**[FIGHT!]**
The moment the barrier dropped, Abyssal Reapers didn't charge—they *exploded*.
Not literally. But their formation—if you could call it that—detonated into chaos. Players scattered in every direction across the zero-gravity arena like a supernova of steel and magic.
"What the hell?" IronFist muttered beside me.
"Chaos doctrine," BlackViper said, eyes locked on the battle. "No pattern means no counter-strategy."
But he was wrong. There *was* a pattern. It just wasn't conventional.
I watched as Abyssal Reapers split into what looked like random groups—three players here, seven there, fifteen over there, solo players darting between asteroids. Complete disorder.
Except...
"They're targeting sight lines," I realized. "Making it impossible to track all threats at once."
CelestialFlame stood at the center of her guild's formation, staff raised but not attacking. Her voice carried across the battlefield through magic amplification.
"Celestial Dominion—**Formation Sigma**. Mages, establish firing zones. Tanks, create killboxes. Archers, high ground. Move!"
Her guild responded like a machine. Seventy-five players shifted into a three-layer defensive formation in under five seconds:
- **Outer layer**: Twenty tanks with tower shields, creating a mobile fortress
- **Middle layer**: Thirty mages, staffs glowing with charged spells
- **Inner layer**: Twenty-five mixed—healers, archers, and specialist classes
Perfect coordination. Textbook execution.
And it lasted exactly twelve seconds before Abyssal Reapers tore it apart.
---
**VoidLord** led the first strike—not with his guild, but *alone*.
He was a Chaos Berserker, a class so difficult to play that less than 1% of players bothered with it. His armor pulsed with dark energy as he activated **Void Step**—a teleport skill with zero cooldown but random destination.
He blinked.
Appeared twenty meters to the left.
Blinked again.
Appeared inside Celestial Dominion's formation.
Right in the middle of their mages.
"SCATTER!" one of the mages screamed.
Too late.
VoidLord's greatsword—**Abyss Render**—erupted with chaotic energy. He swung in a full circle, the blade extending into a whip of pure void magic.
**SLASH!**
Three mages died instantly. Their health bars didn't even drain—just vanished. One-shot kills.
"FOCUS FIRE! ELIMINATE HIM!" CelestialFlame commanded, her voice steady despite the chaos.
Twenty spells converged on VoidLord's position—fireballs, ice lances, lightning bolts, arcane missiles.
The explosion was massive. Damage numbers in the hundreds of thousands popped up.
The smoke cleared.
VoidLord was gone.
No corpse. No death notification.
He'd **Void Stepped** again, reappearing on the opposite side of the arena, completely unharmed.
"WHAT?!" IronFist shouted from the spectator stands. "HOW IS THAT FAIR?!"
"It's not about fair," I muttered. "It's about chaos. You can't predict random."
---
While VoidLord distracted the mages, the real assault began.
From three different directions, Abyssal Reapers launched coordinated strikes—but each strike was *different*.
**North Flank**: A horde of undead.
Wait. *Undead?*
"They have necromancers," CrimsonWitch breathed.
Not just one. *Seven* necromancers stood on floating asteroid fragments, chanting in unison. Dark magic swirled around them as they performed a Master-tier ritual spell.
"***LEGIONS OF THE ABYSS***!"
The void itself seemed to tear open. Skeletal warriors, zombie hulks, spectral assassins—hundreds of undead creatures materialized and swarmed toward Celestial Dominion's north flank.
But these weren't normal summons. These were dungeon-quality mobs.
I recognized some of them from raid footage: **Cryptlord Skeletons** from the Tomb of Endless Night. **Flesh Titans** from the Plague Warrens. **Wraith Assassins** from the Shadow Catacombs.
"Those are raid bosses!" DarkEdge said, stunned. "How the fuck do you summon raid bosses?!"
"Necromancy at level 95+," BlackViper answered grimly. "You can bind defeated bosses as permanent summons. It costs insane amounts of mana and requires rare materials, but..."
"But it's legal," I finished.
The undead legion crashed into Celestial Dominion's tanks.
**BOOM! CRASH! SCREECH!**
The tanks held—barely. Their shields glowed with defensive enchantments, **Guardian Aura** buffs stacking from multiple paladins in the formation.
But they were getting *pushed back*.
A Flesh Titan—easily ten meters tall—grabbed one tank's shield and *ripped it away*. The player behind it barely had time to scream before the Titan's fist came down like a meteor.
**CRUNCH.**
One tank dead.
"REINFORCE NORTH FLANK!" CelestialFlame ordered. "Mages, switch to AOE! Burn them down!"
