Chapter 606: Lily vs. Blade Master (2)

“…A child of god… I guess that’s exactly what you call someone like her,” Falkius said with an exasperated sigh, though the cold sweat trickling down his cheek would not stop.

Lily had neutralized a blessing-fueled attack with a divine blessing of her own. In short, it was an exhibition of sheer, brute force.

By deploying *Great Fairy Barrier, Fairy Garden*, Lily had mitigated the crushing pressure of the *Gravity Field* unleashed by Seris.

If fire or lightning came raining down, one could simply erect a wall to block it. Gravity, however, was a force of nature itself—a universal law that dragged things down toward the earth just as a ripe apple falls from a tree. Before such a force, even the sturdiest shield or the thickest, most massive fortress walls rendered themselves completely meaningless.

Against a force that acted upon space itself and offered absolutely no way to defend, Lily had asserted control. Using a god-tier spatial magic called *Great Fairy Barrier, Fairy Garden*—a form of *World Dimension*—she transformed the very space around her into her own sovereign domain, effectively neutralizing the threat.

“To witness it right before my eyes… it truly is a terrifying thing.”

“That blessing of hers is absurd. At that level, she’s probably having casual chats with God on a daily basis.”

While there were various ways to receive a blessing, it was fundamentally a one-sided gift bestowed upon mortals. Hearing even a single word from a deity was considered a miracle. It was typically within a dream, or perhaps the exact moment one surpassed a harrowing ordeal, that a person might vaguely sense a divine presence. Only when the unique abilities of the blessing manifested would they finally feel certain that a god had granted them power. In fact, it was quite common for individuals to possess a blessing without ever realizing it until they underwent an official examination at a temple.

Thus, one would initially receive a small fragment of divine favor, and through relentless dedication and self-improvement, be granted even greater strength. In direct proportion to that growth, the distance between the mortal and the divine would shrink.

What began as merely sensing a faint presence would evolve into seeing a god’s form, then hearing their voice. It was said that the High Priests of the Pandora Temple, who held the highest tier of divine favor, could even engage in direct dialogue with the gods.

Because they operated under this common knowledge—and more importantly, because they were fellow recipients of divine blessings—the swordsmen understood.

The fairy girl standing before them in the middle of a blooming field of flowers was, out of everyone present, the closest existence to a god.

“Hahaha! Incredible! She’s seriously incredible! This feeling… it’s just like when we clashed with Sariel back in Galahad! No, her power is even greater than that!”

“I see. So this is the level of an ‘Apostle’—the kind of monster that Kurono-kun is genuinely terrified of.”

“Indeed. If any of us fought her one-on-one, there would be absolutely no chance of victory… However, there are four skilled combatants on our side. It is far too early for us to retreat.”

Even as they felt the waves of a massive magical aura—one twice as powerful as before—prickling against their skin, the three swordsmen assumed their stances in perfect unison.

“It looks like Seris-chan’s gravity is still having an effect.”

“Yeah. Just standing there is taking everything she’s got. She won’t be flying or jumping around anytime soon.”

“The *Gravity Field* and the *Great Fairy Barrier, Fairy Garden* are overlapping, locking their powers in a stalemate. If we press the attack right now, our own movements won’t be crushed by Lady Seris’s power.”

While Seris’s *Gravity Field* had not been enough to completely crush Lily, it possessed more than enough force to bind the freely fluttering fairy straight to the earth. Stripping away her advantage of aerial mobility was a massive breakthrough.

No matter how immense a blessing Lily boasted, if her movements were restricted, their chances of victory were entirely within reach.

There was no telling how much longer Seris’s blessing would hold out. The moment Lily regained her flight capabilities, any hope of winning would instantly vanish.

“Alright, let’s go!”

Recognizing this as their golden opportunity, the three swordsmen lunged at the grounded Lily.

“My, this has turned into a bit of a problem, hasn’t it?”

