Knull's voice, a vibration of the Void, echoed through the chamber, sealing the fate of the intruders. With a slow, deliberate movement, the Black King began to rise from his throne. It wasn't a simple physical act; it was as if a mountain of nonexistence came into motion. The Sanctuary trembled, the symbiote arteries pulsed wildly, and the psychic pressure increased tenfold, threatening to collapse their minds.
"This creation... a disease... born of light... in my realm," Knull's voice was a whisper that filled the universe. "An aberration... A scream in the perfect silence of the Void. And you... lingering symptoms of this disease. The insignificant... and the perverted shadow..."
Knull stood up completely. His figure was even more imposing, stretching into the dark vault of the chamber. The fragments of chain embedded in his throne seemed to groan. The very energy he gave off was a force of existential repulsion, an absolute rejection of life and creation.
"You will be... cleansed," Knull declared, his intent manifesting in an attack.
He didn't raise a hand to strike. Instead, the darkness that constituted his being and the sanctuary itself sprang to life. From the walls, the floor, the air, thousands of black symbiote tendons emerged, not just physical, but made of pure, concentrated Void energy. They launched themselves toward Cid and Jinwoo with the speed of thought, seeking to envelop them, crush them, erase them from existence. Simultaneously, a wave of icy energy, the very essence of the Primordial Void, expanded from Knull, a tidal surge of nullity that sought to dissolve them at a fundamental level.
Jinwoo reacted instantly. He deployed his shadow army in a vast protective dome around himself and Cid. Thousands of knights and warriors formed a shield of manifested darkness, while Beru, Igris, and Tank dashed in to intercept the largest tendons. The wave of Void energy slammed into the shadow shield, and Jinwoo felt the impact as if the chill of nothingness were trying to claim his own shadowy essence. His shadow soldiers screamed (a sound only he could hear) as they struggled against the corrosive energy, some dissipating under the pressure.
Cid, meanwhile, didn't form a shadow shield. His reaction was pure speed, magnified to an absurd degree. The space around Cid seemed to distort as he moved, a series of ghostly afterimages evading the tide of tendons and the energy wave. He used his own fundamental energy to create temporal micro-singularities, tiny holes in space-time that absorbed or deflected the tendons and void blasts that came too close to completely dodge.
Cid thought: Alert! Maximum-level cosmic area attack! The 'Extreme Survival Countermeasure Protocol' is activated. The 'Energy Defenses' must be scaled to maximum power. The 'Reactive Dimensional Shift' is essential. The final boss's 'Nullification Wave' is dangerous to the Designated Shadow Asset. I must maintain proximity to mitigate collateral damage.
The chamber became a whirlwind of darkness. Jinwoo's army fought valiantly, dissipating hundreds of tendons, absorbing part of the void wave, but it was a costly defense. Jinwoo himself fired powerful Skills—Monarch's Spear and Shadow Landcleaver—directly at Knull, but the attacks dissipated in the vastness of his body or were deflected by invisible force fields made of pure vacuum.
Knull watched, his red eyes fixed on them. He didn't seem surprised that they had survived the first onslaught, just... irritated. He wasn't using his full power, not the strength that had rivaled Celestials, but what he did use was devastating to any entity of normal creation.
"Your resistance... futile," Knull echoed. He raised a slow hand, a hand as large as a vehicle. He didn't strike; he simply concentrated the Void energy in his palm.
The air around them became unstable. Space twisted. Jinwoo felt a crushing gravitational pressure, as if a tiny black hole had materialized around him. His shadows shuddered under the distorting force.
"Monarch's Domain!" Jinwoo shouted, expanding his shadow energy field around him, fighting against Knull's spatial manipulation. It was like trying to push against reality itself. His shadow armor cracked under the strain.
Cid sensed the spatial manipulation. To him, it was a "cosmic energy containment protocol" that affected the stability of the local tissue.
Cid thought: High-level spatial manipulation! The final boss is trying to collapse our foothold. It requires a calibrated 'Gravity/Spatial Counterfield.' It's an advanced technique, but a Level 7 Agent is skilled at... improvisation.
He extended both hands. Primordial energy, now visible as a glowing halo around his gloves, pulsed outward. It wasn't an attack, but a force field that directly countered Knull's spatial manipulation around him and Jinwoo. The pressure lessened; space stopped twisting so violently.
Knull seemed to register this countermeasure. His red eye flickered with... interest? Or simply recognition of a new kind of irritation?
"Interesting... An anomaly... in the fabric... of creation..." Knull's voice was a low, threatened purr. He launched another volley of attacks, faster, more focused, aimed specifically at the two points of irritation challenging him.
The initial battle came down to survival. Jinwoo and his army fought desperately to hold a line of defense, while Cid used his speed and growing mastery over fundamental energy to evade, deflect, and counter Knull's attacks on a conceptual level. Their combined efforts allowed them to survive the first onslaught, but it was clear: Knull, even weakened, operated in a league of his own. Every breath, every movement, was a struggle against the overwhelming force of the manifested Void.
They were in the ring with a primordial god, and the first round had been merely a demonstration of their patience. The mission of containment seemed nearly impossible.
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