As Aldurin screamed in agony, Odin rushed toward Caelum with his spear glowing with a dangerous light. He had poured a lot of power into it, hoping to end it with a single strike while Caelum was distracted.
Unfortunately for Odin, the moment he thrust his spear forward thinking Caelum would not be able to dodge, Aldurin lost his grip on the whip and Caelum jumped up using the dullahan as a foothold. Missing his target, Odin looked up and prepared to attack again, but his stance was already messed up.
Caelum quickly retrieved his colourless wing and reinforced his black wing as he slammed it down on Odin sending him crashing down to the ground just a second later than Aldurin.
In just a few minutes, the two leaders were thrown to the ground, burying them in dust and dirt. At this point, the battlefield had shifted greatly. Most of the soldiers from all three factions have either died or have recovered from their bout of madness and retreated.
The resplendent golden light of Caelum's Eternal Flame released them from the grip of the darkness that clouded their minds. The dark mana in the surroundings seethed as though in pain, scorched by a grand flame that defied its predetermined script.
And in response, the dark mana surged into the only things capable of snuffing out that bright light. The bodies of Odin and Aldurin, who were slowly rising from the craters they made, were enveloped in a storm of dark mana. And soon, their auras grew heavier and more terrifying.
The first to come out from the storm of dark mana was Odin who had changed significantly. No longer was he the god who ruled other gods and men. Now, he was just a huge abomination of flesh and blood.
His very appearance elicited nothing but dread and disgust from whoever witnessed his new form. It was so deranged that his body parts could no longer be identified. His face was gone amidst the lumps of patched muscles and guts.
And yet, somewhere in that strange inhuman design was a mouth that constantly leaked out the gurgling cries of a fallen man, once lost in the delusions of godhood, now lost in the illusion of life.
And as though it knew exactly to whom it owed its current unraveled guise, the abomination bounded off from the ground and shot straight toward Caelum. It seemed oddly comical at first glance... that is if one could even manage to get a glimpse of it.
Its speed was far too fast than its current hulking size should allow. The mass of wriggling and pulsing muscular flesh should in no way contain enough power to threaten anyone at the level of Caelum. And yet, it appeared right in front of him in the blink of an eye.
The abomination swung a limb full of hatred at the one who turned him into this accursed thing, hitting Caelum directly in the chest and sent him flying.
Feeling the collision through its new and vulnerable nerves was a sensation of both tremendous pain and utter pleasure that the abomination let out strange and horrifying moan so deep that it rivaled even the horn Odin blew to announce his arrival in the battlefield.
Caelum halted the momentum of his crash, but he was already quite a distance away from the battlefield. He was injured from the attack, but not by much. The Eternal Flame fueled his recovery to a level beyond what it previously was.
He flew right back to the battlefield, but before he could even reach it, a frigid aura erupted accompanied by the wails of a million unfortunate souls. From within the other storm of dark mana came the new form of Aldurin. And much like Odin, he was no longer recognisable.
What came out was creature made of black spectral mist. Its core body was a swirling mass of mist that constantly cried out a debilitating wail that encroached upon the minds of everyone who heard it.
The stronger ones who could not resist completely began bleeding at the orifices while the weaker ones fell prey to another bout of madness. This time with the urgent desire to free themselves from the curse of life.
The spectral nightmare then stretched its limbs, six long filaments that resembled more the limbs of an arachnid. They twitched every now and then, but were otherwise steady in their menacing presence.
The abomination and the nightmare did not even look at each other once before shooting toward Caelum. They knew the purpose of their existence, perverted and vandalised as they may be, was to end this defiant actor who would not follow the script.
Seeing that the two had no intention of leaving him alone to go after someone else, Caelum halted his return and instead drew the enemies further away.
Their speeds were practically equal now. The new powers fed to these two bosses had made their abilities equal and even surpass some of Caelum's own despite him being empowered by the Eternal Flame.
While the spectral nightmare shot out strange magical attacks were made from curses, grudges and some other natural negativity, the abomination kept Caelum occupied with unending barrages of tackles, punches and kicks, if they could even be called that.
