<This is not good!> Suzamete cried.

It was no good. Aigas was at its limit. The consequences for a lack of an anchor and the shattering of the Rules had finally brought about its absolute demise. The desolate expanse left behind on its other half, far from the present battlefield, and the raging oceans below Edagon on this end, parted. The skies cracked, thundering and booming. The canvas was broken. The great void began spilling in. It fell upon the dark waters like mounds of black tar laced with soot, which further weakened what remained of Aigas. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

It wouldn’t be long now. Aigas would split into different quarters, then fifths, then hundreds that would rapidly lose all traces of the energy used to create them. This was the end.

<Just my luck!> cried Luserus. <I should have known this would happen. It sounded too good to be true, and it was! What good is having a generation of my Luminants if there’s no world to house them! I gambled on that damned anomaly, and I paid the price!>

<Be quiet!> Suzamete brushed off Luserus’ whining.

Now was the time to complete her last-ditch effort to save this world.

The Mad Bishop was singing, the vessels Em-Sul and Eaniss had made channeling more and more power into her. Everything was done. The Bishop’s – a mortal’s faith – was overwhelming the grace of a Doom Knight, a fallen Deity.

Beyrmir still had the thing pinned down, and slowly, its will to fight back was staggering. There might have been none left now. A Deity without ambition and agency was no stronger than a determined Divine in the first stages of their Ascension. Suzamete judged that to subdue the Doom Knight completely, she’d need a little more time, but there was none. They had to risk it now.

<Banish the Undeath energy inside it!> she told Beyrmir. The Apostle didn’t hesitate to act. He drew upon the Null Life Essence in his slick, mercury body, reinforced by the gargantuan remains of a world, and pressed them into the Doom Knight’s body.

The creature roared. It resisted.

...But Beyrmir was more driven. He didn’t have nearly as much Null Life Essence as the Doom Knight had Undeath energy, but it wasn’t a contest of quantity. The tug-of-war began and ended in a breath. The Doom Knight’s Undeath energy, drawing directly from its Broader Existence, was blown away by Beyrmir’s Null Life Essence as soon as it filtered into the creature’s soul and body. A terrible wad of it erupted from the Doom Knight’s flesh and into the breaking skies.

The Doom Knight roared.

<That’s it! As soon as it’s weak enough, I’ll empower the Bishop’s faith and compel the Doom Knight to—>

...!!!

Suzamete panicked when she felt something well up inside the Doom Knight. Given how it spontaneously emerged from its body, she imagined that it came from the creature’s Broader Existence. The creature might not have had agency of its own, but it was a product of necromancy.

It would never fall into the hands of anyone else. Other than its complete destruction by the hand of its master or an enemy, there existed no other option for it other than self-detonation. And indeed, the detonation began from its Broader Existence.

*

Yuyui’s eyes opened wide, all of them exposed on some part of her flesh. She was flushed with extraordinary strength. The output of each of her eyes was monstrous, greater than she’d thought she could ever make it on her own.

Her Eye of Dispersal, revealed on her forehead, glared at Rias and enacted its vengeance at once. Because his current body was a secondary conduit created by Aimon, it fell prey to the eye in spectacular fashion. Rias’ skin and bones were whittled away like sand in the wind. Hissing, he streaked forth to stick his fingers in Yuyui’s eye, but she ducked to the side, bashed his chin with her left fist, and blasted him away with a rough kick to his vanishing chest!

"AIMON!" Rias cried.

The deerhead rapidly healed from the blast of the Aggrante, but before it could do anything for him, a crushing force pummeled Rias’ mind again, and he roared in agony. Yuyui exploited that. The Eye of Moving accelerating her attack speed, she landed six hundred blows into Rias’ disappearing body, plucked his Eye of Backfire out of its socket, and crushed it!

’HOW?!’ thought Rias, astounded. But he wasn’t wondering about his eye. ’That’s the Eye of Dispersal. It should only be limited to dispersing the effects of lesser Divine powers – not products of Amras! How is she—?’ He couldn’t finish the sentence.

A small dagger flew his way and stabbed his head before becoming a tattoo on his skin. Suddenly, Rias felt cold and numb. It was Baddan’s dagger. It would have killed lesser lifeforms with this application, but not the ghost of Actuass; it merely stunned him, and Yuyui used that opportunity to wail on Rias several hundredfold again.

The gigantic Cluster General Baddan had tamed, as well as all the other beasts orbiting it, had risen up to the Egg. Lipptis was riding the behemoth, still under the effects of Complication. The creature was within range of its master again, and it used its heightened affinity with Null Life Essence to reinforce him from the inside, priming him for close-quarters combat. Grim’s Paradon Parody made the effect ten times greater.

Grim himself joined the fray. Together, the three would ragdoll the unmasked necromancer.

However...

...!!!

Warnings flared inside their heads as Rias’ one good eye flashed gold, flush with murderous intent. It was cutting – as cutting as the flurry of invisible slashes that he unleashed on the Unlimited Stars. They were poised to dismantle them all into hundreds of chunks!

...But Savast wouldn’t allow it,

He had reached for and connected to all the minds inside the Egg. He could read Rias’ next move and forewarn his allies (using Mimic), as strenuous of a feat as that would be. Yuyui, Grim, and Baddan bled from every orifice on their faces, but they successfully forewarned.

...And then they were gone. They zipped out of the way of the slashes to safety barely a micro-second before they were cut.

This was Yuyui’s doing. She was grinning all the while, her Eye of Moving shining, racing past its limits. With it, she could define movement as she pleased. She could match all speeds as long as she could discern them by sight, sound, or even intuition!

’Don’t hesitate!’ she told them all through the mental link. ’I’ll force you all to react to the danger the instant Savast warns us. Ride the skies, ride space, ride the light if you want to. Whatever happens, don’t stop!’

Everyone agreed. From here on out. No one would stop for anything at all.

Not even Rias himself. His powers were restored, and his enemies were standing between him and his goals. To thoroughly reject them and their ideals, he would slaughter them, even if it meant cracking them all open and using their offensive arsenals against them!