Watching Kai charge forward, his body shrouded in the brilliant blue aura of Svardias’s blessing, Lily knit her slender brows in slight annoyance.

Just as the trio had deduced, being rendered stationary put Lily in a tight spot. She could retaliate with light magic, but she remained uncertain if that alone would be enough to completely halt the ferocious onslaught of these three master swordsmen.

She wouldn’t lose, but she certainly wouldn’t escape unscathed either. Given their tenacity, even if only one of them remained standing, they would undoubtedly find a way to sink a blade into her flesh.

Now that she had finally claimed Kurono as her own, she had absolutely no desire to engage in life-or-death struggles. She had zero intention of playing along honestly in a contest of blades with Spada’s proudest warriors.

Yet, it was an undeniable fact that they had dragged her down onto a stage where a direct confrontation was forced.

Light magic alone was insufficient to repel them without taking a scratch.

As for using the Demon King’s blessings… since the nature of those abilities had already been exposed, they were no longer a guaranteed trump card.

The blessing powers that Kurono had acquired at the end of his trials were all exceptionally powerful. However, they came with a strict limitation: multiple blessings could not be activated simultaneously.

Knowing exactly what those six blessings were and understanding that only one could be deployed at any given time was an immense tactical advantage for her opponents.

In the worst-case scenario, she could turtle up using *Demon King of Iron, Overgear* and ride out the storm without issue. It was painfully obvious from the strain on Seris’s face that her gravity blessing wouldn’t last very long.

“But still, it’s really not a good look for a woman to rely on Kurono to protect her all the time, is it?”

A truly exceptional woman, after all, does not trouble her man.

“Yes, I’ve decided. This time, I think I’ll have you protect me instead—”

With a faint, elegant smile, a chant—no, a direct command—flowed from Lily’s lips like the chirping of a small bird.

“*Regalia Armor, Dress Up*—Nell Julius Elroad.”

Even as the words left her mouth, Kai was already directly in front of her, his greatsword hoisted high into the air.

“Uooooooooh! *Great Severing Strike, Break Impact*!!”

The blue shockwave concentrated within the descending blade came crashing down, aimed directly at the crown of Lily’s head—

“—*Second Form: Return*.”

The world flipped upside down.

The counterattack caught Kai so completely off guard that, even though it was a technique he had witnessed before, his body utterly failed to react.

It was impossible. As far as he knew, Nero and Nell were the only two individuals capable of perfectly executing the techniques of the Ancient Koryu Jujutsu style.

It made no sense. The pristine white armor gleaming upon her arms was unmistakably Avalon’s national treasure, the *Heavenly Dragon Gauntlets: Soten and Koya*, which he had seen during the finals of the Knight Selection Tournament.

Why? How? By what means could Lily equip the *Heavenly Dragon Gauntlets* and utilize Nell’s precise Koryu Jujutsu to block, deflect, and violently redirect Kai’s own martial art?

“Guhah!”

Kai’s back slammed violently against the flower-strewn tiled floor, forcing an abrupt pause to his frantic questioning as his consciousness flickered on the verge of blackout.

“As I thought, this truly is an incredible technique—*First Form: Flow*.”

“Kh?!”

“Tch.”

As Kai’s vision rapidly pulled back into focus, he witnessed Falkius and Rudra—who had attempted to slash inward from her flanks—being lightly deflected and sent flying by Lily’s martial prowess.

Though both had been thrown backward by the unexpected counter, the impact lacked the vicious, bone-shattering force of the *Second Form: Return*. Both swordsmen managed to break their falls gracefully before hitting the ground, leveraging their momentum to spring back onto their feet and instantly recover their stances.

Kai shook his head vigorously, pushing through the dull ache as he forced himself up.

“U-Ooh… Are you seriously… kidding me? How can you use Nell’s techniques…?”

“My, I wonder why. Perhaps it’s simply because she has chosen to cooperate with me?”

