In the end, age and experience triumphed.
The Marquis Voban's thunderous roar reverberated across the sky above the hotel.
Explosive serpents of lightning burst outward violently, shooting straight into the heavens. They tore open a massive storm vortex overhead, and torrential rain began to pour down around them.
The King of Swords was struck head-on by the explosive shockwave and the lightning serpents. Even with Steel Body granting him immense hardness and weight, he was still blown away mercilessly.
Having done that, Voban immediately turned his attention toward Satsuki.
Clearly, his target was not only the King of Swords, but also the girl who had previously dared to "run her mouth" in front of him.
"Well then, I originally had no intention of treating a little brat as an opponent, but—this time I'll reluctantly make an exception. You should feel honored."
After blasting the King of Swords away, Voban looked extremely pleased, yet the smile on his face was cold and merciless. A dreadful evil light radiated from his green demonic eyes.
Satsuki lowered her head and glanced at her feet. Around them, strands of white light were winding tightly—this was another of the Marquis Voban's authorities. Any living being he gazed upon with his eyes would be turned into a pillar of salt, regardless of number.
"Oh? Not a bad ability. As a support skill, it barely has some merit."
As she said this, Satsuki made no move to resist. Yet the white light entwined around her feet seemed to be blocked by some kind of Barrier, unable to advance even an inch.
"Sodom's Gaze is ineffective against you?" In his werewolf state, the Marquis Voban practically roared. "Even one of the strongest goddesses of darkness could not be completely immune to such petrification. You... what exactly are you?"
"Mind your words, little dog!"
Satsuki's layered voice echoed across the sky above the shattered hotel. The surrounding walls trembled violently, rubble and broken tiles cascading down in a constant rain.
In the next instant, a violent shockwave burst forth from her heterochromatic eyes in a cone-shaped blast, directly sending the insolent Marquis Voban flying out of the air above the hotel.
The body that could withstand the King of Swords' supersonic domain slash had no resistance whatsoever before Satsuki. Like a missile, he was blasted far into a distant street, kicking up a plume of smoke dozens of meters high.
At that moment, the King of Swords had just recovered from Voban's lightning shockwave and returned. He looked somewhat disheveled.
Even with Steel Body, taking Voban's lightning blast at point-blank range was far from pleasant.
Yet now he gazed at the direction where Voban had been sent flying and spoke in a tone thick with schadenfreude.
"This just proves that gentlemanly manners are important. Staring so intently at a lady's feet—of course you deserve a little punishment."
Satsuki did not respond. She merely looked toward Voban's direction with those mismatched eyes.
"Was that the divine power of Athena just now? In such a short time, have you also become a Godslayer?" Salvatore's voice carried excitement, and his gaze toward Satsuki once again brimmed with battle intent. Ever since losing to her in swordsmanship last time, he had clearly never let it go.
"Just a trivial trick."
Satsuki offered no further explanation.
Her Demon Buddha Dharma Body was inherently immune to interference. Even direct contact with an authority that altered matter would have no effect on her.
Moreover, the Dead Line Boundary existed around her. That infinite distance was enough to block any attack that did not transcend dimensions.
Whether the strongest god of this world or a Godslayer, if they had not stepped beyond boundaries and reached a level akin to an enlightened one—
Then before Satsuki, they amounted to nothing, no more troublesome than an ant.
"A trivial trick like that would be enough to make every mage in the world die of shame."
The King of Swords adjusted his breathing. The duel formally began.
With a single step, in that instant alone, Salvatore charged toward the Oldest Campione, his right arm already illuminated by silver radiance.
The moment the two closed in, he unleashed an incomprehensible slash.
Satsuki had seen many powerful sword techniques.
For example, the swordsmanship of the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū, as well as the Shinkō Kassatsu Ittō-ryū.
Even when Erica had briefly faced the Heretic God Athena, her swordsmanship had shown impressive cultivation.
But compared to this strike of the King of Swords, there was a fundamental difference.
