Lilith and Atlin watched as Raina exploded with unprecedented power.
Two waves of energy, one pitch-black and the other a near-black purple, raged around her, mixing and intertwining as they swept over the surroundings like a violent tide. As she fought, these two lights steadily fused together, with each successive attack triggering a profound, almost qualitative change in her power, a little like she was forging as she fought.
They looked at Raina's changes and frowned deeply.
"This is…"
Atllin nodded, "This is mental energy, or perhaps it is better to say that it is a powerful derivative created by those lunatics. It seems as if our suspicions were correct…"
Lillit frowned. "But why would it show up now? That experiment was sealed so long ago, so how could it succeed after all this time?" For some reason, his hand clenched into a tight fist. "If it was going to appear, shouldn't it have emerged during the time of the Second Demon King's rise?"
Atllin shook his head. "It must have been triggered by an outside factor. Perhaps it is related to the current state of the Second Demon King, or perhaps it was affected by the Calamities." Atllin narrowed his eyes, giving Lillit a sharp, side-eyed glance before adding, "It could even be an outside force playing their cards. Between those underground barbarians, those long-eared slaves, or even that damn place... any of them could have intervened and thrown this variable into the mix."
Lillith shook his head, "It shouldn't be."
Atllin muttered, Indeed, 'it shouldn't' be…"
Both of them paused.
The duo looked ahead, watching slowly as the strange power around Raina continued to evolve.
-
"Oraa!!!"
Boom!—The underground expanse trembled violently!
A terrifying roar erupted from Raina's throat as waves of black energy continued to erupt outward from her body like a tidal wave. Her long black hair whipped wildly through the air while the newly formed horns protruding from her head flickered and extended with an unstable shadow.
Bang!
Another wolf king crashed into her side, but Raina gritted her teeth and swung the massive black hammer sideways, smashing it directly into the creature's jaw and blasting the enormous beast across the battlefield. At the same time, her free hand shot out, grabbed its tail before it could shoot away, then swung it over her head in a wide arch, smashing it down, then again, and again, and again! Bang-bang-bang-bang! The impact shattered several stone pillars before the huge wolf was eventually thrown away and disappeared into a collapsing wall of rolling rubble.
With another roar, she rushed forward, but despite all the violence, Raina herself was actually confused.
"What… is this…?" She muttered, her voice like a dream.
Her heartbeat thundered violently in her chest as the elemental energy filling her body began to boil.
She felt like a machine, a machine that was beginning to overheat.
Like an overclocked engine, all the power filling her body was being pushed to its absolute limit.
The dark-element elemental energy that she could normally control had started to change. The change had grown so large that even Raina, in her half-berserk state, had started to notice. Mixed within the familiar dark element was now another strange power, a near-black purple energy that felt heavier, denser, almost… tangible, a power that was more compatible with her thoughts.
Buzz!
Suddenly, the surrounding gravel trembled.
This change, although subtle, caused Raina to briefly freeze because she could instinctively feel that it had something to do with her changes.
Even in the heat of battle, this sudden sensation stood in stark contrast to her current brutality.
She gritted her teeth, and after pulling away a sliver of her focus, she swept her gaze around the cavern.
Soon, she discovered that several nearby stones had slowly floated upward around her feet.
"Hm?"
Her brows wanted to raise, but the moment her attention shifted—
Boom!
Another wolf king slammed its claw down on her from the back, blasting her forward and sending her skidding violently across the ground.
"Damn dogs!" She roared!
Raina rolled upright before smashing her hammer downward, then returning to her feet with a swoosh. At the same time, she swung around, her hammer breaking the air and landing with a shock!
BOOM!!
The wolf's skull cracked upon impact.
But at the same time—Hum!
The shattered debris around her suddenly lifted into the air again, causing another brief distraction.
Raina's eyebrow twitched.
