Amidst the fire of the furnace, Rem and Cytortia hung, suspended by a pyramid-shaped barrier created by Cytortia’s [Paradiso]. The heat didn’t bother the two. Cytortia’s [Benevolence Core] amped her mastery of the defensive and sealing Primal Arcane to a ridiculous level.

Test show the former goddess could create environment-sealing barrier so tight decomposition practically halted. She easily constructed a shield that withstand force in hundreds of kilotons. Her isolation could hide an entire invasion force camped right in front of the enemy capital. The protection she offered was so advanced it possessed air purification and temperature change property. For Cytortia, maintaining constant internal temperature in the furnace only shy of the 5000 degrees Celsius was as easy as washing dishes.

Rem scanned every surface of the room and smiled. He pointed at the surface of the glowing wall.

“Cy, take us there”

Cytortia cast her Arcane.

“[Paradiso]”

Translucent barriers materialized, building a tunnel of magical protection leading down to their location. As testament of the former goddess incredible rise in skill and precision, the thermally insulated tunnel was perfectly constructed with stair case and handrails that would earn a medal from Rem.

“Thank you,” Rem walked down to the metal plate. He contemplated ripping the protective wall with telekinetic power, but that would be an equivalent of kicking down someone's front door. Instead, Rem adopted the more polite — Albus Dumbledore approved — procedural.

He gently bowed and spoke.

“Excuse, may we enter for an…” Rem checked his watch. “Well… an afternoon chat.”

It took a brief second, but the hidden compartment opened to reveal a translucent corridor cover in blue chilling light.

“Wow,” Cytortia slowly walked down the stair and hid behind him for comfort. “There is really a hidden room here.”

Rem tossed a knife into the corridor for caution. The knife tumbled past the blue light and clattered harmlessly on the floor.

“It appears safe. Well, let not keep our host waiting,”

…

Melody learned well. Gone was the girl who over-confidentially walked toward an unknown threat. Multiple spars with her friend beat the value of caution into her brain. Friend. A foreign word she only learned recently, but now it time for her to pull every stop to keep it.

Melody needed a single glance to understand that thing wasn’t Luxinna. The tree huggers never dropped her guard in the middle of combat. She never allowed the opponent to prepare, if she could. No, it was like glaring at an animal. That animal had Luxinna’s skin and magical abilities, but not her skill or overwhelming reliance to bombard everything that moved with projectiles.

Melody made a preliminary expectation. She knew the following fight would involve a massive quantity of lightning. But the rest of the monster’s arsenal was still unknown. Too much mystery was involved. That second Legend was still a mystery. This meant she must fight defensively, dragging as much capability the threat possessed out as possible.

“You…” Emily alternatively pointed between Hikma and Melody.

“You again?” Amitate's jaw hung open. He then pointed to Melody. “And who are you?”

Magnolia sat dumbfounded behind her two saviors. The young girls’ mind buckled, never expected to reunite with the man called Chronicler in this manner. As for the demoness, Magnolia didn’t know who is she. Meanwhile, Aryssa, Sun Senwei and Joshua entered a period of truce-by-gawking, after witnessing the calvary slamming down in a wall of heat and fashion.

Hikma made his message perfectly clear. He even produced a portable microphone to magnify said message.

“Too every survivor, my name is Chronicler. We regret to inform you we are dealing with an unidentified threat. Please, for the safety of all involves, I need you to follow my instruction. We need your full cooperation to survive the next few hours. But no need to worry, our personnel have this cover. Please remain calm.”

Magnolia lost her mind.

“Have this cover? We are locked in these underwater death-traps with killer robots, vampire and that rampaging monster? And you expect us to calm — ack!”

Melody gave the elf a karate chop in the head.

“Shut up. I am concentrating,”

Melody snapped her fingers and unleashed the technique called [Echo].