It wasn’t that Nell herself had arrived to assist. It was Lily—clothed in the exact same equipment and wielding the exact same power as Nell—who stood before them.

Though it had been interrupted, Kai had engaged in a serious, no-holds-barred duel against Nell during the finals of the tournament. Because of that raw experience, he could tell at a single glance.

Lily, wearing the white dragon gauntlets and shifting into a fluid, loose stance, mirrored Nell’s exact movements with absolute precision.

“Don’t tell me the Princess is literally possessing her right now—Whoa!”

Hoping to test her refined stance, Falkius lunged inward once more, only to find himself narrowly escaping an incredibly sharp, precise body evasion that almost resulted in him being grappled. Breaking away at the absolute last second, Falkius retreated from Lily’s immediate striking range, a cold sweat breaking out across his skin.

“That close-quarters combat ability is going to be incredibly troublesome.”

“Troublesome doesn’t even begin to cover it… Tch. If she focuses entirely on defense, Koryu Jujutsu is practically invincible.”

Indeed, it was precisely because Lily thoroughly understood the terrifying defensive nature of Koryu Jujutsu from her previous encounter with Nell that she had selected this specific power.

The three girls Lily had defeated—Fiona, Sariel, and Nell—were not merely held captive. As Kurono had witnessed, they had been placed inside magical apparatuses and cast into a profound, artificial slumber. Because he knew this, Kurono had challenged her under the explicit premise of rescuing them.

However, there was something Kurono did not know. Frankly, there was no way he could have deduced it simply by looking at their physical pods. He had no concept of what was actually happening to their consciousnesses, or why Lily had gone through the deliberate trouble of keeping them asleep via those magical devices.

The entire arrangement existed solely for the sake of this newly developed magic, which she dubbed *Regalia Armor*.

“Now, come at me. You don’t have much time left, do you?”

Lily offered an elegant, mocking beckon with a gauntlet shaped like the savage claws of a white dragon. They weren’t foolish enough to blindly snap at cheap provocation, but the reality remained that this frozen moment was their only window of opportunity to strike. The three swordsmen had no choice but to advance with heightened vigilance, raining their blades upon her once more.

“Fufu, ahahaha! Yes, Nell, grant me even more of your strength. Look, Kurono is cheering us on too—*Demon King of Lightning, Over-Accel*.”

The combination of Koryu Jujutsu, which fluidly redirected any incoming assault, and *Demon King of Lightning, Over-Accel*, which accelerated her cognitive processing to the point where time itself appeared to grind to a halt, was far beyond a mere favorable matchup. Their synergy was absolute perfection.

The strikes unleashed by Kai, Falkius, and Rudra were uniformly blisteringly fast and razor-sharp. It required absolute, unwavering concentration to endure. In fact, even if one met their assault in peak condition, how many individuals in this entire world could boast the sheer martial ability to neutralize such an onslaught while standing entirely rooted to a single spot?

Yet, even when exposed to a lethal tempest of flashing steel, Lily dismantled it with effortless ease, utilizing Kurono’s predictive ‘Eyes’ and Nell’s flawless ‘Arms’.

With *Demon King of Lightning, Over-Accel* active, she could perfectly read instantaneous decisions, highly advanced feints, and blind-spot assaults without a single miscalculation.

And so long as she was never caught by surprise, there wasn’t a blade in existence that Nell’s Koryu Jujutsu couldn’t deflect.

To counter the swordsmen striking from every conceivable angle, Lily spun with the blinding speed of a top, repelling the incoming edges using nothing but her two hands. A cascade of countless sparks erupted into the air as an instantaneous clash of offense and defense unfolded.

“Mmh, you truly possess a natural-born genius for close-quarters combat, Nell. I’ve already completely memorized the trajectories of their blades.”

The three weapons danced with fluid, ultra-high-speed variations. Yet, her reaction speed accelerated with every passing second.

“Damn it! Is this monster seriously possessed by Nell’s literal soul?!”

