The Berserker could accelerate with dark red lightning.

It could reinforce its regeneration by dimming that energy and redirecting it inward.

It could fire plasma from its maw by gathering the same lightning in its throat.

But it couldn’t do everything at once.

When it regenerated rapidly, its outer lightning dimmed.

When it prepared a plasma blast, its movement stalled for a fraction.

When it accelerated explosively, regeneration slowed slightly.

Liam’s eyes narrowed for a brief moment.

There was a rhythm.

The Berserker finished regenerating and charged again.

This time, Liam did not meet it head-on.

He moved around it.

Flame bursts shot from his feet in short, controlled bursts, each one changing his angle by a few degrees. He circled close, not far, remaining within the Berserker’s attack range while never staying where the demon expected.

The Berserker swiped.

Liam slid under the strike and slashed with a flame-coated dagger he formed for less than a second.

Then the dagger vanished and the hybrid javelin returned.

He struck the demon’s ribs, with an explosion following immediately.

The Berserker turned, but Liam already vanished sideways in flame.

Another miniature sun formed from his left arm and struck the demon’s lower back causing another explosion.

The Berserker’s tail swept low.

Liam jumped, landed on the tail itself for half a breath, ran three steps along its length, and drove the hybrid javelin down into the base.

The explosion tore through the tail.

The Berserker roared and spun, ripping its own damaged tail free from the blast radius.

Liam launched upward, and the demon followed.

They clashed midair; claw against javelin. Flame against lightning.

Liam twisted around one strike and slammed his knee into the Berserker’s jaw, releasing a flame burst from his shin at the moment of impact. The demon’s head snapped back, but its hand still caught Liam by the ankle.

It swung him downward.

Liam formed a miniature sun in his left palm and fired it into the demon’s wrist.

The blast severed most of the hand.

Liam tore free, flipped, and landed against the side of a tree trunk. He pushed off immediately and hurled the hybrid javelin straight into the Berserker’s chest.

The demon knocked it aside with its regenerating hand.

Liam’s eyes remained calm as the javelin curved.

Not in natural a way.

The shadow portion of the weapon bent its path mid-flight as it spun back and struck the demon from behind with an explosion following up again.

The Berserker staggered forward.

Liam appeared in front of it with his left arm raised.

Another miniature sun.

The Berserker’s dark red eyes widened, then opened its maw, lightning gathering inside.

Liam fired first.

The miniature sun shot toward the mouth, but the Berserker closed its jaws and turned its head aside. The orb detonated against the side of its face, blasting away one cheek and part of its jaw.

But the plasma did not release.

The demon had stopped it.

It was adapting again.

The Berserker lunged through the smoke.

Liam’s instinct caught the movement, and his reason told him the demon would feint high and strike low.

He stepped back half a pace.

The Berserker’s claw cut through the air in front of his face.

Then its leg shot forward toward his knee.

Liam jumped before the kick formed fully, landed on the demon’s shin, and used it as footing. He ran up the limb, hybrid javelin forming in his hand again, and drove it toward the throat.

The Berserker’s hand caught his shoulder, claws sinking in.

Pain flashed across the shoulder, but Liam ignored it as the javelin struck the neck, and explosion following again.

The Berserker’s grip loosened.

Liam tore free, leaving blood behind, then kicked off the demon’s chest and launched backward.

The Berserker’s neck regenerated with its eyes burning brighter and getting angrier.

More desperate.

The fight had gone beyond curiosity now.

The prey was injuring it too much.

The prey was refusing to break.

The prey was forcing adaptation after adaptation.

The Berserker roared and surged forward with speed that cracked the ground behind it.

Liam met it with a flame burst.

They clashed again.

The exchange became too fast for ordinary eyes.

The Berserker struck from above.

Liam slipped under and hit the ribs and an explosion followed.

The Berserker turned with a tail strike.

Liam cut over it with fire and landed behind the demon with a miniature sun forming in his palm.

The Berserker moved its arm into the path before explosion erupted and tore the arm apart.

But regeneration followed right after.

The Berserker stepped through tue smoke and punched.

Liam blocked with the hybrid javelin, the weapon cracking before he released an explosion.

The force had both thrown apart.

They hit the ground at the same time, and both moved immediately.

The Berserker’s speed tripled from the first clash, but Liam’s movement had changed too.

Earlier, he reacted.

Now he flowed.

His body no longer moved like he was deciding each action separately. There was no pause between thought and motion. No visible separation between observation, choice, and execution.

He saw the demon’s shoulder twitch and was already moving before the claw came.

He felt the air pressure shift and knew the tail was coming before it entered his vision.

He sensed the dark red lightning gather in the legs and adjusted his angle before the Berserker launched.

Unified Flow made his body look almost weightless.

But the Berserker was still overpowering him.

Each blocked hit hurt.

Each near miss tore the ground apart.

Each glancing blow rattled bone.

