“Step back? What more can you possibly do?” Ophelia's voice turned cold, the playfulness completely vanishing from her emerald eyes. “Your right arm is ruined, your mana is depleted, and you can barely even stand—”
“Ah, that's true.” Leopold forced himself to stand. “But you seem to have overlooked one very important detail, Miss Ophelia.”
Ophelia narrowed her eyes, scanning him from head to toe. All she saw was a body on the verge of collapse.
“And what is that?”
“You have all misunderstood the Shadow Blessing.” Leopold covered his face and laughed. “Shadow was never a blessing to begin with...”
“...What are you talking about?”
“I'm saying—” Leopold lowered his hand and looked up, his golden pupils trembling wildly. “Every single one of you thought the Shadow Blessing was a boon bestowed upon me by the Primordial Dragon. A blessing, a gift, a source of power!”
“But you were wrong. Shadow was never a blessing. It is a curse...”
Ophelia wore a look of utter disbelief. “—What on earth are you talking about?”
Isabella opened her mouth to speak, but closed it and stepped aside.
Leopold did not answer. Something deep within his pupils was collapsing. He stood there, arms dangling at his sides like an empty husk drained of all strength.
Surrender my body to the shadow.
Shadow spread, climbed, and coiled from beneath his feet, creeping up his legs, waist, chest, and back. A suffocating darkness was swallowing a body that was still breathing.
He raised his head. His pupils had lost all focus, and the tiny sliver of light remaining in them was as cold as stagnant water.
“...Are you trying to push yourself to the limit with that foolish method again?” Ophelia took a half-step back, entirely of her own accord.
Leopold did not answer. The wound on his right arm stopped bleeding as shadows filled every crack. He bent his knees slightly.
Ophelia decisively flapped her wings and retreated. Almost simultaneously, Leopold vanished from the spot, completely merging into the underground darkness.
What! Ophelia had no time to steady herself. She beat her wings again to retreat in a hurry, but Leopold's shadow had already moved.
Sensing danger, Ophelia violently twisted her body aside. Four spears of shadow grazed past her cheek, whipping up a howling gale!
Ophelia beat her wings forcefully, her golden feathers cutting through the ruins as she retreated more than ten paces.
She glanced down at her cheek—a faint scratch of blood was healing slowly, but the speed was noticeably slower than before.
“...Damn curse.”
Before she could finish her thought, Leopold appeared at the edge of her vision once more. He emerged soundlessly, like a shadow spat out by the darkness.
Ophelia instinctively raised her arms to block. Leopold's fist slammed into her crossed forearms, sending her sliding backward several steps.
“His speed and strength have more than doubled...” She gritted her teeth and snapped her right wing open, thrusting an angelic silver spear at Leopold before he could melt back into the shadows.
Leopold's body warped within the shadow, and the spear nailed into the stone wall behind him, its shaft vibrating with a loud hum.
Leopold vanished into the shadows once more.
“Tch!” Ophelia scanned her surroundings warily.
Leopold materialized from the shadows again, the darkness morphing into a blade aimed straight for Ophelia's heart from behind.
She sidestepped to dodge, swinging her arm back to unleash a blade of light toward his waist. His body twisted in mid-air as the shadows swallowed him, leaving the light blade to slice through nothing but a plume of black mist.
Leopold appeared directly above her, bringing both fists down in a hammer strike. She beat her wings and slid sideways, leaving his blow to shatter the ground where she had just stood, sending stone fragments flying.
“Give up! Neither of us can do anything to the other right now!” Ophelia's voice drifted from the other side of the ruins, laced with heavy breathing.
Leopold stood atop the pile of rubble, the shadows slowly undulating around him. His pupils had completely lost focus, leaving only two hollow pools of dark gold.
The shadows did not explode beneath his feet; instead, they surged forward like a tide, blanketing the rubble, tiles, and broken stone beams, sweeping toward Ophelia in an overwhelming deluge.
Ophelia instinctively flapped her wings to retreat, but the rubble beneath her feet suddenly transformed into a black swamp. Her feet sank in as shadows began to crawl up her ankles.
“Gladius...” (Holy Light...)
Just as Ophelia began her chant, several swords of light shot out from the side. Before she could react, the swords exploded beside her, forcefully interrupting her spell!
