### Chapter 14: Blood Demon Death Arc – Maximum Output

  Ron moved first.

  Smoke poured from his body in thick black clouds, choking the fractured space, turning Ray’s realm into a suffocating haze. The Bloody Haze variant—his blood mixed in, making it corrosive, eating at lungs and skin. He floated in it, intangible, grinning through the fog.

  Then he clapped.

  The explosion was deafening. A concussive wave of compressed smoke and sound detonating outward, amplified by the trapped air in the realm. The blast hit like a nuke in a bottle—five barriers in the surrounding zones cracked and shattered instantly, spiderweb fractures racing across the sky as distant domes groaned and buckled. The ground shook hard enough to topple buildings miles away. Debris rained. Screams echoed from far-off players caught in the shockwave.

  Inside the realm, the explosion slammed everyone—Max’s shadows scattered, Frosty’s frost nails melted mid-air, Mira’s crows vaporized. The gang hit the ground hard, coughing blood.

  Sky was still stuck—feet glued in Jaylee’s copied rubber threads, Ray’s realm pressing down like gravity times ten. But the blast loosened something. The threads stretched, snapped in places from the force.

  He got up.

  Slow. Tall frame rising from the rubble, white pants torn and bloody again, black shirt hanging open. Knife lost somewhere. Didn’t matter.

  The hum inside him roared—maximum output. Blue energy flared violent around his hands, swirling denser than ever.

  “Maximum Output: Azure Pull.”

  Space warped brutal. A vacuum vortex centered on him, yanking everything inward with irresistible force. Ron’s smoke form compressed, forced solid. Lana’s giant body dragged sliding across concrete. Jone’s sound waves sucked back into his own mouth. Rei’s shadow clones whipped toward the center like leaves in a storm.

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  All four—Ron, Lana, Jone, Rei—caught in the pull’s eye.

  Then Sky flipped it.

  “Azure Push.”

  Repulsive force exploded outward—amplified by the pull’s momentum, a cataclysmic ring of red-blue energy. It hit them center-mass.

  Ron’s body solidified just in time to take the full blast—smoke form shattering, flesh ripping apart in a wet spray.

  Lana’s titan frame crumpled inward first, then blasted out—bones snapping like trees in a hurricane, giant body reduced to a broken heap.

  Jone’s mouth opened for a final sound shred—too late. The push crushed his chest, ribs caving, blood exploding from lungs.

  Rei’s clones merged back into her instinctively—then the wave hit, shadows shredding, body torn into black mist and red chunks.

  All four—gone. Dead in the push’s echo.

  The realm shuddered.

  Ray’s Death of No Recovery cracked—fractures racing across its invisible walls from the sheer force. Sky didn’t stop. One more surge—Spatial Surge at max, fists slamming together. The realm shattered like glass under a hammer, dissolving into nothing.

  Ray staggered out into normal space, chest hole from Blood Gun still smoking, eyes narrowed.

  But Yuka was ready.

  Illusion Veil snapped into place—perfect, seamless. The courtyard shifted. Max on his knees, throat slit. Frosty frozen solid, frost nails turned inward through her own chest. Mira’s crows pecking out her eyes. Jefferson swapped into pieces. The whole gang—dead. Bloody. Cold.

  Then worse—Sky’s mom, face he hadn’t seen in years, standing in the ruins, neck snapped, calling his name with a broken voice.

  Yuka’s smile widened behind the veil. “All gone.”

  Sky froze for half a heartbeat—eyes wide, breath catching.

  Then he exhaled slow.

  “I know it’s fake.”

  The illusion flickered under his gaze—spatial sense cutting through the lie like glass. He’d felt this before, in training, in dreams after the party. Knew the weight of real grief too well now.

  His hands came together again.

  “Realm: Endless Fracture—0.1 seconds.”

  The world cracked.

  To everyone outside—Max, Frosty, the surviving gang, even the villains—it lasted a blink. 0.1 seconds. Barely time to register.

  Inside—for Sky—it stretched.

  Time warped brutal in the realm’s deepest layer. One full minute for him. Endless mirrored fractures multiplying infinite. Demons poured through the broken barriers Ron’s clap had cracked—hundreds, thousands flooding Zone 7 in waves, drawn by the chaos.

  Sky moved.

  Knife gone, fists only. Echo Fist stacked infinite in the loops. Spatial Surge pulling and pushing in chains. Blood Gun firing compressed voids from his own bleeding palms.

  He tore through them.

  500 demons per second—claws shredded by pushes, bodies erased by voids, echoes punching through hordes. Black ichor sprayed infinite, reflecting in mirrors that shattered and reformed. The realm fed on it—time dilation letting him massacre waves that would’ve taken hours in real time.

  One minute for him—sweat pouring, arms burning, blood loss dizzying, but unstoppable.

  Then it ended.

  The realm snapped shut—0.1 seconds real time.

  The courtyard was silent again.

  Over thirty thousand demon corpses littered the ground—piled, shredded, erased. Black sludge steaming. The air reeked of ozone and rot.

  Sky stood in the center, chest heaving, blood dripping from fists and nose. Eyes locked on Ray and Yuka.

  The gang stared—alive, unhurt, jaws dropped.

  Ray’s bored mask cracked further.

  The games had a new monster.

  And he wasn’t done.