Apocalypse Baby-Chapter 307: Final Flame
Sylen screamed.
A soul-shattering roar tore from his throat—raw, primal, jagged.
It echoed through the crumbling arena, piercing the very air like a sonic blade. The sky itself seemed to recoil as his voice cracked through the heavens.
Flames danced violently atop his skull—no longer fire, but a sentient, cursed entity writhing with malevolent hunger.
The black blaze twisted upward in serpentine arcs, coiling like devouring spirits that licked the heavens, only to curl back and consume their host from the inside.
It was a fire that didn't just burn flesh—but also essence.
Sylen's essence.
His death aura, once a regal tide of shadowy dominion, had lost its rhythm. It now surged in chaotic pulses, waves lashing outward like a beast in a death spiral.
The ground warped beneath his feet. Cracks tore through the stone like veins of molten hatred.
And at the center of it all—his spectral armor, the hollow shell of Noctherion—shuddered.
The towering silhouette clinging to Sylen's form spasmed, its spectral limbs flaring like panicked nerves misfiring in all directions. The tendrils of living shadow twisted and twitched violently, desperately trying to contain the storm within Sylen's soul.
But it wasn't working.
Noctherion—his last defense, his god-crafted cocoon—was unraveling.
And so was he.
Cracks bloomed across his skin, splitting his arms, throat, and chest open like overripe fruit. Thin veins of violet light webbed through him—lines of soul-fire rupturing through the fragile surface of his mortal form. His skin was ash now, flaking away with every twitch, every breath.
His blood sizzled as it struck the ground.
Every drop steamed on impact—each one burning with the residue of soulthread. His very life was coming undone, unraveling like a broken curse.
Thoughts vanished.
There was no strategy left.
No calculation.
Just one thing remained—one final, pure emotion that outlasted everything else.
Hatred.
Untethered.
Undeniable.
Directed solely at Alex.
The one who started it.
The one who had forced Sylen into this state.
The one who stood somewhere ahead—the eye of this storm, untouched while everything else crumbled.
Sylen's lips pulled back, revealing teeth like cracked glass. His eyes, wide and glowing white-hot, locked forward.
He didn't need to see Alex.
He could feel him.
Like gravity itself had bent around that cold bastard.
He surged forward.
A jagged, broken sprint—half run, half stumble—through flame and ruin.
His skeletal frame shook with every step, black fire trailing behind him like a cloak tearing at the seams.
Each footfall left craters, the stone unable to hold his collapsing form. Skin sloughed off in chunks. Bone showed in places where muscle had burned away.
But none of that mattered.
He didn't care.
He couldn't care.
If it cost him the last flicker of his existence—so be it.
He would take Alex down with him.
The shadow remnants clung to his limbs, trying to hold his collapsing body together, but it was like watching threads try to stitch back a body mid-detonation.
His sword dragged behind him, scraping across the floor like a fallen executioner's blade, teeth catching in the cracks as it sparked with death magic.
Ahead,
Alex stood.
Still. Silent.
Unbothered.
His expression unreadable. Eyes flat and cold.
His hands were already raised—middle finger and thumb touching gently, as if waiting for nothing more than the perfect moment.
But that moment had already arrived.
While he held Sylen by the neck, Alex had set an explosion disk upon Sylen's head.
And now, it was time to end it.
Alex watched Sylen's last charge with dead-eyed calm.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't move.
He just spoke.
Quietly.
Almost kindly.
"This has been fun."
SNAP!
His fingers met with a crisp sound—and the flames obeyed.
Instantly.
The black fire on Sylen's skull convulsed—twisting inward in a violent spiral, collapsing on itself like a dying star.
The cursed blaze that had screamed skyward just moments ago folded into a single glowing point—compressing, boiling, imploding.
And then—
BOOOOOOOM!
There was no wave. No shock. No outward force.
Just destruction.
Pure. Condensed. Unforgiving.
The explosion was internal—an implosion of cursed flame that consumed rather than blasted.
Sylen's skull didn't explode outward—it crumbled inward, devoured from within as the cursed orb detonated in his brain like a black sun.
There was a sickening sound.
A crack.
Wet and inverted.
Then silence.
His body gave a final twitch—
And collapsed.
Face-first.
Limp.
Like a marionette whose strings had been severed mid-step.
The death aura around him flickered.
Then—like a candle starved of oxygen—it vanished.
And with it, Noctherion broke.
The massive frame of spectral armor that had once loomed with apocalyptic dread began to peel away, layer by layer.
Shadowed tendrils collapsed into mist. Plates of energy turned to fading symbols. One by one, each component disintegrated into curling wisps of fog, evaporating into the air like a nightmare being erased by dawn.
The veil broke.
And beneath it—
Sylen's real body.
Emaciated. Frail. Sickly pale.
All the youth and menace stripped away.
What remained was a husk—a soul-stripped shell of what had once been a formidable summoner.
His headless corpse lay in a pool of its own ash, blood staining the fractured arena floor as silence pressed down like a burial shroud.
There was no more movement.
No twitch.
No flicker of energy.
The link between Sylen and the shadow summons shattered like glass, releasing one final pulse of dying magic that swept across the battlefield.
And with it—
His army fell.
One by one.
Shadow knights froze in place—then turned to vapor, weapons vanishing mid-swing.
Beasts collapsed into clouds of smoke, snarls cut short.
Spectral mages crumbled to ash as if never real to begin with.
Within seconds—
They were gone.
All of them.
Nothing left but scorch marks and silence.
And Alex.
He stood alone.
Surrounded by the dissipating echoes of war.
His clones slowly turned their heads, scanning the battlefield.
But there was no threat left to fight.
It was over.
The war of attrition had ended—not with fanfare, but with quiet finality.
Alex exhaled and dismissed the clones with a thought.
They vanished in flashes of faint system light—the clones dissolving back into nothingness.
And then—stillness.
Just Alex.
Standing alone in the ruin.
He simply breathed and stared at the blackened ground where Sylen's body lay.
The battle, to him, had never been about revenge or proving superiority.
It had been a test.
For Varkos.
He hadn't fought to kill Sylen personally, at least not after Sylen pulled the Noctherion card.
He'd pulled out Varkos to learn what it could do.
And what he saw in that Archfiend—what he'd unleashed…
It thrilled him in the best way possible.
Adaptability.
Varkos had learned on the fly in his fight against Sylen and his summons.
He had grown stronger with each passing second.
And that kind of evolution…
That kind of weapon…
Was beyond dangerous.
And though the fiend had been destroyed—split apart in a spectacular clash—he could always resummon it.
The summoning cooldown would take time. Varkos wouldn't be available for a while.
But that was fine.
Because next time… he'd be even stronger.
Alex then turned slowly, lifting his gaze toward the VIP Combatant Zone.
He knew eyes were watching.
He felt Malik's stare.
Then he smiled.
A quiet, knowing grin.
Then raised a hand—
And gave a slight, mocking wave.
Like saying: You're next.
Because in the next match…
He wasn't going to use strategy.
He wasn't going to use his clones.
He wanted chaos.
Raw.
Personal.
This time…
He wanted all the action to himself.