This time, she noticed it more clearly, these strange sensations, like waves on a beach. With each tide, a refreshing sensation washed over her body, making her feel cool and comfortable. Every time this happened, Raina was increasingly clear that something was happening inside her body.
Soon, as she continued to fight, the floating stones trembled erratically before suddenly starting to shoot outward in random directions.
Crash! Crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-crash!
One stone smashed into a Wolf King's shoulder, tearing out a disproportionately sized chunk, while another struck the cavern wall, blasting a crater nearly ten times its size. A third stone, completely uncontrolled, somehow looped backward and nearly hit Gillion. Before it could land, it struck against the barrier separating them, causing the smallest of cracks to spiderweb across its surface.
"OI!" He yelped, jumping back in shock!
Why did he feel as if his life had nearly flashed past his eyes!
Raina ignored him, her attention completely on this strange change.
As she underwent an introspection, her eyes visibly widened.
"…I did that? No, this is…"
Her thinking was once again cut off, because the wolves lunged again. They seemed to sense this change far more clearly than she herself had, making them somewhat restless.
Aooooooooo!
Raina reacted instinctively by exploding forward and attacking the source of the sound.
Buzz!
Following her charge, several floating rocks began to gather around her feet, moving a little like fleeting shadows. Her body shot upward, but as she took a step forward, she coincidentally stepped on one of the rocks orbiting her feet, causing her to almost trip, leaving her awkwardly stumbling.
"…Wah!?"
She nearly lost her balance midair before crashing heavily onto another floating stone.
After regaining her balance, she jumped back, found her footing, and grimaced, her eyes snapping down with a sharp glare. When her eyes shot toward the floating stone, her gaze seemed to carry an invisible power, instantly turning the rock to powder.
She furrowed her brows.
She had planned to just kick it away, so why was it crushed into dust by a mere look?
Raina herself looked stunned; this was the first time in a long time that she was so confused.
But after a moment of realization—
Her eyes slowly brightened!
"…Interesting! I think I understand!"
Soon, the battle intensified again.
Boom!!
Raina smashed one wolf back while simultaneously trying to lift the nearby debris with this strange new power. At first, she could only move a few pebbles, but those larger stones, anything bigger than a few centimetres merely trembled before collapsing back down.
She did this while fighting, so her concentration was intermittent…
But slowly, as she continued to concentrate, she began understanding something. As she relentlessly fought, the two energies continued to mix and mutate. The pitch-black light, that energy that represented the darkness element, was slowly mixing with the near-black purple light, the mutated mental energy that seemed to be radiating from the second set of horns, and continued to fuse. As this fusion became more and more unified, it also had unknowingly begun to affect her elemental body, rewriting her lifeform at a fundamental level.
Hum!
Eventually, several fist-sized rocks floated up and hovered around her shoulders.
But just then!
Woosh—Bang!
A massive claw tore through the void, actually ripping open space itself, and collided heavily with her side, blasting her through the air like a bloody ragdoll.
Aooooooooo!
In that brief moment of flight, Raina's mind began to turn even faster, as if the whole world had suddenly slowed to a crawl. She grimaced, abruptly feeling a heavy wave of mental fatigue, a rare state of exhaustion that even high-level summoners rarely encountered.
After forcing away the fatigue, she focused her mind even harder, and soon, like an egg, there was a crack in the unseen, shattering some shell, and following a swift stream of air, something shattered, forcibly filling her body.
Hooong!
In that exact instant, something fundamental seemed to change within her!
-
Both Atllin and Lilit narrowed their eyes, their pupils trembling slightly.
-
Gillion and Hirano unconsciously stepped back, shuddering.
-
From far above, even Nodaba briefly trembled, feeling a kind of sharp resonance in his bloodline.
-
Roar!
Soon, the surroundings were completely overwhelmed by a thick, heavy pressure, as if some prehistoric beast had just awakened from a long slumber. A small storm of gravel rose up, but as the pressure grew stronger and stronger, larger and larger stones began to take flight. Ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred... one meter, two meters, five meters. Massive boulders tore themselves free from the earth and rose toward the ceiling, seemingly unaffected by gravity, creating a surreal and terrifying sight.
