Horizon Dawn’s prized F-U3 could be summed up as glorified blood-sucking.

The gang, spearhead by the Horisearch division, modified ten high-grade harpoons with an improvised suction system created by Ebony and linked it to a spare purified Space Stone. Once activated by the remote switch, the devices would begin sucking blood from the dragon and stored in the storage device remotely connected to the system.

A simple quote from Rem summed it up better than anything.

It might be an impenetrable god from beyond, but as long as it needs oxygen, it will die without its blood.

As the Sicilian Ghost Dragon continued dragging itself to its feast, unstable anemic dizziness caught up to it. In combination with the grievous injuries it received, this mounting damage had swayed the beast immensely.

The final phase of the battle was approaching fast.

…

Meanwhile, at the South East section of Milian, a battle resumed.

“[Sacrificial Rite: Bloodstain Edge],” Illma Zoldia Road flicked her finger, sending a burning light striking through the air like a strip of extendable saw-blade.

Luxinna faced the attack with controlled calmness. An impressive feat considering the distraction from panicking innocent bystander. The last time Illma fired this attack, she flew into a bar, but she lived. Her defense worked. She only needed to double its power.

“[Static Glass: Double Savage Lotus],” Luxinna raised her hand. Magic weaved to create two glass lotuses stacked on top of each other.

The crimson cutter shredded the first lotus layer, and the second lotus barely slowed it down. Still, that slight decrease in its speed allowed Luxinna shifted her defense enough to deflect the crimson ray. The light veered left, slicing off the restaurant's roof in the crashing sound of dust and brick.

“You survive that?” Illma mocked. “How is the arm, bitch?”

“Oh, it hurt like hell,” Luxinna replied honestly, blinking out tears as her arms went soft with pain. “But isn’t it bad for your body to spam those attacks?”

Illma clenched her teeth. The roach had a point.[Sacrificail Rite] had an incredible attack power, but the recoil did take its toll; used it too much and her body would pay the price. Although enough healing potion could remedy its effect, it still limited her to 18 more [Sacrificail Rite] at most until she blackout. As far as she knew it, the elf couldn’t get past her shield. In conclusion, the roach only shot a winning meant outlasting at least 18 more attacks.

Illma barely contained her laughter. The elf barely stood after three doses. Gave her eighteen more, and no matter how much of a cockroach she was, there would be nothing left. However, with the last two moves to go by, a one-directional attack like [Bloodstain Edge] wouldn’t do the trick; not even when boosted by her [Sacrificial Mastery (C)] skill.

It appeared another [Blossom] was in order.

A pool of red light oozed under Illma as she resumed her attack.

“[Sacrificial Rite: Bloodstain Blossom]!”

Seven orbs of crimson light materialized behind Illma.

Luxinna’s eyes shone. Here come the opening she was waiting. The elf spread her arm and started the counter-attack she bounced around in her head for quite a while. Time had come to use her weeks of magical control training to good used.

[Static Glass: Hextuple Savage Lotus]

Luxinna flared with a golden aura. In that golden light, three pairs of double-stacked lotuses bloomed around Illma, trapping her in a rectangle formation. Each flower began to glow, dueling its light-intensity with Illma’s crimson orbs.

The Untouchable wasn't amused.

“Another laser blast?” Illma jeered, ignoring her predicament. “Didn’t you already try to fire those during our little chase? If I remember correctly, it fell flat, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Luxinna confirmed. After her smoke bomb trick failed, she tried every gimmick at her disposal to disable Illma’s shield. Everything from exploding [Savage Lotus], direct brute force, and the electrical laser. All of her attacks fell flat in its place.

“Luckily, I’m not aiming at you.”

Illma blinked, then the lotuses fired the golden beam. The beam landed directly on its target: the crimson orbs of immense destructive power behind Illma. Three blood-red energy orbs warped unstably from the attack before swelling up in the explosion, triggering a chain-reaction and ignited the rest of the [Blossom] simultaneously with Illma at its epicenter.

The Untouchable barely had time to scream.

As for Luxinna, she held out her hand and poured her heart and soul into the lotus formation. The girl’s body rippled from nausea and fatigue. But she stood, emptying all her effort into the cracking lotus, trying to redirect the explosion that could render an entire city-block to rubble.

The burst of red light blew into the sky, shattering every window and flattened the second stories nearby. The force chipped away the golden lotus' inner layer before breaking them, unleashing a dampened but devastating shockwave that tossed Luxinna across the floor and sent all the bystander flying.

The explosion rocked the entire Milian.

…

 At the other side of Milian

“What is that noise?” A young demoness asked an old dwarf.

