After several more exchanges, Salyssra finally lost her patience.
"Are we really going to keep doing this?"
The pattern had become painfully familiar.
Every time the Ancient One began to lose ground...
Time rewound.
The battlefield reset.
Everything started over.
A Felguard might have enjoyed an endless cycle of combat without question.
The Eredar Twins did not.
To them, this had become tedious.
The Ancient One remained perfectly calm.
"Why not?"
A faint smile touched her lips.
"It’s rare for me to find opponents capable of matching me."
The statement wasn’t arrogance.
Ever since she had begun drawing upon the Dark Dimension, almost every extradimensional threat capable of entering Earth had been beneath her notice.
Those entities powerful enough to challenge her...
Could not enter Earth directly.
The Eredar Twins occupied a unique middle ground.
Strong enough to threaten her.
Weak enough that she could continue challenging them.
They were exactly the sort of opponents she almost never encountered.
"We’re stronger than you."
Alythess folded her arms confidently.
"Even if this continues forever, you still can’t win."
They had already fought nearly twenty battles.
Every single one had ended the same way.
The Twins gained the advantage.
The Ancient One rewound time.
Repeat.
"You’d be surprised."
The Ancient One’s smile remained unchanged.
"You’re both stronger than I am."
"I’ll admit that."
"But time is on my side."
"I have endless chances to experiment."
"Eventually..."
She raised a glowing blade toward the sisters.
"...I’ll find the sequence that defeats you."
"When I do..."
"...there will be no escape."
The Twins’ expressions twitched in perfect synchronization.
That sentence stirred memories they’d rather have left buried.
The sisters exchanged a glance.
No words were needed.
Their thoughts were identical.
Forget the plan.
We’re done playing.
Alythess’s body erupted with surging fel power.
Even her eyes transformed into blazing flames.
"You think one person can defeat both of us?"
Salyssra became wreathed in dense shadow.
"Then let us show you..."
"...how badly you’ve misjudged this."
Alythess raised both hands toward the heavens.
"Flames! Scorch the skies! Steal the light of the sun!"
The entire sky turned crimson.
Salyssra’s voice followed, low and resonant like whispers rising from the Void.
"Shadow! Rend the earth until creation itself mourns!"
A storm of darkness swept across the ground.
The sisters spoke together.
"Prepare yourself..."
"...for the Final Apocalypse!"
Shadow swallowed the land.
Ash spread across the earth.
Above, countless burning meteors condensed from crimson clouds, descending toward the world like the opening moments of the end of all things.
The spell belonged to Kil’jaeden himself.
Armageddon.
As his former lieutenants, the Eredar Twins had learned the technique.
Neither could cast it alone.
Only by combining their power could they reproduce even a diminished version of the legendary spell.
Inside the fortress...
Evenson nearly tore his own hair out.
"What are those lunatics doing?!"
"This wasn’t part of the plan!"
Outside, the Twins continued their invocation.
"We have witnessed the birth of the Black Sun!"
"We have watched entire worlds burn into smoldering ruins!"
"We are the heralds of Argus!"
"We are the awakened Eredar!"
"We come from the heart of endless darkness!"
The ritual reached its climax.
The earth cracked.
The heavens trembled.
Reality itself seemed ready to collapse.
The sisters raised their voices together.
"We are..."
A flash of green.
Everything vanished.
The crimson sky disappeared.
The shattered earth returned.
The meteors dissolved.
The apocalypse never happened.
The Ancient One smiled pleasantly.
"What are you?"
The Twins stood frozen.
For several long seconds, neither seemed capable of processing what had just occurred.
Then Alythess slammed the butt of her staff into the ground.
"Oh, come on!"
Her frustration finally exploded.
"This is impossible!"
Inside the fortress, Evenson let out a long breath.
He honestly wasn’t sure whether his stronghold could have survived even a weakened version of Armageddon.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he looked toward the battlefield again.
The Ancient One had activated the Time Stone immediately.
She clearly understood that she had no realistic way to survive the completed spell.
If Antonidas himself had stood there instead, his legendary Violet Citadel Barrier might have weathered the attack.
The Ancient One possessed magical reserves comparable to history’s greatest archmages.
Unfortunately...
She lacked thousands of years of accumulated magical knowledge and refined spellcraft.
It was an unfortunate limitation.
"Looks like neither side can actually win."
Evenson smiled.
At last...
Events had returned to the course he’d expected.
Clea, still pale from exhaustion, looked shaken.
The sheer scale of the Twins’ spell had completely overturned her understanding of magic.
Even so, she stubbornly insisted,
"The Sorcerer Supreme..."
"...won’t lose."
"I certainly hope not."
Black energy surged around Evenson.
His sleeveless Corruptor armor materialized piece by piece around his body.
"Otherwise..."
"...I won’t get my turn."
Outside, Salyssra finally snapped.
"You bald old nun!"
She pointed accusingly at the Ancient One.
"The only reason you’re still standing is that stupid stone!"
"If you’ve got any pride..."
"Fight us without it!"
The Ancient One quietly looked away.
Judging by her bald head alone, it was obvious she wasn’t foolish enough to fall for such an embarrassingly transparent taunt.
Then...
Her expression froze.
A chill unlike anything she’d felt during the entire battle crawled across her spine.
It wasn’t overwhelming.
It wasn’t spectacular.
Compared to Armageddon’s apocalyptic power...
This presence seemed almost restrained.
Yet it inspired a far deeper fear.
Because it possessed only one quality.
Pure...
Uncompromising...
Destruction.
The Ancient One slowly turned toward the small shop that existed outside her isolated pocket dimension.
Evenson stood in the doorway.
Still wearing the same armor he’d worn during the Battle of New York.
Streams of glowing green runes flowed from the fortress behind him, pouring into his body through the countless enchantments woven into the structure.
Only then did the Ancient One notice the source of that terrifying aura.
A green staff.
At its head, intricate carvings unfolded.
For a brief instant...
A pair of demonic wings spread wide before fading once more.
The Scepter of Sargeras.
The Destruction Warlock’s Artifact Weapon.
Unlike Ulthalesh, the Deadwind Harvester or the Skull of the Man’ari, it possessed no independent spirit.
Yet that made it no less dangerous.
Anyone lacking sufficient power could be unraveled at the most fundamental level merely by approaching it.
Even Evenson couldn’t wield its full might.
Only with the support of every magical array within his fortress could he safely draw upon a fraction of its true power.
He met the Ancient One’s gaze.
"So..."
"Do you still want to continue?"
His voice remained calm.
"The Scepter of Sargeras destroys things at their very foundation."
A faint green glow spread across the Artifact Weapon.
"Time..."
"...isn’t an exception."
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