“It isn’t anything quite so dramatic. I am merely borrowing her strength.”

Having grown entirely accustomed to the trio’s coordinated assaults, the Nell-infused Lily began integrating precise counterattacks into her flawless defense.

Seizing a momentary opening, she delivered a sharp thrust. Kai managed to twist his torso away in a desperate evasion, but the maneuver forced him to abandon the strike he had been preparing to unleash.

“Ufufufu, look at you all working so hard. It makes providing her with such beautiful dreams entirely worthwhile.”

The underlying mechanics of *Regalia Armor* relied upon the synthesis of *Fairy Fusion: Excelion* and *Demon King of Love, Over-Ecstasy*.

The pods preserving the three girls were advanced apparatuses recovered from within Shangri-La, presumably designed originally for medical treatment. They activated seamlessly upon being fed mana, and the fluid filling their interiors was a highly specialized chemical solution perfectly optimized for maintaining human bodies alive indefinitely. Lily utilized them simply because they were vastly safer, more reliable, and far more convenient than tossing her prisoners into a standard dungeon cell.

The critical element, however, lay within the specialized magic circles engraved directly inside those preservation pods. They were custom-tuned for hypnosis, heavily amplifying telepathic transmission and elevating her capacity for mental interference to its absolute peak.

Through *Demon King of Love, Over-Ecstasy*, Lily guided the confined girls into a world of constructed dreams. It was an exquisitely crafted, agonizing nightmare—one where Kurono would never truly belong to them, yet remained so tantalizingly close that they could never bring themselves to give up and flee.

Within their respective dreamscapes, the girls continuously exerted themselves, desperately trying to make Kurono turn his gaze toward them. So long as they pursued that phantom illusion of their beloved, they would never awaken.

By subtly manipulating the parameters of those dreams, Lily could instantly channel their subconscious minds directly toward active combat.

Take Nell, for example. At this very moment, she was experiencing a dream where she stood side-by-side with Kurono, locked in a fierce battle against a trio of master assassin-swordsmen dispatched by the Crusaders. Naturally, those three dream assassins were none other than Kai, Falkius, and Rudra. Their real-world movements were linked to the dreamscape in real-time, completely reconstructing their tactical patterns.

Though trapped within a dream, Nell was actively fighting the reality. Armed with the Koryu Jujutsu she had meticulously refined through a lifetime of training, she continuously deflected the terrifying tempest of steel unleashed by the three swordsmen.

And that exact output granted power directly to Lily. Via *Fairy Fusion: Excelion*, Nell’s movements within the dream were perfectly projected onto Lily’s physical body in the waking world.

Fusing two entities into a single existence—that was the true, ultimate capacity of *Fairy Fusion: Excelion*. However, it was shortly after the conclusion of the Galahad War that Lily realized she could exploit this power as a channel to siphon away another person’s abilities, even without achieving a flawless, physical merger.

At its absolute core, the power of *Fairy Fusion: Excelion* was telepathy. It transcended the conventional boundaries of merely sensing an opponent’s thoughts, allowing her to establish a literal unity of mind and body.

Yet, if she deliberately dialed down the massive telepathic output required for physical fusion and adjusted the frequency to merely lock her mind firmly to another’s, a vastly different result manifested.

Namely, while their physical bodies remained entirely separate, the exact actions conceived by the target could be directly reflected onto Lily’s own frame, and vice versa.

Having previously altered human brains, Lily was intimately familiar with the exact physiological mechanisms that governed physical movement. Fundamentally, living creatures moved because electrical signals emitted by the brain traveled through the nervous system to reach various parts of the body. Connecting her mind so deeply with another meant she could effectively reroute the destination of those physical command signals, diverting them from her own body directly into the target’s, or vice-versa.

With Lily and Nell’s minds locked in this state, if Lily consciously attempted to walk, the electrical signals intended to move her legs would bypass her own limbs, cross the mental bridge, and arrive directly within Nell’s legs. As a result, only Nell would begin to walk.

