"Brother Caelus~! Sister Sushang!"
A girl's ethereal, airy cry rang out — pure and clear, yet threaded through with mischief.
[We're up.]
A strange, seamless understanding passed between self and not-self. Moonscar caught Yue'er's intent and turned to Li Sushang.
"Got it!"
Li Sushang's toes grazed the shadow of the Ruoshui sword beneath her. Light as a swan skimming snow, she rode the blade around to DanteMon's flank. Her pale, slender fingers rose in a sword-pointing stance, and with a graceful sweep of her fair wrist, she called out:
"Cast ten thousand blades."
Taixu Sword Intent surged forth like a spring bursting from the earth, instantly splintering into tens of thousands of water-blue sword shadows.
"Singing Edge Strale——"
The sword shadows scattered like rain, converging from every direction into the sky, fusing into a single colossal Ruoshui divine sword as vast as a mountain range.
By some inexplicable twist of fate, Moonscar had become Jingliu's master — and while teaching Jingliu the Taixu Sword Art, she had taken the chance to shamelessly ask about Jingliu's own sword in return. Combined with the ambiguous Honkai energy coursing through her body, Li Sushang had made remarkable strides lately.
"Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Heart!"
Rippling light, dragon shadows coiling around it — like a divine dragon roaring up from the deep sea only to plunge back down and swallow the ocean whole — the great sword drove downward toward DanteMon.
"ROAAR!"
DanteMon swung its bloody claws. Claw met sword with a crash like a great bell hammering against a bronze cauldron, and the enormous blade shattered.
Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Heart was flashy, to be sure — but the gap in tier between Li Sushang and a demon of DanteMon's caliber was simply a fact. Even with her considerable recent progress, she was still far from Emanator-level.
But that was never what the strike was for. It was always meant to lock down its movement.
"HA!"
Caelus-Goss let out a forceful, "benevolent" battle cry. Energy gathered at both wrists, azure-white electricity coiling up his arms like a writhing dragon.
Arms spread wide, then slowly extended outward. The energy across his whole body condensed like drawn breath into a ball of azure current, then fired as a concentrated beam.
"Stasis!"
One of Goss's signature abilities — Freeze Shot — halting the monster's movement entirely.
With DanteMon's flanks locked down by the great sword, the beam spread across its entire body. The energy tentacles it had been swinging froze instantly in mid-air. Countless purple-black energy projectiles hung suspended as though someone had hit pause — a grotesque, hovering sculpture of frozen artillery.
"Come taste what Yue'er's got~!"
Yue'er brushed the loose strands of hair from beside her ear, tucking them back into place. She drew power inward, twisted at the waist, and spun — her pink-violet skirt flaring into a flower wheel.
That gentle, soft presence. That bearing as resplendent as a princess. Yet in that simple pivot of her waist — capturing every supple line of her young body — there was an unyielding strength.
Haxxor Bunny, watching from the sidelines, was internally losing her mind.
She's so beautiful!
A perfect fusion of soft sweetness, cool grace, and playful charm — her eyes carrying both power and beauty, her cuteness and her resolve on full display, incomparably stunning. And in the middle of a crisis she still took a moment to brush the hair from her ear, adding a touch of effortless elegance to the whole thing.
[Mom, I'm in love!]
[Little Gui, don't contact me anymore — I'm afraid Yue'er will get the wrong idea!]
The livestream chat detonated again. Guinaifen had completely given up watching it.
The butterfly-wing scythe shifted into a bow. The girl slowly drew back the string, violet-blue radiance blooming around her.
Yue'er released the index finger pinching the bowstring and tilted her head with a light smile.
"Here comes a shooting star~!"
A violet-blue ice meteor blazed skyward — like fireworks launched into a summer night, lighting up the entire Fyxestroll Garden's Grotto-Heaven.
The instant the meteor struck the dome, the Six-Phased Ice refracted into ten million ice shards. An Eternal Freeze fell like a curtain of water pouring from the sky in reverse.
A thousand li of glacial sealing, ten thousand li of frost-blossom drift — the garden's rockeries, winding galleries, and teahouses were all frozen into crystalline specimens. Even the air carried the sharp, clean scent of frost.
The fiercest curtain of ice struck directly across DanteMon's spine. Blue-silver frost veins bloomed across its rubbery body.
Inky Heliobus spirit-flames raged in resistance. DanteMon was still fighting back.
Caelus-Goss's wrists snapped together with sudden force. The azure-white beam contracted sharply, binding DanteMon's four limbs into a chrysalis shape and grinding its movement to a dead halt.
"Now's the time."
