"Elara?!" Finn’s pupils constricted violently. It was the most shock he had shown since he returned to this timeline. Was this truly Elara? Finn felt a vague familiarity toward the woman in question. It was a resonance in his soul that he could not immediately explain.

Looking at her carefully, trying to spot any resemblance to the Elara he remembered, he could not find any. Her features were different, her aura was alien, and yet something about her triggered a feeling in him.

After his initial shock, his body moved on its own. Instinctively, he had already covered multiple steps, charging toward the two Harvester Cult members with a pace that surprised both of them.

Sue came to herself relatively quickly. She snapped to attention and kept that weird, chaotic wave running. At this point, the wave had already begun receding toward her, acting as a shifting, unstable barrier.

Sue and the woman who had been called Elara headed for the slit in reality where the woman had originally emerged, but Finn was blisteringly fast.

He was upon them in a heartbeat, his eyes locked on the Elara figure in cold focus, ignoring Sue entirely.

His hand stretched forward, his Invalidation spell coating his body as he pushed forward into that weird wave surrounding Sue. He expected his magic to clear the path as it always did...

But instead, two things happened in that moment.

First, to Finn’s surprise, Sue dispersed that weird wave immediately. It was a tactical choice that seemed counterintuitive. She acted as if she had only wanted to use it to stave him off and prevent him from coming close.

She looked genuinely surprised that he had committed to the charge despite the obvious weirdness of the spell. Now that he had reached the threshold, she withdrew the energy as if she did not want him to touch it. It was as though she feared what would happen if his specific power interacted with her specific chaos.

That only spurred Finn even more. He saw the hesitation in her eyes and saw it as an opening. His hand shot forward faster in a grasping motion as the Elara woman dragged Sue along with her into the vertical slit. The space around them was warping, the edges of the rift beginning to knit back together.

Then the second thing happened.

Despite the best efforts of the two women, Finn had still reached them. Speed was not a forte they had expected from the Error Bearer, but he had used a series of flaws to deceive reality, convincing the world that the space between him and them was smaller than it truly was.

That technique, coupled with the immediate activation of the Crimson Fist Tyrant’s might to enhance his movement the moment this Elara person had appeared, allowed him to cover the distance with jarring, split-second speeds. The air cracked behind him as he broke the sound barrier within the small dome of the battlefield.

In that moment when he reached for the two fleeing Harvester Cult women, his hand inadvertently touched that wave despite how fast Sue had tried to disperse it. A residue of the chaos remained in the air, a shimmering film of unreality. Immediately as he made contact, a most surprising phenomenon occurred.

Finn’s outstretched hand was flung backward sharply. The sensation was violent, as if he had just been electrocuted by a violet current. His Invalidation spell unraveled in an instant, an abrupt cessation that shocked him thoroughly.

It was the first time in this life that his core ability had failed him so absolutely.

He immediately leapt backward to create distance. Without hesitation, he summoned a plethora of his soul masses to form a defensive perimeter. The air around him became crowded with the weight of his power.

Syf dashed towards him from behind, her towering body landing in front of him to protect.

Ryuga appeared out of his shadow, immediately charging at the sealing slit in reality where the two women had retreated. His body was not even fully formed yet. He stretched like a black, abyssal veil from Finn’s shadow, his long, serpentine form undulating through the air. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

He opened his mouth and charged up a mighty, terrifying black ball of flames that bristled with energy so dense that it began to pull the surrounding light into itself.

Ryuga released the attack without hesitation, not even waiting for the energy to build up to its peak. He fired the moment he had a clear line of sight.

The black flame seared the air in an instant, carving a pillar of heat that was utterly black and destructive... a beam of pure annihilation.

It hit the spot where the two Harvester Cult women had disappeared, but the timing was off by a fraction of a second. The space had fully sealed up. Reality had mended itself, leaving no trace of the rift. The pillar of black flame could only continue into the distance like a beam of plasma, having lost its target.

That single beam annihilated every single thing in its path. It tore through the earth, leaving a glass-lined trench miles long. It consumed wandering soul masses and unlucky Ossuarists alike.

The destruction was followed quickly by a loud, furious roar from Ryuga. The dragon was utterly incensed that he had been unable to kill the ones who had threatened his master. He felt the sting of failure as a personal insult to his dignity.

His draconic soul mass form had formed fully at this point, and he wasn’t holding back his size this time. He allowed his mind-numbing, mountain-range sized body to fill the dark skies, terrorizing everyone below with a furious oppression.

Caretaker-ranked Ossuarists dropped to the ground like flies. They could not handle the sheer weight of his presence. Ryuga’s full aura was many times stronger than even the abomination when it had appeared out of the chasm.

While the abomination’s aura had been jagged and chaos filled, pushing one to the brink of madness, Ryuga’s full, unrestrained aura was simply a constant pressure. It was as though gravity was pressing down on everyone below from all angles.

The air in their ears became muffled. They could feel the blood behind their eyes strain like it wanted to burst out. Some people cycled their soul energy, some screamed but couldn’t even hear themselves... anything to try and stop the oppression.

Even Seer was struggling to keep her mind straight. She was a Transcendent Fragment Holder, a person who stood at the peak of the current power structure of the world, yet she felt like a child in the presence of this dragon. What kind of thing was this?!

The oppression continued to mount. The very ground began to crack under the weight of Ryuga’s anger. It continued until Finn finally spoke:

"That’s enough, Ryuga."

His voice was not loud, but it carried an authority that silenced the dragon’s roar. Those words were enough for the Ryuga to rein in his terrifying aura. He began reducing his size until he became a simple school-bus-sized soul mass.

He was still very obviously furious and disgruntled. His tail lashed out occasionally, striking the air with a whip-like crack, but Finn’s simple words had been enough to stop him from rampaging in an instant.