The Herald of the New Dawn sighed.

“Well done. The first hero to also utilize the power of the Realms directly. Even I can’t resist you at this stage, not with the boundary collapsing and the power of the Rifts at your disposal.”

But then he sneered, even as Seero’s magic circles turned towards him.

“But you must understand that you cannot win by simply killing me. The hole in the world is beyond your ability to repair, and it will continue to grow even should I perish. All that my death will achieve is to stop the new world’s growth at its current limits. No matter what, the old world will fade, and this new one you stand upon now shall replace it.”

Seero’s robotic eye flickered.

“Dismissive Response: Then this unit will terminate the other world.”

And with that, the anti-mana Prismatic Bombardment opened fire. The Herald of the New Dawn ceased his ritual and raised his hand, redirecting his mana to defense. The Great Demon Lord’s core was not the only one he had built into his own suit, after all. A corrupted core of Inferno sent out a cone of all-burning mana. A corrupted core of Overgrowth began to grow an ever-expanding shield of vines before him. A corrupted core of Deluge sent an endless torrent of water. Devastating lightning from Tempest, searing light from Blinding, a tide of rats from Verminflood. And the shrouding darkness of Eternal Night to obscure his location.

But it didn’t matter.

He may have had all the mana from the dungeons of Aelea that Seero hadn’t claimed, but Seero now had the support of a Realm of Mana in a place where the boundary had been ripped apart. He may have had multiple corrupted dungeons at his disposal, but Seero had Rifts large enough for direct incarnations of the Domides to appear.

In fact, looking at the giant mana bear standing over Seero, he couldn’t rule out that she had somehow recruited a Domides of her own.

And that was before the fact that she was using that anti-mana of hers, and so the nature of the spells he casted hardly even mattered. The best he could do was negate some of it by throwing mana in its path…except Seero had adjusted her attack. She now used the mana infiltration and conversion methods used earlier, so his spells were just feeding into her assault.

The Herald frowned as all the power of the destructive Realms was negated and absorbed, and a black beam approached him. He didn’t even have escape measures prepared at this point, because he was all in at this point. Why would he flee from his new world into the one that was dying below? Who could challenge the Rifts once they had opened in full?

He made a token effort to start a Spatial spell but the anti-mana reached him first, erasing both his spells and the mana running through his body.

And then Seero’s arm transformed…and grew several times larger. She aimed an enchanted railgun loaded with an explosive Iesnuorium shell right at him. He opened his mouth to speak his final words…

But Seero opened fire before then, and the Herald of the New Dawn saw no more.

“Hostile terminated.”

Seero reverted her arm back to normal as she watched the sparkling rainbow explosion of the Iesnuorium shell. The last of the Heralds had been terminated…but the fight was not over. She looked up into the sky, where a hole continued to grow.

“Seero!”

She turned her attention behind her as Ateia and Taog ran forward and hugged her.

“I knew you’d come back.”

Seero…slowly returned the embrace.

“Happy Response: This unit is glad to see her friendlies are unharmed. However, this unit does still need to address a critical situation.”

They let go and Ateia nodded with a serious face.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Right.”

Taog looked up at the hole in the skies and blinked.

“Yeah. Um, Seero, do you have any ideas on how to deal with that?”

“Analyzing…”

Seero did not, at least not right away. She could close the Rifts forming to the Realms of Mana, however, the main hole didn’t lead to the Source, but rather to some sort of empty void. Her normal Material Plane patching protocol wouldn’t work here.

So Seero set her processors to work. All of them, even as she converted newly appearing Rifts to the Realm of Machines.

“Analysis complete, solution determined.”

Ateia and Taog smiled at that. Seero walked to the Herald of the New Dawn’s former position, at the magic circle at the center of the black continent. She began to repair it…and fix a few inefficiencies she found in the design, before turning to Ateia.

“Request: This unit will require Ateia’s assistance.”

Ateia smiled and nodded.

“Anything you need, Seero.”

Ateia activated her repulsors and boosted into the sky. She flew away from the black continent and back down to the surface below.

