"Hand over the boy." Gensai's voice was imperious, leaving absolutely no room for negotiation.
"...Gensai..." Kaguya whispered, her voice trembling with murderous rage. Her mind had already deduced the truth: the Elder had planned to backstab her from the very beginning.
Slowly shifting her gaze away from the monster and toward Tsumugi and Fumiko, she spoke through gritted teeth. "Let us work together. Gensai is only at the early stages of the Ultimate-class."
In her obsessive focus, she didn't even spare a single glance at the unconscious girl tucked beneath the Elder's arm, completely disregarding the hostage.
Tsumugi and Fumiko exchanged a tense, fleeting glance before giving each other a subtle nod. They had absolutely no idea who the unconscious blonde girl was; their only priority in this was fighting for Ren's sake.
Seeing the silent, desperate pact form between the three women, Gensai shifted his chilling gaze to the strongest among them, Fumiko.
He sneered, raising his arm slightly to better display the unconscious hostage. "The Astaroth's kin is now in my hands." His gravelly voice dripped with malice. "You wouldn't want her death to cause a violent fallout between the Astaroth and the Ritsuzen... would you, Head Maid?"
Of the three combatants, Gensai was actually the most wary of Fumiko. It wasn't that he couldn't defeat her; rather, her reckless, regenerating fighting style made her incredibly tedious to kill. A prolonged battle of attrition would eat up precious time and invite far too many unpredictable variables into his carefully laid plans. It was much easier to simply break her resolve.
"This..." Fumiko hesitated, her combat-ready stance faltering slightly.
Deep in her pragmatic heart, the Head Maid knew the Ritsuzen Clan's future and political survival were far more important than the life of a single boy. Yet her genuine fondness for Ren firmly rooted her feet to the floor, tearing her loyalties right down the middle.
Seeing Fumiko's agonizing hesitation, Kaguya violently gritted her teeth. "Buy me some time! I have a way to secure the hostage!"
"How long?" Tsumugi answered solemnly, her crimson gauntlets radiating heat. Compared to the politically conflicted Head Maid, in Tsumugi's heart, Ren's life would always rank far above the Ritsuzen Clan. She was fully prepared to fight Gensai to the death, with or without the Astaroth VIP.
"One minute," Kaguya replied intensely.
In a high-speed magical battle, especially one where two High-class fighters had to contend with an Ultimate-class monster while simultaneously ensuring a hostage's safety, sixty seconds was an eternity.
Hearing this, Fumiko hesitated no longer. She still had one final trump card left to play. It was a forbidden technique that would exact a devastating toll on her body, but as she assessed her own wrinkled hands, a quiet sense of peace washed over her. 'Oh well. I suppose this is my final journey,' she thought warmly.
"Heh heh..." Fumiko chuckled softly, a fond, fearless smile touching her lips. "It seems these old bones need to go all out one last time."
Slapping her palms together in a sharp Anjali mudra, a resounding Clap! echoed through the tense air.
She called out the activation word with unwavering calm: "Anástasis."
Instantly, a blindingly brilliant flash of verdant green light erupted, completely flooding the shattered corridor and forcing everyone to shield their eyes. A few moments later, as the overwhelming radiance finally began to subside, the heavy magical pressure in the room fundamentally changed.
The figure standing in Fumiko's place was no longer a wrinkled old woman with wilted white hair, looking as though she were on the verge of her deathbed.
Instead, an ethereal, breathtakingly beautiful young woman stood tall in the fading light. Her hair cascaded in vibrant waves of deep green, and her eyes burned like polished emeralds. Overflowing with boundless, suffocatingly dense magical energy, she looked as if she were the very incarnation of life itself.
Watching the miraculous transformation unfold, Gensai's expression grew increasingly grim. The overwhelming magical pressure radiating from Fumiko in her prime state triggered his primal instincts. For the first time today, he felt the genuine threat of death. 'It seems I cannot hold back either.'
Slowly, a thick, dark mucus began to ooze from his orifices, slithering down his flesh. A terrifying, pitch-black aura violently burst forth, rapidly weaving itself into a dense, pulsating cocoon of energy around him.
Feeling the suffocating weight of that aura, Kaguya's eyes widened in horror. "Quick! Stop him!" she shrieked in alarm.
Clearly, the genius mage had finally realized the true strength the Elder had been hiding all along. The original plan was instantly discarded. Against a monster of this calibre, they could no longer afford the luxury of a clean rescue. Their only objective now was survival.
