Chapter 96: The Abyssal Seal
The ascent was a blur of heat, crushing pressure, and absolute, blinding rage.
Glen did not feel the jagged edges of the bedrock tearing at his clothes or slicing into his skin. He did not feel the suffocating lack of oxygen as he carved a vertical tunnel through hundreds of feet of solid earth. The void fragment embedded in his core had completely taken over, flooding his nervous system with a dark, corrupted adrenaline that numbed all physical pain. His eyes, completely black and devoid of their human irises, tracked the massive, overwhelming mana signature of The Wanderer waiting on the surface.
He burst through the crust of the earth like an erupting volcano.
The ground of the Gate Hub crater exploded outward in a shower of melted black glass and superheated rock. Glen launched high into the air, suspended for a fraction of a second against the backdrop of the crimson, ash-choked sky. Below him lay the devastating aftermath of the S-Rank clash. The crater was a sea of bubbling magma, the surrounding city completely erased, leaving nothing but a flat, smoking wasteland where the upper spires of Johannesburg had once stood.
Seraphine Vance was on her knees at the edge of the magma lake, her silver armor scorched black, her holy sword discarded. Elias Vance lay fifty yards away, his gold core stabilizer sparking weakly, his body broken. Evander Buchanan was buried under a pile of melted rubble, barely conscious. The absolute pinnacle of humanity’s strength had been utterly dismantled.
But Glen didn’t look at them. His pitch-black eyes locked onto the figure standing in the center of the crater.
The Wanderer was no longer the untouchable, bored god who had casually swatted away the S-Ranks. The cosmic entity was staggering. The stolen physical vessel of Duncan Carmichael was rotting at an accelerated, horrifying pace. Without the infinite supply of refined mana from the Ash Bloom’s anchor—severed by his own sister in the tunnels below—the human meat suit could no longer contain the sheer, incomprehensible density of the void within.
Duncan’s skin was sloughing off in large, gray patches, revealing the shifting, starry darkness beneath. The Wanderer was clutching his chest, coughing up thick, black ichor that hissed and burned as it hit the magma.
"Treachery," The Wanderer hissed, his telepathic voice no longer a smooth, echoing hum, but a jagged, static-filled screech that tore at the minds of everyone in the crater. He looked at his trembling, decaying hands, realizing what had just happened in the depths below. "She severs the root... she disrupts the harvest for her own petty amusement. The arrogance of my kin..."
Glen didn’t give the demon time to recover. He didn’t announce his presence. He didn’t scream a battle cry. He simply fell from the sky like an executioner’s blade.
He channeled every stolen movement skill he possessed—Shadow Step, Wind Glide, Phantom Dash—stacking them on top of each other in a reckless, suicidal combination that tore his own muscles to shreds. He crossed the distance in a microsecond, bringing his Abyssal blade down in a brutal, two-handed overhead strike aimed directly at The Wanderer’s skull.
The Wanderer reacted on pure instinct. He raised his right arm, attempting to summon the massive, pitch-black blade of anti-mana that had effortlessly parried Seraphine’s holy fire.
But the blade that formed was brittle, flickering, and unstable. The infinite well of the Ash Bloom was gone.
Glen’s Abyssal sword slammed into the demon’s hastily constructed guard. The impact generated a shockwave that parted the sea of magma beneath them, exposing the melted bedrock. For the first time since he had arrived in Johannesburg, The Wanderer was forced backward. His boots skidded across the black glass, his decaying physical vessel groaning under the immense kinetic pressure of Glen’s strike.
"You," The Wanderer snarled, his glowing, starry eyes narrowing as he looked at the human boy pressing the attack. He sensed the dark, corrupted veins pulsing on Glen’s neck, the pitch-black eyes, the unmistakable resonance of the void fragment. "The anomaly. The little thief who swallowed a piece of the rot. You think because my sister crippled my supply, you are suddenly my equal?"
Glen didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The rage consuming him was too absolute, too all-encompassing for words. Caleb’s terrified face, disappearing into the shadows of the Female Noble, played on a continuous, agonizing loop in his mind.
Glen twisted his wrists, disengaging the blade lock, and spun into a devastating horizontal slash. The Wanderer leaned back, the tip of the Abyssal blade missing his throat by a fraction of an inch, but the sheer wind pressure of the strike tore the remaining flesh from Duncan Carmichael’s jaw, exposing the terrifying void beneath.
The Wanderer retaliated. He thrust his palm forward, unleashing a concentrated blast of anti-mana. It wasn’t the apocalyptic, horizon-erasing wave that had destroyed the upper spires, but it was still a Noble-tier attack.
The blast hit Glen square in the chest.
Any normal hunter, even an A-Rank, would have been instantly vaporized, their physical body and spiritual core rotted into nothingness. But Glen was not normal. The void fragment embedded in his core flared, acting as a terrifying, corrupted shield. It absorbed the brunt of the anti-mana, feeding on it, integrating it into Glen’s own system.
Glen was thrown backward, his ribs cracking under the kinetic force, but he didn’t disintegrate. He hit the ground, rolled through the bubbling magma—his aura protecting his flesh from the heat—and immediately launched himself back at the demon.
"Impossible," The Wanderer hissed, genuine shock bleeding into his telepathic voice for the first time. "A human vessel cannot process a direct strike from the void. Your core should have shattered."
"Give him back," Glen rasped, his voice a demonic, layered echo.
He closed the distance, unleashing a relentless, suicidal flurry of strikes. He fought with the mindless, apocalyptic fury of a Berserker, completely ignoring defense. He took glancing blows from The Wanderer’s unstable void constructs, letting the anti-mana slice into his shoulders, his thighs, and his ribs, just to land a strike of his own.
