Alise's sword had a soul; it possessed the true spirit of the blade.
She was far more than a stiff imitation or a hollow replica.
She and the "Eula" before him were fundamentally different entities.
At this thought, Aiden's eyes suddenly lit up, as if a clap of thunder had detonated in his mind.
Does this mean... Alise and "Eula" were different from the very beginning?
Thinking about it carefully, it made perfect sense.
Alise's soul was originally in Heaven, residing within the cycle constructed by the gods.
As a high-tier existence in this world, the Dungeon possessed the ability to "snatch" people from Heaven. While bizarre, it wasn't logically impossible.
But what about "Eula"?
Her soul wasn't in this world at all. In fact, at this very moment in another world, the real, living Spindrift Knight was perfectly fine and alive.
No matter how omnipotent the Dungeon was, how could it possibly cross the barrier of worlds to grab a soul that didn't belong to this world and hadn't even died?
Understanding this world of difference, an uncontrollable surge of excitement welled up from the bottom of Aiden's heart.
This meant that the resurrected Alise very likely possessed a complete soul.
"So that's it... So that's how it is!"
He threw his head back and laughed aloud, his voice filled with relief and a burning thirst for battle.
"Then let this battle end right here."
He no longer held anything back. The magic power within his body erupted without reservation.
The crimson mantle of flames became blindingly bright once more. He transformed into a burning shooting star, taking the initiative to meet that ice-blue figure head-on, launching into the final clash.
This time, there was no more probing, no more drawn-out skirmishing. This was a tempestuous onslaught meant to completely end the fight.
"Eula's" claymore swept across in a beautiful arc, carrying a bone-chilling gale. Wherever the blade passed, even the thick fog was frozen into ice shards.
Facing a strike powerful enough to cleave through solid steel, Aiden didn't retreat. Instead, he surged forward. The flames on his Fire Spirit Sword flared wildly as he met her slash head-on with an almost barbaric ferocity.
"Clang!"
As the two blades collided, Aiden's wrist buckled under the sheer weight, but relying on his explosive strength and willpower, he stubbornly forced her blade back.
He saw through the microscopic lull in her sword technique's momentum, poured his entire body's strength into it, and shattered her defensive stance in a single stroke.
With her stance broken, "Eula's" combat instincts instantly made the optimal choice.
She leaned back, executing an agile backflip to create distance. Simultaneously, her left hand clenched the empty air. Dozens of razor-sharp ice cones condensed out of nowhere, shooting toward Aiden like a deadly downpour.
"Too slow."
Aiden didn't dodge or evade.
He also clenched his left hand in the empty air.
"Gospel!"
The short chant left his lips. The invisible sonic bombardment fired a split-second later but struck first, violently colliding with the rain of ice cones in mid-air and shattering them entirely into a cloud of icy powder.
Riding the recoil of the sonic blast, Aiden's speed spiked once more, instantly closing the gap to appear right in front of "Eula."
Facing Aiden at such close range, "Eula's" reaction was astoundingly fast. The massive claymore swung upward from an impossible angle, attempting to slice him in two.
However, that sword was no longer in Aiden's eyes.
He parried "Eula's" greatsword aside.
Immediately after, twisting his waist and channeling his momentum, his body spun with a whip-like torsion. A roundhouse kick, imbued with the condensed power of Flamescion, planted itself squarely into "Eula's" abdomen.
"Bang!"
With a muffled thud, "Eula's" elegant figure was lifted off the ground by the tremendous force. She flew backward, violently crashing into and shattering a massive crystal pillar.
Now.
Aiden steadied himself. He didn't pursue her. Instead, he slowly raised the Fire Spirit Sword in his hand.
He no longer suppressed his power or held anything back. He completely unleashed his strongest trump card.
"Alpha Inforce!"
In an instant, he "retrieved" all the elapsed combat time—the thousands of slashes he had swung over the past few hours of fighting, the hundreds of spells he had cast.
Sound and fire, vibration and heat, invisible destruction and tangible incineration. They intertwined, collided, and ultimately fused together on his Fire Spirit Sword into an entirely new, unprecedented, and terrifying form.
The longsword in his hand transformed into a beam of pure, refined light.
The core of the light was an all-destroying, pure white, while the outer layer was wreathed in visible, constantly vibrating golden rings of sound.
All the sound and all the light within the entire cavern seemed to be sucked into that sword at this very moment.
In the distance, Robin, Tifa, Daphne, and the others all felt a shudder originating from the depths of their souls.
It was as if they were witnessing a sun being born right within that man's hands.
"Unsheathed Heavenly Fire!"
Accompanied by a soul-shaking declaration, an indescribable beam of fiery light erupted from the tip of the sword.
"Eula" had just staggered up from the rubble, the pure white light reflecting in her hollow, golden eyes for the first and last time.
She didn't even have time to react before her entire figure was completely swallowed by the beam.
There was no explosion, no scream. She vanished without a trace, utterly wiped from existence without leaving so much as a speck of ash.
And after devouring "Eula," the pure white light cannon showed no signs of weakening.
It pierced through the crystal rock wall at the back of the cavern—a wall tens of meters thick. It didn't leave any cracks behind, only an absolutely smooth, mirror-like circular hole.
It blasted through the rock face, shot out of the cavern, and scored a direct hit on the massive, four-hundred-meter-wide waterfall in the distance known as the Great Fall.
In an instant, that roaring waterfall, which seemed to have flowed endlessly since ancient times, had a massive gap over fifty meters wide violently vaporized directly through it.
Countless streams of water turned into a sky full of steam the moment they touched the edge of the light cannon.
Ultimately, this all-piercing beam continued with unabated momentum, viciously striking the floor of the cavern. It punched straight through, leaving a bottomless, circular crater with molten, glimmering edges that plunged into the abyssal depths below.
A long time passed before the light faded.
In the massive cavern, the only sound left was the faint crackling of superheated crystal melting along the fractured rock walls.
That pure white light cannon unleashed by the Fire Spirit Sword had forcibly carved a top-to-bottom scar into the indestructible architectural structure of the Dungeon. The evaporated water vapor slowly condensed into white fog in mid-air, eventually falling as little droplets of water.
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