The shroud of night descended over Orlando.
Lia erged from the sewer. There were no goodbyes. The decision had been
finalized the mont the Punishnt Legion concluded their clumsy, theatrical
search. The Evernight Empire's true motives remained a chaotic variable, but to
remain any longer was to surrender her initiative. To sit and wait for the end
was never an option for Unit One.
Her silhouette rged with the darkness as she moved with predatory speed toward
the forest. She avoided the main thoroughfares, favoring the deep shadows and
the dense thickets. Every footfall was a calculated whisper, ensuring not a
single nesting bird was disturbed.
But from the second she breached the surface, the sensation of an intrusive gaze
clung to her like a secondary shadow.
It was no illusion. No matter how she altered her trajectory, no matter how she
utilized the terrain to mask her heat signature or silhouette, that invisible
line of sight remained locked onto her.
Lia did not halt; instead, she accelerated. She needed to verify a
hypothesis—one that made her internal processors run hot with unease.
She burst through the final layer of dense forest, and the world opened up
before her. A desolate, rocky clearing.
Lia skidded to a halt. The answer stood before her.
Under the cold, silver wash of the moon, a gargantuan red dragon hovered in
mid-air. His scales caught the moonlight, each one shimring like a polished
ruby. And seated atop the dragon's back was a skeleton.
The sa skeleton from the reed chair. Skele-Pride.
Lia displayed no panic. Emotional dysregulation was a Tier-1 error. Her brain
operated at peak efficiency, analyzing the tactical reality. Flight was a
statistical zero; the fact that he was waiting here ant her every route had
been pre-calculated.
The only remaining option was a direct engagent.
Pride did not speak. He watched her with hollow sockets, his soulfire still, as
if observing a specin in a jar. He was waiting.
Lia understood the invitation. She closed her eyes and released the internal
dampers.
In the next heartbeat, the Mana in the surrounding atmosphere began to riot.
With Lia as the epicenter, the air distorted visibly, warping like a heat haze.
Countless specks of light converged from all directions, forming a dense,
shimring flood that poured into her body. The velocity of the intake created a
spiraling Mana-vortex before her. A localized gale erupted, sending gravel and
dust tumbling across the clearing.
Pride made no move to intervene. He watched the spectacle, his soulfire an
unreadable blue. After cycles of observation, he had determined that passive
waiting would not force this inter-planar rat to scurry ho. He needed a new
thodology.
Break her. Grind her to the brink of death, then release her. Let her struggle
in a cycle of despair until her psyche fractures and she chooses to flee back to
her own world.
The vortex expanded. The depleted well of Lia's Od was refilled with staggering
speed.
Tier 1... Tier 2... Tier 3...
The sensation of returning power caused every cell in her body to vibrate with a
lethal resonance. When she finally plateaued at the summit of Tier 5, the
violent vortex finally cald into a steady hum.
She opened her eyes. Her violet pupils glowed with an internal, piercing light.
The jagged map of scars across her cheeks had been washed away by the sheer
pressure of her returning power, revealing a face of haunting, flawless
perfection.
Pride looked down from his draconic perch, finally breaking the silence. His
voice was a flat, tonal drone.
"Are you prepared?"
Lia offered no verbal response. She dropped into a combat stance. Her left hand
flattened into a palm, held before her chest; her right hand coiled into a fist
at her waist. She sank her center of gravity, her focus absolute upon the
skeleton in the sky.
Pride watched her eyes, and a flicker of sothing resembling approval touched
his soulfire. "A comndable gaze."
"Regrettably, I am not your opponent tonight."
The mont the words left his jaw, Pride vanished from Ignius's back.
In the next micro-second, Ignius unhinged his jaw. Scorching energy gathered
deep in his throat, turning the night sky a bruised, angry crimson. A colossal
pillar of Draconic Fire erupted.
Lia moved.
A fraction of a second before the fire impacted, she propelled herself sideways.
