As soon as Adyr triggered his final skill, the Tower of Worth began to swell.

A moment ago, it had been the size of a standard fighting staff, roughly 1.8 meters long and about 3 to 4 centimeters thick, the sort of balanced length and grip used in martial training.

Under the pressure of his new skill, the stone shaft started to stretch and widen. It reached 3 meters in length, then thickened beyond what a single hand could comfortably clasp.

It did not stop there. A heartbeat later, it surged past 10 meters, forcing him to brace it with both hands.

When the growth ended, he held a crude stone column that echoed the Tower's old silhouette in miniature: a heavy, blunt pillar that looked more like a cut of bedrock than a weapon. Anyone watching would wonder how a body like his could even lift it, let alone swing it.

Adyr did not share the doubt. His 1483 Physique handled the weight without strain.

He was not done preparing. He layered another skill atop the first, and the miniature tower began to tremble, a tight vibration running through the grain as if unseen energy were pouring into the stone.

This was another Rank 3 Spark he had earned from the Tower's trials; it carried a single promise: his strikes could seed earthquakes.

He intended to make one that could crack a dimension.

Last came the taint. He poured Malice over the pillar, black smoke seeping along the rock, filling its pores, then spiraling up the length until the whole thing seemed to breathe like a living monolith.

Only then did he settle into position.

"Use your defensive skills," Brakhtar called.

He did not waste time gawking at the strange form of the attack. Invisible hands unfurled, barriers bloomed, and his other defenses locked into place. Around him, the Practitioners reached the same conclusion and stacked wards in layers, a wall of protections rising in front of them to blunt whatever would come after.

Adyr ignored the scramble and fixed on the swing.

There was no ground to anchor his stance in the void, but his wings beat in a steady rhythm and gave him balance. He lifted the stone pillar straight overhead, hands set wide along the sides, chest open, elbows tight, the grip of a clean vertical drop.

For an instant, he held it there, feeling its weight and the charge inside it line up.

Then he brought it down.

BOOM!

The pillar met nothing, and still the void answered.

Sound tore open at the point of impact, as if he had struck the fabric of the pocket dimension itself. A ring of hairline fractures spiderwebbed outward from the invisible contact, faint white creases racing away in every direction. Black smoke rushed after them, Malice flooding the cracks, and the shockwave rolled through the void in a hard, expanding disc.

In the next second, the cracks raced across everything, faint tremors rippling so visibly that even the naked eye could track them. A sharp report followed, and the artificial void around them shattered like glass, hurling them back into the Legacy Domain.

Thalira, Brakhtar, and the other Practitioners looked around wide-eyed, their defensive skills still humming.

"Unholy mother… he really broke it," Loudbark muttered under his breath. The attack was like nothing he had ever seen, too crude and too magnificent at once.

"It is not over. Stay focused." Thalira's voice pulled every gaze to the true threat waiting not far away.

With the dimension split open, the Serpent's body stood before them again, hate buried deep in its eyes.

"So this is the Rank 4 Spark, huh?" Adyr lowered the massive stone staff a fraction and studied the creature, one brow lifting as he wondered what it would try next.

He did not wait long. The Serpent began to hiss, not weaving another pocket space but unleashing Fear Bind. The sound rode the air like a wave, rolling from its blood-red tongue and spreading outward.

"Careful. It is a debuff that uses fear to bind the body," Brakhtar called, assuming Adyr was seeing this skill for the first time. He was wrong.

He was even more wrong to think a single Fear could rival someone like him, a creature carrying the purest form of Fear in his body.

The skill flooded Adyr instantly. It slid into his limbs and sank to the root of him, as if something physical were pouring into every cell and freezing each one in place.

A beat later, his Malice thickened. Black smoke surged from his skin and wrapped him head to toe once again. The Serpent's fear recoiled and tore free of him at once, driven out as if expelled by a greater, purer source.

"He broke it just like that?" Brakhtar could not quite hide the awe.

Adyr's Malice behaved like a natural counter to the Serpent's Fear.

"No. It is not just a counter," Brakhtar's two heads murmured in sync as understanding settled. "His bloodline talent… it is the ancient form of Fear, the true bloodline of an elder evil."

In the presence of the real thing, an imitation had nothing to show.

The black smoke did not stop with purging. In full view of everyone, it rushed out from Adyr in a single tide and swept toward the Serpent.

Sensing the wrongness, the Serpent flinched. Its head snapped up, coils tightening for flight, but an instant later it stalled. Something held it.

Brakhtar had already shifted his defenses. The transparent hands reformed, clamped onto the massive body, and pinned it. The pressure dulled its senses and locked its mass in place.

"Nice job." Adyr gave him a brief nod and watched the Malice take hold of the Rank 4 Spark.

Even with its senses muffled and its mind dimmed, the Serpent writhed under the smoke. Its yellow eyes went wide. Its long tongue lolled. Its entire body spasmed, every line of it answering to a terror no one could see.

I wonder what kind of feeling this is.

Adyr watched the Rank 4 Spark's reactions in silence, wondering what this feeling was, since he couldn't sense his own bloodline's fear effect.

He then let the thought go, lifted his massive staff, and began charging his skills for another attack.

He swelled his arms with the Burst Hop's kinetic energy, muscles tightening as he unleashed the Rank 3 Earthquake skill, channeling the vibrations into the Tower of Worth and readying it to release them as a devastating quake.

But the Rank 4 Spark wasn't weak enough to stand still and take it. Driven by the will to survive, it poured all its instincts into a teleportation skill to evade the incoming strike—only to halt abruptly.

Before it realized when, its surroundings had already been encircled by hundreds of lightning soldiers. They hurled themselves at its body, the electrical currents flooding its nerves, spreading through every muscle, and severing its brain's command over the body. The Serpent's movements froze completely, its skills sealed.

Having teammates sometimes isn't that bad.

Adyr smiled faintly and smashed the colossal stone pillar into the Serpent's head, buckling its armor-black scales on impact.

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