Naturally, if one merely linked minds without proper adjustment, physical control would suffer immense interference, and even the precise flow of mana required for complex supernatural movements would fracture. To direct and wield this borrowed power flawlessly at will required a supreme, absolute capacity to govern both spirit and mana.

And the only individual capable of such absolute governance was none other than Lily, the true caster of *Fairy Fusion: Excelion*.

By reducing the telepathic output to an incomplete variant of *Fairy Fusion: Excelion*, Lily anchored her mind to her target, smoothly drawing out only the necessary physical actions and projecting them onto her own form.

The mechanism used to compel the target to act exactly as desired was *Demon King of Love, Over-Ecstasy*.

The mechanism used to project those actions onto herself was *Fairy Fusion: Excelion*.

By crossing these two distinct arts, she had finalized a completely unique, devastating spell: *Regalia Armor*. It was the armor of a supreme ruler, allowing her to clothe her own body in the stolen talents of others.

It was precisely because she had successfully secured the bodies of Fiona, Sariel, and Nell—her rivals in love, yet each an undeniably powerful master of their respective crafts—that *Regalia Armor* had been born.

“I have already completely seen through your attack patterns—*First Form: Penetrate*.”

At last, the flow of offense and defense inverted.

Lily smoothly deflected Kai’s incoming slash using the *Soten* gauntlet on her left hand, while simultaneously driving her right palm—wrapped in the *Koya* gauntlet and swirling with an immense vortex of destructive force—straight into his chest.

“Ugh, guhah!”

The counter connected with absolute, flawless precision, sending Kai’s massive frame hurtling backward through the air. Lily’s *First Form: Penetrate* had landed as a clean, devastating palm strike to his abdomen. Kai vomited blood and bile as he flew, his survival and the fact that a gaping hole had not been blasted clear through his torso owing entirely to the supreme protection of Svardias’s blessing.

Even so, the sheer destructive force injected into his body detonated internally, completely robbing him of the vitality required to instantly spring back up and counterattack as he had done before.

“Hah!”

Refusing to let Kai’s sacrifice go to waste, Rudra materialized directly behind Lily while she was still extended from her palm strike, bringing his blade down in a swift, lethal arc.

Yet, this strike too was halted.

Before he could even register her movement, Lily had crossed the backs of her hands, catching the cursed black katana cleanly between them.

“Fufu, it seems light magic would be far more appropriate for someone like you.”

The katana wouldn’t budge. Trapped firmly between the backs of her gauntlets, the blade remained entirely stationary, refusing to budge whether he pushed with all his might or pulled desperately.

*This is bad.* Driven by pure survival instinct, Rudra instantly released his grip on the hilt of his beloved sword, but it was already far too late.

“*Spire Sword, Star Sword*.”

A blazing blade of pure force cut through the air, severing Rudra’s right arm cleanly at the elbow.

“Muuuh!”

Wielding Kurono’s stolen authority, utilizing Nell’s master techniques, and simultaneously casting her own advanced magic… Under ordinary circumstances, the sheer cognitive load would have instantly fried an individual’s brain, nervous system, and mana circuits, resulting in immediate death from shock.

“I see… A true genius, then…”

“No, this is simply the power of love.”

Even as the severed right arm gripping the katana began crumbling into ash from the residual light energy of the wound, Rudra finally noticed that the white dragon gauntlet on Lily’s right hand had vanished, replaced instead by a gleaming silver-white firearm.

“*Meteor Striker*—Full Burst!”

A torrential cascade of pure white light engulfed Rudra, stripped as he was of his weapon and his dominant arm. Swept away like debris in a raging flood, Rudra was blasted clear across the battlefield, crashing through the dilapidated facade of a nearby haunted house attraction before vanishing from sight.

