"A blade forged from your very soul,"
Drakovitch continued.
"Co then, Gin. Show if that ’Witchblade’ can pierce my already dead... heart."
Gin’s mind fractured for a heartbeat. The mory of her brother’s disgust, the way he had looked at her crystalline arms as if they were a blight on the Gigante na—clashed violently with the look in the Dragon King’s silver eyes. He wasn’t looking at a monster. He was looking at a masterpiece.
Then, she snapped.
"Shut up! I don’t need your praise! This isn’t for you! This is for ! For my father! This is so I can finally walk into the Gigante realm... AGAIN!"
She lunged.
Her Witchblades beca conduits of pure fury, slicing through the courtyard with unstoppable force. Massive stone columns shattered like stalks of wheat, the top halves sliding into dust. The ground beneath her split in jagged trenches, and ornantal bushes and iron benches disintegrated into powder as the Absolute Transmutation energy radiated outward from her limbs.
Drakovitch didn’t move. He stood in the center of the destruction. The sweat poison in his veins slowed his heart, but his spirit was a roaring furnace.
"Then show , Princess! Show the true face of the Gigante!"
He realized he couldn’t dodge. The "Witchblades" were screaming through the air, carving a path of vacuum and violet light that threatened to shear him in two. His poisoned blood ran thick and cold, and his arms felt like lead.
To survive, he had to reach into the core of his heritage—a power he usually kept buried, not out of fear, but out of a bittersweet, aching mory.
"DRAGON MANIFESTATION ART: MANTIS BLADE!"
With a sickening crunch, the skin of his forearms split. Long, serrated blades of reinforced bone erupted from his wrists, curving forward in the lethal, elegant shape of a praying mantis’s scythes.
He swung them with a desperate, instinctive speed, the bone blades clashing against Gin’s crystalline Witchblades in a shower of violet sparks and black soot.
The recoil sent a jolt of agony through his weakened chest, but he held his ground.
As the blades remained locked, violet crystal grinding against organic dragon bone, Drakovitch looked at his own transford limbs with a flicker of lancholy. He hated using this specific manifestation.
"Everything was supposed to be perfect... I am a King now. I have the power to rebuild my world. I have a beautiful, fierce woman in front of who finally challenges my soul..."
But the Mantis Blades were a haunting reminder of Earth. They reminded him of Maddy. He could almost hear her voice, bubbling with that obsessive, nerdy joy she had for the natural world, lecturing him about the predatory efficiency of insects. Now, his very body was manifesting her obsessions, turning his grief into a weapon.
"Even here... even now. You still find a way to mark , Maddy."
Gin, sensing his sudden lapse in focus and the strange, mournful look in his eyes, pressed her weight forward.
"What are you whispering about?! Focus on the woman who is about to kill you!"
Drakovitch didn’t answer. His gaze was distant, haunted by the mory of a wife who loved the very creatures his body was now mimicking to survive.
Inside the crumbling remains of the ballroom. While the others struggled to keep their footing, Percieval had beco a desperate defiance.
He was soloing the lightning caster. Percieval’s lungs burned from the sweat, and every muscle fiber felt as if it were being shredded by invisible hooks, but he refused to falter.
In his left hand, he gripped a massive, reinforced silver platter he’d scavenged from a fallen table, using it to ground the lightning bolts that hissed toward his chest.
His right hand held a Black Steel Sword, the blade light and dull compared to his usual weapon, but fueled by raw, stubborn will.
The Gigante laughed, sending a jagged bolt that shattered Percieval’s makeshift shield into molten shards. But Percieval didn’t retreat. He used the explosion of sparks as a screen, sliding across the blood slicked floor.
With a guttural roar, he swung.
SHRAK!
The black steel bit deep. He landed a clean, brutal cut across the Gigante’ thigh. The giant stumbled, a scream of shock ripping through the hall as the "invincible" skin of the earth born was finally breached.
"You... little... lizard..." the lightning user hissed, clutching her bleeding leg.
Percieval stood shaky legged, his sword tip dipping toward the floor, a grim smirk on his face despite the grey pallor of his skin.
"I might be slowing under your curse, but mark my words... you’ll be the first to go down."
Across the shattered ballroom, the air temperature plumted. The Ice Caster Gigante let out a piercing cry, slamming her palms against the floor.
"GIANT’S ADVANCE ICE ELENT: ICICLE SPEARS!"
Jagged, translucent spires of Primordial Ice raced across the marble, seeking to entomb the defenders in a frozen graveyard. But the ice never reached its mark.
CRASH!
Forsha swung her heavy staff with a devastating power, shattering the frost into harmless diamonds before it could take root. Her heart-shaped pupils, once bright whenever she looked at Prince Draculeus, had now twisted into the shape of a skull.
"Pathetic! Your aura is nothing more than a flicker from a grill compared to our Prince and King!"
Beside her stood House Leader Corneo. The oldest among them, his skin had turned pale from the toxin, his joints cracking audibly with every movent yet his spirit remained unyielding, forged like iron.
As a massive wave of absolute-zero ice surged toward him, Corneo did not flinch. He planted his feet firmly, muscles bulging beneath his formal robes. With a guttural roar, he swung his massive orb staff with raw, concentrated power and the Primordial Ice shattered into nothing but drifting snow.
The Ice Caster hissed, her eyes wide with disbelief.
"How?! You are rely humans! Old and... a brat! Your blood should be frozen solid with my magic!"
Corneo wiped a fleck of frost from his beard, his eyes blazing with fierce, ancient pride.
"You Gigante asure power by blood... but we asure ours by—OUCH!"
His waist popped loudly.
"Not now, damn it! I was about to say the coolest line!"
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