Tsumugi and Fumiko didn't need to be told twice. Moving as a blur, both women rushed the dark cocoon.
[BOOST!] [BOOST!]
The mechanical voice roared as Tsumugi pushed her Sacred Gear to its absolute limit. Shifting her weight, she raised her dominant, gauntlet-clad hand high above her head, taking the classic Vom Tag striking stance. Flattening her armoured fingers into a rigid sword-hand, she brought it crashing down onto the cocoon with devastating force, desperately trying to pierce the dark barrier.
Fumiko, on the other hand, simply charged straight at the cocoon, fully embracing her suicidal recklessness. Over her decades of brutal combat, Fumiko had mutated her martial arts into something completely unrecognizable from the elegant Kunst des Fechtens taught to the rest of the Ritsuzen staff. Because of her instantaneous regeneration, her entire body was her weapon. Maximizing her sheer kinetic momentum, she threw herself forward, utilizing her own flesh and bone as a literal, high-speed battering ram.
BOOM! The devastating collision of both women against the dark barrier produced a massive shockwave, whipping the spectators' hair wildly around them.
However, the cocoon remained intact. A web of jagged cracks had splintered across the surface where Fumiko struck, but it hadn't shattered completely, and the dark, slimy mucus was already sluggishly repairing the damage. Tsumugi, meanwhile, had done absolutely no damage. Even with a four-times multiplier, her newly elevated High-class power simply couldn't put a dent in an Ultimate-class defensive barrier.
Both women were alarmed, but as seasoned fighters, they had anticipated this outcome. Instantly shifting their footwork, they repositioned themselves for a second assault.
Watching helplessly from the sidelines, Ren suddenly felt a sharp tug in his spiritual senses. Because the dark cocoon wasn't a perfect sphere, his Ki allowed him to detect the subtle, uneven flow of its defensive energy.
"Tsumugi-nee! Fumiko-obaasan!" Ren shouted, pointing frantically toward the floor to catch their attention. "The weak point! It's at the very base of the cocoon!"
Hearing his shout, both women immediately locked their eyes onto the target. They exchanged a single, fleeting glance and nodded in perfect, tacit understanding.
Tsumugi quickly raised her gauntleted hands and slammed both palms flat against Fumiko's back. "Transfer!" she intoned sharply.
This was a highly advanced, almost impossible application of her Sacred Gear. Even the legendary Boosted Gear, the Longinus-class artifact and superior version of the Twice Critical, did not inherently possess the ability to transfer its multiplied power. Yet, through her sheer talent and the unique nature of her Sub-species awakening, Tsumugi had unlocked the ability. A violent torrent of heavily multiplied mana rushed out of her crimson gauntlets and poured directly into Fumiko, drastically swelling the Head Maid's magical reserves.
Sensing the explosive surge of borrowed power, Fumiko flawlessly channelled every single drop of it into a highly condensed point on her knuckles. Without a second thought, she struck downward at the base of the cocoon with reckless abandon.
Off to the side, Kaguya was not about to be outdone. Slamming both of her palms onto the floorboards, her mind raced as she began to rapidly chant the incredibly complex formulas of her ultimate spell.
"By the axiom of absolute stasis, I bind the infinite variables of your flesh! Let the divergence of your energy equal zero! Let the limit of your entropy be completely sealed!"
Beneath her glowing hands, the first of thousands of intricately layered magic circles began to violently sketch themselves across the floor toward Gensai. The incredibly dense mathematical arrays still needed some time to fully manifest.
This was the exact same runic sequence she had shown the Elder earlier, the "cure" she had designed to halt his cellular decay. Only this time, she was weaponizing it.
By amplifying the spell's potency to its maximum and requiring a spoken chant to stabilize the math, she wasn't just stopping his cellular decay; she was forcibly sealing his cellular movement entirely, aiming to completely paralyze his physical body.
"RAAAHHH!!!" A rage-filled roar echoed out of the violently shattered cocoon.
When the swirling dust finally settled, a grotesque, half-transformed Gensai was revealed. Both of his arms were warped beyond all recognition. His left shoulder socket, instead of sprouting a single appendage, was now violently stuffed with a writhing cluster of several pus-producing tentacles. His right arm, which he had previously transformed into the massive limb of a hairy gorilla, now looked completely bare, swollen, and sickly, with thick, dark veins bulging across its entire surface.
