A creature at the peak of the Core Formation realm, with dragon blood flowing through its veins, was afraid of a human at the first stage.

Without hesitation, the beast opened its mouth and bit its own limb.

The lizard’s flaming teeth sank into the flesh of its own claw, tearing through scales, muscles, and bones. Blood exploded like a scarlet river as the entire limb was ripped from its body with a violent motion of its head.

The sound was horrible, flesh tearing, bones cracking, and the beast’s muffled roar.

The severed limb fell to the ground with a heavy crash.

Then it froze completely.

In seconds, what had once been a colossal claw covered in flaming scales transformed into a gigantic crystal of blue ice, glowing coldly beneath the volcano’s red light.

The lizard roared furiously.

The sound was no longer one of pain but of pure fury.

Using its own flames, the beast cauterized the wound, burning the open flesh until the bleeding stopped. The smell of burnt blood spread across the battlefield, mixing with sulfur and ash.

The fire burned the wound, but it could not bring back the lost limb.

...

The creature slowly raised its head.

And looked at Kyrian.

The fury in its eyes had reached another level. It was no longer the irritation of a predator dealing with stubborn prey. It was hatred. Resentment. A desire for annihilation.

The Qi around the lizard flickered, becoming unstable. The heat increased even further, so much that Kyrian felt his skin tingle even through the ice armor.

An even greater roar exploded from deep within its throat.

The sound was so powerful that the entire sky seemed to tremble. Clouds of ash scattered. Stones fell from nearby slopes.

Kyrian felt it immediately.

Danger. Far worse than before.

His snowflake-shaped pupils rotated rapidly as he observed enormous quantities of energy gathering within the beast’s throat. The fire Qi was being compressed beyond what he thought possible, becoming unstable, almost out of control.

Another draconic breath.

But this time... far more powerful. Far more unstable.

The lizard was pouring everything it had into that attack. It was no longer concerned with conserving energy for the continuation of the battle. This was a final and deadly strike.

Then Kyrian noticed something else.

The beast’s strength was increasing.

Its Qi was beginning to rise violently, as though an internal barrier were about to shatter.

Kyrian’s eyes contracted for the first time during the battle.

’This...’

His heart sank.

The beast is trying to advance realms.

If that happened, if the Five-Horned Lava Lizard reached the Spiritual Awakening Realm in the middle of the battle, there would be no more fight. No escape. No resistance.

Kyrian would die.

The draconic breath already forming before him was probably already twice as powerful as the previous one. Even without the complete breakthrough, the amount of energy being compressed within the beast’s throat was overwhelming.

A spark of despair arose within Kyrian’s heart.

Small. But real.

For a moment, he doubted his own strength.

...

Then, amidst the doubt, something changed.

Kyrian felt that connection again. Stronger this time.

Much stronger.

As though something entirely new were being understood at incredible speed.

It was impossible to explain with words. It was a sensation, a certainty, as though his eyes were approaching something.

The path of ice was responding to him.

Not the way a master responds to a disciple. Like a partner responding to another.

The despair slowly disappeared from Kyrian’s chest.

Replaced by absolute calm. A coldness that came from the depths of his eyes.

Kyrian’s pupils began to change.

The icy white that characterized his snowflake eyes slowly disappeared.

Blue emerged in its place.

A deep light blue, almost identical to his irises, but more intense.

The snowflakes slowly rotated within that deep blue...

The draconic breath advanced.

A sea of destruction crossed the battlefield.

This time, it was not a narrow pillar of fire. It was a wall, a barrier of flames stretching from one side of the horizon to the other, leaving the lizard no room for error.

Everything in its path was incinerated.

Rocks evaporated. The ground melted. The air exploded.

There was nowhere to run. But Kyrian merely closed his eyes.

Silence. In that instant, he thought of nothing. He felt no fear. No anxiety.

He did not even feel the proximity of death, which should have been only meters away, burning his face through the ice armor.

Only calm. A cold and absolute calm.

Like the center of a snowstorm. Like the eye of a frozen hurricane.

Then. Kyrian opened his eyes again.

All the remaining Qi within his two cores exploded simultaneously.

It was not a violent explosion, like the lizard’s fire. It was silent and controlled.