Unable to block or evade, he had taken a direct hit from high-tier light magic—an element that possessed an absolute, lethal advantage against undead entities. It wouldn’t have been the least bit surprising if his entire body had already been reduced to a pile of scattered ash, leaving not a single bone behind.

Either way, a samurai stripped of his sword was entirely powerless. The match was decided.

“—Not yet!”

A sharp, golden flash of steel cut through the air, lunging directly toward Lily.

“My, you certainly are a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

With Kai incapacitated and Rudra wiped from the field, Falkius was the lone survivor. It was a moment where any rational combatant would realize there was absolutely no path to victory and choose to retreat, yet he pressed forward without a single shred of hesitation.

Lily had pegged Falkius as a far more pragmatic, intelligent man. Yet, completely defying her expectations, he unleashed a furious assault with an intensity that suggested he was entirely prepared to die for the sake of his comrades.

If that was his choice, so be it. Standing entirely alone, there was absolutely no way Falkius could hope to endure the full weight of her retaliation.

“Right there—*Bright Sword: Victorica*!”

Falkius brought down his ultimate, signature martial art—the very same technique he had displayed during the Galahad War while matching the Taurus commander unit.

The blade, enveloped in a radiant, blinding aura of pure gold, boasted an absolutely terrifying capacity for bisection. However, as was typical for a technique of such monumental power, it required a brief window of concentration to charge. There was absolutely no way Lily’s enhanced perception could fail to read such an obvious tell.

And yet, the strike connected.

For a fleeting fraction of a second, Lily felt as though her consciousness had completely blacked out. Before she could comprehend what had occurred, Falkius’s sword erupted in a violent burst of light, tearing cleanly through her *Oracle Field* and driving its lethal tip straight toward her entirely defenseless body—

“*Demon King of Iron, Overgear*!”

At the absolute last second—no, she had been a microsecond too late. Across Lily’s pristine, white shoulder, exposed by the cut of her dress, a thin but unmistakably vibrant crimson line of blood was drawn.

“—Whoa, talk about tough… Seriously, that technique of yours is just cheating.”

Had Kurono’s acquired power not protected her, she would have been killed.

Because Kurono’s authority was active, she had escaped with nothing more than a superficial scratch.

As the heavy, metallic screech of steel scraping against steel echoed through the air—the golden blade bouncing uselessly off the dull grey aura emitted by *Demon King of Iron, Overgear*—Lily inwardly cursed her own carelessness.

No, that previous strike hadn’t succeeded simply because she had left an opening due to negligence. It certainly wasn’t a mere lucky hit either. Falkius had undeniably perceived *something* that bypassed her advanced reactions, exploiting a fundamental blind spot to force his blade through her defenses.

Before she could dedicate further thought to analyzing the cause, however, Lily moved to strike.

“*First Form: Penetrate*—*Spire Sword, Star Sword*!”

She held nothing back. Channeling every ounce of offensive power she could mobilize at this exact moment, she sought to utterly crush the gladiator who stood before her, smiling through his cold sweat.

She unleashed a lethal, single-hit palm strike. A massive blade of pure force whipped through the air. Simultaneously, hundreds of light-magic bullets erupted from her firearm in a relentless barrage.

“Kh—! Gh—!”

Yet, nothing hit.

At this absolute point-blank range, facing a single, solitary opponent, Lily’s overwhelming arsenal of high-yield, high-volume attacks repeatedly cut through nothing but empty air.

Why?

How could she possibly be failing to land a single scratch upon this man?

Could he be actively interfering with her cognitive processing?

Impossible. Attempting to deploy mental or spiritual magic against Lily—who currently commanded the absolute pinnacle of telepathic authority—would be nothing short of immediate mental suicide for the caster.

Her mind was entirely sound. Falkius was quite literally evading her attacks by a hair’s breadth, entirely through physical movement.

If that was the case, did he possess a divine blessing that granted him hyper-reactions on par with *Demon King of Lightning, Over-Accel*?

No, that wasn’t it either.