The arc of his blade was shorter, the trajectory tighter, the swing faster.
And the impact was far more intense, imbuing the sword with even greater destructive force.
Aside from Satsuki, who had reached the realm of a Sword Saint and could slash while completely disregarding spatial distance, Salvatore's technique had already reached an extreme.
Demonic Sword—Mirage.
The overlap of these techniques formed a strike that was as elusive and unavoidable as a mirage. The distance between the two shrank instantly to barely thirty centimeters. At such proximity, even the Marquis Voban could not escape.
"Ahhhhh—!"
His roaring shout rang out like the battle horn of an ancient warrior. At the same time, more than a hundred streaks of sword light descended upon Voban in a relentless storm.
At that exact moment, Erica also arrived at the scene and witnessed the attack from afar.
Even with her mastery of the blade, she could not imagine how it was possible to unleash such a number of slashes in a single instant.
Was it another application of Ripping Silver Arm?
Even if she invoked the Raptor incarnation to enhance herself, she would never be able to release and manifest such an onslaught in a single instant. It had already surpassed the limits of her swordsmanship.
But what happened next left her stunned.
At that critical instant, a pale yellow light flashed around the Marquis Voban, and his figure vanished completely without a trace.
Every single slash struck empty air.
No magical technique could possibly activate at such speed. Moreover, the demonic sword could sever not only solid matter, but also intangible substances such as gas, liquid, or even spirits. Before this blade, no spell could be properly constructed.
However, with her Tenseigan, Satsuki could clearly perceive Voban's response.
At the very moment the sword energy reached him, he activated an authority and plunged underground.
Clearly—the Oldest Campione possessed the ability to move freely beneath the earth.
"Boy, you've fallen for it!"
Reappearing from within the raging storm, the Marquis Voban emerged behind the King of Swords. His eyes lit up once more.
—Sodom's Gaze
The white light that had previously entwined Satsuki reappeared, attempting to invade the back of the King of Swords.
The King of Swords swung his blade backward, intending to sever the white authority light.
However, this move had long been anticipated by the Marquis Voban.
Before the silver swordlight could descend, the pale authority glow abruptly transformed midair into the black-scaled gigantic claw of some monstrous being, seizing the demonic sword in a crushing grip.
A flicker of surprise crossed Salvatore's face. He understood his own authority better than anyone. It was a miraculous power capable of cleaving the earth and reshaping terrain, of splitting open the sea itself—a demonic sword that could sever all things.
Even the Marquis Voban's true body had to rely on his werewolf transformation and sheer physical resilience to barely withstand its edge.
Yet this black claw reaching out from the void—he could not even break its scales, much less cut into its flesh.
What in the world could possibly catch such a strike?
But the King of Swords had no time to ponder, for the werewolf-transformed Voban had already become a storm rushing toward him.
Left with no choice, he released the demonic sword and immediately raised his left palm to block the Marquis' incoming elbow strike.
Bang—
Even with Steel Body granting him weight and defense, Doni felt a violent tremor shoot through his arm.
That instant of contact was like two tempered steel plates colliding at several Mach speed. The surrounding torrential rain was blasted away by the force erupting between them, as if an invisible hemispherical field were pushing everything outward.
"Tough old bones," Doni muttered.
He immediately lashed out with a kick toward Voban's lower body.
However, the Marquis moved faster. Taking advantage of the longer reach granted by his werewolf form, he drove his left hand straight toward Salvatore's chest, as if intending to rip out his heart.
Even with Steel Body, the King of Swords dared not treat that strike lightly.
With no alternative, Doni altered the direction of his attack. His downward kick rose sharply instead, knocking Voban's grasping left hand aside.
Yet this response fell precisely into the Marquis' expectations.
His lower body swayed fluidly left and right like a great feline. With an indescribably agile twist, he spun and unleashed a roundhouse kick that tore through the air.
Faced with that strike, even the King of Swords could neither block nor evade.
