The monster’s cracked visor tilted downward, the dark amusent returning to its ntal voice as it took in the three girls standing between it and Hajin.
"Ah," it said, the word echoing with cruel delight across the crater. "The master finally calls his pets. Twenty minutes you fought alone, human. I almost respect that, but we both know how this ends now."
Juna’s wings snapped fully open behind her, the silver mbranes catching the light of the ruins as they unfurled to their full span. The air around her suddenly grew heavy, charged with a pressure that made the hair on Hajin’s arms stand up.
’What is this?’ he thought, his blurred vision sharpening as he watched golden particles beginning to swirl around her feet. ’I have never felt this kind of output from her before.’
The system screen materialized in his vision, the text glowing with an urgency he had never seen from the system before.
[Summon: Juna — Bond Level: 94%]
[Proficiency Surge Detected: Combat Arts Mastery 47%]
[Proficiency Surge Detected: Mana Control 38%]
[Proficiency Surge Detected: Wolf Instinct 52%]
[Evolution Progress Accelerated: 2 Wings → 3 Wings (87% Complete)]
’Bond Level?’ he thought, the words foreign in his head. ’Proficiency Surge? Since when does the system track this?’
The numbers kept climbing, each update flashing faster than the last. The summon profile had never shown anything like this, just wing count, stats, and skills, no bond percentage or proficiency breakdown.
’Ninety-four percent?’ he thought, his mind struggling to process the data while his body scread in protest. ’What does that even an, is that good or bad?’
He felt it then, a second surge of energy rippling from beside Juna. Loccy’s single wing flared bright, the pastel blue mbrane expanding until it matched Juna’s span, the light from it steady and terrifyingly pure.
Another panel appeared, overlapping the first.
[Summon: Loccy — Bond Level: 91%]
[Proficiency Surge Detected: Physical Supremacy 63%]
[Proficiency Surge Detected: Soul Form Adaptation 41%]
[Proficiency Surge Detected: Mana Circulation 35%]
[Evolution Progress Accelerated: 1 Wing → 2 Wings (79% Complete)]
’Ninety-one percent,’ he thought, the exhaustion montarily forgotten. ’She has been contracted for less than a week, how is that even possible?’
The monster’s amusent faltered, its head tilting as the cracked visor cycled through sothing that might have been confusion.
"Impossible," it muttered, the ntal voice losing its mocking edge. "Their souls are resonating with yours at near-perfect synchronization. That level of bond requires years of shared combat, trauma, and purpose. This makes no sense."
Juna didn’t answer, she simply vanished.
The monster’s head snapped toward where she had been standing, but she was already behind it, claws extended and wreathed in silver fire, the strike landing clean across the back of its knee and buckling the joint with a sickening crunch as the beast was driven face-first into the ground.
Loccy moved at the exact sa mont, no flashy technique or wind-up, simply appearing at the monster’s flank with her fist driving into its ribs like a cannon shot.
The beast’s body folded around the impact and launched sideways across the crater before it could recover from Juna’s strike.
It slamd into the far wall, stone shattering around its impact crater while black blood sprayed from its mouth and the purple aura sputtered violently as it tried to push itself up.
"Behind," it snarled, the words barely coherent as it whipped its head around. "Pets fighting for their master."
Juna was already there, her foot connecting with its jaw and snapping its head back, Loccy following a heartbeat later with her elbow driving into its sternum hard enough to cave the chest plate inward.
They moved as one, no hesitation or wasted motion, every ti the monster tried to rise one of them put it back down, every ti it gathered mana for a counterattack the other disrupted the flow with surgical precision.
Hajin stood frozen, Vella’s arms still loose around his waist, watching the systematic dismantling of a gate boss that had nearly killed him single-handedly.
’They are reading each other,’ he realized, the thought cutting through the fog in his head. ’Reading the monster and reading through the bond, all at the sa ti.’
The bond, the proficiency surges, the evolution acceleration, it wasn’t just power climbing, it was understanding, a shared combat consciousness letting three separate minds function as a single weapon.
The monster’s visor cracked further as Juna’s claws raked across its face. It roared, the sound shaking loose stone from the cliff walls, while its polearm materialized in its grip in a burst of dark energy.
It swung wildly, a desperate horizontal sweep ant to catch both girls at once.
Juna ducked under it while Loccy jumped over it, crossing in mid-air above the monster with silver fire and pale blue light intertwining as they descended together.
"Twin Fang," Juna called out, her voice clear and steady.
"Soul Breaker," Loccy answered, the words sounding strange in her usually quiet tone.
Their strikes landed simultaneously on either side of the monster’s neck.
The purple aura shattered like glass, the polearm dissolving into motes of dark light as the monster’s body went limp and collapsed into the dust with a final rattling exhale, silence falling over the crater.
Juna held up her hand toward Loccy and even at this distance, Hajin could see the tired grins on their faces. Loccy stared at the offered palm for a second before slapping it, her own grin wobbling.
He exhaled, the tension in his shoulders finally dropping, "would you look at that, they actually did it."
He leaned heavier into Vella, letting her support more of his weight while the golden glow of her healing continued to knit his ribs back together. The corrupted blood had stopped coming up and his breathing was evening out.
Then the dust across the crater shifted, a low sound rolling over the ruins, cracking, like bones being forced back into place.
Hajin’s head snapped up.
The monster was rising where it had fallen, shattered legs pushing upright at angles that shouldn’t be possible, black blood pouring from its mouth and nose and the cracks in its visor. The purple mana around it wasn’t fading, it was swelling, wild and chaotic, screaming with sothing that felt like joy.
"Did you really think," it said, the ntal voice echoing with fractured laughter, "that I would just leave?"
The air pressure spiked and ground vibrated as the monster’s core collapsed inward, mana compressing into a dense point at the center of its chest.
’Crap, it’s going to self-destruct,’ Hajin thought, the realization hitting with cold clarity. ’Compressing its entire mana reserve into one point. At this output the blast will destroy the whole area and kill everyone.’
Vella’s arms tightened around him, "master, don’t even think —"
He pushed her away and began running, "thanks for the healing, Vella. Really but I need to handle that quickly before everyone dies."
The chains erupted from his forearms, the links unspooling with a sound like tearing tal. The Goddess Resonance was gone and his core was burned out, but the chains responded anyway, glowing with that strange hybrid light, gold threaded through with dark purple.
He rembered the sensation from minutes ago when he used assimilation. The corrupted mana flooding through the links into his body, which nearly killed him, but the chains had also taken so of that mana as its own.
[ Repair Status: 94% Damaged ➔ 81% Damaged ]
The chains ate the corruption and healed themselves, more than he expected.
’In a situation like this, there is only one skill that can work,’ he thought about his divine Sever.
The skill that cuts through physical armor, magical barriers, and corrupted essence. It was the perfect thing to use in this situation to save lives.
The singularity in the monster’s chest pulsed, critical mass approaching.
Hajin sped up, gritting through the pain as he poured what little mana he had into the chains, the links blazing white as the severed edge ford, and swung for the monster’s core.
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