Melody Solarmaria

Daughter and revenge of the late Majesty Solarmaria. An immensely powerful demoness who started a brutal campaign to reclaim the throne of Aztellic Dynasty. The legendary princess of carnage who bathed the Demonic Continent in brutality, blood and fire as she started the largest civil war of the continent ever experienced. Million died in that war. Ambassadors and nobles dragged to the street and slaughtered to sate the upstart princess. This one woman drove the Enma Clan from her nation, closed the border of Demonic Continent, and hung Jekyll Aztellic’s corpse from her gate as an example to her enemies and allies. Years ahead, the juvenile 33 stars gathered to suppress her, costing seven of Phantasia’s best in a disastrous invasion. Tai Hua Tianshang and Grustav Enma had to unite to stand a chance against Melody’s overwhelming skills and synthetic army. The battle ended with the Heavenly Daughter of Steel plunging the sword into the Bloody Melody’s heart, but the war decimated the Seven Continental Alliance and the Iron Army, leaving the Phantasia opened to destruction from the World Enemy. Without a doubt, Melody Solarmaria was the biggest reason Phantasia got utterly bloodied by the World Enemy ten-years ahead.

She was the greatest threat on Chuang’s priority list.

And here she appeared as a smug girl. Not doused in blood and fire, but a beautiful girl in jean, tank top, and mechanic jacket.

Chuang wiped out her bloody nose. Her confusion intensified. Cytortia's behavior was strange enough, but nothing comparable to Melody’s entrance. Why was the largest future dynamite here of all places?

“What are you here?” Chuang yelled. “Why do the girl who live to rule the Demonic Continent under an iron fist come to help the Heavenly Daughter of Wood? What kind of mass-destruction weapon the shrimp promised you?”

“Nothing,” Melody shrugged. “Now, how the hell did you know my name?”

“Stop changing the subject!” the Heavenly Daughter of Fire screamed. “A self-center lunatic like you won’t come here with no benefit? How did you trick Cytortia into helping you destabilize the world!!!?”

“You mean my plan for the Demonic Continent?” wind deflated from Melody. “Don’t mind it. It already failed. Rem will kill me if I even start a bakery there. For now, I am learning about leadership and innovation from that guy.”

Chuang blinked, so bamboozled she forgot about the battlefield.

“You quit.”

“Yes,” Melody sighed tiredly. “Too underqualified to lead, single-minded to the point of self-destruction, and don’t even understand the people I am leading. Isn't it strange that I am too lacking to lead?”

Chuang’s jaw fell.

“You admit your incompetence.”

“Yes.”

“B-b-but,” Chuang struggled to find the right word. “You are the proudest, most arrogant bitch in the history of the Demonic Continent.”

“Arrogance? You fool! I am not so insecure that I refuse to admit a significant flaw in myself!” Melody declared to heaven above and hell below. “Pride is the measure of self-worth. If I am so weak I get bruised by admitting a fault, I have nothing to be proud about! Acceptance of one inferiority? Bullshit! I shall not suffer such a humiliating defeat. I will not wallow in my roadblock because I will triumph over it!”

The declaration nearly fell Chuang on the spot. As someone who refused to believe she could be wrong, Chuang never viewed the world with Melody’s perspective. They might have the same affinity. The two might be born with noble blood. However, the difference between them couldn’t be clearer. Melody possessed the shameless pride more elastic than rubbers. She enjoyed being challenge and boosting her ego through self-improvement. Even if she lost repeatedly, her pride would eventually transform into admiration once she saw what the victor could help her accomplish, seeking her to ally with a rival who compensated for her.

But Chuang went opposite route. Her pride was sharp but brittle. She basked in praise, but she broke once the obstacle become too huge. Melody saw no shame in lost and identified her weakness as her greatest enemy once she accepted her fault. Meanwhile, superiority complex motivated Chuang entire life. The Heavenly Daughter of Fire wallowed in comparing herself with others. Hence, she found Tai Hua who stood above her unacceptable and feared the rise of the ‘shrimp’ she deemed weak.

Cytortia noted those differences while witnessing their battle from Luxinna’s glass-lotus. The Heavenly Daughter of Wood didn’t think back too much of Nu Wa’s teaching, but witnessing stark difference between the two women made her realized her master's weakness as a mentor. Ebony raised her child to respect, emulate, and personalize the strong. Nu Wa fed her student greatest of orthodox and hugbox philosophies. Those differences made Melody into an open-minded person once she set aside her excessive arrogance, and the Heavenly Daughters into an apathic, self-centered radical defined by ignorance.

 Chuang yelled, summoning a colossal amount of fire and unleashed it in a vortex.

“[Heaven Fire: Burning Wheel]”

The torrent of fire washed over Melody. The girl stared straight as the goddess, glowing with power as a shinning visage of dragon’s scale surfaced on her skin. The demoness walked forward fearlessly, strolling past the tunnel of fire like it was the garden of lilies.

