The hand-spider was flattened instantly. Reduced to a smear of paste and shattered bone.
Sebastian looked up. The sky was darkening with the flying harpies. The ground was swarming with the abominations. The Apostle floated above it all. Watching with sadistic glee.
"This isn't a fight," Sebastian realized. Wiping black ichor from his mask. "This is an extermination."
He tightened his grip on the dagger. The hunger in his real-world body flared. A sharp reminder that time was running out. He couldn't play with his food. He needed to clear the board.
"Come on then!" Sebastian roared. His voice cutting through the shrieks of the horde. "Let's see whose darkness is deeper!"
Sebastian was a black streak cutting through a sea of grey and red meat. He wasn't fighting like a mage anymore. He was fighting like a butcher.
The [Shadowfang] dagger was a blur.
SLASH. A harpy's wing severed. Sending the creature spiraling into the abyss below.
STAB. The dagger sank to the hilt in the eye of a mutated wolf. [God-Slayer's Edge] ignoring the creature's reinforced skull like it was wet cardboard.
He spun. Ducking under a swipe from a massive, bloated giant that leaked acid from its pores. Sebastian didn't retreat. He shoved his hand directly into the giant's open wound.
"Internal Combustion."
BOOM.
The giant exploded from the inside. Wet chunks of flesh and bone shrapnel sprayed outward. Knocking back the smaller monsters behind it. Sebastian emerged from the red mist. His Auditor robes soaked in gore. His breath coming in ragged gasps not from fatigue but from the sheer intensity of the mana channeling.
"There's too many of them!" Valerie's voice cracked over the comms. She was holding the cliff edge. Raining down [Firestorms]. But the hand-spiders were climbing the walls. Bypassing her flames. "Zero! I can't hold them back!"
Sebastian looked up. The Apostle was laughing. He kept waving his hand. More tears opened in reality. More monsters poured out. It was a war of attrition. And the Apostle had infinite ammunition.
"He's spamming summons," Sebastian growled. Kicking a crawler in the face. Feeling the satisfying crunch of cartilage. "He thinks numbers matter."
Sebastian checked his status.
[Level: 18]
[EXP: 85%]
He was close. But he needed to end this now. The sheer volume of enemies beginning to tax his cognitive load. He couldn't dodge a thousand attacks forever. One slip-up. One grapple he couldn't break. And he'd be torn apart. It wouldn't just be a respawn. The psychological trauma of being eaten alive by void beasts would scar his real-world mind.
"Valerie," Sebastian commanded. His voice cold and hard. "Get behind me. Far behind me."
"What? Why?"
"Because I'm about to break the map."
Sebastian stopped moving. He floated in the air. Allowing the horde to surround him. They shrieked in triumph. Sensing his stillness as weakness. A wall of teeth and claws closed in from all sides. Five hundred monsters. A sphere of death collapsing on a single point.
Sebastian holstered his dagger. He raised both hands.
In his left hand he channeled the [Fire] tree. He poured 50,000 Skill Points into [Solar Flare]. A ball of blinding white plasma formed. Hot enough to vaporize steel.
In his right hand he channeled the [Earth] and [Void] trees. He poured another 50,000 points into [Gravity Well]. A sphere of absolute darkness formed. A singularity so dense that light bent around it.
"Fusion," Sebastian whispered.
He clapped his hands together.
The white sun met the black hole.
[System Alert: Anomaly Detected. Skill Combination invalid.]
[System Alert: Overriding... Physics Engine Failure.]
[New Skill Created: Event Horizon (Forbidden Tier).]
"Burn," Sebastian said.
There was no sound. The universe held its breath.
Then a ring of destruction expanded from Sebastian's hands. It wasn't an explosion. It was a gravitational collapse ignited by stellar fire.
The horde didn't have time to scream. The monsters closest to him were instantly elongated. Their bodies stretching into thin ribbons of matter as the gravity caught them. Then the fire hit. They didn't burn. They sublimated. Flesh, bone, and void energy turned instantly into superheated plasma.
The Event Horizon expanded.
It swallowed the bone platform. It swallowed the summoned army. It swallowed the very air in the crater.
The Apostle's laughter died instantly. His eyes widened as he saw the black-and-gold sphere expanding toward him. He raised a barrier of void shields.
"Impossible!" the Apostle shrieked. "That's admin-level destruction! You can't—"
The Event Horizon hit his shields. They shattered like glass. The Apostle screamed as the gravity field caught his left arm. He didn't just lose the limb. The limb ceased to exist. Dragged into the singularity and crushed into a point of infinite density.
He severed his own arm with a blade of void energy and teleported backward. Terror etched into his shifting form.
The sphere continued to expand until it hit the cliff walls. The obsidian rock groaned. Then cracked. Then dissolved. The entire center of the map was being deleted.
From the ridge Valerie watched in awe and horror. She shielded her eyes as the light became too bright to look at. The heat was intense enough to singe her eyebrows even from three hundred meters away.
Finally the reaction destabilized.
BBBB-OOOO-MMMM.
The shockwave flattened the forest for a mile in every direction. Trees were uprooted and thrown like toothpicks. The ground rippled like water.
When the dust cleared there was no crater. There was a glass bowl. Smooth and glowing red with residual heat. The horde was gone. Not a single corpse remained. Just a fine layer of ash drifting in the wind.
[Ding! You have killed Void Beast (x450).]
[Ding! Killing Spree! Rampage! Godlike!]
[Level Up! Level 19.]
[Level Up! Level 20.]
Sebastian floated in the center of the glass bowl. His clothes were smoking. His mana bar was empty. Regenerating slowly from the dregs of the atmosphere.
He looked across the devastated landscape.
Floating near the edge, missing an arm and looking significantly less glitchy, was the Apostle.
"You missed," the Apostle hissed. Clutching his stump. Black smoke leaked from the wound.
"I wasn't aiming at you," Sebastian replied. His voice raspy. He descended slowly. His boots touching the hot glass. "I was clearing the table. Now... we can talk."
The silence on the glassed plains of the arena was heavy. Broken only by the crackle of cooling rock.
Sebastian walked toward the Apostle. He didn't rush. He didn't need to. He had cleared the fodder. He had leveled up. Now it was just a matter of execution.
The Apostle hovered a few feet off the ground. His form flickering. The damage from the [Event Horizon] had destabilized his connection to the Void. He looked less like a god now and more like a corrupt file trying desperately to stay executed.
"You..."