The air still vibrated with the echoes of the explosion when Frieren finished the sentence.
"That… wasn't a natural failure," she said, her eyes fixed on the void where the core should have been nothing but rubble. "Soone pulled the anchor from a distance."
Strax didn't respond imdiately.
His draconic body remained motionless, like a living statue, every muscle tense beneath the cracked scales. His senses were heightened, not only hearing the physical world but sensing the invisible currents of mana, miasma, and intention that still snaked through the destroyed hall.
Then it happened.
A sound erged from the center of the crater.
It wasn't an ordinary roar.
It didn't co from the air.
It ca from within the earth.
A scream.
Distorted. Elongated. Too deep to belong to a single being. It sounded like dozens of overlapping voices, tearing each other apart, mixing pain, hatred, and sothing primal hunger.
The stone beneath them trembled.
Frieren felt the impact pierce her bones.
"…this isn't over," she murmured.
Strax reacted even before the sound ceased.
His wings opened at once, wide, imposing, covering Frieren again with his own body. He spun slightly, positioning himself between her and the center of the crater, claws digging into the unstable ground.
"Stay behind ," he growled, his deep voice echoing through the shattered hall.
Frieren frowned imdiately.
"Strax," she said firmly. "No need."
Another scream pierced the space.
Closer.
More defined.
Frieren raised the staff with a fluid, almost automatic movent, and the mana around her responded like an obedient tide.
"I told you you don't need to," she repeated.
Then she conjured.
A translucent layer of mana enveloped her body.
Then another.
And another.
One after another, in perfect succession, until ten distinct layers of magical barrier overlapped around her, each vibrating at a slightly different frequency. So were purely defensive. Others, reflective. Others, of absolute containnt.
The air hissed as the layers stabilized.
Frieren stood there, calm, unwavering within the magical cocoon.
"I know how to protect myself," she said, looking directly at him. "You don't have to carry this burden alone."
Strax glanced over his shoulder.
For a mont, his draconic eyes t hers through the shimring barriers.
Then he nodded.
A small gesture, but full of confidence.
"Right," he said. "Then get ready."
He slowly retracted his wings, stepping back a step to give her space. His body turned back toward the crater, now completely focused on what remained of the core.
The center of the cave… was moving.
Not like sothing exploding.
But like sothing trying to reorganize itself.
What had once been an unstable core now looked like an open wound in space, a vortex of condensed demonic energy, spinning upon itself in irregular spasms. Fragnts of dark mana rose and fell like faltering breaths.
Strax felt it.
This was no longer just a receptacle.
It was a channel.
"He opened an exit," Strax murmured. "No… soone opened one."
The miasma began to writhe.
The edges of the vortex stretched, forming sothing like an inverted esophagus, pulsing, contracting, as if about to vomit sothing that no longer fit inside.
Frieren gripped the staff.
"Strax…" she said softly. "Whatever it is, it's not an incomplete demon. It has structure."
"I know," he replied. "And that worries more than it should."
The vortex trembled violently.
For a mont, everything seed… to stop.
The sound ceased.
The energy stabilized.
Frieren narrowed her eyes.
"This is too strange," she murmured. "Core cores don't calm down after—"
The roar exploded.
Louder.
Closer.
More defined.
A sound that seed not rely vocal, but structural, as if sothing were tearing through reality itself to force its way through.
The vortex opened all at once.
And sothing was spat out.
Not launched.
Expelled.
The body traversed the air in a heavy, clumsy arc, spinning once before crashing against the cave floor with a dull thud, shattering stone and raising dust.
Silence fell again.
Frieren held her breath.
Strax took a step forward, claws ready, wings half-open.
"…this," he murmured, "wasn't in there by chance."
The dust began to settle slowly.
The body on the ground moved.
A spasm.
Then another.
Frieren felt the mana react even before identifying the form.
"It's human," she said, surprised.
Strax narrowed his eyes.
The body was, in fact, humanoid.
But only in broad strokes.
It was too tall. Too thin. The limbs were long, the joints strangely angular, as if the skeleton had been stretched beyond its natural range. The skin was pale, almost translucent in so places, marked by dark veins that pulsed slowly, following sothing that still moved inside.
The chest rose.
It fell.
A hoarse sigh escaped the creature's throat.
"It's… alive," Strax said.
Frieren felt a chill run down his spine.
"Or sothing close to it."
The being tried to move.
An arm dragged across the floor, its fingers trembling uncoordinatedly. Its head turned slowly, revealing a face that made Frieren swallow hard.
It was human.
Too human.
The features were ordinary. Young. Perhaps twenty-sothing, if it could still be called that. But the eyes…
The eyes didn't beat.
The irises were black, deep, and sothing moved within them, like liquid shadows trying to organize themselves.
The sound ca before the movent.