Boom—
The blow struck him square in the face. A crushing shock seemed to pulverize his insides as his body arched violently backward, as though he had been run over by a fully accelerating train.
Even the immense weight granted by Steel Body offered no comfort.
But it was not over. At the same time as he executed that spinning kick, the Marquis had already manipulated the lightning of Raging Tempest, sending it blasting toward the direction Doni had been knocked away.
In an instant, the King of Swords' situation turned unfavorable.
Clang!
Just as the bolt of lightning was about to strike, a crisp metallic sound rang out. A golden sword suddenly streaked across the sky, cleaving the authority-born lightning apart midair.
Ordinary magical tools could never accomplish such a feat. Only another authority could sever an authority.
That was common sense.
Therefore—this scene signified that a second Campione had intervened.
Thousands of meters away from the battlefield, Erica Blandelli maintained the posture of having just thrown something. Her golden hair shone brilliantly beneath the radiance of divine authority.
Her lips moved as she murmured something.
What was it?
Though the old Marquis' Sodom's Gaze could perceive scenes several kilometers away, it could not capture sound.
Thus, in theory, Salvatore should not have been able to hear it either.
Yet what happened next surpassed even the old Marquis' imagination.
"You finally made it!"
Doni, who had been blasted away, leapt high into the air and caught the golden sword streaking across the sky.
Then—
"O sword that pierces all enemies with a single swing, to seize every life—let radiance dwell within you!"
As Doni cried out the Kotodama, Ripping Silver Arm transformed its formidable authority into terrifying curse power that wrapped around the golden blade in his grasp. The dazzling swordlight that burst forth shot straight into the heavens, cleaving apart the storm-wracked sky.
This was not even a proper swing yet. The mere fusion of two terrifying authorities sent out aftershocks that shattered the Marquis Voban's storm-controlling authority.
Just as Satsuki had surmised earlier.
The sword in the King of Swords' hand was not some unique mythic treasure or singular magical artifact.
It was merely a derivative created through his own authority—just as the wolf pack was to the Marquis Voban, a standardized consumable tool.
Yet the vast curse power coiled around it was enough to grant this otherwise unremarkable twin-bladed sword earth-shaking might.
And now, by combining the golden sword created through Erica's authority as the Warrior Who Wields the Golden Sword with his own Ripping Silver Arm, his slash would be unstoppable.
"So this is your little trick? It has indeed given me a thrill I have not felt in a long time. Good—only then will you have value as slaves after I kill you."
He seemed to have forgotten how he had been toyed with by Satsuki earlier, wholly intoxicated by the joy of battle.
In other words—he was getting carried away.
"In that case, I shall let you behold—my true body."
The ground where the black gigantic claw had seized the demonic sword suddenly split open into a fissure hundreds of meters long. Black netherfire erupted upward from within, instantly melting the earth into magma before forcing it apart.
Then a second enormous black claw emerged from the rift and slammed down upon the ground, causing the earth to quake violently.
Colossal wings that blotted out the sky rose high like towering masts. The creature that had effortlessly withstood the demonic sword's strike finally revealed its face.
Its head resembled that of a horse, yet it was covered in black scales and crowned with interwoven horns spiraling like a royal diadem.
From its neck down along its back ran a long row of jagged spines. At the tip of its massive tail were several venomous barbs glinting with deadly menace.
The enormous being stretched nearly thirty meters in length. When its wings unfurled, the shadow they cast was enough to swallow half a plaza. Its deep green eyes burned brightly like sinister flames, and its black scales were smooth and hard as metal.
This was a black dragon that existed only in myth and fantasy.
"Seriously—no one ever told me that this old wolf could summon a black dragon," the King of Swords muttered, staring dumbfounded at the mythical creature before him.
Even having slain gods, he still found the existence known as a dragon—one that could rival the divine—troublesome.
After completing the ritual to summon the black dragon,
The Marquis Voban and the dragon cast mocking gazes toward Salvatore and Erica, who now stood side by side.
"Now, it's two against two!"