Varo King World had been consumed.

Every corner of it was blacked with smot and tarr — the thick, dark residue that corruption left behind as it spread, coating surfaces, filling cracks, turning what had been living space into something that looked like the inside of something dead. In the far dark corners of the landscape, creatures moved through the shadows feasting on what remained of settlements. The sound of bones being crushed carried further than it should have in the silence.

The invisible shuttle cut through the air without a sound.

It climbed steadily, navigating up along the side of a mountain region, moving through the shadows where the light from the sun barely reached. From the outside there was nothing to see — just air, just rock face, just the occasional shift of shadow that could easily be explained away.

"This is the place he was last seen."

At the front, a night creature leaned slightly forward, pointing toward a large rock structure that rose up and stretched into the sky. The sun’s rays caught the upper edges of it but didn’t make it past the bulk of the stone below. Everything in the middle range sat in a kind of permanent half-dark.

The mission had not been easy to authorize.

A few beings of high status in heaven had sanctioned it — reluctantly, with conditions, with the kind of approval that made clear they weren’t happy about it even as they gave it. They were monitoring the ground from above, feeding information down in real time, making sure nothing went wrong that they hadn’t accounted for.

"Okay." Nibbleskin scanned the terrain below through his third eye. "Just keep gliding. We’ll notice him sooner or later."

The shuttle drifted through the shadow of the rock face, slow and patient.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Battlebeast didn’t like crowds.

That was simply how he was. Despite the fighting power — despite being a high god capable of leveling anything that came at him — he had no interest in the company of other Deamons when there was no battle to be fought. He moved at his own pace, from one place to another, sitting on the back of his beast and doing largely nothing.

Right now that was exactly what he was doing.

A humanoid figure, bear-bodied and massive, sitting cross-legged on the back of a cow-type beast as it moved along the mountain terrain below. His arms were thick. His posture was completely relaxed. All across his body tattoo marks crawled through his flesh in slow, shifting patterns — not still the way ink is still, but moving, like something alive running just beneath the skin.

He reached down and rubbed the beast’s side absently.

"You’re hungry, ay? Big guy."

The beast made a low sound.

"Should we go down to that small town you were looking at on the way? Kill everyone there?" He said it the way someone says let’s stop somewhere for food on a long trip. Casual. Unbothered. "Human essence is your favorite snack."

This species — humans — was still relatively new in the scope of the universe. Stubborn. Unpredictable in the specific way that new things sometimes are before they find their ceiling. For a long time corruption hadn’t paid them much attention. They were spreading, yes, but they weren’t worth a serious look.

That had changed.

They were strong now. And nutritious in a way that mattered to things like Gore.

The beast’s mouth opened at the mention of the humans, jagged teeth catching the dim light, edges sharp enough to shear through most materials without effort. It had just come back from a settlement not far from here — had moved through it and taken what it wanted.

It hadn’t been enough.

It wanted more.

Unfortunately for Gore, this would most likely be the last time it thought about feeding on humans for a very long time.

Because in the sky directly above their position, a hatch on an invisible shuttle had opened.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Enzo stood at the edge of the opening, black battle suit on, the mountain air hitting him from below.

Nibbleskin sat on his shoulder.

"When you plant your wonderland, we’ll join from the outside immediately," the others said from inside the cabin.

"Hm."

Enzo didn’t spend time on it.

He stepped off the side of the shuttle and dropped.

—woosh

The air rushed past him as he plummeted downward, the rock face blurring on one side, the open sky on the other. The ground came up fast.

"Hm?"

The moment Enzo crossed a certain altitude, Battlebeast noticed.

His head turned upward. The tattoo marks along his arms shifted, responding to whatever instinct in him had picked up the movement. His eyes found the falling figure and processed it in an instant.

But it was already too late.

"Wonderland Creation——"

Enzo’s voice was level.

"——Shadow Void Space."

For a divine being, the most powerful thing they possessed wasn’t divine energy. It wasn’t their weapons either. It was their wonderland — the space they could create and control completely, an environment that bent entirely to their nature.

Inside a wonderland, a divine being wasn’t just strong.

They were a god of that space.

The Shadow Void spread outward from Enzo’s position as he fell, dark and total, swallowing the light and the terrain and the open mountain air and replacing it with something else entirely. A space that belonged to him.

"You dare ambush me?!"

Battlebeast was already moving.

"Puny night creature!!"

He raised one massive arm and began throwing punches into the air — not at Enzo directly, but at the edges of the wonderland as it formed, sending out bursts of energy with each strike. His energy splicing technique read the structure of the space as it expanded and targeted the weak points in the formation, trying to interrupt it before it fully set.

He was good at this.

The technique was built for exactly this kind of disruption — reading the shape of something mid-formation and cutting through it before it could stabilize.

But the void was something else.

Cutting through darkness was hard enough. Cutting through the void was a different problem entirely. The strikes landed and dissipated without purchase, absorbed into the space without giving anything back.

The wonderland finished forming.

"Kid."

Nibbleskin’s voice came quick, already shifting. "Kill the beast. I’ll hold off its master as long as I can."

He dropped from Enzo’s shoulder and his form changed as he moved — human shape, fast, heading directly for Battlebeast with the kind of forward momentum that didn’t leave room for hesitation.

In his mind he had already calculated the matchup.

Yuno Al’K was talented. Genuinely. If Yuno were the one here now Nibbleskin would have positioned differently — would have played a supporting role and let the assassin work. But his read on Enzo was still the read he had formed back on Galafray. A capable kid. Worth protecting. Worth making space for.

He just didn’t——

A scream tore through the wonderland.

Gut-wrenching. Enormous.

From the side, Gore lurched — a massive gash opened across its flank from nowhere, deep and violent, flesh splitting in a long ugly line as Enzo came through it with a strike that didn’t look like it should have landed that clean.

"Ah?"

Nibbleskin slowed for just a fraction of a second.

He looked back.

Enzo was already repositioning, eyes fixed, completely focused. No hesitation in the movement. No wasted motion. The strike hadn’t been lucky — the angle, the timing, the read of the beast’s weight distribution before the cut landed. All of it deliberate.

Nibbleskin looked at him for a moment longer.

’This kid is not the same one from Galafray.’​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​