The abomination was much too disfigured to have a definite form and was more easily recognised as a ball of flesh with protruding parts that have very little resemblance to human limbs.
Caelum did his best to dodge and counter, his white golden flames spreading throughout his body like a coat of incandescent fur that licked at the dark mana in the air and purified it. This was the only thing keeping him from being affected by the constant wails of the nightmare.
Upon reaching a sufficiently far distance from the initial battlefield, Caelum finally stopped. This battle started with him dominating these two all thanks to the new power he had awakened in the past few days.
But all of a sudden, the tables were flipped and he was being chased around like a pest to be eradicated. It would be a lie to say he was not angry, but more than that, he was wary. Because even with this strange progression of events, he knew this was not what he feared.
He knew that bad premonition he had had yet to reel its ugly head, and already the enemies have become too dangerous to handle comfortably. Even with his insane regeneration, he was taking longer and longer to heal with every new injury inflicted on him.
And so he began with a new idea that he had recently been entertaining, a way to increase ones' power temporarily without much drawback other than a bit of strain to the mind perhaps. It did not have a name yet, after all, he did not even know if it would work.
While evading attacks and tanking some unavoidable ones, trying his best to limit the amount of damage he was receiving, a brilliant spark of light emerged behind Caelum. It was just a tiny insignificant spark, but its presence commanded an absolute obeisance.
It was a like a star of conquest that shone tyrannically, bearing down upon the world with a power it inherently held. This was the raw manifestation of the Eternal Flame.
Unlike Erta's Holy Flame, the Eternal Flame was a vicious and uncompromising despot who wielded authority beyond anyone's comprehension. This was an eternal light that spanned the endless river of time. It will persist through all, yet its beginnings faded in the blinding radiance.
The worst part was that this was truly a divine flame containing a wisp of Divinity within it. That small trace was enough to nearly drown the whole world in its authority. Even Caelum himself could not control it properly, wondering if he would fall to his own power.
Even as he thought that, the intense heat of the Eternal Flame was burning his body to ashes just as fast as it was healing him. He was in even greater torture than anyone else, but that was all due to his lack of control over it.
After all, what mortal can hope to command the divine? He had been impossibly lucky to have even awakened such a power. But to wield it required more than just luck as shown by how defiant flame concentrated most of its power on him rather than the rest.
While Caelum was suffering under his own power, the abomination and nightmare were faring much better, relatively speaking. They were pretty much still greatly weakened, unable to muster much of their new strengths. The nightmare itself was sizzling as though it was being burned.
And yet, they were still whole. They were nowhere near perishing unlike Caelum who was being punished for wielding power beyond his abilities and understanding. And so they rose, enduring the torturous pain.
They wanted to strike, but the enemy was too close to the spark that would burn them to ash. There was no need to move. They could just wait for Caelum to die on his own. Or so they thought as the rumbling of the ground they failed to perceive during their battle finally alerted them.
They followed the origin of it and realised it was coming from behind them, from the battlefield that they had left behind. What they saw on it was something that was arguably worse than what they were currently facing.
A huge magical formation made of golden flames stood proudly in the middle of the battlefield. The concentric circles on it moved, separating into three different layers that resembled the barrel of a gun aimed directly at the two monstrosities in the distance.
The formation itself was mounted on another formation on the ground that seemed to be syphoning a strange power into the first formation. It was the raw form of the strange energy in the dragon veins, amassing in the barrel-like formation like a condensed energy bullet.
And then it shot out a beam of pale grey light that somehow felt to be on the same level as the Eternal Flame but lacking Divinity.
This was one of the insurances that Caelum and Erta had created. It was the first one, in fact, as it was based on the idea of harnessing whatever power the dragon veins had to launch an attack. And since neither of them could control that power, they decided to use formations.
The attack worked splendidly, crashing onto the two enemies who were not able to move due to the Eternal Flame.
The raw energy of the dragon veins seemed potent enough that when used in such a barbaric way, it turned absolutely chaotic and unraveled whatever power took hold of the two creatures.
They fell truly and completely dead at last.