As everyone knows, Master Goss is the Ultra Tribe's supreme grandmaster of negotiation — any creature that has experienced Master Goss's benevolence will lay down the malice and brutality in their heart.
All seven of his forms are rooted in reason and communication.
Standard Luna Mode: the nice-guy approach — gentle voice, soft words, patient reasoning.
Corona: subduing opponents with pure, straightforward logic.
Cosmos Corona: subduing opponents with pure, straightforward logic, but in space.
Solar Eclipse: simultaneous negotiation-and-reasoning mode.
Miracle Luna: reasoning so potent it borders on brainwashing.
Future: reasoning, but not entirely reasoning.
Legend: I AM the reason.
Of the seven forms, the Star Rail crew could access the basic four. Miracle Luna required a heart of pure, gentle, all-encompassing love — and you were going to pitch that to the Trailblazer?
Future Mode required a dream — a belief in the possibilities that lay ahead — plus Future Energy. That one… needed extra pay.
As for Legend, well — no need to dwell on it. Actually, they could say something: buying a single-use Legend transformation item directly from the shop ran into four digits of Crystals, for only a few minutes.
Out of their price range. Completely out of their price range.
Caelus mused that there might be other ways to experience Legend.
For instance — he could use the Sun-Moon Brilliance Baton to become Goss, Stelle could use the Axiom Rifle to transform into Justice, and the two of them could raise their shields together and tank Nanook's full-power assault.
Hey, wouldn't that summon Legend right there?
Lord Ravager Zephyro — renowned for overwhelming individual might, a one-man army, a devotee of violent destruction — might also be able to break the combined energy shield of two Ultra warriors working in tandem.
Or perhaps one Imaginary Collapse Pulse could do it.
There were beings in the Galaxy capable of shattering the combined energy shields of Goss and Justice — but DanteMon was absolutely not one of them. So, Corona it was: subduing the enemy with pure, simple, straightforward logic.
"Sorry, sorry — blind spot in my field of vision."
StelleGoss dropped her weight into her hips and torqued her waist, her right fist igniting with a river of molten lava-fire, gleaming with red-gold radiance like a quenched steel ingot.
Corona Punch!
Like a hundred-ton semi-truck on an open road with the accelerator floored and no regard for anything — a fist wreathed in leaping flame crashed forward.
DanteMon's purple-black spirit-flame arms, shrouded in the shrieks of vengeful spirits, came thundering in to meet it, the miasma-fog rolling with rubble and shattered masonry, blotting out the sky.
Those arms were seventy, eighty meters long, and wildly disproportionate — slender at the wrist, thick as a tower at the forearm, the fist clenched into a mass over ten meters across.
Two fists colliding — like a gloved boxer throwing a punch against a toddler's outstretched hand.
And yet — the fist-wind shredded the fog; the purple-black slime splashed against the Corona Punch and vaporized into wisps of green smoke; the miasmic arm was scorched with charred, gaping holes by the blazing fist.
Heliobus were praised as Spirits of Starfire — but compared to the solar fire of Corona, they still fell a little short.
"AAAGH——!"
A high-pitched, ear-splitting shriek. DanteMon swung its main body's blood-red giant hands, slashing a savage crimson blade-light sharp enough to make your very soul flinch straight toward StelleGoss's face.
"Hah. I thought it was a speed bump — turns out it's DanteMon."
CaelusGoss didn't retreat an inch — he surged forward, fist trailing fire, clashing head-on against the blood-claw with a resounding clang of gold on iron.
The two energy arms came charging in again. The Star Rail pair each seized control of one, and CaelusGoss's Corona, with unstoppable momentum, broke the deadlock and sent the blood-claws flying.
Consecutive Corona Punches!
Fists blazing with molten-gold fire and ringed with coronal streams — they smashed apart the gaps between DanteMon's purple-black energy fingers, and wherever the black flames landed, the grass beneath carbonized and crumbled to ash in an instant.
The right fist punched clean through the center of the palm, detonating in a cacophony of wailing vengeful spirits.
Spinning Corona Kick — launched with the force of a polar plume behind it.
A polar plume is a solar phenomenon: coronal plasma gas gathered at the sun's polar regions, held in hydrostatic equilibrium by a magnetic field acting as a side wall — that is what forms a polar plume.
DanteMon flew like a snapped puppet-string, tumbling hundreds of meters sideways, crashing through Fyxestroll Garden's buildings, sending bricks and stones flying in a billowing curtain of dust.