During their many sparring against lightning, laser beam, telekinetic punches and radioactive flames, several members of the Dawn — namely Hikma, Luxinna and Cytortia — discovered they lacked ability to predict powerful attack. Sure, Rem [Clairvoyance] and Melody’s [Heavenly Eyes] allowed them to stroll around invisible attack, but the rest didn’t have those.

It was Cytortia who develop a solution. She experimented with natural Mana in the atmosphere and sent a pulse of energy similar to a Soundwave through the Mana. The energy waves then collided with foreign Mana and reflected to the user in a similar principle to echolocation by bats. It was a Mana detection technique that could detect invisible Mana-base attack and even Mana influence on natural phenomenon, such as potential light direction and energy sink.

And thus [Echo] was born.

It took training, but every Horizon Dawn knight could locate Mana activity with a simple finger snap. But among the five, Cytortia — the technique inventor — and Melody were skilled with analyzing substance composition with [Echo]. It wasn’t too surprising given both were gifted artisan who weren’t stranger with Alchemy and Material Science.

Melody received the initial analysis of Luxinna’s Exoskeleton with mild concern. Her [Echo] couldn’t penetrate that armor, but it lighted several assembling Mana nodes.

“Incoming,” the demoness made a face. “It is… lightning bolt?”A

Melody felt insulted. Lightning bolts? Really? Luxinna graduated from something that easily avoidable ages ago. Sure, bolt was fast, but it was easily diverted with pieces of steel acting as lightning rod or [Aura] basic protection. It also needed intense concentration to aim. Essentially pinpointing the location of electron-sink in 3D space with brainpower. By the time she aimed one lightning, Luxinna would already finish porcupine people with swords. Sure March 13 rail-gun was way slower than lightning bolts’ Mach 300, but the destructive power and ease of use more than balance it out.

[Assault Flora] fired at a more rapid rate, more easily adjustable, and its room for improvement meant one day it would eventually surpass the speed of lightning. Melody was more upset than hurt that this was the weapon her rival used against her.

Melody got her hope up. Maybe it was a special anomaly of a lightning bolt. Maybe some kind of lightning that could melt people to puddle of goo.

Sadly, [Heavenly Eyes] confirmed the reality. It was a good old fashion smiting.

Unimpressed, Melody tanked the entire gigantic bolt with her [Aura]. She stretched her Mana into a protective barrier and redirected the surrounding energy. Melody whistled. Although throwing an electrical current alone at her was pointless, she must give an extra point for the sheer scale. Whatever taking control of Luxinna got entire oil-rig of stockpile to spend.

Hikma barely blinked. He already got used to watching people tanked unnaturally huge lightning bolt without lifting a finger. Hell, he was the third in the group at redirecting energy attack—the first being Rem and the runner-up was won by Cytortia.

Other spectators — unfortunately — experienced no feat of magical attack redirection. Standard convention when facing such as attack was raising your defense or snuffed it with tons of Mana. Abilities to simply emerged unscathed from directly meeting the attack head-on wasn’t normal. Sure, S-ranker and above could walk through a weaker opponent attack like a breeze, but that was because their Mana pool is huge to the point it automatically resisted attack.

But allowing a huge blast like that to flow passed like a river current flowing through a rock? That ability was unprecedented in conventional spell-casting or cultivation manual.

The spectators’ jaw collectively dropped. The 33 Stars stared unblinking at the newcomer who just ripped the convention of magical duel to smithereens. But among this 33 Stars, it was Emily who was the most dumbstruck. As a closet magic nerd, the ability the demoness before her displayed simply defied description. Unlike the other, she also noticed one more similarity with the mage who utterly stomped her while being outnumbered.

A symbol behind their back.

“Who are you two?”

Melody sighed as the monstrous elf disappeared.

“This might sound corny… but we are protector of the innocent.”

Melody said, intercepting the attacking Luxinna’s faceplate with a fist and sent her flying to the far-side of the room. The monster followed her lightning with close-quarter, but Melody was already used to that tactic. It was old enough to be in the Horizon Dawn’s equivalent of the papyrus.

“Chronicler, take care of them. I will be knocking same sense into the tree-huggers. And, buddy, I want a one-on-one.”

