GRHAAAOOOOOOOOHHH!

The sky peeled open under the roar, a broad vibration spilling over broken stone. Dirt flurried up while the Titan Ape advanced, weight and power gathering beneath its dark-brown fur like a winched cable.

Then, with all 4 fists drawn high, it brought them down together, each strike carrying the crushing rhythm of a mountain falling.

It wasn't just muscle strength; with the Rank 4 skill Seismic Pulse riding the strike as an invisible current, the ground tore open the instant the blows landed.

BOOOMM-CRAACK!

The air buckled with a deep, resonant boom, and cracks raced outward at blinding speed, veining the field like white fire. The hardened terrain beneath the Rank 4 Spark gave way, collapsing into a violent void.

A surge of red light burst from the Blood Dragon's scales, clashing against the force before both giants plummeted into the newly carved crater.

High above, Throgar Gorat's gaze fixed on the chaos below, the bones and skulls on his tribal armor clattering as the wind howled past. The impact's aftersound still pulsed through the air like a living echo, and the massive eye beneath him gave a faint shiver under the pressure.

Only then did his face settle, cold and stony, and his voice came as a whisper. "The title 'Earthshaker' proved accurate."

From that height, the aftershocks could be seen rippling through the distant ridges. Dust rose in rolling curtains, and ancient ruins swayed under invisible waves, as if the entire land still trembled in respect for the blow just struck.

He didn't linger to watch the tremors ease; instead, he urged the Giant Eye forward and drew up over the lip of the newly made crater, loose grit skittering under the rim as the ground settled.

Looking down revealed nothing. A choking wall of dust smothered the view, a dense, moving veil that swallowed edges and sound. But fortunately, he did not need sight.

He raised both dark-green hands, energy gathering along his fingers as his Spark skill activated, then sent that force into the pit, pulling at the packed weight below.

From the packed cloud of sand and grit, something began to peel free: a broken silhouette hauled up from the crater's maw, trailing streamers of dust.

"Is she all right?" Silverlight Zephan drew close as Titan Ape's blood-slick form bobbed upward through the haze.

Liora floated in the air like a wreck of iron and torn sinew, heat still rippling off her skin.

She had pushed until the last of her reserves bled away; every one of her 4 forearms hung at wrong angles, and her joints were jagged.

Blood poured from her mouth, ears, and eyes in wide, wet curtains, running over her face like small waterfalls. Her lids fluttered without focus. She was clearly unconscious.

"She's alive, but badly hurt." Throgar's invisible grip never wavered as he eased the massive body from the dust and lowered it to the hard ground with careful control.

"What about the dragon?" Zephan asked heavily, but he didn't wait for anyone

to answer.

The Silver Whale floating under his feet vanished in a blink as it returned to his Sanctuary, leaving a sharp snap of displaced air.

Zephan didn't need it outside; for what he planned, he had to use the skill himself.

The next instant, a long silver spear formed in his hand, and light began to gather, beading along the metal like dew.

The world around the weapon dimmed as if the plane had bled out its brightness. At the same time, the spear itself grew fierce, its shaft and head burning with a glare that forced the eye to water, a single point of focus inside a widening ring of dark.

Throgar saw the incoming move and said nothing. He gathered the Titan Ape in unseen hands and began to pull back, already tracing in his head the lines of ruin that would follow when that strike landed.

The spear drank more light, drawing shade around Zephan until his silhouette was a pale spearhead in a field of dusk, the silver in his eyes catching the glare.

When the charge peaked, he bent his knees and jumped into the sky, cutting cleanly through the dust.

"If you are not dead yet, you will be now." His silver brows drew together; a hard fire burned behind his eyes.

Then he hurled the spear into the crater with the full weight of intent.

It carved into the dust like a bullet of pure silver light, a thread of brilliance that vanished into the choking cloud and stitched it closed behind it.

At first, nothing answered; the light disappeared inside like a snuffed-out

candle.

Zephan dropped to the ground and watched the crater, his expression

unchanged, unbothered by the lack of response.

Seconds ticked by, and only then, from deep where the silver point had died, something flared.

A pinpoint of light swelled at first, then brightened so fast it seemed to breathe white heat.

The hum was low at first, then rose in pitch and volume until it thrummed with a voice that made even one's teeth rattle and ears ring, a deafening drone. The light swelled, filling the whole crater until stone and sand seemed to drink it and then reflect it, each grain flashing like ground glass.

The radiance rose in a single, unbroken column, spearing the sky and tearing the low clouds apart. A silver pillar turned the wind into falling glitter and lit the dark sky like a giant beacon.

It wasn't only light or spectacle; a searing, almost unimaginable heat rose with it, melting the crater's rim, flushing it red, and turning it to flowing lava. Liora's strike had been powerful for its sheer physical force, but Zephan's was pure chemistry, a burn meant to melt the Rank 4 Spark lying at the bottom of

the crater.

He did not leave; he stayed and watched his masterpiece. His long white robe and silver hair streamed in the updraft as he stood, eyes unblinking, watching the silver column until it spent itself and died down.

He was not someone who left outcomes to chance or trusted blind certainty; he needed to witness the result with his own eyes.

When the minutes scraped by and the silver light began to shorten, drawing back from the sky into the crater, he called out, his voice cutting across the

heat-hazed air.

"Hey, Soulforge, can you check if the dragon is cooked or not?"

As an Aether Path with versatile investigative and tracking skills, Throgar Gorat was the best Practitioner to determine the outcome; his senses were built for reading traces, pulses, and shifts hidden to ordinary eyes.

The ogre did not refuse. He left the still-unconscious Giant Ape behind and floated toward the crater, whose depths still burned with silver light and poured out brutal heat that warped the air and reddened the stone along the

rim.

He sent his skills downward and began to search, threads of perception slipping through flames like fine wires unspooling into the depths.

As he probed, his expression changed, a questioning look settling over his features as if a piece of the pattern would not lock into place.

"There's no movement," he said, "but I can feel a faint ripple."