Artur’s dragon silhouette flickered and dimmed from the blast. He went into a freefall, his consciousness nearly slipping away. Yet, on the brink of blackout, his eyes ignited once more. With the last of his strength, he slashed his artifact blade through the empty air. Instantly, the fabric of space split like torn cloth. Artur allowed his body to be swallowed into the dimensional rift just before the space sealed shut.

Nevare’s eyes widened slightly. Her detection spells suddenly went blind; Artur’s existence had vanished from reality.

Suddenly, the air to her left distorted. Relying on pure intuition, Nevare tilted her body just as a rift tore open and a sphere of blue lightning scorched the wind beside her. The rift closed instantly. Once again, Artur’s position became a mystery.

Nevare immediately understood the mechanism of the artifact. The sword could rend space and hide its user within a pocket dimension. The enemy would be totally blind, while the user could monitor and launch surprise attacks from impossible angles. Nevare’s mind raced, seeking a flaw to neutralize this lethal weapon.

The battle continued in an agonizing imbalance. Projectile after projectile launched from the void. However, Nevare’s Mana God Form had elevated her perception and reflexes to a divine level. She avoided every blind shot with a terrifying, casual ease, relying on instinct even when her reaction time was less than a tenth of a second.

Realizing his long-range attacks were futile and couldn’t touch a single hair on his sister’s head, Artur’s barrage ceased.

Next comes a close-quarters strike he thinks I can’t avoid, Nevare thought.

Unfortunately for him, that was exactly what she had been waiting for.

Nevare’s nerves hissed, warning of a threat from the side. But instead of dodging, she stood her ground. The tip of the artifact sword ripped through space and pierced straight through her abdomen.

Strangely, Nevare did not flinch. Not a single drop of blood was spilled. With lightning speed, Nevare’s hand clamped onto the blade impaling her and pulled—hard.

Artur was dragged out of his dimensional hiding place, his eyes bulging in shock. Before he could process the situation, Nevare’s knee was already in flight. Artur tried to evade, but his artifact sword—held fast by his enemy—locked his movement. The brutal impact buried itself squarely in his chest.

Artur coughed up fresh blood, groaning in agony as his body was hurled back, slamming into the earth and creating a small crater. He scrambled to his feet, knowing his sister would show no mercy. Sure enough, a second later, a pillar of lightning struck the spot where he had landed; he had jumped away just in time.

"Why...?" Artur whispered, his breath ragged and his eyes wide. "Why aren’t you hurt?!"

His focus shifted to the artifact sword now in Nevare’s hand. His artifact should have been unusable without the owner’s permission. Furthermore, Nevare’s stomach—which should have had a gaping hole—was completely unblemished. Her skin was flawless.

Nevare only offered a cold smile, refusing to answer. This was the unique trait of the Armor of Zeus: Elementalization. She could convert part or all of her body into pure lightning. Any physical attack, no matter how strong, would simply pass through a void.

Artur’ged his teeth, sickened by the arrogance of the monster before him. He reached into the air again, plunging his hand into his dimensional pocket.

Nevare’s brow furrowed. She had seized the dimensional sword, but she did not know how many occult armaments her brother had hidden away. Even if she had ways to avoid the Soul Spear, artifacts remained a troublesome variable.

However, when Artur’s hand pulled back, he held no weapon. Only a small, round pill sat in his palm. Nevare’s eyes narrowed sharply. She could feel no magical fluctuation from the pill, but her intuition screamed an absolute warning.

"I didn’t want to use this. This was never meant to be shown to the public. But I have no other choice. YOU FORCED ME!"

With a desperate roar, Artur swallowed the pill whole.

Silence reigned for a heartbeat. Then, the mana around Artur exploded in absolute chaos. His body swelled anomalously; his muscles tore through his clothing, pulsing wildly like a tumor growing in real-time. Black veins bulged across his face and neck. His eyes lost every shred of human sanity, replaced by the feral glint of a starving beast.

Nevare’s breath suddenly hitched. The hair on her body stood up in unison. It wasn’t because she feared Artur’s mutation, but because the sight before her forcibly kicked open a door of memory she had long kept dead-bolted.

A past trauma she thought had faded now rose to tear at her chest.

Artur’s horrific form, those bulging veins, and the soulless madness in his eyes... it was a perfect replica of the two nightmares that had stripped everything from an innocent girl in the past. The forms that had forced her to kill her own humanity. The forms that had birthed Nevare.

Bon and Jon.

The two demons who had abducted her and her friends into a living hell. Yet, it wasn’t the abduction or the physical torture that made Nevare’s soul tremble with fear even now. It was what radiated from the eyes of those two monsters.

Nevare never knew what tragedy had created Bon and Jon, but she could see the abyss of despair in their eyes. If Jon’s gaze was a manifestation of pure pain that tortured sanity, then Bon’s eyes were a bottomless pit of darkness—an absolute void where morality and empathy had long since rotted away.

Through the hands of Bon and Jon, she had been forced to swallow the most disgusting fact of reality: that this world is a slaughterhouse, and humans, under the right conditions, will willingly discard their humanity to become worse than animals. In those nights of absolute despair, her fragile innocence was shredded. Anna cried, Anna begged, until finally, Anna died—strangled by hopelessness.

From the ashes of that weak girl, a ruthless survivor named Nevare had crawled out. She chose to be the monster who controlled her own fate rather than the prey that wept for help.

And now, seeing her own brother mutate into that same demonic form... Nevare knew exactly. Whatever tragedy had befell Bon and Jon in the past to turn them into mindless monsters, the root of all that depravity was intimately linked to the round pill Artur had just swallowed.