Convergence

The trajectory of the Holy Sword warped and deflected, robbing it of the chance to lock blades with the Skeletal Crown.

Boom.

The Skeletal Crown sent Esper flying, and the Holy Sword slipped from her grasp.

Her body smashed right through an ancient pine tree as thick as three men's embrace, snapping it in half. The deafening crack of the splintering pine echoed as wood chips scattered in all directions like a torrential downpour.

Most of the impact was absorbed by the blood armor covering her body, sparing Esper from any significant harm.

She reached out, and the Holy Sword, still flying through the air, halted abruptly and shot back into her hand.

“...What is that?”

A deep purple shadow serpent was coiled around Louis's body.

Spiraling around him, its jaws parted as if waiting to devour something, it hissed as it flicked its deep purple tongue.

The Serpent to be Shunned.

Its ability was...

Esper swung her blade, unleashing several Crimson Pierces toward Louis.

The head of the Serpent to be Shunned slowly turned.

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

In an instant, the blood threads veered off course and shot off to the side.

Even when Esper detonated them afterward, the fine mist of blood only swirled around Louis as if caught in some invisible vortex before falling to the ground a moment later, staining the muddy earth beneath his feet a damp, crimson red.

“Deflection...?”

Esper murmured.

“Temptation.”

Louis raised the Skeletal Crown.

“Out of jealousy toward the Creator, the serpent god tempted the Human Ancestor to seize Authority. The Authority was inherited from this, and its power is Temptation.”

To deflect the flow of things toward where they should not go.

“『Shadow Demon Skeletal Crown: Malvaza』”

Black shadows seeped from the Skeletal Crown and covered the shadow serpent, giving it a more solid form.

Then, with the shadow serpent coiled around him, countless shadow wolves emerged from it, marching like an army to attack Esper.

The coiling shadow serpent seemed to strengthen Louis himself. Enhanced by the Shadow Demon, renowned for its agility, his speed became even faster than before.

At the same time, through the temptation of the Serpent to be Shunned, all the power Louis unleashed at this moment flowed onto the blade.

Deep purple mist spewed from the serpent's mouth, wrapping around his shoulders, arms, wrists, and the blade of the Skeletal Crown layer by layer, finally condensing into a spinning purple vortex at the tip of the sword.

I can't block this.

Activating Winged King once more, enhanced by the Forbidden Fruit, her explosive burst of speed in that instant was in no way inferior to Louis's.

At the absolute last second, she evaded the trajectory of the Skeletal Crown's slash. The blade grazed the tips of her hair, severing a few black strands.

Yet Louis's follow-up attack came faster than she had anticipated.

『Vampire Skeletal Crown: Alucard』

In an instant, the Skeletal Crown shifted into a crimson lance, looking exactly like the one Esper wielded when she summoned the Beast of Blood.

If there was any difference, it was the lack of a thorny crossguard.

And even after transforming into a lance, the Shadow Demon's enhancement had not fully faded.

“Winged King.”

It was the exact same ability as Esper's.

During the days he watched her train and fight, other than Crimson Scale Surge which could not be learned through mere observation, he had already memorized all of her externally manifested skills.

Boom—

Blood erupted from Louis's back, becoming the final piece of the puzzle that allowed him to strike Esper.

Esper grit her teeth, swinging the Holy Sword with one hand to meet the blow head-on.

Clang!!!

Blade met lance tip, and the shockwave this time was countless times stronger than before.

Esper was sent flying backward and crashed toward the ground, slamming into the wreckage of the ancient pine tree she had just broken.

Wood chips and soil splattered together, kicking up a massive cloud of dust and leaving a shallow crater nearly three feet in radius on the ground.

Louis landed on the opposite side of the crater. The Skeletal Crown returned to its initial bone form, and the Serpent to be Shunned slowly circled behind him.

The smoke cleared, but there was no movement in the crater.

“Get up, Lonia. I know you're not that fragile.”

Still, there was no sound.

Louis's brow furrowed. Esper's presence was clearly still inside.

He took two steps forward, and then he saw what was in the crater.

It wasn't Esper.

It was the blood armor Esper had created using the triple runes, and it was currently emitting the exact same presence as her.

The so-called 『Compression』, if used properly, could also be used to conceal one's presence, acting as a way to hide one's tracks.

Then, by reinforcing the blood armor with 『Momentum』 and 『Rigidity』, she had left her own presence behind.

She had deactivated her own 『Momentum』, applied 『Compression』, and then funneled all the extra energy into mimicking her presence on the blood armor.

—Where did Esper go?

Louis's eyes instantly snapped behind him.

The Skeletal Crown vibrated violently in his hand, and the ten types of flesh fragments glowed simultaneously. But before it could transform into any form, he saw red lines appearing one after another.

From the ground. From the treetops. From the cracks in the soil. From every single leaf shaken loose.

Blood. There was blood everywhere.

Not fresh, newly spilled blood, but blood that had long since seeped into every inch of soil, every fallen leaf, and every broken branch in this clearing.

It was the blood Esper had deliberately scattered across this area during all their previous clashes.

She hadn't wasted a single drop; even the residual blood from the Crimson Pierce deflected by the Serpent to be Shunned onto the trees had been within her calculations.

And now, all of this residual blood was activated.

The threads of blood gathered into streams, and the streams of blood wove into a net. Rushing toward Louis's position from all directions, the overlapping nets of blood instantly condensed into a cage, wrapping him tightly.

The Serpent to be Shunned hissed, attempting to deflect the blood nets around it, but there were too many threads of blood—far exceeding the limit of what it could deflect.

For every strand it deflected, another would strike, and the strands it had previously deflected would turn back around to attack once more.

Countless fine threads of blood from various positions squeezed in simultaneously from every direction. They layered over Louis's body and the shadow serpent behind him, binding them, constantly reinforcing, and finally compressing into a spherical blood prison with a radius of over ten meters.

Esper's figure was already gone.

The blood prison wouldn't hold Louis for long; this was merely a stalling tactic.

She was running at full speed, barely able to feel her own legs.

Blood surged wildly inside her body. The duration she had kept Crimson Scale Surge at maximum output had already exceeded its safe limit.

Winged King continuously spewed compressed streams of blood from her back. Even though she felt like collapsing countless times, she kept running.

The distance between them wasn't too great. In this brief moment, the forest ahead blurred into a distorted green river in Esper's vision, with tree trunks and shrubs flashing past on both sides.

Occasionally, low-hanging branches whipped against her cheeks and shoulders, but she didn't even have the luxury of turning her head.

She could feel it.

Across the shadows of the trees that connected her brief yet very real bond with Kaylar, and through the lingering scent of the Black Tide, she could feel Eladia's presence growing faint.

Why was an Abyss presence of this magnitude appearing here? What on earth had happened over there?

She felt the holy light that usually enveloped Eladia's body flickering like a candle swaying in a tempest.

The fundamental reason Eladia could remain immortal was that the holy light was constantly healing her.

But if the holy light was suppressed, what would happen to Eladia?

She couldn't gamble on this, nor did she dare to.

That girl, who always spoke so slowly, had already become someone she could absolutely never let go of or abandon ever since their promise in the woods that day and through all the days they had spent together.

So she sprinted, tearing through the forest, and saw Eladia about to be struck.

Then, a thunderous explosion echoed, and a dense aura of the Black Tide erupted.

From Kaylar's body.