Liam could injure the demon again and again, but the Berserker only kept regenerating and returning faster.

Then the demon changed.

It stopped chasing for half a breath as its claws dug into the ground with its body lowered.

The dark red lightning across its shoulders, arms, and back dimmed.

Liam saw the maw opening, wider and wider.

Far wider than before.

Lightning gathered inside its throat with terrifying intensity.

This was not the same quick plasma blast from before.

It was concentrating far more power.

The air in front of the demon distorted and the ground beneath its mouth blackened from heat before the blast even fired.

Liam knew immediately.

If that struck him directly, there would be nothing left to stabilize.

The Berserker was desperate enough to end it now.

And that desperation created the opening Liam had been waiting for.

Liam moved forward even faster than before.

The Berserker’s eyes widened slightly with lhtning roaring inside its maw.

Liam’s hybrid javelin dissolved in his grip as he lowered his right hand.

His left arm, still glowing white-orange, dimmed slightly as shadow began gathering in his palm.

Dark Myst folded inward and fire compressed around it.

A small orb formed at the center of Liam’s hand.

Not bright like a miniature sun, and definitely not explosive at first glance.

It was dark and dense, pulling everything toward itself.

An Umbra Star, at maximum output.

The orb trembled in his palm, a terrifying mixture of compressed flame and dark magic. The air around it bent inward. Loose dirt, ash, leaves, and fragments of bark began dragging toward the sphere as though the world itself wanted to collapse into it.

The Berserker fired.

A blast of dark red plasma erupted from its maw.

Liam stepped into the line of fire.

Then vanished slightly to the side with a flame burst so tight it barely produced light.

The plasma grazed past him, tearing open the air beside his shoulder.

Pain burned across his side, but he ignored it.

He appeared directly beneath the Berserker’s opened maw and thrusted his left hand upward.

The Umbra Star entered the demon’s mouth.

For one instant, the Berserker froze, its s eyes widening.

Liam’s crimson eyes stared up at it coldly.

"Disappear."

He released it.

The Umbra Star dropped into the Berserker’s throat.

Then it imploded.

The demon’s body folded inward violently.

Its chest collapsed toward its center. Its ribs snapped inward. Its arms jerked toward its torso as if an invisible force had seized every piece of it and dragged it into a single point. Dark red lightning distorted, bending toward the orb inside its body.

The Berserker tried to roar, but no sound came out.

Its maw stretched open, but its throat had already begun collapsing.

Liam pushed off the ground with everything he had.

Flames exploded beneath his feet as he launched backward.

Not far enough before the implosion reached its limits.

Then it reversed.

The explosion that followed swallowed the forest.

Darkness and fire expanded outward together in a massive sphere of destruction. Trees vanished within it. Earth was ripped apart. Stone fragmented into dust. The air compressed, tore, and erupted outward violently as the combined force of dark magic and flame erased everything inside its reach.

The radius expanded close to a hundred meters.

The blast consumed the clearing, the surrounding forest, the broken trenches, the scorched ground, and the space where the Berserker had stood.

Liam was caught at the edge of it.

The shockwave slammed into him from behind, throwing him across the ground like a broken object. His body skipped once over shattered earth, crashed through the remains of a tree, and rolled hard across the outer edge of the destruction. The heat burned across his back. Darkness scraped through his skin like invisible blades. The pressure forced the air from his lungs.

Then everything faded.

The explosion died slowly, shrinking inward after the outward destruction, leaving behind a silence so complete it felt unnatural.

Dust and ash drifted through the night air.

The forest no longer existed where the attack had landed.

A wide circular area had been erased from Nalim’s eastern woods. The ground at the center was blackened and sunken inward, smooth in places where heat and compression had fused soil and stone together. Around the edge, trees stood half-destroyed, their trunks stripped bare, their branches burning faintly or crumbling into ash.

For a long while, nothing moved.

Then, at the far edge of the destruction, Liam shifted.

He lay on his side, half-buried beneath ash, dirt, and broken leaves. The glow along his left arm had vanished. The destructive aura around him had faded completely. His crimson eyes no longer burned with that heightened intensity.

He looked like a normal boy again.

A battered one.

His clothes were torn, soaked, burned, and stained with blood. Cuts marked his face and arms. His breathing came rough and uneven. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, and every movement clearly hurt.

Slowly, Liam forced one hand beneath him.

His fingers dug into the ruined earth.

He pushed himself up.

His body trembled slightly, not from fear, but from damage and exhaustion.

Eventually, he managed to sit upright near the edge of the blast radius.

For several seconds, he simply breathed.

Then his gaze lifted toward the center of the destruction.

There was no movement.

He sensed no regeneration, or dark red lightning.

There was no roar, no core glowing in the dark, no dark grey flesh.

There were no traces of the Berserker demon that remained.

Liam stared at the empty center of the ruined forest quietly.

Then he exhaled.

"That should do it."