The pink-violet ice bow in Yue'er's hands shifted back into the Ruby magical staff.
"Finish it!"
A flood of violet-blue energy erupted from Yue'er's graceful back. Dazzling streams of particles became impossibly beautiful, immense butterfly wings.
Spiderweb cracks spread across the entire space, shattering it like a mirror.
The phase shifted. Hanyan and the various wraith-officers and spirit-soldiers abruptly appeared within Fyxestroll Garden.
Or rather — it was the other way around. It was Goss, Yue'er, Xueyi, Haxxor Bunny and the others who had appeared in the real Fyxestroll Garden.
"Ruby."
Like a butterfly unfolding its wings fresh from the cocoon, bare-footed Yue'er with her jade-pale feet shot upward into the sky like a meteor in reverse.
"Oh oh oh!! This magical power! THIS MAGICAL POWER!!"
Filled to a degree it had never known before, Ruby reached what felt like an absolute zenith of ecstatic resonance, her voice climbing to a fever pitch of excitement.
"Choosing you as my Master was the right call — this is unprecedented, a Noble Phantasm deployment so extraordinary it's positively mind-blowing! MASTER!!"
In the world of Tsukihime, magecraft and True Magic are two distinct orders of mystery. Only phenomena that can be achieved by neither magecraft nor scientific technology may be called True Magic.
After the Age of Gods drew to a close, True Magic dwindled. In the modern era, only five things still merit the name.
Magical Ruby contains the Second Magic — capable of drawing upon the magical energy of parallel-world isotopes and downloading their skills and experience.
A case like Yue'er's, where no parallel-world isotope exists, was something Ruby had only ever encountered with Kishua Zelretch Schweinorg — the wielder of the Second Magic who created her.
But the fact was, the girl did not command the Second Magic. She couldn't even use ordinary magecraft.
And yet — before the sheer terror of that power, call it Honkai energy or Imaginary energy, none of that mattered in the slightest!
"Move over, Caelus-cub — let me handle this!"
In the space within the light, Stelle bumped Caelus aside with a twist of her hips and seized control of the body.
Caelus-Goss crossed both arms sharply in front of his forehead. The blue light of the chest Color Timer flared, and crimson-gold energy formed into a swirling vortex of light patterns.
"AHHHH——!"
A cry of "compassion" — a battle cry. The Color Timer began turning red, and she kept charging.
Time was almost up anyway. Stelle intended to fire all the remaining light energy in Goss's body in one go.
Transformation devices were expensive, after all. Wasting leftover energy would be a crime!
"Sis~ take it easy, don't go sideways — Luofu will sink," Caelus crouched nearby and offered, in a perfect Tianjin drawl.
"I know — HA!"
The instant energy transferred from both arms into the right wrist, the golden-light vortex condensed to its absolute limit. Moving with a motion that was outwardly soft yet inwardly immovable — like a Taiji form — she fired:
"Cosmoium Ray!"
Goss Solar Eclipse Mode's finishing move — an all-purpose ray of equal gentleness and power. Against kind allies, it heals; against enemies who are fundamentally wicked and cruel, it is lethal.
A healing beam that somehow deals more damage than Solar Eclipse Mode's Explosive Ray and Scorching Shockwave combined — the mechanics are honestly absurd.
Star-dust light waves bloomed across Yue'er's pink-violet skirt. Holding the staff with both hands raised high, a magic circle formed of interlocking rings shimmered into being around Ruby.
"...Ahem, ahem!"
In the Seat of Divine Foresight, Jing Yuan — seeing the high-energy emergency alert signal transmitted from the Artisanship Commission — found that the tea in his mouth had suddenly become very hard to swallow.
Were these people trying to destroy Fyxestroll Garden — or blow up the entire Xianzhou?!
How had a perfectly ordinary mission to detain a Heliobus escalated into an event of this magnitude?!
"Quintette Fire (Multi-Resonance Saturation Bombardment)!"
This was the ultimate offensive technique inscribed within Ruby — one that normally required drawing upon parallel-world isotopes' magical energy to execute. In this moment, it was powered by Yue'er's magic alone.
A torrent of pink, violet, blue, black, and red magical energy cascaded outward like the Milky Way overflowing its banks. A deluge of stardust light as vast as a galaxy pouring in reverse fell down upon the battlefield — its shockwaves tearing the heavens in two on a sea of starlight.
Across the way, Moonscar calculated quietly: between these two attacks, the damage should already be more than sufficient — whether Li Sushang's Taixu Sword God added to it or not was irrelevant. The damage would overflow regardless.
