The ice shackling the creature's body began to crack.
At first, fine fractures, like a spiderweb, ran across the frozen carapace—then dark tongues of flame tore through them.
A red glow kindled in the monster's depths.
Darkness woke.
The demonic beast wasn't merely trying to break free—it was changing.
Kano felt something ancient and deadly stirring within it.
This thing… it was sacrificing itself to grow stronger.
Flames bursting from the fissures devoured the monster's body. The stone floor around it started to melt.
The beast suddenly arched, and a feral bellow ripped from its throat—not just a sound, but a wave of dark force that made even the air shudder.
Its body began to swell.
Muscles tore the skin and replaced it with tougher, darker hide—obsidian armor, glimmering with fire.
Wings that had been little more than bony protrusions now wore a hellish sheath, burning like molten rock.
Its horns thickened, branching into a colossal crown of darkness.
The eyes… they no longer glowed with ordinary demonic mana—they had become black holes, radiating boundless hatred.
The beast's chest split open, and wide rifts scored its torso, bleeding searing magma.
The claws on its hands lengthened, as if the demons of hell themselves had honed those blades to erase all living things.
Its tail grew, sheathed in ranks of massive black spikes.
This was no longer merely a demonic beast.
This was chaos made flesh.
Kano stepped back on instinct.
His heart pounded.
He had never seen anything like it.
And then—
An explosion.
Darkness and fire detonated around the beast, sweeping everything in the hall away.
Columns cracked and toppled like houses of cards.
The lizardfolk who still clung to life simply burned where they stood; their bodies crumbled to ash.
The chieftain, pinned beneath the rubble, spat blood as he stared at the spectacle.
—"Demons… tricked us…"
His eyes went dim.
And in that moment it became clear:
Only two beings remained here now.
Kano and the Berserk.
The battle that would decide the fate of this place was only beginning.
Kano surged forward.
He could not wait any longer.
His heart hammered in his chest, as if it meant to tear free.
His mind screamed that this was impossible, that his blows would do nothing.
But his body was already moving.
He could not allow himself to stop.
The instant his feet touched stone, he vanished into a blur—and in the next heartbeat his sword, wreathed in magic, bit for the demon's flank.
A dull, iron clang.
Kano felt his arm tremble from the recoil.
A sharp pain stabbed through his joints.
Instead of cleaving flesh, his blade merely skated along the armored hide.
—"What?.."
He didn't finish the thought before instinct threw him back.
A heartbeat later, the monster's claws ripped the air where he had just been standing.
Kano began to move faster.
Speed—his only advantage.
He struck from the left, the right, from above, unleashing torrents of fire and frost, hunting for a weak spot.
But…
The beast didn't even react.
None of the blows left a mark.
It… felt no pain.
A fracture within.
Kano stopped.
His legs felt the ground quiver beneath the monster's next strike.
Fear.
This enemy was unlike any he had faced before.
Usually he watched foes die. He knew each attack carried death.
But now he was fighting as if it were pointless.
His body tightened, his movements growing slower.
His mind was torn between two voices.
"RUN! You can't handle this! It's IMPOSSIBLE!"
"You cannot run. You chose this path."
Kano panted, fingers locked around the sword.
He had closed these gates himself.
He had chosen to stay.
He had sentenced himself to death.
That thought…
Was too horrific.
His body trembled.
"I don't want to die…"
The thought terrified Kano.
He felt his lungs clamp, his legs grow heavier, and the massive demon turn from an enemy into inevitable doom.
His fear wasn't of losing.
His fear was that it was all for nothing.
"I did all of this… and it doesn't matter. I'll just die."
The demon swung again.
Kano barely slipped aside; fire scorched his shoulders, he slammed into a slab of stone, and cried out in pain.
His rhythm broke.
His movements slowed.
His body wouldn't obey.
His mana was nearly spent.
And the demon saw it.
The monster halted, tilted its head, as if studying the boy.
Kano understood this was the end.
He stood before something beyond his strength.
Something that couldn't be overcome with technique or speed.
A power that erased everything around it.
Kano raised his head.
His voice broke into a scream:
—"GODDESS! HELP ME!"
His voice rang as if it were addressed not just to gods, but to the universe itself.
—"ANYONE! GIVE ME STRENGTH!"
He didn't want to die.
Not now.
Not here.
There was no answer.
Only silence.
His mana was almost gone.
His strikes no longer had force.
His speed was fading.
And in that moment the demon struck.
The tail crashed down on Kano.
Everything blurred.
He didn't even grasp what had happened in time.
