CHAPTER 1126: THE CLASH

Zerathul didn’t move. He remained there, suspended in the air. His robes of darkness flowing around him like the breath of the void.

His face that looked like twisted mockery of flesh and tentacles and octopus showed no emotion that could be seen, only those narrow red eyes glowing like twin flames, it was cold and ancient.

The crescent of golden energy screamed toward him. It was serrated with burning light that shredded through the air as it came.

Then, the smoke surrounding him surged upward, forming a vortex of black and crimson tendrils that met the strike head-on.

The moment they collided, the sky blew up.

BOOM!

A massive explosion erupted, tearing apart clouds and shattering the ground far below them.

The shockwave carried not just Magic energy but a wave of corruption.

Erend flinched as his vision blurred for a split second, seeing flashes of shapes in those explosions. He saw eyes, claws, and teeth in flashes of images.

The blast burned through the atmosphere, creating expanding rings of golden fire laced with dark veins.

Krono roared again. His wings cut through the smoke as he lunged forward again, his movement bending space around him.

The beat of his wings left trails of golden energy that shimmering in gold and blue.

He opened his mouth and released a breath of pure fire. This was different from his usual time power he used in battle. This one was fire, elemental. It burned bright and hot.

Zerathul raised one arm lazily, the folds of his robe twisting unnaturally as though filled with living shadows.

The fire collided with a crimson wall that appeared in an instant. The wall looked like a flat surface that looked like stretched flesh. It was pulsating and covered in glowing mysterious runes.

The barrier absorbed the flames, swelling like a balloon before bursting into a cascade of black blood-like liquid that rained down and turned the ground below into boiling pits.

Krono didn’t relent. He swung his claws again. The strike cracked the air with blinding light. Waves of golden energy rippled outward like blades of pure force.

Zerathul dodged through the attacks with unsettling fluidity without much effort. He bent his body in ways no creature should be able to move.

Sometimes he disappeared into folds of smoke and reappeared somewhere else, his form distorting through space as though space itself couldn’t decide where he was supposed to exist.

When Krono’s claw passed too close, Zerathul extended his smoke tentacles, wrapping them around invisible threads in the air and yanking them.

The threads were lines of time power, and the pull caused reality to stutter. For a heartbeat, Krono’s movement froze. His claws stopped, his wings caught between beats.

Zerathul used that instant to conjure a lance of dark energy that looked like condensed shadow and hurled it upward.

The spear pierced through Krono’s chest, but instead of blood, a burst of golden sparks erupted, scattering across the sky.

The wound healed instantly as Krono’s body pulsed with lights. He let out a furious roar that cracked the sky, and the power of time surged around him in violent distortion to rewind his wound.

The clouds twisted into spirals and time itself began to fracture after the clash. Lightning flashed backward, explosions played in reverse, and even Erend’s perception flickered for a moment. Past and present blending into chaos.

Krono’s wings flared wide, and he unleashed a massive blast of energy that erupted like a miniature sun.

Zerathul crossed his arms, summoning a colossal black sphere that formed around him. He summoned a barrier of void energy that pulsating and filled with eyes that opened and closed in random sequence.

The golden inferno slammed into it, pushing both forces into a roaring deadlock.

The air screamed, mountains in the distance suddenly crumbled to dust, and the entire world trembled under their power.

The golden light began to overpower the black sphere, burning holes through it.

But through those holes, tendrils of crimson energy shot out and pierced Krono’s wings.

The Time Dragon roared in pain, thrashing as the tendrils tried to drain his Magic.

In that chaos, Zerathul’s voice echoed through the storm. It was deep, hollow, and filled with mockery.

"You are timeless, but you still decay in front of me," he said. "Every loop of eternity leads to the same end, Dragon of Time. You cannot escape what waits beyond the final second of my plan."

Krono’s answer was a roar that shook the existence. His body blazed even brighter, breaking free of the tendrils.

The storm bent backward as golden light surged outward again, turning everything into a horizon of brilliant gold light and deep shadow.

Erend, Eccar, and Aesa hovered pretty far away from them, watching their battle. And as the world burned and bent around them Erend whispered, "I don’t know what to do anymore."

His mind was in confusion. None of this made sense anymore. The fabric of reality was coming apart before his eyes.

He glanced at Eccar and Aesa. Both wore the same expression. The three of them had seen the same impossible thing.

Time itself fracturing whenever Krono and Zerathul’s powers clashed. Fragments of moments hung in the air like shattered glass. Echoes of past and future overlapping. In one instant, they saw Krono’s wings whole, in the next, already mended again.

And then there was Zerathul. The longer they watched him the stranger he became. The shadows around him twisted unnaturally and created shapes that looked strange.

The shadows moved on their own through the air, and for a moment Erend thought he saw a thousand red eyes blink open within them. Even more terrifying, Zerathul’s aura pulsed with something eerily similar to Krono’s. It wasn’t just dark energy. It was time. He seems to have time power too.

Erend turned to his friends. They exchanged a silent tense look.

"Use your special power," Aesa suddenly said.

Erend understood immediately. She meant the System—the strange and powerful interface that had constantly guided him before.

He shook his head. "I can’t."

Aesa’s eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"I don’t know," he replied, frustration biting at his tone. "The power had been silent for too long. I can’t reach it anymore."

Aesa’s throat moved as she swallowed hard, unable to respond.

Erend looked back toward the clash in the sky. And then, suddenly, his vision flickered.

For a brief moment he saw familiar things flashing faintly at the edge of his sight.

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