Her body spun in mid-air, barely clearing the corona of the blast. The thermal
wave scorched the hem of her dress into blackened ash.
As she cleared the blast zone, she adjusted her posture in the air. Fingers
splayed, she manifested a crescent-shaped blade of light from pure Mana, hurlng
it toward the dragon.
Ignius's massive form dove with a velocity that defied physics. Mid-descent, his
biology rebelled against its draconic shape. Scales retracted, bones cracked and
slid into new configurations, and in the blink of an eye, he beca a
Dragon-man—a Tier 5 powerhouse standing over two ters tall.
Carrying the imnse kinetic energy of his dive, Ignius threw a punch. Before
the fist even connected, the compressed air ahead of it ford an invisible
concussive shell, stalling Lia's breath.
Evasion was impossible.
In a state of extre backward lean, Lia forced a surge of power through her
core, twisting her torso to shift her vitals. Simultaneously, she threw a
straight punch saturated with Tier 5 Mana directly against Ignius's incoming
forearm.
BANG!
A dull, heavy impact echoed through the clearing. Lia felt as though she had
struck a pillar of white-hot steel; the sheer force of the counter-shock numbed
her entire arm.
Ignius's trajectory shifted only by a hair's breadth. His fist slamd into the
earth.
BOOM!
The ground buckled. A crater several ters deep erupted where Lia had stood,
jagged fissures racing outward like a spiderweb.
Before Lia could reset, Ignius reverted to his full draconic form. His blood-red
maw, capable of crushing mountains, snapped shut toward her.
The scent of sulfur and iron filled her senses. The two rows of serrated dragon
teeth expanded in her vision.
There was nowhere left to retreat.
In the space between heartbeats, Lia shifted her fist into a palm. As the jaws
were milliters from closing, she vanished.
She detonated her remaining reserves, launching herself vertically like a cot.
However, in mid-air, her montum was spent and her next move hadn't yet
ford—it was her mont of maximum vulnerability.
Below, Ignius didn't hesitate. Another pillar of Draconic Fire pursued her
ascent.
Lia, suspended in the night sky, frantically manifested dozens of diamond-shaped
Mana-shields, stacking them layer upon layer into a temporary bulwark.
CRASH!
The fire struck the barrier. The first layer evaporated instantly. The second
cracked and shattered. The third... the fourth...
The shields were pulverized with terrifying efficiency, but they bought her the
precious seconds she needed. Utilizing the concussive force of the blast, she
propelled herself higher, reaching an altitude of several hundred ters.
Under the silver moon, Lia set her feet and spread her arms. She released every
drop of her Tier 5 Mana without reservation.
"[Glacial Descent]!"
Her voice rang through the night air. Above her, a massive, intricate blue
magical circle unfurled, covering hundreds of ters. From the center of the
array, pillars of jagged ice—each exceeding ten ters in length—materialized
and began to fall like a cataclysmic teor shower, aid indiscriminately at
Ignius.
Each pillar held the mass to level a city block.
Faced with this absolute carpet-bombing, Ignius did not flinch. He shifted back
to his Dragon-man form and looked up at the falling death. Crossing his arms
before his face, he lunged upward—straight into the teeth of the storm!
BOOM!
He beca a juggernaut of muscle and scale, shattering the lethal ice pillars
into a billion shimring fragnts through sheer physical impact. He carved a
path through the frozen rain like a god of war. Broken ice danced in the
moonlight, reflecting a brilliant, chaotic light.
In the distance, suspended in the air by his own power, Skele-Pride watched the
engagent with his arms crossed.
"Impressive," he murmured.
"She is indeed worthy of being a Planar Spy. Even though Ignius is clearly
sandbagging—hardly using thirty percent of his output and sticking to basic
breath and physical strikes—a Tier 5 who can force him into an active charge
possesses a talent that is rare even among the high-born."
☆☆☆
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