“Acknowledged. Engaging world termination protocols.”

Taog froze.

“Wait, what?”

But Seero did not elaborate. She reactivated the formation, linking her to all the dungeons in the world. She sent some Holy mana through the bond to eliminate any remaining corruption before she began.

Then she channeled the mana into her anti-mana conversion magic circles, and fired a massive Prismatic Bombardment of anti-mana into the air before her.

Her target?

The very boundaries of the world.

She calculated the boundaries of the world were in a critical state, and repairing them from scratch while trying to close all the smaller Rifts constantly forming would be an inefficient method. So…she simply terminated them altogether. Her mana also wrapped around all the Rifts to the Realm of Machines and moved them together, fusing them into one massive Rift in the sky.

The world began to rumble. The sky split open, replaced by images of machinery and code as the Material Plane opened fully to the Realms of Mana. Or rather, one Realm of Mana.

And that’s when Ateia went to work.

Back on the surface and away from the Rifts, Ateia could fully reconnect to the flows of Holy Mana in the world. She redirected their flow away from the boundary, and instead spread them throughout the world. And so when the boundary opened fully, Ateia began to grunt and shout. She willed the world to hold itself together even as torrents of mana attempted to rip it apart.

Much like Seero had held her together when the Heralds’ ritual had done the same to her.

And as she did, her light spread throughout the world. Every being, every soul, turned their eyes to her. They understood that the world was under threat, and that Ateia was trying to save it.

Sparks of hope lit in their heart and flew into the currents of Holy mana containing the will of the Lady of Hope and Perseverance. The sparks sank into the parts of the world falling apart, and reinforced them, keeping the world together.

Meanwhile, the programs and machines of the Realm of Machines worked as well. They constructed walls and barriers, they closed connections and valves, they refactored code and rerouted circuits. They did everything they could to keep their own mana contained, to prevent it from flowing into the Material Plane that had suddenly opened up to them. It was only because of their and Ateia’s efforts that the Material Plane was not subsumed in the endless mana of the Source.

Seero then opened entrances to the Primary Home Base, both in the Material Plane and in the Realm of Machines. She expanded the entrance as wide as it would go…and then began forming a truly massive magic circle. She tasked the ever growing processors of the Realm of Machines with forming the circle, using the endless mana from the Source. Soon, they finished, and the spell triggered.

A truly massive Spatial Angling began to warp and fold the entire Material Plane. It wrapped around until the flat plane had formed a sphere…with the entrance to the Primary Home Base at its center. And most importantly, the Realm of Machines in the sky from two parts of the world joined together, covering up the hole leading to nowhere.

And then, Seero began to fire the Equalizer, forming anti-mana conversion circles to power yet another Material Plane-wide spell.

A thin barrier of anti-mana formed in the sky all around the Material Plane, erasing some of the mana of the Realm of Machines. Ateia spread the Holy mana of the world up into the sky to meet it, while she reached down into the center of the world to connect with the Primary Home Base now at its heart.

A circuit of Holy mana formed and spread into the sky, extending the Material Plane further…and forming a new barrier with it. At this point, Seero dropped the anti-mana barrier and adjusted the spell to reshape the boundary of the world.

She was not content to simply recreate it. Instead, she hooked it up to various machines and inputs being created in the Realm of Machines.

There was final rumble in the Material Plane and then it grew still. The Rifts and holes in the sky closed. The mana flowing through the black continent pulsed one more time, and then the continent began to crumble into ash as it lowered to the ground. It finished just as it placed the people on top back on the ground, before a light breeze blew away the last remnants of the fallen continent.

A circuit of mana now formed through the world. It flowed from the Realm of Machines into the Primary Home Base as the Heart of the New World resonated with the Geo-Oscillators in the Realm of Machines. It then flowed out into the dungeons of the world and into the Material Plane, nourishing and sustaining everything with in. Then the excess flowed up into the boundary, where it was siphoned back into the Realm of Machines, by connections and valves nowhere near as vulnerable to corruption or degradation.

And so the world was terminated, reshaped, and reborn.

All thanks to the girl named Seero.