"Abyss of Ten Thousand Depths."
A circle of water traced itself into the sky and dropped like a curtain.
The world changed.
The plateau vanished, replaced by an ocean with no surface or perhaps a space that had no bottom where the air was water but the lungs did not drown.
It was a realm of fluid laws.
Ethan found himself standing in the middle of an invisible platform, surrounded by a three-hundred and sixty degree ocean sphere, as if within a submerged planet.
Inside this Domain, the Archmage's will was law.
Water required no source.
All movement became resistance.
And moisture density increased tenfold.
Ethan's breath weighed thrice his body. His sword arm floated unnaturally, slowed by drag fields the eye could not detect. The ocean was not just physical but conceptual.
Thus every action that used energy required more.
Maxvlque appeared above him, already launching ten thousand water needles in a spiral.
Ethan moved to dodge, but his lightning-fast movement earlier was debuffed into a slow movement like he was sleepwalking through molasses.
Tzznk! Tzznk!
Water needles rained down towards him, zaen crackling from his body as his speed increased gradually as if getting used to the intense pressure. But the thing was… there were just too many of them.
One grazed his cheeks. One pierced his chest. Some pinned his foot to nothing that he could not move forward.
Rrryaak-k-kssshhh!!
There were no signs of water needles stopping, as one appeared right after the next landed— whether a clean hit or parried.
Maxvlque then rotated his palms.
Gravitational undertow. The very idea of 'up' collapsed. Ethan plummeted toward the bottomless dark and his internal organs folded under the conjured weight.
He let out a massive amount of zaen mid-fall before he pivoted his foot and planted it on nothing, but just held by his will.
Cra— Crackle!
He concentrated the zaen onto his sword and raised it upwards in a reversed grip.
Crackle! Cra—
He closed his eyes.
Step.
Slowly… slower than slow, if such a thing exists, Ethan opened his eyes. They gleamed with a prismatic blue like the light of a dying star.
"Absolute Line: Final Passage."
The ocean-like Maxvlquee's domain around him split.
It was not vaporized or evaporated, but severed at the conceptual level like Moses severing the red sea.
Maxvlque found himself standing within a narrow corridor— only thirty meters wide— where water was stopped by an invisible barrier as if split open and Ethan stood across him.
The corridor has no doors, no exits, and no gods… only the sword and a man whom Maxvlque thought he should have never messed with.
"Death."
Maxvlque muttered.
After all, Ethan's sword touched all things within this domain.
Raising both his hands, the ocean trembled but could not enter. He conjured spells enough to possibly wipe an entire kingdom but it dissolved at the edge of the corridor.
Ethan's domain was not just stronger, but…
Undeniable.
Maxvlque sent whale-sized torrents and even a three-headed spear of water that looked like the weapon of poseidon, but they all stopped after hitting the corridor's invisible walls.
He cast a water bubble filled with imploded pressure, but Ethan just walked through it— ignoring both the pain from the pressure and the pain of water needles piercing his body.
Cra— Crackle!
Ethan stopped and raised his sword.
For a moment, the plateau which no longer existed began to tear at the seams of space as reality and the domain clashed with one another.
Ethan's eyes bled, but he paid it no mind and just continued raising his sword, the metal humming as if singing a lullaby.
Maxvlque's spine twisted from the magic he was casting, his left arm turned limp, and the severed bottomless ocean darkened to black.
Kkkssshhh!!
The six black stars tattooed on his wrist vanished as he condensed that ocean into one massive body of fluid— his body.
Every molecule became a nerve.
And he, Maxvlque, became the spell himself.
"If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me."
Maxvlque's body exploded, launching a thousand… more like a million explosions at once as if the entire universe collapsed on itself.
But Ethan only brought his sword down.
The thirty-meter corridor became absolute. All within it— light, sound, gravity, thought— was cleaved in a single vertical arc.
There was no matter spared.
It was…
…Judgement.
TTREEMBLEEEE!!
The domain shattered.
Water peeled from the sky like glass cracking in reverse, and reality reasserted itself where Ethan stood alone on the plateau once more.
It was no longer the same plateau.
The ground was fractured for miles, gouged with impossible lines as if tectonic rage had carved scars into the continent itself.
The Archmage, Maxvlque, lay before him on one knee and his form flickered: part water, and part man.
Ethan looked up, and ran a hand through his hair.
There was no sound that was spoken, nor a declaration of victory.
But.
Only one man remained standing.
Looking down, Ethan replied…
"Too bad. I need to apologize to Ely—"
Cra—ckle!
A water bolt pierced his chest.
He looked up, only to see a man wearing a tattered and bloodsoaked robe designed with an emblem of a purple crescent moon and was holding a staff— his wrist had three black stars.
The man looked at the body of the Archmage and frowned, not an expression of grief.
Slowly, the man cast a massive purple magic array aimed towards the Archduke.
Cr— Crackle!
Yet Ethan only stood still and watched not because he wanted to, but because he no longer had the strength that he's now barely standing up.
"Ahaha!"
The man laughed.
"That battle was a spectacle! I don't think I can witness something like—"
But before the man could finish his sentence, a single black flash passed the man and halted right behind him, holding a heart.
"—Urgghk-kh!"
The man groaned as the purple magic array flickered, then shattered like brittle glass.
He looked down and saw a clean, gaping hole carved through his chest where his heart was supposed to be— now there was nothing.
"W-Who are…"
Turning his head around, what met his eyes was a single figure wearing a black cloak and a half-face mask with a design of a wolf. Also, his right hand that was holding his carved heart seemed to belong to that of a wolf.
Thud.
The man fell into the ground.
The figure masked with a wolf walked before Ethan and knelt down.
"I apologize for being late, Archduke."
Though Ethan said nothing. In the first place, he was the one who ordered for the wolf-masked figure not to follow him here but protect the youngest: Seven, and observe the eldest: Eden.
"You—"
Step.
Ethan's words were interrupted by the sound of soft footsteps coming behind him.
He turned and saw Eden Hart, carrying a woman on her shoulder with a short platinum hair and a pair of clear blue eyes.
"I've brought Elysia, father."
Eden glanced toward the far end of the island, parting her lips to speak. But she did not continue as the wolf-masked figure spoke instead,
"I apologize once more, Archduke. I failed to save my 'siblings.'"