The Wanderer was forced on the defensive. He was bleeding black ichor, his stolen body failing, his connection to the city’s mana grid completely severed. He parried Glen’s strikes, but every clash sent a tremor through his decaying form. He was a god who had been suddenly, violently dragged down to the realm of mortals.
Seraphine Vance, kneeling at the edge of the crater, watched the battle in absolute, paralyzed disbelief. Her silver eyes tracked the hyper-sonic movements of the boy she had dismissed as a mere C-Rank anomaly. He was fighting a cosmic entity. He was bleeding, his body breaking under the strain of his own corrupted aura, but he was pushing the demon back. He was doing what three S-Ranks had failed to do.
"You are breaking your own vessel, boy," The Wanderer taunted, though his voice lacked its previous arrogant certainty. He deflected a thrust from Glen’s sword, stepping back to create distance. "The fragment inside you is eating your humanity. You are burning your own soul to fuel this tantrum. Even if you strike me down, you will die."
"I don’t care," Glen roared.
He dropped his Abyssal blade. The dark metal clattered against the black glass of the crater.
The Wanderer paused, his starry eyes narrowing in confusion. Discarding a weapon in the middle of a death match was the act of a madman.
But Glen wasn’t surrendering. He reached into the reinforced canvas bag strapped to his chest and pulled out the Abyssal Prism.
The artifact was roughly the size of a human skull, carved from a single, flawless piece of obsidian glass. It was covered in ancient, shifting runes that seemed to absorb the ambient light around them. The moment Glen exposed it to the air, the temperature in the crater plummeted. The bubbling magma began to cool and harden, the heat sucked directly into the hungry, empty void of the Prism.
The Wanderer’s decaying face froze. For the first time, the cosmic entity looked truly, profoundly terrified.
"The cage," The Wanderer whispered, taking a step back. "Where did you get that?"
"It doesn’t matter," Glen said, his black eyes locking onto the demon.
He gripped the Prism with both hands. According to the Astra Guild’s research, the Abyssal Prism required a massive, unimaginable sacrifice to activate. It needed a conduit—a source of pure, unadulterated void energy to open the seal and drag a Noble inside. A normal human couldn’t use it. A normal human would be instantly consumed by the artifact’s hunger.
But Glen had the void fragment.
He bypassed his body’s safety limiters and forced the corrupted anti-mana in his core directly into the Prism.
The artifact reacted instantly. The obsidian glass turned a blinding, terrifying purple. The ancient runes etched into its surface detached themselves, floating into the air and expanding, forming a massive, complex geometric array that locked onto The Wanderer.
A localized singularity opened at the center of the Prism. It wasn’t a physical vacuum; it was a conceptual void, a prison designed specifically to contain the uncontainable. It exerted a terrifying, irresistible pull on The Wanderer’s true form, bypassing the decaying human meat suit entirely.
"No!" The Wanderer roared.
He planted his feet, channeling every last drop of his remaining energy to resist the pull. The ground beneath him shattered as he tried to anchor himself to the physical world. The starry darkness beneath Duncan Carmichael’s skin surged, desperately trying to claw its way out of the gravitational pull of the seal.
"You think a glass box can hold the void?!" The Wanderer screamed, his telepathic voice tearing through Glen’s mind like shattered glass. The demon was being dragged forward, inch by agonizing inch, his physical vessel beginning to disintegrate as his true essence was pulled toward the Prism. "My sister merely delayed the inevitable! She betrayed me for a human anomaly, but this changes nothing!"
Glen gritted his teeth, blood pouring from his nose and eyes as the Prism drained his life force to fuel the seal. The black veins on his neck pulsed violently, his muscles tearing under the strain. He fell to one knee, but he refused to let go of the artifact. He pushed harder, feeding the last remnants of his stolen aura into the void fragment.
"This prison is fragile, boy!" The Wanderer’s physical body finally dissolved completely, leaving only a massive, shifting cloud of starry darkness desperately fighting the pull of the singularity. "It will not hold me forever! And when I shatter this glass, when I return to this world... I will find the boy she took! I will consume you both! I will—"
"Shut up," Glen snarled.
He slammed his hands together, closing the geometric array.
The singularity collapsed inward with a deafening, apocalyptic crack. The massive cloud of starry darkness that was The Wanderer was sucked into the Abyssal Prism in a fraction of a second. The blinding purple light flared one final time, illuminating the entire ruined Mega-Sanctuary, before instantly winking out.
The sky above Johannesburg, which had been choked with crimson clouds and falling ash for hours, suddenly cleared. The oppressive, suffocating weight of the demon’s aura vanished, leaving behind a profound, terrifying silence.
The Ash Bloom, deprived of its master and its anchor, crumbled into fine, gray dust, blowing away in the cold night wind.
It was over.
Glen remained on his knees in the center of the crater. The Abyssal Prism, now cold and dormant, rested heavily in his bleeding hands. The black veins on his neck slowly receded, and the pitch-black corruption in his eyes faded, returning to their normal, exhausted brown. The void fragment in his core went dormant, its energy completely expended.
The adrenaline that had fueled his impossible ascent and his suicidal fight evaporated, leaving behind a physical and emotional exhaustion so profound it felt like death. Every bone in his body ached. His spiritual core was cracked and weeping.
He looked down at the Prism. He had done it. He had sealed a Noble of the Lost. He had stopped the Ash Bloom from spreading to the rest of the world. He had saved what was left of humanity.
But as he knelt in the ashes of his home, surrounded by the melted ruins of the upper spires and the broken bodies of the city’s greatest champions, Glen felt absolutely no triumph. There was no victory in his heart. There was only a hollow, echoing void.
He clutched the cold glass of the Prism to his chest, lowered his head, and let out a ragged, broken sob.
Caleb was gone.