“Fine by me.”

Melody blasted forward on a trail of fire.

…

“Is she going to be fine?” Magnolia yelled at Hikma who conjured a barrier over the semi-panicking survivor.

“Empress? Yeah, she is strong. Well, I doubt she can beat the berserk monster Ace became, but she would be enough to keep her busy.”

“Keep her busy? That thing must be S-rank to trash us like this! It shrugged through this entire facility's defenses and swallowed Sanctification. A bloody S-rank attack. How can you be so sure?”

Hikma barely paid attention to the rambling Magnolia. Instead, he noticed several flying drones coming through the wall. It appeared the mastermind just rebooted the base defense after the prior brawl short-circuited the room.

[Nicholas]

Hikma combined [Electro Gift], [Paradiso] and with [Conceptual Seal] read [Error] into the combination of pyramid-shape seal grabbed everyone's attention.

“You talk a lot, but despite everything you say, none of your rattling suggest you knew how powerful Empress is.”

Hikma activated [Nicholas], stretching the barrier of enchantment that automatically turned every electricity dependent device off. The survivors gawked as a single spell from the Chronicler utterly disabled every coming mechanical threat poking itself into the room. Of course, being a pseudo-soul intelligence, the Mastermind remained mostly unaffected, but this new obstacle forced it to deploy certain experimental feature now that failure chance skyrocketed.

“Trust me.”

Magnolia somehow knew that the man under that helmet was smiling.

“They are rival. If there is someone who could take out Ace, it is Empress.”

…

Melody sprinted into battle, kicking Beast Luxinna’s claw to the way-side and pirouetting an elbow right into her face. The monstrous elf tanked the blow without flinching and countered with electrically charged tail-swipe, followed by a burst of ionize airs. It was a failed attack. The demoness’ [Heavenly Eyes] lend her the leverage to dodge the swipe, while her [Aura] allowed her to fight past the ionize air in favor of slamming a haymaker into the monster chest.

[Echo]

The punch sent Luxinna flying into the far wall, but left Melody nursing her fist. That breastplate was hard. Luckily, she sneaked in a measurement.

That was one weird reading.

The possessed elf rocketed from the crumpled steel like a comet of lightning. Melody clenched her fist and mentally assembled the Arcane.

[Pyro Lorde]

She punched, blasting the column of fire at Luxinna like a fist of lame thrower, catching the elf and carrying her up to the ceiling.

It was then that Melody’s [Heavenly Eyes] flashed.

Shit.

Melody acrobatically flipped away from the blast of ionized laser from up high. She narrowly twisted sideways to evade the ion laser cutting up to her position.

She then remembered Hikma and folks were behind her.

Oops

…

Hikma cursed, enlarging his [Trinity] into an all-encompassing shield to defend against the ion laser cutting toward them.

“Mel,” Hikma strained against the power of concentrate charge particle. “Handle this or we are tagging!”

…

“Sorry!” Melody yelled. She flew, tackling Luxinna against the cieling to disable the lightning, but the possessed elf dug her ground. Tentacles slithered and grabbed the demoness by her ankle. Melody felt electricity penetrating through her [Aura] as a tentacle flinging her into the battered wall. However, Beast Luxinna couldn’t muster much force into her throw from such a terrible angle. And it was about to learn that failing to finish Melody in a lucky shot wasn’t a recipe for survival.

Melody growled. That electrical discharge hurt, but the S-rank endurance was there for a reason. 

Fine. Time to up the heat.

Melody touched the cracked wall.

[Burning Asura: Nuclear Forge]

…

The group saw the demoness being flung into the metal and electrocute.

“That got to hurt,” Hikma whistled.

“Your comrade about to get murder!” Joshua of the Wolf Hoard yelled at the helmet knight. In the display of courage and royalty, he braved the carnage to drag his battered Commander behind Hikma’s barrier. “Help her!”

