The game screen was shaking violently. The golden blade light of the Divine General flashed and vanished in an instant.
Then Phantylia, her body burning with raging flames, waved her hand. The burning root-spears surged and grew wildly again, forming a massive wave of fire, but right after that, a blue dragon blocked it and extinguished the flames.
Phantylia was locked in a chaotic battle with Jing Yuan and the Astral Express crew.
Then it switched back into the battle screen, except this time the ones fighting were Siberian Duck's team and Phantylia.
With her body now burning, Phantylia felt even more oppressive. But with the support of the Wind Sword Formation, she wasn't especially hard to deal with.
After depleting Phantylia's final health bar, a long transition animation for Aemdo began to play.
In this long animation, Phantylia wasn't defeated. She was still locked in a stalemate with Jing Yuan and the Astral Express group.
Meanwhile, the camera pulled back. On the other side, Aemdo and Nero's one-on-one duel was still going on.
Aemdo gripped his silver longsword with both hands and charged forward, launching a fierce assault on Nero with wide, powerful, and precise swordsmanship.
Nero didn't rush. He dodged while observing Aemdo's movements. This Mirror Holder's sword style was very different from ones he had seen before like Jingliu.
It emphasized steady, grounded strikes. Even so, it wasn't clumsy at all. Each move flowed smoothly into the next.
After watching Aemdo's movements long enough, Nero suddenly raised Black Cutter and held it in front of himself, preparing to meet Aemdo's next attack head-on.
Aemdo tightened his grip on his sword and swung down with force, but the blade struck Black Cutter instead.
With a crisp ringing sound, the force rebounded along the blade, numbing Aemdo's palm, and his sword let out a buzzing hum as if it were drunk.
Black Cutter was too hard. When Aemdo brought his sword down, he ended up being pushed back a step instead.
But Aemdo had no intention of stopping his offense there. Yet when he swung again, he suddenly felt his hand go empty. The sword was no longer in his grasp.
In the next moment, a chill shot through him. From the corner of his eye, a curved flash streaked past.
Aemdo instinctively dodged, and then felt something scrape across his chest armor, producing a harsh grating sound and leaving a glaring scratch.
Barely avoiding the strike, Aemdo looked up, only to realize in shock that the one attacking him wasn't Nero, it was his own sword.
'What's going on?'
Questions flooded Aemdo's mind, but he had no time to think about them. For some reason, the sword seemed to have come alive and was now attacking him.
As he dodged, he tried to regain control over it, all while splitting his attention to watch Nero, because the duel was still ongoing.
And what he had just experienced forced him to pay even more attention to Nero.
Even though Nero didn't look particularly threatening, the power he displayed, the divine fragments that made up his body, and the massive black greatsword in his hand all told a completely different story.
Aemdo believed that Nero was the strongest and strangest opponent he had ever faced. In less than a second, perhaps even less, he had used some unknown method to turn his own sword against him.
'Hm?'
Aemdo's pupils suddenly shrank, and a sharp sense of danger surged up.
'Where's Nero?'
The thought had just appeared when the black greatsword, wrapped in fierce wind, slammed into him.
The overwhelming force instantly sent Aemdo flying, and he rolled across the ground several times before coming to a stop.
Nero stood where he was, resting Black Cutter on his shoulder, while Aemdo's sword floated nearby.
Even though it looked like a one-on-one duel, Nero still had Black Cutter. As a sword with its own will, it clearly couldn't just be treated as an ordinary weapon.
No matter how you looked at it, Aemdo had suffered from the ability of a "living weapon."
Aemdo lay on the ground. After a few seconds, his fingers twitched slightly. Then he pushed himself up with both hands, suddenly sitting upright, and coughed out a mouthful of blood.
He had probably passed out just now, but now he had come back to his senses.
Then, swaying slightly, Aemdo stood up and said to Nero, "You are indeed extremely powerful. Among everyone I've faced, you are without a doubt the strongest.
"But I must remind you, what comes next is the real battle."
As he spoke, the temperature around Aemdo began to rise rapidly. Tiny sparks floated out from the gaps in his silver armor.
Soon, those sparks turned into arcs of flame spraying outward, and then into tongues of fire that engulfed his body, until every trace of his human form was burned away.
In the end, Aemdo became fire. A mass of blazing fire, burning fiercely within the restraint of silver armor, shaped like a human. There was no head, no fingers or limbs.
He was simply fire... burning, terrifyingly hot, yet possessing thought. The flames followed the structure of the armor, forming limbs like a human.
Where there was chest armor, there was a torso. Where there were arm guards, there were arms. The flames rising above the chest formed a head, and the clusters of fire at the ends of the arm guards became hands.
Then Aemdo raised his hand and grasped a mass of fire, or perhaps that flame had extended from his own body. It was shaped and restrained into the form of a longsword.
Aemdo took two steps forward. The flames that represented his head flickered, and a series of low, indistinct vibrations rang out.
When the sound reached Nero's ears, it turned into words he could understand, "Now, I am the Burning Star Omen, Falcorez."
In the next instant, the battle began.
After entering battle again, the name above the boss health bar changed from Aemdo to Burning Star Omen, Falcorez.
"Guys, Aemdo's form looks really cool, right?" Siberian Duck licked her lips and said.
[I Use Pantene: It's got a dark vibe to it.]
[Dan-heart Eternal: Ghost Rider?]
[Wind-Boy Solo-Stan: Looks more like the Frenzied Flame King to me.]
After entering the second phase, Aemdo's Burning Star Omen form finally looked more like a proper boss, and the battle officially began.
After becoming the Burning Star Omen, Aemdo gained several new actions.
First was "Sacred Flame." With this move, Aemdo would use it on himself, intensifying the flames burning on his body and granting himself a stackable damage-increase buff.
As for offensive moves, there were three:
The first was called "Sword of Judgment." When using this attack, Aemdo would first perform a vertical slash, followed by a horizontal slash.
With flame effects, the horizontal slash would deal fire damage to the target hit by the vertical slash and the adjacent allies, and apply one stack of Burn.
The second was called "Sword of Holy Fire." When using this attack, Aemdo would scatter the flames in his hand like splashing water toward the player's team, dealing fire damage to all allies and applying one stack of Burn.
The third was called "Sword of Verdict." When using this attack, Aemdo would thrust his flaming sword into the ground.
Golden sacred fire would tear the ground apart and erupt from within. The camera would zoom out into space, showing a planet being consumed by flames.
As a golden sword light pierced through the burning planet, all allies would take heavy fire damage and receive one stack of Burn.
However, before using "Sword of Verdict," Aemdo would first charge with a move called "To Inform the Divine Spirit," and only release "Sword of Verdict" on his next turn.