“Don’t move,” The dwarf hit her lightly on the head while performing first-aid. “Geez, kid these days doesn't know how to play quietly, do they? Given the power-output, that must be the Road brat fighting against someone.”

“Someone is fighting Illma Zoldia Road?” Melody’s mouth hung open. “That’s suicide.”

“Suicide?” The dwarf, Obi-wan, raised his eyebrows. “Like taking the entire adventurer population of Milian alone?”

Melody suddenly went quiet.

The dwarf laughed.

“You do remind me of your old man.”

“You knew my father?”

“Yes, quite an interesting guy,” Obi-wan said. “Ridiculously good at accounting. He used to hire my team when he was alive. Given how much mess the Demonic Continent produced yearly, I was his regular janitor.”

Melody stayed silent.

“How long have you known I am his daughter?”

“From the beginning,” the dwarf said. “I was one of your father regular client. Of course, I can recognize his wife; not to mention the name Majestia. Ebony lighted neon-sign right on top of you for 15 years straight. You two are lucky people this part never see your mother without a bob-cut or else your identity will be blown up to smithereens.”

“Ma use to have a bob-cut?” Melody said in surprise.

“Majesty liked it,” Obi-wan explained. “I miss him. He was a flawed person, but a good man.”

Melody suddenly turned downcast.

“Then why don’t you save him?” The girl started to tear-up. “You two are good friends, right? Why couldn't you save my dad?”

The old-dwarf sighed.

“Majesty had many of hidden secrets; many of which are still loose in the world,” Obi-wan mysteriously explained. “I was there, you know. He already sent your mother away and burnt his home down when I found him. I couldn’t do anything about the poison he took, but he still able to leave his last word. Your father begged me to leave his corpse to be defiled by Jekyll, saying that this is what he deserved.”

“You are lying,” Melody started. “My father would never say that?”

“Do you know the pain of ruling, Melody?” Obi-wan depressively explained.

Melody thought back to Rem’s speech.

“A guy told me being a ruler is the worse job in the world,” Melody quietly recited. “He said that it only brought suffering to you and your family. He said no one, not even the best of us, can succeed in it.”

“Your friend was spot on,” Obi-wan said. “There is an old idiom: heavy is the head that wore a crown. Being a ruler, especially a war-like nation such as Demonic Continent, requires compromises. Compromises that make a good man balked if he is smart enough. Your father needed to compete with an amoral nincompoop backed by catalogs of nobles who ran your nation into the swamp for generations. To combat them, Majesty made many horrific compromises to even the odds, and those choices took its toll. In the end, what truly defeated him wasn’t Jekyll but his guilt."

Melody felt her fantasy shattered like smithereens.

“You mean he gave up the fight?”

“More like the fight broke him,” Obi-wan said. “Your mother didn’t tell you that. I’m not surprised. It's hard to make Majesty look like a scorn hero who needs avenging when it was his life choices that done him in.”

Melody remained silent. 

“Is it possible to be a good king and a good person?”

Obi-wan laughed.

“Yes, it’s possible,” he said. “But here is a thing: dynasty always ended up falling apart. A good king might come, but it is nearly impossible to stop the later generations from losing some screw. Evil and greed are corruptive and insidious. That is a natural state of the world. Bad is far stronger than good.”

…

Luxinna couldn’t believe what she was seeing. 

Out of the smoke, slowly stepping across the powdered pavement like an injured hound, was a bleeding and tattered Illma Zoldia Road. The Untouchable walked unnaturally toward Luxinna; skin red with burnt and clothing burnt black from the fire.

The Untouchable laughed; blood-freezing malice replaced all trace of sanity she had in her voice.

“I can’t believe this!” Illma screamed. “You nearly got me right through the shield! I had to blow myself up with a fire-magic to escape the worse of the explosion in time! I change my mind. I won’t kill you. I will drag you back alive, and slowly broke you into my fucking dog before separating you organ-by-organ!”

Luxinna got up.

“No chance, bitch!” Illma screeched. “[Sacrificial Rite: Field of Pain]!”

Luxinna suddenly felt something crashing down on her. It was a pain. Raw unbearable agony ran amok in all her limbs like her muscle just spontaneously ignited. Tears clouded her eyes as her vision turned dimly red. Luxinna screamed as every part of her body, from her throat to her toes, sang the discord of pure suffering. She wasn’t the only one. All around her, the innocent bystander started falling to the ground, screeching in agony.

Luxinna angrily glared at Illma. The screaming around her lighted a fire more intense than anything she ever felt.

“Love it! My favorite magic. It hit everything, me included, but I don’t feel a thing!” Illma derangely laughed. “Do you know why? Because you are taking my pain for me! Here, look!”