The Heavenly Daughter of Fire stared dumbfound. How was she doing this? Chuang recalled her memory on Melody. The demoness boasted super-regeneration from [Demonic Blood Cultivation], expertise in uses of flame-base [Sunfire Fist], and holder of the all-powerful [Sky Dragon Bloodline]. At twenty, she discovered, stole and studied multiple cultivation art and demonic technique of the highest grade. The 33 Stars might be the leader of the next generation, but even they faded compared to Melody, who achieved greater fame by her lonesome.

No matter how much she crawled in her head, Chuang came up with nothing similar to this. The bone-chilling awe of  the killing machine of doom. The burning serpentine eyes of the apex predator who ruled the natural world unrivaled. Chuang only felt like this once. It was when Nu Wa took her and Tai Hua to a brief trip in the Forbidden Zone. It was the first time she came face-to-face with a pure-blood dragon. The king of the beast that steamrolled A-class at its weakest.

It should be impossible. No concentration of [Sky Dragon Bloodline] mutated a person into a real pure-blood dragon. It broke the very rule of Cytology and Genetic. No organism in the world could recreated themselves into another species. Even if one converted a 100% percent of their bloodline to dragon’s blood, they would die from blood rejection. The only option was remaking the body with Dragon’s cell and transferred their consciousness into a new host, but that required years of research, preparation, and raw materials. It was not something that succeeded in seconds.

But Chuang knew deep down the impossible was happening, Melody Solarmaria was an equivalent to a dragon.

“Here I go,” Melody said, and she sprang. Her leg’s strength, surpassing the STR of 2000, sent her barreling toward Chuang like a bullet. Chuang barely intercepted the attack with a magical barrier. The hit sent a shock-wave, dispelling her fire, but Chuang held on.

“[Burning War: Burning Sword Spire],” Chuang roared.

A magical circle blinked into the sky, dropping a giant sword made of fire down on the duo. The sword lighted up with sparks and heat as it fell like a guillotine.

“[Fire Flicker]” 

Chuang disappeared from the danger zone in a flicker of fire.

Melody whistled, lifting her perfect leg to kick the 50 meters long sword aiming at her head.

…

Chuang reappeared a hundred meters from the blast-zone. She stumbled from light-headiness before a gale of force and heat brushed past her, signalling [Burning Sword Spire] collision against Melody.

Tonight was the whammy episode of Chuang’s life. The shock she experienced today blared worse than the day she received her future-self memories. One startling discovery came one after another: Cytortia had friends, one friend was an elf of considerable skill, another was Melody fucking Solarmaria with a power that Chuang sure would soon surpass her future self. After tonight,  her advantage of future knowledge was no longer valid.

Chuang got up, dusting the speck of charred dirt from herself. She breathed. As much as she hated it, she needed to escape and reassess the situation. She must raise an alarm on Cytortia’s increasing power. The young orange-head wanted to kill herself at the prospect of admitting the crybaby as a threat, but the reality couldn’t be ignored. Cytortia was no longer the weakest 33 Stars.

Chuang felt a warm glowed in her back.

[Auto Defense: Fire] and [Immolation Robe] kicked up, deflecting the golden glass arrow with the mixture of fiery explosion and high-temperature. But any physics major would tell her she need more than compacted explosives and a 1000°c degree aura to halt a designer projectile at Mach 5.

Credit to Chuang, her defenses did alter the projectile’s trajectories. Her End-stat helped her tanked the blast, but the explosion of force and lightning still struck her at point-blank.

The lightning launched the girl up 16 meters upward in a quadruple somersault. Chuang’s world spun like she was on a roller coaster, but she still caught the glimpsed of a figure draped in lightning, skipping across the golden lotuses in the sky. The lightning-bolt halted above her, leaning against a shining flowers, gathering power for a lunge.

“[Burning War: Infernal Chakram],” Chuang unleashed several rings of fire to stop the lightning-clad girl. However, she was in for an enormous disappointment.

Luxinna launched herself from the golden construct. Her sword, [Historia], extended into Halberd. With a technique she learned from Scathach, honed with [Armory Grace], Luxinna crushed each fire-ring with a consecutive wave of her electricity-cladded swipes. Luxinna swept the five rings out of the sky, slipped past the remaining three in a blink, then brought her weapon down on Chaung.

The surviving Chakram exploded, painting the sky red as the Exile Lightning and the Heavenly Daughter of Fire collided.

The halberd met Chuang’s [Auto Defense: Fire] in a crash that ignited the sky. [Immolation Robe] activated next, but a little spontaneous combustion was no match against Luxinna’s force of will. Chuang rapidly cast several layers of magical barrier with a speed worthy of a Heavenly Daughter, but Luxinna’s attack still sent her slamming into the ground like a falling star. Chuang struck the ground, blasting a cloud of dirt up as her body dug a new crater. 

