The White Tower landed.

The impact shook the ground in every direction, a deep resonating thud that spread outward like a second heartbeat beneath the earth. Then the beam came.

White light poured out from the structure in a wide, sweeping arc, engulfing the area in an instant. The ray of weakness hit everything within its range, pressing down on the energy of anyone caught inside it.

In that same moment, a jade pendant reacted.

Both Enzo and Nibbleskin held one. The pendants flared quietly, canceling out the suppression before it could take root, a clean nullification that left them untouched while everything around them buckled under the pressure.

—woosh

—woosh

Raven and Zeke flashed into position, appearing behind Battlebeast in the same breath, and immediately unleashed a barrage of attacks. No buildup. No warning. Just strikes coming in from both sides at once.

Battlebeast moved.

He dodged each one on instinct, shifting his body between attacks with a speed that didn’t match something his size should have, releasing energy splicing counters between the gaps. Every movement efficient. Nothing wasted.

1v3.

And he was holding his ground.

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

Meanwhile.

Enzo had fought a lot of creatures in his time as a weaver. Each of them, eventually, fell to his blade. Whether it was the Deadman’s Codex, the Divine Grace Poison Medallion, or something else entirely, he always had a method. Always had an angle.

For the first time in a long time, that wasn’t the case.

He had struck the Gore at its most vulnerable points, burning them to char. He had sliced at its senses to limit its awareness, to slow it down, to force it into a corner.

The beast just wasn’t dying.

"Roarrrr!!!"

The Gore released an indignant roar, raw and ancient, and its energy spiked outward as the healing kicked in. The body began knitting itself back together at a pace that made no sense. Wounds that should have taken hours to close sealed in seconds. The char faded. The damage reversed.

Floating in the air in front of the gigantic beast, Enzo breathed heavy.

Not panicked. Just tired.

(An ancient beast. Of course it won’t go easy.)

He had known that going in. He hadn’t expected this to be simple.

But there was a difference between difficult and impossible, and he was starting to wonder which side of that line he was standing on.

’How do you realistically kill something that heals this casually?’

The thought sat there without an answer.

"Hey. Out of the way!!"

The voice came from behind him. Cold. Sudden.

Enzo moved before he finished processing it, dodging on instinct as a beam of cold light shot forward from atop the White Tower, barreling past where he’d been standing a half second earlier.

It struck one of the Gore’s hooves.

Ice spread across the surface fast, crawling up from the point of impact. Enzo watched it closely.

"Hm?"

The hoof wasn’t just frozen.

It was being drained. The life was pulling out of it in real time, visible, measurable, the tissue darkening as the recovery process hit a wall and stopped entirely.

He didn’t need to think about it.

—woosh

He moved in and sliced. Clean. The lower section of the leg came away entirely, severed at a point the beast could no longer protect, the wound sealed against recovery by whatever Gaia had hit it with.

Back on the White Tower, Gaia held her position. Gaze steady. Already lining up the next shot.

With her in the mix, Enzo wasn’t just dealing damage anymore. He was dealing damage that lasted. That stuck. That the beast couldn’t simply reverse the moment he pulled back.

That changed things.

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

On the other side of the field.

"Fucker!!"

Zeke felt it the moment his flames stopped landing. Not faded. Stopped. Battlebeast’s energy splicing ability cut through them at the root, neutralizing the attack before it could do anything meaningful, no matter how Zeke adjusted the angle or the output.

Broken ability. Genuinely broken.

Whatever came at him, Battlebeast dismantled it on instinct alone. Like breathing. Like he didn’t even need to think about it.

Only Nibbleskin and Raven were getting through, because their powers weren’t energy-based. Zeke’s were. And that gap was showing.

He stood there for a moment.

Flames still burning around him. The sounds of the fight all around him.

’I can’t keep letting myself get looked down on.’

It wasn’t new. He had carried that feeling for a long time. Back on Earth it had followed him everywhere, this quiet, persistent sense that he didn’t measure up. Then the first voyage changed everything. He found the sky. He became one with it. For the first time, he was genuinely special.

But since joining the Dual Moon Institute, he had watched monster after monster walk past him. Enzo. Raven. Both of them operating at a level that made him feel like he was back at the start again, like the gap had never closed at all.

He exhaled slow.

"First comes the spark, then comes the fire. The eternal flame burns to rebirth."

The words came out quiet. Certain.

The flames around him responded immediately.

The intensity shifted, climbing fast, visibly, until even Battlebeast, who was still locked inside Enzo’s domain with his sight stripped away, could make out a rough burning outline of him in the surrounding darkness. A shape made entirely of fire.

Zeke didn’t wait.

He rushed forward.

The splicing attacks came, same as before, cutting through the air toward him in rapid succession.

His flames reignited every time. Each one snuffed out and reborn in the same breath, continuous, uninterrupted, like the ability couldn’t find a permanent foothold anymore.

He closed the distance and hit.

The exchange was brutal and short. In pure fighting ability, in raw martial technique, Battlebeast outclassed him completely. That wasn’t a secret. Zeke wasn’t pretending otherwise.

But that wasn’t the point.

The point was the opening.

While Battlebeast was occupied, while he struggled to pull away from the raging flames pressing in from every direction, the others had room. Clean angles. Unguarded moments.

Zeke was burning himself into the fight so they could finish it.

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

Elsewhere.

[You have slain a divine beast]

[You have received its spark of divinity]

[You have received an echo]