“Empress won’t fall for a mild hit like that,” Hikma reassured him. “No doubt she felt that shot, but I can guarantee she is more annoyed than hurt.”

Right on cue, the metal wall erupted on fire.

“You must understand. My friend is trying to be less reckless in her battle. She istrying to deduce the cards before revealing her hands. What you see right now is a raise.”

…

Hanging perpendicularly from the melted wall, Melody spun the metal halberd she built from the surrounding metals and enchanted with [Radioactive Fire]. After years of sparing with Luxinna in the simulator, she picked the [Armory Grace] skill, albeit at a lower rank compared to the elf. 

Melody ran down the wall to her out-of-control rival. Tentacles of glass whipped in a flickering speed, but it was no match against Melody’s combination of [Heavenly Eyes] and weapon skill. The demoness twirled the halberd like a shield of rotating blade, slicing the glass tentacles at its joint with the nuclear-powered super-heated blades.

Beast Luxinna watched Melody hit the floor and responded by stretching all her tentacles to build a cage. The glass appendaged glowed and began firing needles at rail-gun speed.

Melody actually grinned. Finally, something resembled the old Luxinna.

[Pyro Genesis]

Shell of flames wrapped around Melody, withstanding the monstrous bombardment that echoed throughout the room. Smoke rose from the collision of glass and flames. But the flames weren’t enough to defend against True Magic powered barrages. Melody knew this, but she never meant to use her defense as a one-sided protection.

From the smoking haze of burning fire, a halberd of flames rocketed forth and impaled the scorched metal floor, narrowly missing the elf.

[Burning Asura: Nuclear Forge]

The shell self-destructed, blasting Melody to her target like a comet of fire. She emerged with a newly created metal shield. Needles accelerated by electromagnetism hit the shield, but failed to penetrate the strengthened metal disk. She arrived in the striking range, gripping her shield by the edge and bringing it smashing down on the elf like an axe.

Luxinna’s glass claws lengthened into a blade, swinging to intercept the strike without knowing that the elaborate attack was a feint. Melody was too familiar with Luxinna to not take any chance. The entire point of the shield bash was to obscure her vision. Melody relaxed her grip on the shield, allowing it to spin away as she twisted into the elf’s blind spot and kicked her halberd sticking from floor. The demoness caught the spinning weapon from the floor and delivered a strike, powered by burning the metal mass as nuclear energy.

The attack landed right on the exoskeleton spine and marked the wall with a red-hot slash-mark 20 meters wide. After a brutal battle between of the elf and the vampire, and getting demolished further by Melody, the material of the wall finally hit its limit and fell apart into shards broken steel.  

…

“Whoa,” Amitate put himself in the monster position. Yep, that move would had bisected him without him able to put any resistance. “Who the hell are you people?” He yelled the question at the unresponsive Hikma.

Emily’s thought follow the same patterned. Any member of this mysterious group would easily butcher low ranking 33 Stars — the elite of the younger generation. Even higher-ranking members would be in the fight of their life. Any person who could do that would be targeted by the Mandatory Recruitment Order and the Divine Fists. But a group? An organization composed of those individuals they knew nothing about? That was terrifying.

“Don’t relax. It isn’t over.”

…

“I see,” Melody watched her opponent intently. “That is why the reading is so weird.”

The demoness commented on the rising Luxinna. Her attack wounded the exoskeleton, revealing mesh of glass fibers lined with energy, but Melody’s [Heavenly Eyes] allowed to see what Serina failed to grasp during her bout.

The entire armor was respiring. It behaved like a gigantic organism constantly siphoning energy from the Multiverse and transport it through Mana conducting vessel in the glass fibers. Melody even discovered another secret as the exoskeleton began repairing itself. It wasn’t just material appearing from the air. Melody telescopic vision revealed the True Nature of Luxinna’s second legend.

The grain of glass—something that should be inorganic — was undergoing mitosis. It was reproducing itself and repairing the armor at an alarming rate.

She needed more information, but that glass already ticked two of the characteristics of living organisms.

Could that glass be alive?