---
**East Flank**: The berserkers arrived.
Not players. Well, yes players, but...
Twelve Abyssal Reapers warriors wearing mismatched armor that glowed with conflicting enchantments. Each one wielding weapons that looked like they'd been torn from nightmare dungeons.
I recognized those weapons. **Bloodfang Axes** from the Crimson Abyss. **Thunder Mauls** from the Storm King's Throne. **Chaos Blades** from the Rift of Madness.
These weren't just players. These were *dungeon completionists*. The kind of psychos who solo raid-tier content for fun.
They didn't charge in formation. They charged as *individuals*—each one a one-man army.
The first berserker activated **Primal Rage**, his body swelling to twice its size, muscles glowing red. He leaped—a hundred-meter jump in zero gravity—and came down on Celestial Dominion's eastern shields like a falling star.
**BOOOM!**
The impact shattered two shields and sent three tanks flying.
Before they could recover, the berserker was already swinging. His **Bloodfang Axes** cleaved through armor like paper.
Two more tanks down.
The other eleven berserkers hit seconds later—a cascading avalanche of violence.
Celestial Dominion's eastern flank collapsed.
"ROTATE! FALL BACK TO INNER CIRCLE!" CelestialFlame commanded.
Her guild responded instantly, pulling back into a tighter formation. The outer layer was gone—twenty tanks reduced to twelve. But they weren't panicking.
"Mages, **Meteor Swarm** on eastern approach! Archers, cover our retreat!"
Forty meteors materialized and rained down on the charging berserkers.
Explosions everywhere. Damage numbers in the six digits.
But when the smoke cleared, ten of the twelve berserkers were still standing. Wounded, sure—health bars in the yellow—but *still coming*.
"They're insane," CrimsonWitch whispered.
"No," I corrected. "They're *experienced*. They've tanked raid boss mechanics. Player spells don't scare them."
---
**South Flank**: The assassins struck.
This was the scariest part.
Thirty Abyssal Reapers players in full stealth builds appeared—literally *appeared*—behind Celestial Dominion's formation. Not through teleports. Through **Perfect Stealth**, a legendary skill that made you completely invisible until you attacked.
And they were targeting the healers.
"HEALERS! BEHIND YOU!" someone screamed.
Too late.
Daggers flashed. Critical hits everywhere. Five healers dropped in two seconds.
But Celestial Dominion had planned for this.
From within their formation, a group of specialist players activated their counter: **Revelation Aura**.
Golden light burst outward, revealing all hidden enemies in a fifty-meter radius.
The thirty assassins became visible.
"NOW!" CelestialFlame's voice cut through the chaos.
The remaining healers didn't heal—they attacked.
People forget that healers in Nexus can fight. And high-level healers? They're terrifying.
**Holy Smite**. **Divine Chains**. **Purging Flames**.
The assassins tried to re-stealth, but the Revelation Aura prevented it. They were caught in the open, their low-defense builds exposed.
Ten assassins died in the counter-attack.
But twenty survived, and they were still fighting. Weaving between Celestial Dominion's players, striking from blind spots, creating chaos.
---
And through all of this—the undead horde, the berserker assault, the assassin infiltration—VoidLord kept blinking around the battlefield like a ghost, picking off isolated targets.
"Celestial Dominion is losing," SilentStorm observed quietly.
I checked the kill count displayed on the holographic screens:
**[Celestial Dominion: 75 → 58 players remaining]**
**[Abyssal Reapers: 130 → 114 players remaining]**
Celestial had lost seventeen players. Abyssal had only lost sixteen—and most of those were summons, not actual players.
"They're getting swarmed," BlackViper said. "Too many threats from too many directions. Even perfect coordination can't handle true chaos."
But CelestialFlame wasn't panicking.
She stood at the center of the shrinking formation, staff glowing brighter and brighter, and I realized she'd been charging a spell this entire time.
"She's been casting since the match started," I said suddenly.
"What?" IronFist looked confused.
"Watch her mana bar."
CelestialFlame's mana was at 15%. Not from using spells—she'd barely cast anything. She'd been *sacrificing* it. Channeling it into a single, massive spell.
Her voice rang out, clear and commanding despite the chaos:
"Celestial Dominion—**FINAL PROTOCOL**."
Her entire guild stopped fighting.
Just... stopped.
The tanks dropped their shields. The mages lowered their staffs. The archers relaxed their bows.
For one impossible second, they were completely defenseless.
Abyssal Reapers saw the opening and surged forward—all of them, from every direction, converging for the kill.
And CelestialFlame smiled.
"***CELESTIAL JUDGMENT***."