Chapter 558: Full Strength Attack!

Chapter 558: Full Strength Attack!

The wings behind Max flared open with a burst of black flame, and in the next instant, he took off like a bullet fired from the heavens. The golden forest warped around him as he moved, the earth scorched in his wake, and then—

Boom!

The first black beam of light tore through the air toward him like a judgment passed by the gods. Max didn’t flinch. His mind moved faster than thought, his Three Dimensional Body processing every trajectory, an dsgle, and ripple of the approaching attacks.

His Black Sun Inheritance responded first. With a wave of his hand, a wall of enormous black flaming shields materialized in the sky—twelve in total—forming a spiraling wall in front of him. The first beam hit—

KRAK!

—ripping through five of the shields before finally being diverted upward, screaming into the sky.

The second and third beams came from opposite flanks.

“Crimson Entrapment,” Max muttered, eyes sharpening.

Instantly, two black flaming spheres formed midair like twin stars, intercepting both beams. The moment the beams collided with the spheres, the spheres warped—absorbing part of the force, distorting, trembling violently—and then shattered like glass. But the delay was enough.

Max moved.

He zipped forward, his hands transforming mid-flight. Black gauntlets reshaped into talon-like claws, and then with a snarl of his aura, each claw turned into a black-bladed sword. Two more beams came screaming in from above. Max’s body twisted mid-air, and—

SLASH! SLASH!

He sliced both beams clean in half with his flaming blade-arms, but the shockwave still blasted him backward through the air.

He twisted again, righting himself with a flare of his wings. “Let’s try something new,” he muttered, raising both hands.

From the crown of the Black Sun hovering high above, a wave of constructs flooded the sky—swords, spears, chains, phoenix-shaped firebirds, all formed from black flames. He wasn’t just defending anymore.

Now he attacked.

Ten black flaming birds shrieked downward like missiles, their forms blazing through the golden canopy toward the source of the beams.

Several collided with the fourth and fifth beams, detonating into violent explosions of infernal energy. Two beams fizzled into smoke. The others veered off-course.

The sixth and seventh beams struck from below like fangs.

Max stomped his foot mid-air, and the Crimson Reaper pulsed. Spheres formed beneath him—dozens—spinning in a protective spiral. As the beams hit them, they broke apart—but so did the beams.

Max dove again, his gauntlets reshaping into a long scythe of pure black fire stretching from elbow to fingertip.

“Flame Tyrant First Form: Blazing Fang!” he roared, and in a sweeping arc, he cleaved through the eighth beam just before it reached his chest.

But the ninth and tenth were closing in—fast.

His eyes narrowed.

With a thought, his Black Sun constructs surged. Ten massive obsidian chains burst from the floating crown above and snapped forward. Each chain coiled around the oncoming beams like serpents, dragging their trajectories apart, tangling them in midair.

The beams struggled, howling like wounded beasts—but Max had already prepared his final move.

“Crimson Entrapment.” His voice was cold.

A massive sphere—the size of a house—formed around him, enclosing Max inside. The two final beams smashed into the sphere with the force of collapsing stars. It trembled. Cracks began to spread. But it held. The energy drained into the walls of the sphere until—

Silence.

The beams faded.

The flames wavered… and Max emerged, his body pulsing with the layered power of all three inheritances, armor of flames clinging to his limbs, his breath steady, his gaze locked on the elven woman.

The golden forest shuddered. Somewhere in the distance, the sky trembled. And the elf, still standing among her golden trees, stared at him in awe.

“Amazing! Amazing!” The elven woman burst into laughter, her voice laced with wild delight as her golden hair fluttered in the winds of chaotic power. “To think… to think that you would master all three top inheritances to perfection level. Good! Very good!”

Her eyes gleamed with fierce excitement, as if she had just discovered a rare treasure. “You pass the trial of the seventh floor—no question about it—but…” she raised a single finger, her tone suddenly deepening into something more ominous, “I want to see… if you can take the full strength of my attack.”

Even before her words finished echoing, the entire golden forest reacted. Whoosh! A tidal wave of black flames surged outward from behind the elven woman, racing across the divine forest in an instant. What had once been trees of light, soft grass of radiance, and an ancient tree stretching into the sky—were now burning in darkness.

Everything… everything was devoured. The humongous tree behind her became a pillar of shadowy inferno, the glowing flowers disintegrated into black ash, and even the very air turned thick with cinders. The ground beneath Max’s feet trembled violently.

‘What’s going on?!’ Max’s expression changed as he looked around, and what he saw made his heart skip a beat.

The forest—the entire forest—was moving.

No, shifting.

The scorched blackened trees, the crumbling cracked terrain, the fiery air—all of it was warping. The edges of the world around him began to curve upward, slowly but unmistakably bending, as though the very space he stood in was curling into itself.

A chilling realization dawned on Max. The forest wasn’t disappearing… it was transforming.

It was becoming a sphere.

The flat expanse of the forest—once endless in every direction—was folding upward, encasing itself into a shell. What had been the surface was becoming the interior.

Trees cracked and bent inward, pulled along invisible lines of pressure. Flaming debris and ash were being dragged toward the center. Everything was falling inward, not from gravity—but from intent.

The outer layer of the world was slowly becoming the spherical shell of a prison—one forged from black flames and divine light—and Max was being drawn into its core.

“What in the world is this…?” he whispered, eyes wide as the burning world collapsed in on itself. His instincts screamed at him: this wasn’t an attack. It was a divine execution.

And it was coming for him.

‘I need to do something.’ Max’s thoughts raced as his eyes scanned the rapidly collapsing world of burning black wood and warping light. The forest-turned-sphere was folding faster now, curving from every direction like the jaws of a colossal beast ready to devour him whole.

He looked around for the elven woman, hoping to ask her something but she was nowhere to be seen. The golden-haired figure, once so radiant and vibrant, had simply vanished, as though swallowed by the darkness she herself had conjured.

‘Is she gone?’ he wondered, narrowing his eyes as he activated his Three Dimensional Body vision. Instantly, the world transformed—threads of energy, movements, and life became visible in his mind’s eye.

And there she was—outside the crumbling infernal sphere, standing at a vantage point, arms folded, her long golden hair dancing in the storm of heat and flickering shadows. She was observing. Watching him with amused curiosity, as though witnessing the final test of something she had long waited for.

“You said I passed the trial, right?” Max’s voice rang out, echoing strangely across the warping battlefield as he raised his voice toward her distant form. “Then can I use my other concepts and attacks now?”

Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!