With that thought, Moonscar reclaimed control of the body. She raised a sword-pointing finger, and blue-gold flame ignited at her brow.
"The Spirit is the ultimate of all transformation."
The brilliant radiance of seven celestial bodies gathered in Moonscar's palm.
No need for Li Sushang to act — but she herself could add a sword strike. Consider it training with a live target, polishing technique. A target this perfect didn't come along every day.
DanteMon was not going down without a fight.
Sensing the mortal threat to its existence, it was as though its entire body caught fire — miasma and flesh became the fuel, and the inky Heliobus spirit-flames swelled, swelled, swelled again.
The stray waves of flame melted spiderweb cracks into the frozen surface of Fyxestroll Garden. All four feet sank deep into the scorched earth.
It split its blood-soaked jaws wide open, the gap reaching all the way to its ears. Black spirit-fire compressed wildly in its throat, condensing into a dark-violet energy sphere forty meters in diameter — the very fabric of space warping around it.
"ROOAAR~!"
DanteMon's ultimate technique — the Supreme Inferno Cannon!
The Cosmoium Ray and the Multi-Resonance Saturation Bombardment — a cascade of blue, violet, and pink rainbow light — intersected in the air above, a collision like an epic clash between the Milky Way and the aurora borealis. They bore down with the force of something crushing dead wood beneath a landslide, swallowing the dark-violet inferno cannon whole.
Light beams could fuse, too.
Did anyone appreciate the true worth of the ultimate fusion ingredient in the Ultra Series' cosmology?
"AAAAHH!"
A shriek — not just despair, but something that might have been defiance.
The black-flame torrent was torn apart. Goss and Yue'er's combined beam, bearing within it Moonscar's Sword God technique, crashed forward like a surging tide — and swallowed DanteMon entirely.
All colour folded into it. A torrent of sweeping radiance — and finally, all the starlight condensed into a single strand, flying upward into the sky as the embodiment of annihilation.
A lucky little asteroid, randomly selected, played at connecting hearts.
BOOM.
Above Fyxestroll Garden, a mushroom cloud of intertwined frost and stardust blossomed skyward. DanteMon's enormous body dissolved into data and crumbled to ash — yet even now, fragments of small Heliobus were still trying to flee.
The Color Timer flashed in rapid, urgent pulses. Goss still had a little energy left. Caelus stepped in to stop Stelle from firing off another technique.
"Yue'er, don't let those Heliobus fragments get away!"
The number of fragments managing to separate from DanteMon under an assault of this scale was wrong. Their state was clearly off — the ghost-green spirit-flames had been stained through with wicked, inky black.
"Those are snack ingredients!"
At those words, Stelle — who had been in a post-exertion slump after shooting everything out — snapped her eyes wide open.
Snacks. Tasty food.
The moment you mentioned that, she wasn't tired anymore!
"Leave it to this young lady~!"
An ethereal, lilting voice answered — clear as a bell, sweet as spring.
"This time — you're going to be sealed in a fairy tale forever~!"
Facing the fleeing swarm of black-flame Heliobus scattering in all directions like a cloud of bats, Yue'er raised her ice bow. She drew back a bowstring woven from threads of stardust.
"Six phases split ten thousand arrows — ice-lock the wicked soul."
The instant the arrow left the string, it exploded mid-air into ten thousand ice shards — each trailing a tail of blue campanula sparks, a meteor shower hunting down the fleeing Heliobus.
The fleeing spirit-flames were pierced through by ice shards and pinned in place, crystallizing into ice sculptures.
"I-is it... over?"
Huo Huo dropped out of the Jinchuriki state and looked blankly around at her surroundings.
Fyxestroll Garden remained locked in ice. Ten thousand ice shards refracted the light into a crystalline palace of pure water — almost nothing of the original landscape remained visible. Only a frozen wasteland of ruins was left.
"Times like this are when I'm essential — I'll have to squeeze Jing Yuan for a handsome sum."
Not that anyone knew DanteMon had been brought here by him to begin with... actually no — that had been the System and Aha's fault all along.
It had nothing to do with him from start to finish!
Caelus-Goss switched back to Luna Mode. Blue-silver light patterns shimmered with a warm, mellow moonlight glow in the deep of night. He slowly opened his palm — a rainbow-hued soft radiance rippled outward like rings on still water.
A miracle, made real.
The ability that set him apart from all other Ultra Warriors and Master Goss.
Rainbow light rained down. The buildings of Fyxestroll Garden, reduced to rubble and ash, were restored to their former state.
Aihara Ryu was ecstatic!!!
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