Chapter 573: Let’s Unite.
The white flames rose like celestial columns, torrents of destruction that not only burned but disintegrated the reality around them. The sky reacted with thunderclaps of pure fury, and even the clouds parted, as if afraid to touch this insane display of power.
Strax took a step back.
His entire body screamed in warning. This wasn’t just magic. It wasn’t just fire. It was a kind of primordial energy, something the gods themselves would have sealed away for fear of the consequences.
Dutch was no longer smiling. His eyes shone like twin suns amidst the smoke. The once mocking laughter had died away. Now there was only the silence of certainty. The certainty that he had decided to end everything.
And that was when he attacked.
White fire exploded from his hands like a heavenly blast. Strax tried to move, but the attack wasn’t just swift—it was inevitable. A flash of flame sliced through the air, and even as he tried to dodge it, the edge of the flame touched his left arm.
There was a moment of silence.
And then the pain.
A pain that cut deeper than any blade. A pain that came not just from the flesh, but from the soul. His entire arm began to consume. The skin blackened, then shredded like old paper. Muscles, bones, veins… everything was devoured.
Strax screamed, falling to his knees as the white flame crawled up his shoulder like a hungry serpent.
“It’s not just fire…” he muttered, his eyes wide, sweat breaking out. “It’s something… worse.”
Without hesitation, he raised his burned arm with his other hand and, with a roar of pure fury, drew the sword strapped to his back—and in a single brutal movement, he severed his own arm before the flame reached his chest.
The sound of splitting flesh echoed loudly. Blood gushed.
Strax staggered, falling to his side, his face against the hot earth.
But then…
The energy around him exploded.
The ground vibrated. The air grew dense. And something surged from within him—a dark vortex of power that swirled around the void where his arm had been. It was as if Strax’s very essence was molding itself, repairing the damage from the inside out.
Black veins of energy began to glow throughout his body.
And then, with an unearthly snap, a new arm began to form. First the bones—thin and lit from within. Then the muscles, pulsing in sync with his heart. Finally, the skin, marked with natural runes, as if this reconstruction had been written by the forces of fate itself.
Strax gasped.
He looked at his new arm.
He flexed his fingers.
And smiled.
“You think this will stop me, you old bastard?”
Dutch watched the scene, now without saying a word. For the first time, a flash of uncertainty crossed his eyes. He advanced, white fire still enveloping his fists.
But Strax was different now.
When Dutch attacked, Strax intercepted the blow with his newly formed arm. The impact created an explosion of energy that swept the ground for tens of meters. Dust rose like walls. And in the center of it, two figures continued to collide.
White flames against living shadow.
“Your fire…” Strax said between blows, dodging a kick and kneeing Dutch in the stomach. “…it’s not natural.”
Dutch spat blood and jumped away. “It’s not. It’s the result of my efforts to reach the next level. Surpassing the Emperor Stage is this. Achieving the Impossible.”
Dutch wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes shining with an almost religious fervor. He didn’t look tired—he seemed enlightened, as if channeling a power not of this world. The white flames enveloping his body pulsed like a divine heart, and the ground beneath his feet began to crumble, unable to sustain such energy.
“Breaching the Emperor Stage…” Strax repeated, stepping forward. “So you lost your humanity along the way.”
“I have become more than that!” Dutch growled, spreading his arms. “I have left behind mortal limitations. This—” he raised his hands, and the white fire condensed into spinning spheres that distorted the air around them, “—is proof that the impossible can be broken. I am the rupture!”
Strax clenched his fists, dark veins of energy throbbing beneath his skin. His new arm seemed to vibrate in response to Dutch’s power, as if recognizing the threat to its very existence.
“You’re not a rupture,” he replied, his voice low and sharp. “You’re just a frustrated old man playing god… and someone needs to break your wings before you burn the whole world down.”
Dutch’s face contorted in fury.
“Then come, boy. Show me how much arrogance you can handle before a true inheritor of the Primal Fire.”
