Oblivion Sight — perception dilates.

  Herald Roar — destabilization resonance.

  Abyssal Veins — damage bends away.

  Harbinger's Pulse — the world distorts with each increasing heartbeat.

  Idalia's voice tore through it all. {Herald Roar} cracking free from her maw.

  "I am done being patient!"

  {Emotional State: 40%}

  {Approaching Condition: [Rage Active]}

  ???

  [Idalia's Rage]

  [Rage Values]

  STR: 1024 [+852] → 5120

  DEF: 664 [+483] → 3320

  FPWR: 1104 [+930] → 5520

  ??? ??? ???

  Sound fractured first. The air around Idalia split into visible ripples, the rings tearing outward like shattered glass suspended in space. The shock punched through stone, ice, and water remnants alike, carving raw seams through reality itself.

  Her heartbeat spiked violently.

  {Heart's BPM: 620 → 780 → 910 → 1000}

  Her breath ripped in and out with heat, as if her lungs could no longer contain the pressure inside her. Veins along her neck and shoulders glowed an abyssal orange, pulsing in time with her heart.

  Furthermore, the world broke, as cracks spiderwebbed across the sky above her, thin black lines where the world strained to remain whole.

  She shot a sharp look at Genbu, then at Qinqryu, and lastly at Biakomi. She had marked her prey.

  It was time to hunt!

  Portals erupted around her in violent succession, ripping open reality with screaming force. Idalia vanished and reappeared again and again, not blinking, not thinking, only moving. Each jump tore chunks out of the battlefield. Stone vanished midair. The sky darkened as spatial seams clawed across it, bleeding void-light and pressure.

  She was no longer fighting the terrain. She was unmaking it.

  Genbu reacted first. Massive walls of earth surged upward, layered with darkness, slamming toward her from every angle. Idalia smashed through them in a blur, her body taking hits that would have pulverized anything else. The darkness clung, tried to weigh her down, but her veins burned black and silver beneath her skin.

  {Abyssal Veins: Active}

  Indeed, the blows landed. The damage did not.

  {Health: 64% → 64%}

  A flash of white blurred in Idalia's peripheral sight. Biakomi struck next, darting through the chaos with terrifying precision.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  She clipped Idalia mid-portal exit, frost-coated claws raking across her side and sending her spinning into another spatial tear. Idalia snarled, blood spotting the air, then vanished again before the pain could slow her.

  {Health: 64% → 59%}

  She reappeared midair behind Biakomi, already moving, already snarling. Her claws raked through frozen mist where Biakomi had been a blink before.

  Idalia's head whipped toward a cold scent, deliberately hidden, too cold for {Sight}. She ferociously fired a {Portal Breath}.

  Above, Biakomi reappeared and countered instantly by leaping sideways onto a spinning slab of earth, kicked off, then struck Idalia from below, her claws carving a freezing arc across Idalia's belly. Frost detonated on impact.

  {Health: 59% → 56%}

  Flying upward, Idalia yelped, half pain, half {Rage}, and vanished again.

  A portal snapped open beneath Genbu's chin. Idalia burst out of another directly above him, slamming both feet down onto his shell with enough force to crater the stone beneath him.

  Genbu responded with darkness surging through the earth. Massive stone pillars erupted upward, folding inward like jaws. One caught Idalia mid-leap and crushed her between slabs of corrupted rock.

  Her vision went white. Then her {Abyssal Veins} flared. The darkness shattered outward as if repelled, stone exploding into shrapnel.

  Idalia tore herself free with a feral howl, blood streaking her fur, body trembling but unbroken. However, Qingryu's response was overwhelming.

  Water slammed into the sky, folding gravity with it. Currents seized Idalia mid-jump, hurling her like a ragdoll through collapsing space. She was flung straight into a rising slab of blackened stone that Genbu hurled.

  Upon impact, Idalia's body cratered into it, rebounded, then froze midair as Biakomi struck again, slamming her into a wall of ice that shattered on contact.

  Idalia hit the ground hard, but she laughed, a wild, broken, furious symphony.

  "Again!" she howled, leaping back into a portal that detonated behind her.

  The trio pressed harder.

  Genbu crushed space with sheer weight. Qingryu drowned the sky. Biakomi harried her from impossible angles. They hit her again and again, a perfect rhythm of pressure, speed, and inevitability.

  Idalia was bounced between them, a living projectile. Her body screamed. Her head rang. Her vision blurred.

  Yet sunken beneath all the rising {Rage} and pain, she did not fall.

  Her frustration mounted, boiling over, {Rage} eclipsing thought. Her portals grew erratic, tearing wider, collapsing slower, shredding everything they touched. The sanctum howled under the strain. Even the sky recoiled.

  Then something snapped into focus.

  Through the chaos, through the pain, Idalia's gaze locked onto Cheyin.

  Mounted calm on Zuzie's back, centered and untouched.

  Cheyin was the summoner. She needed to go.

  Idalia snarled, eyes blazing. "You!"

  She stopped dodging, instead she planted her feet.

  Genbu's earth surged. Qingryu's waters coiled. Biakomi lunged.

  Idalia welcomed them all. At the last possible instant, she tore open a single, precise {Portal}.

  She leapt. The world flipped.

  She emerged in the sky, her {Portal} shattering behind upon exit. Her jaws clenched onto fabric and a tied, green braid. Instead of biting Cheyin's exposed nape—

  —Idalia yanked. She swapped places with Cheyin.

  The woman plunged into the {Portal}.

  Cheyin gasped as reality folded around her. She fell toward the battlefield, suddenly weightless, realization dawning in her wide eyes as she tumbled straight into the convergence of her own beasts' attacks.

  The three beasts froze, instincts screaming as their attacks suddenly targeted their summoner instead of their foe.

  The woman flailed and screamed. "Genbu! Qing! Bia! Wait—!"

  Idalia landed hard on Zuzie's back, claws digging into blazing feathers as the Phoenix screeched in outrage.

  "What did you DO?!"

  No answer left Idalia's maw. She watched the scene below.

  Cheyin clapped her hands together desperately.

  The summons unraveled.

  Genbu dissolved into stone and shadow. Qingryu unraveled into water and mist. Biakomi vanished in a flash of frost, snarling in furious protest.

  Zuzie shrieked as she vanished as well. "You absolute fool—!"

  The sky cleared. Gravity returned. Idalia fell.

  She burst out of another portal high above, momentum unstoppable. She plummeted like a meteor, body rigid, forehead leading.

  Cheyin barely had time to raise her arms.

  The impact was catastrophic.

  Idalia's forehead slammed straight into Cheyin's chest with a thunderous crack.

  The ground detonated.

  Stone engraved itself outward in a massive crater as both bodies hit. Dust and debris blasted skyward. The impact rang like a bell through the field.

  Silence followed.

  When it settled, Idalia lay embedded at the crater's center, forehead throbbing viciously, vision spinning. Her heart pounded painfully, finally slowing, rage bleeding out into exhaustion.

  She groaned, blinking hard.

  Cheyin lay nearby, battered, gasping, her clothes torn and scorched, chest heaving as she struggled to breathe.

  Idalia stared at her. And slowly, the chaos of the last moments pieced itself together.

  Her ears twitched.

  "…Huh," Idalia said hoarsely. "That worked?"

  She tried to laugh. It came out as a wheeze.

  The sky above remained fractured, the battlefield ruined beyond recognition, silence ringing loud in the aftermath.

  Idalia's grin faded into something quieter as the weight of what she had just done settled in. Her ears rang. The world tilted. But she wasn't done!