A translucent blue aura emerged from his eyes.

It was not merely ice. It was not merely Qi. It was something between the two and beyond the two at the same time.

Without explosion. Without impact.

Only... absolute.

The draconic fire vanished halfway through its path.

It was not blocked. It was not repelled. It was not absorbed.

It simply... froze.

The wall of flames, which moments earlier had devastated everything in its path, was now a static sculpture suspended in the air, motionless flames trapped in time and space as though they were made of glass.

Then it shattered.

The flames fragmented into thousands of tiny blue crystals that fell to the ground like snow.

The aura continued advancing.

Wherever it passed, everything froze.

The ashes falling from the sky stopped in the air, every particle wrapped in a microscopic layer of ice.

The magma flowing from the fissures became solid crystal instantly.

The surrounding air became so cold that moisture condensed into snowflakes in the middle of an active volcano.

Everything seemed to slow down.

Nothing could stop that blue aura.

The lizard roared desperately.

For the first time in its long life at the top of the volcanic mountain range’s food chain, it felt what it was like to stand before something it could not comprehend.

Its body tried to retreat, but its legs would not obey. Fear had paralyzed its muscles just as much as the ice soon would.

In the next instant, the aura struck it.

Its roar ceased immediately.

Not gradually. Not with prolonged agony. It simply... stopped.

The aura passed completely through the beast’s colossal body, continuing another twenty meters beyond it before finally losing strength and dissipating.

Then, once again, silence.

The aura disappeared as silently as it had appeared.

Kyrian remained standing. Panting and confused.

He did not know what he had done. He did not know where that power had come from, nor how he had controlled it. He did not know whether it had been him or his eyes acting.

But slowly, he raised his eyes.

Everything was frozen.

Everything.

The ashes in the sky remained motionless, suspended in the air like stars trapped in time.

The magma had become solid crystal, shining with blue reflections that should never have existed in that place.

The Five-Horned Lava Lizard remained standing in the middle of the battlefield.

A translucent blue statue of absolute ice.

It was dead.

Kyrian stared at it for a long moment. The creature that moments earlier had roared with draconic fury, that had nearly killed him, was now nothing more than a beautiful and terrifying sculpture beneath the volcano’s red light.

He felt the emptiness immediately.

All of his Qi had vanished. Completely.

Not a single drop of spiritual energy remained within his cores. The two centers that normally pulsed with power were empty, silent, like dried wells.

His legs lost strength.

Kyrian fell to his knees upon the frozen ground.

The impact was dull, muffled by the ice that now covered everything around him.

Then an absurd pain emerged around his eyes.

Cold. Deep.

As though ice were growing inside his head, spreading through his sinuses, his bones, and his nerves.

Kyrian coughed violently. Blood.

A large quantity of blood sprayed from his mouth, staining the ice beneath him with red marks that contrasted violently against the blue.

His vision began to blur.

Slowly, that deep connection with his eyes began to fade. The sensation of unity with the ice weakened with every beat of his heart.

The deep blue pupils returned to the original white of the snowflake eyes.

Kyrian collapsed completely onto the ground. His entire body hurt.

Everything.

Muscles. Bones. Joints. Every square inch of his skin felt as though it had been burned, frozen, and burned again.

It was as though he himself had been frozen from the inside out, the opposite of what the lizard’s fire did.

Except for his eyes. His eyes remained intact. They did not hurt. They did not bleed. They did not burn.

As though all the damage he had suffered had stopped exactly around them, sparing them from any suffering.

Why?

Kyrian did not have the energy to think about the answer.

His breathing became heavy. Weak.

The cold began consuming his consciousness slowly, not the external cold of the ice around him, but the internal cold of exhaustion. The drowsiness that came before total collapse.

Kyrian tried to move his fingers.

Failed.

Tried to move his head.

Failed.

His body no longer responded. It was shutting down, system by system, preserving what it could for future recovery.

The last thing Kyrian saw before darkness consumed his vision was the gigantic frozen body of the Five-Horned Lava Lizard shining beneath the volcano’s red light. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

The blue crystal reflected the distant flames, creating a spectacle of light that danced slowly across the devastated battlefield.

’I won...’

The thought was his last before unconsciousness claimed him.

Then darkness.