Chuang groaned. Thankfully, she stacked a [Toughness Enhancement] beforehand, but the spell was getting a workout.

Chuang barely completed her thought before a three golden arrow of light fell from the sky.

“[Heaven Fire: Crimson Maul],” Chuang raised her hand, summoning a flaming plume of fire that swallowed the golden arrows.

Chuang got up.

That attack was strange. The elves’ previous arrow penetrated her automatic protection like it was nothing. The latest batch was lacking momentum compare to those nightmarish bolts. This meant only one thing.

“You cannot fire those arrows consecutively,” Chuang got up and faced the elves who landed on the edge of the crater, looking down on her. “How is the recoil?”

Luxinna was thanking her mask. [Overdrive] was clamping down on the pain, but her arm felt too light. [Goddess Origin] was one hell of an inherent skill. Even a goddess untrained in close-combat still possessed enough stat to survive a beating from both her and the flaming cow.

[Historia] morphed back into a sword. Luxinna could no longer afford to fight from range if she still wanted to swing her arms. The golden sword in the elves’ hand hummed with power.

Chuang twitched. It was the first-time 

“That shape-shifting magical sword,” Chuang said, her voice contained a dripping jealousy. “I hang out long enough with that forge-obsess busy-body to know that blade is a masterpiece. The glint. The design. The material. As a craftsman myself, I can tell that weapon is the king amongst masterpiece. Not even the Drakokia had such a weapon. How did you have it? Such a weapon should belong to an emperor or the ancient elder of Lightwell.”

No, Chuang thought. What was the most peculiar about that sword is its mysterious aura? 

The aura of the sword was resonating with her [Goddess Origin]. Her very existence as the goddess was begging her to run.

Chuang clenched her hand. Why? She was a goddess. The strongest race in Phantasia. Chuang glared at the blade. What was so terrifying about that sword that it instinctively wanted her to flee?

Then the elves flashed in front of her and slashed.

Fire and lightning clashed inside the crater, contesting for supremacy.

…

Luxinna skidded back, narrowly dodging a fire-Chakram in a limbo-maneuver. She transformed her sword into a spear and stabbed at Chuang.

The spear impaled Chuang’s defense. Sparks flew, but it wasn’t enough to penetrate the layer of fortifications Chuang heaped on herself. The Goddess of Fire responded by heaving another massive spell at Luxinna.

“[Burning War: Mountain Piercing]”

The fire spear dug across the ground, creating 300 meters long scar across the earth. Chuang gritted her teeth and glanced up to see eight lotuses surrounding her from all directions. She also knew very well the elf was already behind her with a thrust of the spear.

Chuang growled in frustration. The elves’ dexterity equaled her, but her processing speed was insane.

[Input] → [Function] → [Output]

Dexterity as stats described the performances for the cycle of Input, Function, and Output performed. In such case, Chuang and Luxinna under [Overdrive] had equaled quantity of Dexterity. The different is Luxinna’s function operated on the other gear of function.

In Chuang’s case:

[Luxinna’s dodge] → [Re-aim and shoot] → [Fireball launch]

In Luxinna’s case:

[Fireball launch] → [Calculate Dodging path] ∙ [Create Lotus x 8] ∙ [Plan the Counterattack] ∙ [Overclock her muscle] → [Everything goes]

The elf operated under different systems. If the fight was a trading-card game where Chuang could only draw and played a card each turn. Luxinna would be drawing three or more cards and playing all of them as long as she paid the price. In such scenarios, no matter how powerful Chuang’s creature maybe or how many lives she had ahead, she would inevitably lose the moment Luxinna drew the right card.

[Hyper Reflex] from Luxinna’s [Serene Glass] armor gave her an unlimited option. [Overdrive] delayed the effect of over-siphoning her Mana, creating an inexhaustible quantity of power. With those two abilities activated, even A-class like Chuang would be hard-pressed in a straight up fight.

Chuang had only one path to victory; firing a spell despite the elf’s disruption and overpowered her with her 4000 Mag stats beat stick. Chuang knew the elf couldn’t keep the dance of evasion and counter-play forever. Chuang only needed to outlast Luxinna until she tripped and finished the fight.

It was a mistake, but while she was the first, Chuang Tianshang wasn’t the last person to forget the greatest power of Horizon Dawn.

The Dawn wasn’t head by a lone knight, but entire an entire league of heroes.

Chuang survived the steam of liquid glass and maneuvered Luxinna into a path for a rapid-cast fire-barrage, but the column of fire crashed into her before she closed the battle for good. The goddess fire-proofing was active, but the pressure from the dragon-breath alone was enough to pin her to the crater floors and turned the soil into magma.

The elf landed outside the crater.

“What took you so long?”

“What make you fight inside a crater?” Melody Solarmaria said. “That place was a death ground. Do you think Rem can give you fire support in there?”

“It works for your surprise attack.”

Melody did not disagree.