His face was a nightmare of asymmetrical mutation. His right eye had massively enlarged and now contained multiple, rapidly shifting pupils, granting him terrifying dynamic tracking vision. Meanwhile, the entire left hemisphere of his head had mutated into a massive, black ommatidium, a multifaceted compound eye similar to a mosquito's, giving him a near 360-degree field of view.
His jaw was unhinged in furious anger. His mouth now resembled the tight, puckered opening of a monstrous cactus flower bud, ringed with thick, fleshy segments that pulsed wetly as he breathed, designed to completely pulverize anything unfortunate enough to enter it.
However, below his neck, his main torso remained completely human. Tsumugi and Fumiko's physical obstruction, had successfully forced the metamorphosis to fail mid-process!
Lying completely vulnerable on the floor, right at the monster's feet, was the unconscious Latia.
"I WILL KILL YOU ALL!!!" his distorted, overlapping voice echoed loudly, the inhuman frequency rattling the very walls of the corridor.
The rapidly shifting pupils within his enlarged right eye bounced frantically around the sclera before suddenly snapping to a halt, locking dead onto Fumiko.
"DIE!" he roared.
Instantly, the grotesque cluster of pus-producing tentacles in his left socket violently elongated and expanded, rapidly filling the entire width of the corridor. The sheer, overwhelming mass of the writhing appendages blasted out the glass windows and shattered the surrounding walls. From outside the estate, the entire wing of the manor appeared to be grotesquely bulging outward. This was Gensai focusing his immense strength into a single, localized point, had he lashed out wildly, the sheer kinetic force of his tentacles would have levelled the entire estate.
Seeing the apocalyptic attack barrelling toward her, Fumiko grounded her stance. She locked her glowing emerald eyes onto the maid beside her. "Grab the girl!" she commanded. In his blind, crazed fury, the monster had completely forgotten about his hostage.
Tsumugi nodded sharply, bolting forward just as the attack struck.
Fumiko took the devastating blow head-on. Countless thick, slimy tentacles violently pierced straight through her torso and limbs, spraying blood across the floorboards. Yet, instead of falling, the Head Maid aggressively grabbed the slick flesh impaling her, pushing her muscles to their absolute maximum. Beneath her skin, her blood vessels continuously ruptured and exploded from the horrific strain.
Pushing her prime state to its limit, her body instantly flooded with high-tier healing magic. The gaping holes in her flesh aggressively regenerated around the intruding tentacles, effectively cementing them inside her own body and completely halting Gensai's agonizing advance.
Watching the horrifying but brilliant tactical sacrifice, Ren instantly sent a mental command to his familiar. 'Kon!'
Kon gave a sharp nod of understanding. Locking his golden eyes onto the sprinting maid, the little spirit fox unleashed a surge of pure, concentrated power. A shimmering wave of spiritual power washed over Tsumugi, weaving a flawless optical illusion that perfectly camouflaged her form. Within seconds, the maid vanished completely into thin air as she veered toward a window on the side of the corridor.
CRASH!
Smashing seamlessly through the glass, the invisible Tsumugi vaulted outside. Channelling magic to the soles of her feet, she ran horizontally along the violently bulging exterior wall of the estate, sprinting toward another window further down the wing. By taking this treacherous outside route, she completely bypassed the deadly thicket of tentacles filling the hallway.
Slipping back inside right beside Gensai, she moved completely unnoticed toward the unconscious girl at his feet. Without hesitating, she scooped Latia up. As if possessing a mind of its own, Kon's spiritual power instantly stretched to blanket the hostage, causing the blonde girl to vanish from sight as well.
However, Gensai's massive compound eye had been aggressively scanning the room. He instantly noticed the hostage's sudden disappearance.
"WHO?!" he bellowed in a blind rage.
His right arm, heavily mutated and bulging with dark, sickly veins, violently smashed downward into the floorboards where Latia had just been lying. In his crazed state, he was fully prepared to crush both his own hostage and the unseen intruder into paste.
With Latia secured tightly to her back, Tsumugi desperately leaped back out through the shattered window, narrowly dodging the devastating impact. Because Gensai's right arm had bulked up to such monstrous proportions, his strike was considerably slower, but in exchange, the sheer kinetic force was apocalyptic.
BOOOM!
The entire wing of the estate exploded outward. The massive shockwave blasted the invisible duo through the air, sending them hurtling helplessly toward a neighbouring building across the courtyard.
CRASH! Another violent impact shook the grounds as they collided with the opposite structure.
"Tsumugi-nee!" Ren shouted in terror. With a thick, choking cloud of debris and dust now completely obscuring the courtyard, the fate of the two girls was entirely unknown.