His body was flung aside.
He slammed into a wall so hard he punched through it.
Darkness.
Kano felt something break inside him.
He lay among the rubble.
He could barely feel his body.
"Is this the end?"
His sight began to dim.
But before consciousness left him, he felt something else.
Something dark.
Something strong.
Something that did not belong to him.
And he heard a whisper—or no, not a whisper; just words spoken too softly.
"You cannot die."
Kano slowly lifted his head.
His eyes turned hollow.
His body moved as if at someone else's command.
And he walked forward.
Despite the pain.
Despite the fear.
The demonic beast suddenly stilled.
It felt the change.
Kano was no longer who he had been a second before.
But what was it?
And why now…
Was the demon afraid of him?
Kano kept walking.
His body should have fallen, but it did not.
His legs should have buckled, but they didn't stop.
The hand that could barely hold the sword suddenly ceased to tremble.
He no longer felt pain.
The darkness filling his mind wasn't emptiness.
It was something else.
Something that until this moment had lain hidden deep within him.
—"I cannot die."
His voice no longer shook.
His fear was gone.
His eyes… they were empty.
The beast halted.
Its body still burned, but it did not attack.
Its eyes were no longer brimming with hatred.
For the first time in the entire battle, hesitation entered its gaze.
The demon sensed something different, something its demonic instinct couldn't explain.
Kano was no longer just a boy desperately trying to survive.
Now he looked as if…
As if he could never die.
The monster roared, its fear turning to fury.
It no longer wanted merely to destroy Kano.
It had to destroy him.
Its paw, wider than a human body, carved through the air.
It struck with a force that could crush mountains.
But this time…
Kano did not dodge.
He simply raised his hand.
His fingers closed around the demon's wrist.
And in that instant, a blast sounded.
The demon choked.
Its body was hurled back.
Kano stood his ground.
For a heartbeat his fingers still clenched the beast's paw… then he let it go.
A great fracture ran up the creature's forearm.
Skin that had been unbreakable now shivered.
It felt pain.
For the first time.
Its eyes widened.
It couldn't understand what had happened.
How?!
How could this frail being touch it now—and hurt it?!
He took another step.
His face stayed expressionless.
He no longer felt fear.
He felt nothing.
The demon roared again, throwing its full mass into the attack.
Kano extended his hand.
His palm brushed the air.
A blast.
The demon suddenly flew backward, as if smashed by an unseen wall.
Its vast body slammed into the broken columns.
Its paws trembled.
Its body was no longer invincible.
Kano didn't say a word.
He took another step forward.
His eyes remained empty.
And at last the demon understood.
Now it was the prey.
And it felt fear.
The demon stood, gasping.
Its overheated armor cracked; from the rents in its hide poured thick, dark blood, boiling like molten metal.
Its lungs—if it had lungs at all—wrenched out hot, poisonous smoke.
It could not defeat Kano.
It knew that.
But if it could not win…
Then it would take him along.
Suddenly its eyes flared brighter.
The mana left in its body began to burn from within, forcing its way out.
Kano stopped.
Something was wrong.
The beast planted its paws and lowered its head to the floor.
Its claws bit into the stone of the throne room.
And in that same moment…
The entire hall shuddered.
The beast began to vibrate, as if something were exploding inside it.
Its body blazed with white-hot light.
A dark aura rose over it, coiling into a deadly sphere.
Kano suddenly understood.
—"You're going to…"
His heart fluttered.
This monster wasn't merely dying.
It meant to obliterate everything around it.
He vanished into motion, his body flashing like lightning.
He had to stop it.
He had to end this.
His sword flashed as he drove it straight into the demon's chest.
But the beast didn't even defend.
It no longer fought Kano.
Its body only hoarded power for the blast.
Kano struck again.
And again.
But it was already too late.
A colossal discharge of dark energy tore free.
The mountain shuddered.
Every column of the throne hall collapsed in a heartbeat.
The floor beneath Kano began to split.
The throne room that had stood for centuries could not withstand the blast.
The ground yawned, and the entire hall began to plunge into the abyss.
Kano tried to spring back.
But the bodies of the dead lizardfolk, the shards of stone columns, the fallen sections of wall—everything dropped with him.
His fingers clawed for a jut of rock, but it ripped free of the slab, and Kano, along with the remnants of the throne room, fell downward.
He saw the demon that had exploded falling into the dark as well.
Its body still burned, but life had left it.
But it didn't matter.
Kano was falling into that abyss too.
A depth without end.
A darkness that devoured all.