The Abyss did not sleep.
Even as the trio caught their breath, its walls pulsed like a throat swallowing them deeper. Magic was thick in the air — not just flame, wind, and shadow, but something ancient. Something evolving.
They had touched death. Denied it. Now the Abyss demanded more.
And the Corrupted King Thresher… came to collect.
Chapter 9.1
It returned without sound — not a roar, not a growl, just the sudden silence that crushed all things beneath it.
They looked up from the bloodstained ground to see it standing tall — taller than before. Its back bristled with obsidian thorns, eyes aflame with an intelligence that hadn't been there before.
Subaru whispered, "It's… adapting."
Reinhart gripped his hammer. "So do we."
The King pounced.
Chapter 9.2
Reinhart met the charge first, his shadow forging a shield thicker than iron — only for the Thresher's strike to shatter it like glass. He flew back, armor splitting open, ribs breaking again.
Julius caught him mid-flight, fire wreathing his arms, gritting through pain. "You rest after we win."
Subaru, blood soaking through his robes, drew a deep breath. Wind rose from beneath his boots, lifting him. "I don't need to be whole," he said. "I just need to be faster."
He vanished — reappearing behind the King, slashing with razor gales that cut deep into the corrupted hide. It howled, twisting, and lunged—
Straight into Reinhart's hammer.
A blow like thunder cracked the cavern floor. Julius followed with an eruption of flame from below, sending magma spiraling up the Thresher's chest.
For a moment, it staggered.
Then it screamed — not in pain. In rage.
And its second form began.
Chapter 9.3
The King's hide peeled away in segments, revealing a skeletal form burning with abyssal energy. Its second head emerged, eyes glowing like pits of white fire.
This was no beast.
This was a king who had eaten gods.
It lunged faster than before — tail whipping Subaru out of the sky. Julius hurled flame, only for it to be absorbed by the beast's armor.
And Reinhart stood alone before it.
Breathing heavy.
Weapon cracked.
Mantra nearly spent.
Yet, in his eyes: clarity.
"I'm not just shadow and iron anymore," he whispered. "I'm purpose. I'm the hammer fate doesn't expect."
He struck the ground — not the beast — and cast Ironsing down through the earth.
Chains of black steel erupted upward, binding the Thresher's legs. It roared and twisted, but Reinhart held fast, knuckles white.
"Now!" he screamed.
Chapter 9.4
Subaru soared through the air, battered and bleeding, but smiling.
"I die… or I break through," he said, a mantra forming in his hands like spinning stars.
Wind spiraled into a tempest needle, condensing into one single, perfect strike.
"Skybreaker."
He drove it straight into the Thresher's neck.
It reeled.
Julius rose beneath it, wings of flame lifting him like a phoenix. "Let's end this with fire," he roared.
"Infernal Apex!"
A sun was born inside the beast's ribcage.
Boom.
Everything went white.
Chapter 9.5
When the dust cleared, they stood in silence.
The King's body was crumbling, flaking apart into ash and cinders. Its mask-like face split in two, revealing a hollow mouth still trying to scream.
Then — silence.
And from the quiet… light.
Not heavenly. Not divine.
But earned.
Each of them felt it at once — a shift in their core, like a chain broken, a gate opened. Their auras exploded outward.
Julius's fire curled into a crown of living flame, his eyes gold-rimmed, his skin glowing like molten stone.
Subaru floated for a heartbeat, wind coiled beneath him like wings, his broken arm reknitting midair with pure gale.
Reinhart's body reformed — metal plating encased in shadows that no longer obeyed darkness, but his will alone.
Level 3.
Not just stronger.
Transcended.
Chapter 9.55
The battlefield was cooling.
Ash drifted like snow. Ember-hissed stones still pulsed with residual heat. The King Thresher's remains had already begun to dissolve into black dust.
Reinhart stood at the edge of the crater, chest heaving, hands trembling at his sides.
His hammer — Petra's Anchor — lay where it had fallen. The head cracked. Shaft splintered.
Too heavy. Too slow.
Too much.
He stared at it in silence.
Then, without a word, he reached down, gripped it by the haft… and tossed it into the abyss.
The clang of it striking stone below echoed like a funeral bell.
Subaru blinked. "...That was Petra's."
Reinhart didn't look back. "It held me down."
He turned toward the wreckage of the cavern wall. In the rubble, half-buried beneath a fallen column, something gleamed.
A medium weapon — curved steel, scorched but balanced. A longsword, simple in make, but light. Alive.
Reinhart pulled it free. The hilt fit his hand like memory. He spun it once, testing weight and reach.
His body still ached. But this… felt right.
Not brute strength.
Not stubborn defense.
This was movement. Control. Precision.
Julius raised a brow. "Did you just switch classes mid-battle?"
Reinhart smirked. "I evolved."
Subaru laughed. "You really are the shadow that adapts."
The three of them stood in the aftermath — fire, wind, and shadow. But Reinhart now held a new edge.
No longer the Anchor.
Now, a blade.