Supreme Hunter of Beautiful Souls-Chapter 397: Ice Age.

The void screamed.

Not with sound—but with existence.

The instant the final message dissipated, Kael truly felt the core of Chaos around him for the first time. Not as a place. Not as an object. But as a living, hungry, pulsating thing, too ancient to have a name.

That's where he was.

Inside the stomach of primordial error.

The core of Chaos wasn't a sphere, nor a static source. It was an inverted heart, formed from layers of crushed reality, broken mana, torn laws, and condensed will. It expanded and contracted like an impossible lung, sucking in everything around it: matter, energy, souls, concepts.

And now…

it was trying to suck Kael in.

Any other being would have been erased in the same instant. Dissolved. Rewritten. Transformed into raw fuel.

But Kael Scarlet opened his eyes.

Eyes that hadn't existed moments before.

Eyes that now saw Chaos not as something incomprehensible—but as sustenance.

His new body finished forming amidst that intertwined white and black vastness. There was no ordinary skin. There were no ordinary bones. His body was made of something between flesh, concept, and intention. Veins of distorted light ran beneath a dark surface marked by white fissures, like lightning frozen beneath the skin.

The Divine Body of Celestial Chaos breathed.

And the core reacted.

Tentacles of chaotic energy projected toward him, not out of hatred—but out of instinct. Chaos recognized something wrong.

It recognized a predator.

Kael looked around, feeling the crushing pressure trying to reduce his existence to nothing. The weight was absurd. Each second there was equivalent to eons of ordinary annihilation.

He smiled.

A slow smile. Cold. Dangerous.

"So that's it…" he murmured.

"The Source."

The core roared.

Waves of distortion exploded, attempting to erase its newly created form. Laws crumbled around it. Space collapsed, rebuilt itself, and collapsed again. Chaos tried to impose its supremacy—tried to remind it that it was merely an intruder.

Kael stepped forward.

The ground—if it could even be called ground—cracked beneath his feet.

[Domain of Chaos—ACTIVE]

The instant the ability manifested, something changed.

Chaos ceased to be absolute.

The core trembled.

Because, for the first time since its creation, there was something within it that was not under its authority.

Kael reached out.

He didn't cast a spell.

He didn't channel mana.

He commanded.

"Devour."

The world responded.

Cracks opened on the surface of the core, not from external attack, but because its own structure began to crumble. Entire streams of chaotic energy were ripped from its layers and sucked into Kael's body like rivers reversing their course.

The core tried to resist.

Creatures formed—horrors made of white ice, liquid shadows, and screams frozen in time. They advanced in swarms, trying to tear him apart, penetrate him, disintegrate him from within.

Kael advanced too.

He passed through the creatures as if they were mist.

Each one that touched him was instantly absorbed, reduced to fragments of pure power, incorporated into his existence. There was no struggle. There was no exchange.

It was one-sided consumption.

"You have used me for ages," said Kael, his voice echoing across multiple layers of reality.

"Now it is my turn."

The core began to shrink.

Entire layers collapsed inward, being torn away, crushed, and absorbed. Impulses became erratic. Rhythm faltered. The heart of Chaos began to beat out of sync.

Outside, in the physical world, the cataclysm reacted.

The sky split into white fissures. Mountains crumbled. The battlefield froze in time for an impossible second. Witches—black and allied—felt the same simultaneous chill.

Something was ending.

Within the core, Kael felt the weight of billions of fragments of existence entering him. It was too much. Any ordinary mind would have shattered.

But Kael was no longer ordinary.

He remembered.

He remembered Elion Scarlet.

He remembered the blood.

He remembered Chaos being tamed by force.

"You are not infinite," he growled.

"You just never had anyone willing to eat you."

The core panicked.

Chaotic flows began to escape uncontrollably, trying to flee absorption. The surrounding space warped, trying to eject Kael, expel him like a foreign body.

Kael planted his feet.

The fissures in his body glowed with absurd intensity.

[Hunting Authority — APPLIED]

The concept was imposed.

Chaos ceased to be environment.

It became prey.

Kael advanced to the absolute center of the core—a point of impossible compression, where all distortions converged. There, the primordial essence pulsed, trying to protect itself, to hide, to deny itself.

Kael placed his hand upon it.

The contact was apocalyptic.

Reality screamed.

Chaos tried to invade his mind, to show him impossible truths, broken futures, dead gods, collapsed universes. It tried to drive him mad. It tried to make him give up.

Kael simply closed his fingers.

"I've lived long enough not to care."

And he pulled.

The core imploded.

It didn't explode.

It didn't dissipate.

It was swallowed.

All the energy, all the instability, all the essence of Chaos Ice was sucked into Kael in an endless cascade of intertwined white light and darkness. The void around him began to close, not because something was being created—but because something had been completely consumed.