StelleGoss lunged through the dust-cloud, bent down, and seized DanteMon's tail — its tentacle-like appendage whose tip resembled a shattered set of judgment scales — coiling her core and drawing back like a bowstring pulled taut.
"We're all living as hard as we can."
DanteMon was swung into a howling black-red pinwheel. The ruined ground tore open a deep furrow as it dragged across the earth. After five full rotations, StelleGoss roared and hurled it — DanteMon slammed into Fyxestroll Garden like a falling meteor, blasting a crater a hundred meters wide, shaking the earth's crust.
CaelusGoss's fist swept past the timer dial; his body radiated red-gold light as six clone-forms leapt out of the sunlight.
Back when Caelus had watched the theatrical film "Ultraman Goss: Sun and Moon's First Strike," he'd always had one nagging question — why did only the villains get to use clones first? Why couldn't Ultraman use them too?
Such a ridiculously useful skill — why not use it from the start?
"We're all going this hard — how are you still alive?!"
The clone-forms flexed, fists and feet falling like rain — like an Italian mob executing a frenzied gang beatdown on DanteMon.
The left clone locked its throat and pressed its neck. The right clone whipped a leg-kick into its ribs. The front clone drove a straight punch through its gut. The back clone kneed it in the kidney. The upper and lower clones each grabbed an arm and a leg.
Xueyi, Huo Huo, and Tail stared with their jaws on the floor. Fuyan's entire body trembled, their small flame flickering wildly, their lone eye shrinking to the size of a bean.
"You call this… reasoning with someone?"
This was straight-up applied physics!
Watching Huiyan — that is, DanteMon — getting pummeled into the dirt, Fuyan performed the very human gesture of swallowing hard.
Thank goodness they hadn't provoked the two gray-haired ones earlier. Even if Fuyan had devoured all the Heliobus fragments inside Fyxestroll Garden, they would never have escaped this alive.
"So — so incredible!"
The courageous, compassionate giant made Huo Huo's fear gradually melt away — she even felt a spark of fighting spirit kindling inside her:
"Paper — paper soldiers, obey my command! One spiritual talisman, all calamities dispelled!"
More than ten yellow paper-cut figures drawn in cinnabar ink soared upward and unfurled, their edges shimmering with spiritual light, transforming in the blink of an eye into paper soldiers in sword-wielding armor, their breastplates etched with demon-warding seal script.
Xueyi and Huo Huo weren't idle either. They couldn't join the main battlefield, but they could handle the blood bats flying out from the swirling black fog vortex.
Hundreds upon thousands of blood bats came swarming in on a reeking wind — wherever their bat-wings swept, the lacquer peeled from the corridor pillars like scorched leaves — their fangs glinting with venomous light, lunging for the artery on the side of Huo Huo's neck.
The paper soldiers held the line like a wall of bronze and iron, swinging their swords and slashing out streaks of talisman-light, cutting the leading bats to black ash.
Xueyi dual-wielded her Demon-Quelling Awls and wove in and out of the bat swarm seven times over.
"Goss, watch out——!"
A shout came from behind — Yue'er's voice, delicate yet carrying real force.
The fist-wind was drumming down like a downpour against DanteMon's gaunt yet diamond-hard body, sparks flying. The Star Rail pair, each controlling a separate set of clone-forms in their coordinated beatdown, lurched to a halt — and both snapped their heads upward toward the sky.
The purple-black spirit-fire that the Corona Punch had torn apart had, like a murder of crows returning to roost, regrouped through the thick smoke into a sky-blotting giant hand — its palm-lines pulsing with dark blood-red energy, its edges swallowing entire waves of flame into the heavens — and it crashed thunderously down toward the battlefield!
"Caelus-cub, run!"
Stelle's cry burst out riding the sound of the wind. All six clone-forms dissolved into streams of red-gold light that rushed back into Goss's body, and Goss became a blur of afterimages.
"Acceleration!"
Goss's ability to freely use all his modes — in this case, superspeed movement at Mach velocity within a certain range, leaving afterimages in his wake.
"One more blessing~~"
Yue'er tilted her head with an endearing blink at Goss, and a purple-blue stream of light swept through the void — an ice shield the height of dozens of meters of city wall materialized above Goss's head, its surface laced with frost-flower patterns crystallized from stardust.
The Mach-speed afterimage trail streaked out red-blue-silver bands of light. With the ice shield blocking above, Goss shot clear a thousand meters away before the giant hand crashed down.
BOOM!
The ground shattered beneath the giant hand's impact in a spider-web of cracks. DanteMon shrieked and shapeshifted — both feet grinding down into the earth as it shifted into a four-limbed stance.