It wasn't a scream, nor a roar—it was sothing damp, dragging, like flesh rearranging itself where it shouldn't. A deep crack echoed through the hall as the body on the floor began to rise on its own, not in chaotic spasms, but with unsettling precision.
The dark veins beneath the pale skin began to recede.
They didn't disappear.
They were reabsorbed.
Frieren felt the mana adjust around the creature as if the world itself were being forcibly convinced to accept that form.
"Strax…" she murmured, frowning.
The body shuddered one last ti.
The spine straightened.
The shoulders aligned.
The elongated, misshapen fra began to shorten, the limbs tapering harmoniously, the joints finding proportions too precise to be natural.
The skin tightened like silk being stretched over a perfect mold.
The face was the last.
Human features dissolved for an instant—a smooth, identityless mass—and then redefined themselves.
Eyes erged first: deep gold, with a gleam too ancient for any mortal. Then the nose, delicate and precise. The mouth, curved in a lazy smile even before it finished existing. Well-defined ears, symtrical, almost artistic.
Long, black hair cascaded down her back like a living shadow, gaining volu and shine as it settled. Two light, curved, and elegant horns erged from her head like natural crowns, and black wings—compact, dense—unfolded slowly behind her, not in threat, but in ostentation.
When the process ended, the hall seed… smaller.
She was beautiful in a way that didn't ask permission.
It wasn't just symtry or grace—it was aesthetic authority, as if the concept of beauty had been shaped with her in mind and everything else was rely an attempt.
Even covered in dust and traces of miasma, she looked flawless.
The woman took a deep breath.
Then she exhaled with a satisfied sigh.
"Wow…" she said, her voice soft, velvety, laden with ancient irony. "It's been a long ti since I was trapped in hell."
She stretched her arms above her head, yawning with evident pleasure, and then twisted her neck from side to side. A dry crack echoed. Then another. Her shoulders followed, her back, as if cleaning an ancient chanism, rusted by eternity.
"Hm…" she murmured. "Much better."
Strax remained motionless.
Not relaxed.
Contained.
He felt the pressure she exerted on the space. It wasn't pure demonic force—it was presence. Existence consolidated by force, anchored by sacrifice, maintained by calculation.
Frieren took a step forward, the staff firm in his hands. "So you were the one on the other side," she said coldly.
The woman turned her face toward Strax first.
Her golden eyes scanned him from head to toe, lingering a little longer than necessary.
A slow smile appeared on her lips.
"Hm." She tilted her head. "You're handso."
Strax didn't answer.
He didn't look away.
The woman then looked at Frieren.
The smile disappeared for a second.
"Tsk." That was all she said.
The air ripped.
There was no visible teleportation, no perceptible conjuration. She simply wasn't there anymore.
Frieren felt the attack a microsecond before it happened.
The mana around her exploded in instinctive reaction as the figure erged from within the space between the layers of the barrier, as if it had completely ignored the first six.
— ! —
The woman's hand darted across the air toward Frieren's neck.
But it didn't reach.
A sharp thud echoed through the hall.
Strax was no longer in dragon form.
The instant the entity moved, he collapsed the transformation—scales retracting, wings dissolving into particles of mana as his human body erged in a blur of impossible movent.
His hand closed around her throat mid-attack.
"No," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "You don't touch her."
The ground exploded beneath his feet as he spun his body and hurled her back with brutal force.
The woman shot through the air like a projectile, crashing against the cave wall and sinking into the rock before landing on her feet, sliding a few ters to a stop.
She put her hand to her neck, genuine surprise flashing in her golden eyes.
Then… she laughed.
A soft, satisfied laugh.
"Interesting," she said. "Very interesting."
Frieren reinforced the barriers imdiately, her cold eyes analyzing every variation of mana around the entity.
"That wasn't ordinary spatial displacent," she said, without looking away.
"I know," he replied, positioning himself in front of her again. "She's moving between intervals, not through them."
The woman snapped her fingers.
"You learn fast." She smiled again, slowly opening her black wings. "But relax. If I wanted to kill you… it would be over already."
She tilted her head, assessing them like pieces on a chessboard.
"Consider yourselves… lucky." Her eyes returned to Strax. "Especially you."
The air rippled around her again.
"We'll see each other again," she said, before disappearing—
Strax appeared in front of her, "Not a chance." he said as he unleashed so much demonic energy that her body simply froze, "How cute, you think you're going to attack my Frieren and get away with it."
"Hey demon, bow down and apologize to your King." Strax ordered as his demonic energy increased more and more… Of course, he was still a fucking dragon!
The demon's gaze could only see… a God. Her whole body trembled as she felt the aura of a Demonic Dragon.
She imdiately knelt. "I didn't know about your greatness, Your Excellency," she said, and continued, "I, Albedo, apologize for my indifference." She spoke.
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