before her represented the exact antithesis of her cosmic existence; it represented "heaviness, absolute mass, and the crushing earth." In this clash between absolute concepts, the Minotaur's gravity was fundamentally silencing and negating Lumia's void, forcing her to submit to the weight of reality.
Dex realized in those few remaining seconds that he was entirely alone in this battle.
In that critical moment, when all doors had closed, the "prisoner" mentality began to operate at full capacity. He remembered the days of solitary confinement; in the dark isolation cell, when corrupt guards cornered you with batons in a dead end with no room for a fair fight or escape, only two options remained: either surrender and submit to the deadly blows like a coward, or commit a crazy, self-destructive, and unpredictable act to shuffle the deck and inflict even the slightest damage upon their ranks before drawing your last breath.
"If I try to fight in my usual style, I'll be crushed into a meat paste like a tin can under his foot. My ordinary flames won't even scratch its outer layer of skin, which absorbs and devours energy. And if I try to escape by running, the accelerating gravity field will catch me and crush my bones before I even cross his shadow."
Dex bit down on his lower lip with immense force until the skin tore and warm blood flowed into his mouth. The salty taste of rust and the sharp pain awakened his muddled senses and made him more focused.
"There are no clever plans here... The only solution is to sacrifice everything. All the cards on the table. Every drop of mana in my neural pathways, every speck of vital energy in my cells, in exchange for just one thing... a single second of blindness and chaos planted in the mind of this false god."
With a decisive, irreversible decision, Dex raised his right hand, and instead of pointing it at the beast, he placed it harshly over his left chest, spreading his fingers to rest directly over his heart, where the legendary "Phoenix Core" lay beating.
He pressed hard until his fingers dug into his flesh. He felt the overwhelming heat generated by the core; it was pulsing violently and erratically, like a bird made of real fire, imprisoned and trying to break its human ribcage to escape this cosmic pressure imposed by the Minotaur.
"You damn legendary bird..." Dex addressed the entity lurking inside him, not through words, but through the pulses of his soul. His inner voice carried no plea, prayer, or begging. Rather, it was a blunt, harsh, and desperate threat, a hostage negotiation where he himself was both the hostage and the bomb.
"I know you are conscious. And I know you hear me and feel what I feel. You are a cosmic entity trapped with me in this weak, mortal body. If I am crushed and die right now under the hooves of this dark bull, you will perish too... You will return to nothingness and cold oblivion for thousands of years, waiting for a new vessel that will never come. If you want your freedom... if you want to spread your wings and burn this false sky one day... then give me everything you have right now! Empty your ocean of flames into my human veins! Do not spare a single spark!"
The core responded.
There was no vocal reply, nor was there a warning flash of light. Instead, there was a merciless deluge. A wave of pure, infernal, indescribable pain swept through Dex's body. He felt as if liquid, boiling volcanic magma had been injected directly into his veins and tiny arteries. The mana pathways in his body began to crack and tear from the inside, glowing from beneath his skin with a brilliant orange light that pierced the gloom, declaring the core's acceptance of this "devil's bargain" and its readiness to sacrifice the vessel in exchange for unleashing its eternal wrath.