"It looks like we’ll have to pass the baton." Arjun wryly smiled.
"You heard that?" Natalia looked up. "One of you get her."
"Just take the remaining three. We won’t take that fun from you." Silvester said with a laugh.
"Shaless old man." Hiroshi rolled his eyes. "Two of you can’t beat her, and you know that."
"What’d you say?!"
Up above, Almnd, Lily, and Admiral Rudra looked at each other.
"So, who is going?" Vier cheekily grinned.
Lily sighed, flicking her hair back as she stepped forward, the two crescent chakrams orbiting behind her like silent moons. Their edges rippled faintly with temporal distortion—barely noticeable unless one stared long enough to feel their vision lag behind itself.
"I’ll go," Lily said calmly.
Berreta’s fingers tightened on her katana. Her armor plates in base form glead, ready to start their progress towards the next adaptation. She watched Lily—not with caution, but with cold readiness.
But Lily walked into the arena with the grace of soone strolling into a garden, not a battlefield.
"Your wife is arrogant." Vier chuckled.
Almond smiled. "As she should be. At least, against her current opponent."
Vier blinked. "Are you saying Berreta won’t stand a chance? Haha, we’ll see."
Admiral Rudra just chuckled. "It’ll be a fun show."
In the Berretta’s battlering, the atmosphere thickened.
The atmosphere thickened.
Lily smiled.
"Begin." The busty dark elf initiated the battle.
The instant the word left her lips—
Lily’s domain fell.
It did not explode outward like Arjun’s or distort space like Natalia’s.
It simply... arrived.
A seamless overlap of reality snapping into place.
The wooden floor darkened to obsidian-black. Lines like ancient script erged from the shadows, weaving in perfect symtry. And from those lines began to rise grotesque silhouettes.
From each tear, a creature crawled out.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Then thousands.
Not humanoid.
Not even remotely alive-looking.
A centipede made of interlocking jawbones.
A floating sphere of tendrils with eyes blinking inside the suckers.
A shifting spinal coil that spat out colorless fla.
A mound of shadow-flesh with three elongated limbs dragging behind it.
A tangle of mirrored feathers that cut the air by existing.
And more.
Dreadolons.
Monstrous, indescribable, unpredictable. Devourers and debuffers.
The mont they appeared, Berreta’s breath tightened.
Her armor reacted instinctively, humming at the sudden influx of invasive pressure.
Debuffs flooded the space like invisible fog—weight, decay, corrosion, weakening, slowing, dulling, hollowing—stacking endlessly with every Dreadolon that crawled into existence.
Lily lifted a finger.
"Go."
The horde surged.
Berreta was frozen. ’What the...’
She wasn’t helpless, of course.
Conversion!
All the debuffs were converted into active force for her, kinetic aura burst as she shot forward like a bullet.
She dashed forward, slicing down the first Dreadolon in her path.
It dissolved. Then reford instantly, morphing into a new shape as if the previous form had rely been a suggestion.
Berreta absorbed the impact of four twisting limbs that tried to wrap around her torso, firing a bullet that curved and detonated inside the creature’s mouth-like cavity. It split apart.
But three more took their place.
Lily walked calmly through the chaos, her domain swirling around her like a subservient storm.
Phantom distortions coiled around her ankles, bending ti in soft ripples.
Berreta was being fired by countless debuffs, and she was converting all of them into force as she sliced, diced, and annihilated the Dreadolons, carving her way towards Lily.
’Got you!’
Berreta finally arrived after several seconds of intense annihilation with her katana and bullet, as her next attack went for Lily’s head, a vertical swing from her head to split her into two.
A mont of distance.
Berreta’s razor-sharp katana, humming with circulating kinetic force capable of splitting everything, was a mont of distance away from touching Lily.
And in that mont, Berreta slowly saw Lily raise her hand while the mont between her katana and Lily’s head remained struck, as if frozen.
Tchat!
Lily snapped her finger.
Ti beneath Berreta’s feet slipped—
Her step landed two seconds earlier than she intended, throwing her movent askew.
Lily chuckled softly.
"Cute."
Berreta absorbed the distortion instantly, stabilizing herself before her stance collapsed. She countered with a downward slash, carrying the weight of accumulated power.
A tidal force of kinetic energy roared out—
—but Dreadolons stord it, eating the montum, drinking it like water.
The wave shattered, scattering into fragnts of dead energy and vanishing without even stirring Lily’s hair.
Still walking.
Unhurried.
Berreta sprinted again—
Armor humming—
Converting every ounce of assault and debuff into a single growing reservoir of killing potential.
She fired multiple shots, curving the bullets into perfect convergence angles towards Lily.
Seven ters from Lily, the first bullet was eaten.
Four ters from Lily, the second bullet turned into dust.
Two ters from Lily, the remaining three bullets faced a black mirror and faded into it.
Before appearing right below Berreta, as a Wolf-like Dreadolon’s mouth opened, showing the sa black mirror phenonon as her bullets ca.
"Sh-"
BOOM!
Berreta vanished by converting all force into speed force to get away.
But right behind her, Lily appeared. "I think you need more energy."
Instantly, thousands of debuffs flooded into her.
They were about to convert into kinetic force for her, empowering her action dramatically.
But just one mont before that conversion could happen, she was affected. And that one mont...stretched.
Berrata froze, paralyzed, senses gone, weakened to the extre, and unard as her Katana and Gun fell from her hands.
But two seconds later, that mont ended as all force converted.
Berrata turned like a light as she swept past her weapons, grabbing them and instantly attacking Lily.
But Dreadolons once again flooded her attacks as well as her, building her frustration. ’Just one minute and twenty seconds more!’
"Crazy," Vier muttered. "Why is she not finishing off Berreta and letting her adaptive armor build up? Once it transforms, it will be over."
Almond laughed. "Indeed, it will be over only after Berreta reaches her full power."
"She might regret it." Vier wryly smiled.
Admiral Rudra chuckled. "It’s just our habit. No point in defeating Berreta if she is not at her full power."
The battlering was chaotic.
"You’re doing wonderfully, Berreta. Don’t stop. I want you to build it more." Her eyes glowed with cold amusent. "Show how powerful you can get before you break."
Berreta’s teeth clenched.
Lily was playing, and it was obvious.
Berreta roared inwardly, pushing her armor’s systems harder. The faint light across her limbs grew brighter, faster, as she amplified the conversion cycles.
She blasted three Dreadolons with a pivot kick.
Six more lunged.
She ripped through them, carving a path toward Lily with increasing ferocity.
Her power grew.
And grew.
Every absorbed attack beca fuel.
Every mont Lily toyed with her made her more dangerous.
And most importantly, every mont spent built her progress towards the Adaptive Shell transformation.
She shifted her wrist, Lily in her range. Projectiles were useless because Lily’s Dreadolon could always appear to block and eat them. Only her complete force of the katana could split everything.
This ti, she got Lily.
Or so she thought.
A chakram floated forward.
The temporal glyphs on its rim pulsed.
Berreta’s instincts scread—
But her attack was already too committed.
The chakram slid through her building force like a blade through wet cloth, unraveling ti inside the attack, breaking the sequence of movent, and dismantling the very montum she had constructed before reaching here.
Her killing blow collapsed into harmless particles that scattered in the reversed flow of ti.
Berreta’s eyes widened.
But this setback gave a burst of progress.
Her armor began glimring.
Lily’s eyes looked on with interest. "Finally."
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