Dragons and demons alike watched in awe as entire slabs of broken stone soared into the air.
Buzz!
While continuously fighting, Raina pushed her will outward, driving it directly toward one of the charging Wolf Kings, and roared with all her might.
Hoong!
The massive wolf suddenly staggered. Caught in the grip of an inexplicable, crushing pressure, its powerful and unyielding body was forced to dip slightly downward as the earth beneath it cracked.
Raina blinked.
"…I can affect them too!" She grinned; a flicker of ferocity that she had not felt for a long time flared up, becoming even more intense, awakening something that had long been lost.
Boom!
With that realization, the pressure became even more intense! She immediately capitalized on the opening and flashed over, then crushed the wolf's skull with her hammer.
Boom!
The more she fought, the faster she learned.
Soon, the floating stones no longer moved erratically. Those that were chosen began to orbit her body smoothly, following her like an added layer of armor. Some of the larger ones lifted beneath her feet, while others, those that were smaller, rotated around her hammer, adding a touch of chaos to her figure. Those that were not chosen, the stones that were either too small or too large, unconsciously hovered around, like weapons waiting to be called down.
All of this was unconscious, or perhaps it was not, but regardless, Raina's momentum increased.
The wolf kings continuously attacked from every direction while Raina danced between them with an increasing level of fluidity.
Then, something clicked!
Buzz—Boom!
The black-purple energy surrounding her body suddenly stabilized, and the floating debris throughout the entire basin violently trembled.
Raina slowly raised her head.
Her pupils had become completely black, filled with a kind of chaos that only a few people had even seen before, only those closest to Petra.
-
At the same time, in an underground cavern inhabited only by Trili, a small child, and a listless maid, the small, green-haired girl looked away from the carcass of a large wolf. Her eyes seemed to pierce through the dense layers of stone, eventually locking onto something in the distance.
A faint smirk flashed across her face, disappearing only an instant later.
"It looks like I was right about the origins of those guys calling themselves demons."
But her small voice was left completely unheard…
-
"…So that's how it works! Understood!"
BOOM!!!
The ground beneath Raina's feet completely exploded!
Her body instantly shot forward at nearly twice her previous speed as a veil of black light wrapped around her figure like a cloak.
One wolf king barely reacted before Raina appeared directly above its head midair.
Crash!
Her hammer descended like a falling mountain, instantly splattering the wolf into the earth.
At the same time—
Rumble!
Several building-sized boulders suddenly tore themselves free from the surrounding cliffs before being pulled upwards behind her back.
The remaining wolves howled furiously!
Raina only grinned.
She pointed forward.
"Go!"
BOOOOOOM!!!
The storm of massive floating stones instantly shot across the battlefield like a series of meteors.
Destruction descended!
As the explosive attack unfolded, not only was Nodaba's barrier obliterated, but entire sections of the underground basin exploded! The wolf kings were each smashed through cliffs, crushed beneath falling debris, or blasted directly into the cavern walls, buried alive. Countless stones orbited the larger boulders like satellites, continuously bombarding anything nearby like some kind of orbital strike.
It was a completely one-sided massacre!
Meanwhile—
Raina moved through everything like a shadow.
Tap!
She landed atop a floating boulder, leaped to another, then used the next as a foothold to reach another! Her body continuously dashed between the airborne debris, while the constantly condensing black energy wrapped around her limbs like smoke. Sometimes she used the floating rocks as footing, while at others she directly kicked them toward the nearby wolves before following closely behind.
She felt liberated, as if gravity no longer affected her, as if the entire world was hers to command!
She had already killed almost all of the Wolf Kings, but it was also at that exact moment when—
Thud!
She collapsed, falling from the sky…
…Silence!
The unbound world collapsed…
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!
Everything collapsed…
* * *