Everyone's shoulders jerked.
Then he turned to face that disgusting thing and shouted in a clear voice:
"So you want to compete with me in recovery? Fine—then let's see who's really the strongest here and now! Whoever chickens out is a grandson!"
He had been driven to the brink again and again, and this time, Xien was furious.
He had decided he was done running.
Now, he was going to kill this abomination with his own hands and settle the hatred burning in his chest.
The moment those words left his mouth, Xien stopped hesitating and charged straight ahead without looking back.
Tentacles lashed toward him.
He dodged as much as he could, but the results were limited. Even though the Mangekyo and his own enhanced reflexes allowed him to see through the creature's movements, there were simply too many attacks. His weapon blurred into afterimages, yet some still slipped through.
So Xien adjusted his strategy.
As long as an attack wouldn't stop him from moving, he would ignore it.
Unless a limb was severed outright, nothing was going to make him stop.
He had only just acquired the full power of those eyes. He was still unfamiliar with them. If he used them recklessly now, he probably wouldn't be able to finish the creature off in one strike. No—that power had to be saved for the final blow, the blade that would pierce its heart.
At the same time, support from the rear arrived.
The mages—everyone except Riveria—launched fire and ice toward the female creature's face. But the distance was too great. It had ample time to react, and with a few sacrificial tentacles, it intercepted the spells with ease.
Its chanting did not slow in the slightest.
Still, the strange aura radiating from Xien—and the danger he represented—made it shift its focus onto that tiny nuisance.
This enemy was not a mindless monster. Its sharp intelligence let it immediately grasp what Xien was trying to do.
So it changed tactics.
Its tentacles whirled.
This time, they did not target Xien—they targeted the ground in front of him.
If he had no footing, then he would have no way to advance.
But Xien wasn't about to let that happen.
With a thought, he swung the weapon in his hand, and countless plants burst forth to meet the tentacles. The two sides tangled, crushed, shredded, and locked each other down in a temporary stalemate.
That was enough.
As long as they didn't hinder his advance, that was enough.
But reality was never that easy.
The moment its first method failed, the creature immediately followed up. Countless tentacles came screaming at him with force like sonic bursts.
And before Xien could act, it moved first.
"Dark Sound Burst."
The sudden sonic attack caught him completely off guard. The high-frequency vibration shattered his internal organs and interrupted the defensive response his body had been about to make.
The abrupt increase in the enemy's power and speed, coupled with his own temporary weakness, left Xien no time to react.
Before the horrified eyes of everyone in the distance, several tentacles punched straight through his body.
"No—!"
Riveria's eyes split wide in shock. Her nearly completed magic almost collapsed.
But the next moment, what she saw forced her sheer will to hold it together.
Because that figure had not fallen.
Before anyone could process it, Xien moved again.
At the same time, flames ignited around him.
Was that magic? It wasn't entirely clear. Two visible energies surged around him. His arm, which had been hanging limp, abruptly came back to life—and in the next instant, his weapon flashed, severing every tentacle embedded in his body.
Xien staggered a few steps. Flames wrapped around him, burning the remaining fragments of the tentacles to ash.
Several fist-sized holes were left in his body.
Riveria, unable to believe what she was seeing, widened her eyes. With her vision, she could clearly see the scenery through those gaping wounds.
Those should have been fatal injuries.
The monster on the other side stared in stunned confusion as well. It did not understand why this ant was still moving.
By all rights, others should already have died from wounds like that.
Abundance swirled all around him.
Then, before everyone's eyes—as if they had collectively gone mad—the holes began shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Within two seconds, they were gone without a trace.
Only then did Xien, who had kept his head lowered, slowly raise it again.
"Hah... hahah... hahahahahaha..."
"I see. So precise planning won't work, huh? Your experience and raw strength are far beyond mine. Fine. In that case, forget plans. Come on, then. Since we're mortal enemies, let's just kill each other."
As soon as he said it, an overwhelming aura burst from his body.
He was throwing away every limiter.
The enemy was a monstrously powerful foe that utterly crushed him in terms of raw might. Holding back was meaningless. Then there was only one answer: discard all hesitation and turn every scrap of will, body, and skill into a blade aimed at the creature's throat.
Candleflame sensed its master's intent.
Flooded with immense Abundance, it began to evolve, adapting itself to the situation. Its form shifted, becoming the weapon most suitable for inflicting real damage at this moment—
a gunblade-like sword-spear.
A giant blade more than a foot wide. Its edge sharpened, its structure reinforced. At this moment, it had become a weapon born to hunt giant monsters.
And as for Xien—
"Blazing Heartfire," "One Thought, Gods and Demons," and "Transparent World"—all activated at once.
Every ability gathered together. Under the integration of Abundance and the pressure of death, they overlapped and fused in a miracle, driving him into a state he had never reached before—
a state beyond all worldly things.