The Untouchable showed the screaming Luxinna a bulky wrist-watch. The device clicked open and ejected a charred empty cylinder.

“The shield generator you work so hard to deplete!” Illma evilly crackled as she took out a cylinder filled with blue liquid and waved it in front of the elf. “All you did is waste a battery! Here look!”

Illma slotted the cylinder into the watch and locked it in place. A shimmering sphere enveloped her before going transparent as the shield rebooted.

“Good as new,” Illma laughed. “How it feels to see your hard work erase just by replacing a battery. That is how much of an insignificant joke you are!”

Luxinna growled. Golden electricity crackled around her body as her golden armor sparked to life. The elf fought herself through her pain and got up, glaring at Illma with undying determination.

“Wow,” Illma mockingly congratulated her nemesis. “You last longer than dear old Aion! Well, I know exactly how to finish you off. You both are practically the same species.”

Blood Red light pooled under Illma’s feat as her skill activated, but instead of aiming at Luxinna, the Untouchable raised her hand to the left. Her finger directed at two screaming children crying in pain outside of the bar.

Luxinna bit back a curse.

“Be quick,” Illma winked. “[Sacrificial Rite: Bloodstain Judgment]!”

A torrent of spiraling crimson ribbon wove into a spinning drill of light, digging its way toward the two children. Strand of lights scarred the ground, dragging trenches of devastation, as the spellwork barreled toward its target. Luxinna accelerated her magic to her limit, and move, pushing the children out of the blender. The elf barely had enough time to register the vortex. In that split second, her survival instinct kicked in.

[Static Glass: Hextuple Savage Lotus]

A shield created from stacking six [Savage Lotus] materialized in front of Luxinna. Initial four-layer got crushed in less than a second as the drill of red-light crashed Luxinna into the building behind her. The elf felt the impact full-force. The shock, compounded with all the pain Illma piled on her, shattered the fifth lotus.

Still, she held on as the attack sent her past two more houses, and into a brick building that must be the bank. That was when her final lotus gave out. Then tendril warped, exploding in the tower of light. 

Luxinna’s armor shattered, as the debris of the building rain down on her.

…

Meanwhile, on the other side of the town, Cytortia’s mouth hung open.

“This isn’t supposed to happen!”

“Yes,” Scathach agreed, sweat trickled down her brows. “There is nothing I can do now.”

The Sicilian Ghost finally stopped moving. Severe blood loss ensured that certainty. The dragon's glassy, vacant eye gazed to oblivion. But It won’t go down like this; not even when its brain started dying from oxygen deprivation. An embedded instinct forced itself out of the dragon’s mind in its final moment.

The aura of the ghost clouded the dragon, entering its mouth and depleting arteries. The dragon’s dying flesh blacken as the dead began to reanimate the beast. It fleshes lighted up with purple fires as the spirit's hatred and wrath dyed its eyes red. In less than a minute, the colossal monster transformed into an ethereal creature shielded by the dragon's scales. A beast hanging between life and death growled to the sky as purple flames seeped past the gap in its scale.

“What is happening?” Cytortia said, ducking behind the ruin of collapse building outside the range of the dragon.

“I don’t know,” Scathach said. “The dragon is merging with the ghost hoard. Probably an instinctual last-ditch effort to preserve its life. I believe it can be qualified as a Litch at this point.”

“Not with that kind of aura,” Cytortia argued. “The mana inside it is too unstable for a successful transformation! It will blow up.”

Scathach breathed slowly. They both knew the explosion of such scale would take half of Milian with the dragon.

“Release F-U4,” Scathach sighed. “We need to kill the spirit reanimating the dragon’s dying cells.”

“Scathach, the potion is designed to only work on living flesh, not spirits. At most, it will just delay the detonation.”

“Yes, but delaying it is the only thing we could do right now.”

Cytortia stifled a replied and silently pressed the trigger, causing the seven harpoons still impaling the dragon to release her invention.

…

 

Round ‘s result:

1) Luxinna lost consciousness. Illma remains unchallenged.

2) Melody semi-recovering.

3) The dragon was going critical. No countermeasure can stop the imminent explosion.

4) F-U3 and F-U4 is unlikely to work at the current development.

5) Rem’s status unknown.

Horizon lost this round hard. 

…

“So you are telling me evil is stronger than good,” Melody talked to the old dwarf.

“Yes, sadly,” Obi-wan said. “Evil people can do what good couldn’t, and because of that, they had an overwhelming advantage.”

“That isn’t true, yano,” said a small voice.

Both of them turned to see the talking octopus.