It felt as though she was being systematically compelled to direct her attacks into spaces where Falkius had already ceased to exist.

Yes, he was evading. Long before an attack was actually unleashed—before she could display a single physical tell or emit the slightest fluctuation of mana—he was already shifting his body entirely out of the trajectory she would inevitably choose.

“Ah, I see… You can ‘see’ the future, can’t you?”

Gazing into Falkius’s brilliant blue eyes, Lily finally extracted the secret behind his impossible evasion.

“It’s nothing quite so grand. It’s just a simple… fortune-telling trick.”

“To think that a blessing from *Wheel of Fortune, Finé* could harbor such terrifying authority. Fufu, it seems you are quite thoroughly loved by the gods yourself.”

Within the depths of Falkius’s eyes, Lily discerned a strange, spectral illusion—a pair of intricate wheels and interlocking gears spinning with mechanical precision.

Lily was intimately familiar with Finé, the deity frequently revered as the God of Divination. To a maiden in love, fortune-telling was an absolute staple. Even outside of Lily’s unique circumstances, every member of the fairy race grew up aware of this entity’s existence. Fairies frequently amused themselves by gazing up at the star-filled night sky, playfully mimicking Finé’s ancient astrology.

It was a deeply familiar, common deity whose domain was nothing more than a staple of fairy childhood games.

Because of that familiarity, the shock was immense. To think that pushing Finé’s blessing to its absolute zenith could grant an individual an authority of this caliber.

Falkius was literally perceiving a future several seconds ahead through his own eyes.

Because he possessed absolute knowledge of the future, avoiding any attack became an effortless task. He could move away long before the strike was even initiated. His opponent, bound by the rigid tracks of that witnessed future, would be entirely compelled to execute the attack exactly as ordained, even if the target was no longer standing in that space.

It was a phenomenon that could not be overturned by sheer will or physical effort. This localized, fleeting window of destiny offered absolutely no openings large enough to disrupt its flow.

It made perfect sense why her strikes continuously missed. There was simply no logical way they could connect.

Before a combatant who could read the future so flawlessly, no conventional attack would ever land—

“In that case, I wonder how you’ll handle something like this.”

Once the mechanics of a trick were exposed, a countermeasure could always be formulated.

Even as she maintained a relentless, theoretically unhittable offensive to keep him pinned—and while simultaneously enduring the precise counters Falkius lunged inward to deliver by exploiting the gaps in her future movements—Lily began to sing with absolute, elegant poise.

“*يمكنني إنشاء حرق* (Burn me away, and bring forth)”

The firearm in Lily’s right hand dissolved into particles of light and vanished.

“*يتصاعد من الزنجفر الشرق* (The vermilion that rises from the East)”

In the very next instant, her hand gripped a long, elegant staff.

“*فوة الغربية الموت* (The crimson that sets in the West)”

She hoisted the staff high into the air.

At that exact microsecond, Falkius saw it.

“*الشعلة الخالدة إلى الأصلي* (The primordial and eternal flame)”

A blinding, radiant light. A scorching, apocalyptic wind.

“*ان ملتهب、الشعلة الزرقاء、وعلى ضوء الأبيض、مع كل حريق كبير الذهبي* (Gathering the red-hot embers, the blue flames, and the white light, condensing all into a singular golden fire)”

He witnessed a catastrophic vision of the future—a world entirely submerged in an ocean of absolute, consuming fire.

“*هنا、مع خلق الشمس في اسمي* (Here, I create the sun that bears my name)—”

“Ah, give me a break… There’s absolutely no dodging this.”

The only action Falkius could muster was to raise his mirror shield, throwing every ounce of his remaining strength into a desperate, absolute guard.

That was the absolute limit of his options.

The catastrophic future that Finé had unveiled to him had already crossed the boundary of prophecy, manifesting in the waking world at this exact, inescapable instant.

“—*Golden Sun, All Soleil*!”

—