Finally…

Silence.

Absolute silence.

Kael remained floating where the core had once been.

Now there was nothing.

Nothing but him.

His body glowed one last time… and then stabilized.

[The Chaos Core was completely devoured]

[You obtained: Primordial Chaos Core (Integrated)]

[Authority over Chaos Ice: ABSOLUTE]

[The world was saved from irreversible collapse]

Kael took a deep breath.

A simple gesture.

But now, each of his breaths made the world exist correctly around him.

"So that's it…" he murmured.

He raised his gaze, feeling the physical world calling to him again. The war. Exelia. The witches. The invisible woman who had passed through him. A dangerous smile spread across his face.

"Now…"

"Let's continue."

And the void broke, spitting Kael Scarlet back into reality—no longer as a man facing Chaos.

The core of Chaos screamed.

Not with sound—but with existence.

It was an absolute, primal wail, as if the very foundation of the world were being forcibly ripped away. The unstable mass of white and black energy writhed as Kael extended his newly formed hand, his fingers still shrouded in luminous cracks, as if his body had been forcibly sculpted from within reality.

He devoured.

He didn't absorb.

He didn't channel.

He didn't seal.

He devoured.

The entire core began to collapse in on itself, sucked into Kael like a conscious black hole. Layers of Chaos crumbled, ancient symbols screamed before disappearing, conceptual structures—broken laws, remnants of will, echoes of ancient entities—were crushed and reduced to pure essence.

Kael felt it all.

Every fragment.

Every error of creation.

Every primordial sin contained within that core.

And he rejected nothing.

Chaos tried to resist.

Tried to corrupt him.

Tried to dominate him.

Failed.

Because Kael wasn't using Chaos.

He was the predator.

When the last vestige of the core was consumed, there was no explosion.

No light.

There remained… silence.

A heavy, reverent silence, as if the world itself were holding its breath.

Then—

The ground trembled.

Not as before.

Not in collapse.

But in submission.

From the center of the colossal crater, Kael rose.

Slowly.

Calmly.

His newly created body emanated an absolute cold, so intense that the surrounding air instantly crystallized. Cracks of ice spread across the ground with each invisible step he took in the air, as if he were walking on something no one else could touch.

He rose.

And rose.

And rose.

To the highest sky of Skaldi.

The clouds froze around him like suspended sculptures. The wind died. The sound ceased. The entire war—hundreds of witches fighting, screaming, dying—was interrupted by a single collective sensation:

Imminent death.

Kael stopped high in the sky.

His red hair—once like living blood—was now parted. Half remained scarlet. The other half… white as eternal ice, crystallized, emanating particles that fell slowly like divine snow.

His eyes swept the world.

There was no hurry.

No visible anger.

Only judgment.

He searched.

Felt.

Analyzed.

Teared through space with perception.

The woman.

The one who had struck him from behind.

The one who had laughed as she threw him into the core of Chaos.

Nothing.

No trace.

No signature.

No presence.

She had fled.

Kael closed his eyes for a brief moment.

Then he opened them.

And spoke.

His voice was not loud.

It was not shrill.

Yet, the entire kingdom heard.

— Ice Age.

The world responded.

The cold descended like an absolute decree.

In a single instant, Skaldi was engulfed in a winter that defied natural laws. Lakes froze from bottom to surface. Mountains cracked. Forests became white sculptures. Entire castles were enveloped by crystalline layers of ancient ice.

And the Black Witches…

They were frozen instantly.

In mid-air.

In the attack.

In the scream.

In the spell.

Some still had expressions of fury.

Others, of terror.

Others, of interrupted ecstasy.

All stopped.

Statues of absolute ice.

Kael remained motionless in the sky, observing.

Then he declared, with absolute coldness:

— From now on… I declare the Black Witches extinct.

The ice responded.

It exploded.

Not in a single wave—but in hundreds of thousands of silent, simultaneous, precise detonations. Each frozen witch was destroyed from the inside out, the ice expanding violently before imploding, reducing bodies, souls, and corrupted magic to glittering fragments.

There were no survivors.

The sky rained particles of dark light.

Kael reached out his hand.

And all the souls rose.

Torn from the world.

Disobeying the cycle.

Denying any afterlife.

They flowed to him like an inverted river.

[Absorbing souls…]

[Souls of Black Witches: 1… 47… 312… 941…]

[Process completed]

The cold around Kael intensified even further.

The world, now frozen, remained in absolute silence.

The war was over.

Not because one side won.

But because there was no one left to fight.

Kael descended slowly. And as he touched the frozen air of Skaldi, only one thought crossed his mind:

That woman escaped…

A slight smile—cold, dangerous, almost imperceptible—appeared on his lips.

"I will find you."