“Vincula Tenebrarum!” (Shadow Bind!)
Leopold's voice echoed from deep within the ruins, hoarse and broken. He was pushing past his absolute limits, golden blood streaming from the corners of his eyes.
Shadows surged from all directions, climbing up her long legs, wrapping around her waist, arms, and chest, before finally enveloping her two pairs of wings.
Ophelia thrashed and struggled, golden light repeatedly exploding against the surface of the shadows. Yet the shadows were torn apart only to reform, over and over, pressing down on her layer after layer until nearly half of her body was sealed.
“Damn it...” Her voice finally carried genuine fury as more golden light erupted from within her body.
“The white dragon's Holy Light magic is useless against me! And there's no way you can cast a second offensive spell!” Ophelia struggled relentlessly, the shadows binding her snapping apart one by one. “What is the point of trapping me like this!”
“Glacies Aeterna, Rugor Mundi!”
(Eternal Frost, World's Roar!)
Blake stood in an inconspicuous corner, raising his head as his grayish-blue eyes shivered in the darkness. He was still holding an empty bottle of a premium elven healing potion.
“Nullus motus. Nulla renovatio—”
(Freeze all creation, sever rebirth. Let eternal ice rule all—)
“When did he?!” Ophelia's eyes widened. The temperature in the air plummeted sharply. A thin layer of frost rapidly spread across the ground, and even the surfaces of the rubble became encased in ice.
“Septem glacius regio—Obscuritas congelatur in aeternum.”
(Seventh-Circle Frost Domain Descends—Darkness, frozen forever without life.)
Ophelia's pupils contracted violently. She recognized the tier of this spell—a Seventh-Circle, Domain-class frost magic.
Blake stood at the edge of the ruins, his grayish-blue hair blown back by the freezing wind.
His right palm faced upward, a fist-sized, icy-blue magic core hovering and slowly rotating above it—it was one of the three dragon clan magic cores he had seized from the Dragon Slayers' stronghold.
“Did you think... my dozen or so years in the Bronzebeard Tribe were spent doing nothing?” Blake's voice was nearly torn to shreds by the freezing wind, but a smug smile played at the corner of his lips. “Blizzard magic... I've practiced it for ten whole years!”
He clenched his right hand tightly.
The icy-blue magic core shattered, dissolving into countless fine ice crystals that merged into the air.
At the same time, a massive, icy-blue magic circle expanded from beneath Blake's feet. Its patterns were complex and precise, covering the entire ground of the ruins and enveloping both him and Ophelia within its boundary.
A wild gale carrying a blizzard erupted from the center of the magic circle, exploding outward with Blake as the epicenter. Wherever it swept, rubble was encased in ice, broken walls were frozen solid, and even the dust suspended in the air transformed into fine ice crystals that fell to the ground.
Ophelia felt her wings losing all sensation.
It was over. She was really going to lose, defeated by a pack of young dragons who had only undergone a single slumber. She could not accept this! She absolutely could not accept this! But she was completely out of options...
Overwhelmed by extreme humiliation and grievance, she closed her eyes and screamed toward the sky—
“Brother!!”
In the next second, a gentle, soft, yet deep voice that transcended all the laws of the world echoed out of thin air across the frozen domain.
“Solvere.” (Dispel.)
Within an instant, Blake's overwhelming Seventh-Circle Frost Domain shattered inch by inch from its center, melting away and dissolving into nothingness.
The shadows on Leopold's body dissipated at the exact same moment. The pitch-black chains binding Ophelia turned to ash, melting into the air.
A man appeared abruptly in the center of the field. With his back to Leopold, he reached out and pulled Ophelia into his embrace.
“Honestly.”
He sighed softly, his tone carrying a hint of helpless indulgence.
“Even though little Liesel insisted on completing this mission all by herself.”
Ophelia buried her face in his chest, her voice muffled and choked with tears, filled with grievance:
“I was wrong...”
In the next instant.
Six holy, boundless angelic wings slowly unfurled layer by layer behind him, casting their shadow over the entire world.
Supreme, ancient, sacred, and carrying a monstrous, overwhelming pressure.
Absolute silence fell over the field!
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