The spheres of white fire shot out like meteors. Strax ran in the opposite direction, the explosions following close behind, melting stone, consuming everything in their wake. He leaped between debris and broken columns, dodging with ferocious agility, until he spun in the air and hurled a blade made of pure black energy.
The blade struck one of the spheres—and for a moment, light and darkness collided in a flash of pure antimatter. A deafening clap of thunder shook the battlefield.
Strax appeared from the smoke, appearing beside Dutch like a dark bolt of lightning. He threw a punch with his newly formed arm, and the force of the impact threw Dutch back dozens of meters, leaving a trail of destruction on the ground.
But the old man got to his feet.
Laughing.
A hoarse, maniacal laugh.
“That’s it… THAT’S what I wanted to see!”
The air trembled. Time itself seemed to hesitate.
Dutch raised his arms—and for a moment, everything went silent.
Then, the sky split.
Not metaphorically, but literally. A crack shone above them, like a scar in the fabric of the world, and from it descended a pillar of pure, blinding white light. When it touched the ground, the ground melted.
Dutch stepped into the beam, and the fire around him exploded.
What emerged was… something else.
If before he had seemed human imbued with power, now his form was only fire and will. A semi-ethereal body, with eyes like twin suns and veins made of plasma. His voice, as he spoke, resonated like a thousand echoes mixed with the sound of distorted bells.
“Now you fight the essence of one who has broken the limits.”
Strax gasped. But he didn’t back down.
“I don’t care how many lines you’ve crossed. If you’ve crossed a line you shouldn’t have… then you’re just another monster for me to bury.”
And he advanced.
The two collided in the center of the devastated arena, and this time there was no impact—there was a collapse. The ground sank, and for a moment it seemed as if the world had lost its axis. Pure energy spread, and the mansion in the background, or what was left of it, exploded into fragments of stone and wood carried by the wind.
Strax and Dutch exchanged blows at an unstoppable speed. With each punch, a crater. With each kick, a blast of energy that could devastate forests.
White fire licked Strax’s body, even when it wasn’t touching him. It was as if the heat was trying to seep into his pores, consume his essence from within. And yet… he resisted.
“Do you feel this?” Dutch shouted, his voice reverberating throughout. “Your body is failing! It wasn’t made to withstand my energy!”
Suddenly, something shattered the sound.
It wasn’t a bang. It wasn’t an explosion.
It was the silence shattering.
A flash of light crossed the battlefield. Too fast to see, too intense to comprehend. And then… Dutch was thrown aside like a stone kicked by a god.
His body flew dozens of meters, spinning in the air before colliding with a stone wall amid the mansion’s rubble, which crumbled upon impact. He fell to his side, his face partially melted by the heat of his own fire.
But the most shocking thing… was his expression.
Surprise.
As if, for the first time since ascending to the “impossible,” he had been caught completely off guard.
Strax blinked, confused.
And then it landed.
Lightly.
Precisely.
As if it weren’t part of the war, but a ballet between gods.
The dust around her settled as if the world had stopped to admire her arrival. She rose with the grace of someone who needed to prove nothing to anyone, her hair dancing with the remnants of the impact. Her golden eyes shone with the reflection of destruction, but there was no fear in them. Only tenderness.
Samira.
She turned to Strax, her lips curving into a soft, almost amused smile.
“Are you going to beat my father without my help?”
Her voice cut through the chaos like honey through iron. Strax felt his chest tighten, not with pain, but with relief. For a second, the entire world disappeared. Only her eyes existed. Her presence. And the strength he always knew would come when he needed it most.
“Samira…” he murmured, with a tired half-smile. “It took a while.”
She walked toward him calmly, dodging a fiery fissure in the ground with the lightness of a shadow.
“I wanted to see his trump card… and to think he used it against you so easily,” Samira said with a sigh. “We’ve never fought together. What do you think?”
“Well… you asking for a team?” Strax laughed. “Although this time I agree that dealing with that is complicated.” He spoke, watching the white flames consume the crater…
“Where’s Stella, Samira?”