"ROAARRR——!!!"
The sound wave spread outward with almost physical substance. The purple-black miasma poured down from the sky in an inverse waterfall, instantly blotting out both sun and moon, painting Yue'er's ice dome black.
One of Ultimate DanteMon's signature finishing moves — Miasma Surge.
This skill could also be classified as a Domain.
Miasma billowed. Flames curled through it. The energy arms split apart into dozens of long, writhing tentacles — each tentacle tipped with a gaping blood-maw, corrosive slime dripping between jagged teeth — tangling through the air into a reeking black hell.
"This thing has gone completely berserk."
Inside the space of light, channeling through the Courageous Compassionate Warrior — Goss's capacity to sense negative emotion — Caelus could clearly feel the volcanic torrent of malice erupting from DanteMon's body.
"So… that means negotiation is completely off the table now, right?"
Stelle grinned at the corner of her mouth.
Goss raised both arms high. The right arm swept forward in a Tai Chi flowing-water arc, and behind him, a sun-disk-shaped halo instantly bloomed open with moon-white luminescent patterns.
The red-gold molten fire wreathing his body and the cool blue-silver light slammed together in a violent embrace — like lava shattering through a glacier — the searing ember-warmth folding around the Luna deity's radiance to reforge silver-blue meridians of light.
Goss Solar Eclipse Mode!
Possessing the abilities and attributes of both Luna Mode and Corona — yet surpassing both by a significant margin — Solar Eclipse was a fused and enhanced form.
This form was so absurdly powerful that certain techniques even had friendly-fire disabled!
"RAAGH——!"
The blood-maws at the tips of the tentacles snapped open and shut like floodgates, disgorging a storm-front of energy blasts on a foul wind — the purple-black energy shots pelted down on Goss like a monsoon downpour, the air crackling and popping as it seared, the crumbled ruins of Fyxestroll Garden crumbling to nothing in the blast-wind.
"HYAAH——!"
The solemn battle-cry of someone who was getting progressively more aggravated.
The form of one who had been told to talk it out and refused — and so now it was his turn to do the talking.
The Star Rail Goss leapt skyward, instantly becoming a red-silver-blue afterimage blur, flipping and spinning.
At Mach-level movement speed — moving at a velocity that bystanders simply could not track — every single energy shot in that barrage, comparable to the EX Light-card danmaku from a certain bullet-hell franchise from the east, was deflected and sent flying — a perfect, total reflect!
Master Goss's close-combat technique is beyond question!
The built-in battle experience even included Tai Chi.
"Solar Eclipse Blade!"
StelleGoss gathered light energy at both wrists, forming a massive crescent-shaped destruction light-blade, aiming it at the mass of tentacles and preparing to fire.
But Caelus cut her off: "Wait — Ah-Xing, you're using it wrong."
"Huh?"
Stelle reviewed the Goss skill list she had in her head and tilted her head, puzzled. "How is it wrong? It goes like this."
"Like this."
CaelusGoss withdrew his firing stance, gripped the crescent destruction light-blade, and held it the way a butcher holds a cleaver.
"Yue'er should get serious too — Ruby."
Yue'er tapped the ice bow with her fingertip.
"Hiiii——! Yes, Master——!"
The ice crystals abruptly shattered. The bow's broken light reformed in her palm, condensing into a gorgeous scythe.
Predominantly purple-blue in hue, with the blade-tip suffused with 'White' Seele's crimson, frost-flowers blooming along the blade's spine, the scythe-handle wound with butterfly-shaped satin ribbons — and wherever stardust scattered from it, butterflies bloomed into being, circling the weapon in a flutter of wings.
"Here we go~~"
Yue'er tilted her head and smiled lightly. Purple-blue phantom butterflies drew ice-crystal chains forward, binding DanteMon's tentacles.
CaelusGoss seized the opening and pressed in — Accelerating toward DanteMon.
One slash!
Another slash!
And another!
The compassion of a butcher putting down a hog.
The lingering side-effect of having been Ace before — this was the right way to use the light-blade technique.
DanteMon shrieked and whipped its tentacles about, blood-maws spitting energy shots in rapid succession.
Yue'er spun and leapt, the purple-blue butterfly ice-scythe carving an arc through the air — crescent slashes of purple-blue swept through the energy blasts, each shot detonating into twin blooms of ice and butterfly.
Goss simultaneously flashed into position behind the tentacle cluster, swept the crescent blade horizontally, severing two tentacles clean off, then drove a knee-strike into a blood-maw, shattering its jagged fangs.
A flawless mixed doubles performance!
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