At that instant, it felt as though he could sense everything.
A flood of information poured into his consciousness. Through those eyes, he could perceive the essence of all things.
The massive weapon in his hands, which should have weighed a mountain, flipped lightly.
Faced with the incoming spell, he did not panic at all. He swung Candleflame once, and the enormous beam of magical power was cleanly split in two.
If one looked closely, a thin layer of light coated the weapon, dissolving the surrounding magic as it passed.
It was anti-magic.
With a light tap of his foot, Xien shot forward like a cannonball and vanished from the fairy's sight.
Then he appeared near it.
His blade came crashing down, only to be blocked by the flower petals that automatically moved to defend. But even so, the blade cut more than halfway through them—nearly splitting one apart.
That visibly startled it.
It immediately reacted, whipping its tentacles toward him—
but once again, it lost track of where he had gone.
"Riveria! Long chant! Break its defenses for me!"
"Understood!"
The elven princess clenched her teeth and answered. Because of him, she had to move.
The enemy's attention was now fully tied up by Xien. The others had gained a measure of safety. And if she had even a little time...
She stepped forward without hesitation.
"I need a frontliner to watch my back."
Iska and Mudze gritted their teeth and followed suit.
"[Sealed light, frozen earth.]"
Xien continued fighting alone at the front. Shielded by the others, Riveria closed her eyes and pressed on with her chant.
As she recited the spell of ice, her song accelerated.
"[Snow that fills the heavens, threefold winter—the coming of the end.]"
Then, she linked the chant.
"[One by one, the flames shall be unleashed.]"
The glowing lines of the emerald magic circle at her feet changed shape, burning brighter.
Riveria's chant shifted from an ice spell into a fire incantation.
"[A quietly creeping warfire, unavoidable destruction. The horn of battle sounds high as violence and chaos swallow all.]"
Chant Connection.
That was the magic trait possessed only by the royal princess Riveria Ljos Alf.
Her three magic slots, born from her exceptional status values, all contained this special chanting property.
Just as abilities are classified by Levels, her magic too was divided into three stages:
super-short to short, short to long, long to super-long.
By linking chants from one level into the next, she could increase magical output, alter a spell's effect, and greatly amplify its power.
Attack, defense, and healing.
By wielding Chant Connection, Riveria could flexibly use three kinds of magic multiplied across three stages—nine spells in total.
That was why, surpassing countless mages and even those rare geniuses who had found ways around the limits of magic slots, the gods had praised her and granted her the title:
Nine-Hell Princess.
It was the title of the greatest mage in the city—one even her own kin held in awe.
"[Come, crimson tongue of flame, brutal conflagration. Thou art the incarnation of fire.]"
From the ice spell Ecstasy: Fimbulwinter, through Chant Connection, she poured in even greater mental power and an even longer chant.
The spell she now wove was a second-stage attack magic—one with extreme range that, once unleashed, would burn everything within its area except allies.
The blizzard ascended into crimson flames. The chant had become a long-form spell, multiplying its destructive force and transforming it into a mass-annihilation magic.
"[Sweep away a thousand armies and lower the curtain on great war.]"
The magic into which Riveria poured her entire spirit roared to life.
That abnormal surge of power immediately caught the enemy's attention.
It tried to look toward her—
but it couldn't.
"Amaterasu."
For the first time, that new power revealed its terror.
A primal fear surged through the creature. Instinctively, several of its petal-like armor plates folded inward to cover its body.
The next moment, black flames ignited on the petals.
The horrifying heat caused them to begin burning away at once. Startled, the aberration frantically slapped at the flames with its tentacles.
But what no one had expected was this:
instead of shrinking when struck, the flames spread onto the tentacles, instantly setting them ablaze as well.
That finally shook it.
It made the split-second decision any veteran killer would—cutting away the affected tentacles and petals at the roots and throwing them at Xien.
They burned away in midair.
Xien clicked his tongue.
As expected, the thing was even more troublesome than he had imagined. Killing it with a single use of Amaterasu had been wishful thinking.
But that hadn't been his goal anyway.
He had only used it to buy time.
Because behind him, Riveria's spell was ready.
Iska, Mudze—or rather, Xien himself—had protected her all the while. Behind them, the silver staff in Riveria's hands, with its precious magic jewel, flared with blinding light and released a vast quantity of magical power.
"Riveria…!"
Inside the intense heat and blaze of the battlefield, Xien's whole body was searing.
Yet around him, a layer of energy resembling flames had formed, close in color to Riveria's spellfire. It wrapped around him, evolving into something like a ribcage, encasing his body. Combined with the constant regeneration of Abundance, it allowed him to survive within the super-wide-area firestorm.
Not only that—using the force of the magic itself, he accelerated his charge.
"…!"
The female aberration, stripped of its protective petals, lost its smile for the first time.
....
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