Yuki had been fighting so hard to get inside Dreadblade along with the others that it hadn’t even crossed her mind what she would find after breaching the gate. Or rather getting through the batch of ordinari darkalighters who had stood as the final obstacle on the path to the courtyard.
Now that those enemies were out of the way, only the rays of the sun that had finally been freed from the last dark rain clouds in the sky remained. This was in part due to the New and ex-Martians’ combined technique blasting many of those clouds to pieces, but also because of the cool gusts of wind coming from the west.
The wind that drove away whatever darkness was left in the heavens now gently caressed Yuki’s skin that had felt so hot due to the day’s rising summer heat and the amount of effort she had put in the last technique used by her and her friends and allies. She found the feel of the wind so soothing and the light of the sun – so energizing, the combination of the two creating a strange feeling of calm and excitement the white-haired beauty never wanted to end.
Looking to one side, she saw Hikaru who was lying down in the dirt next to her and was smiling despite his dreadful state. On the other was Seiren, who was also lying down and had just wiped some of the blood coming out of his mouth with a grin. And all around had fallen or crushed the other members of the Goran Rescue Team, the Martian Phoenix Squad and further back – Mara Kilzarad and the ex-Martians.
This single moment was pure perfection. Knowing how hard a battle had been fought to get to it and that an ever more destructive battle lay ahead, Yuki found herself feeling reluctant to look at the courtyard itself to study its interior.
But once she saw the smirks, smiles and grins on the faces of many of her comrades turned to utter shock, she forced herself to look to find the cause of this.
The moment she did, a cold chill went through her whole body, nullifying the effects of whatever joy and serenity she had felt before. Yuki now doubted if all of that had even been real.
Putting aside whatever else Dreadblade’s courtyard contained, it was first and foremost full of thousands of Gurahorn demons – at least 2000 from what Miss Iceflame could make out. And all of them were grinning with a distinct evil satisfaction, which made their already creepy faces all the more terrifying.
According to the intel the Sunbird School Force had gathered, especially from the reconnaissance performed by Vix, Ayli and other morph deviant members of the Force the day before the battle, the Gurahorn Legion had a thousand demons in its ranks in total. So Yuki had guessed all the demons to deal with had been outside the fortress, only about 300 of them remaining and the rest of the Sunbird ground forces supposedly having disposed of them already.
Now it was revealed there were at least three times as many as initially estimated and to make things worse, moments after Miss Iceflame and her friends made this shocking discovery, the Gurahorns’ master finally appeared in person.
There was a number of small buildings spread throughout the courtyard with only one being multi-floored – a sort of small three-level tower placed right in this area’s center, at the far end of the yard, however, lying a tower that was much, much bigger, more imposing and with a roof made solely of giant horns. Its upper part was suddenly broken apart amid a burst of Karaid and darkness that took the shape of multiple skeletal arms for a moment, right after a massive silhouette jumping down in between the falling rubble.
The horns on Deathaxe’s helmet became clearly visible first, then the pale green dots that were his eyes being illuminated from within the darkness the helmet was full of, finally the dark splendor of his armor being revealed. But there was one more revelation to come – namely of the person on the villain’s back who was so much smaller compared to him.
A person who was actually about the same height as Yuki due to not having became a full-grown man yet. And though she hadn’t seen him in a while, judging by Seiren’s reaction which was the single most devastatingly shocked face the white-haired beauty had ever seen, she quickly realized who this person was. Serego and Gora’s younger child and Seiren’s younger brother and only sibling – Goran Blackscale.
His raggedy black hair had now turned whiter than Yuki’s and had grown longer, especially the upper half that had the tufts sticking out in all directions, his left eye’s sapphire blue iris having turned bright orange while the sclera – very dark purple, the right eye glowing in bright red like the crystal that had been imbedded in Deathaxe’s axe. There was a big and deep scar around that eye and many more fresh stitches on other parts of his skin that were visible, all of it being the same beige color as the Gurahorn demons’ skin. His nails were as sharp and long as theirs and blood-red, the typical earrings for all clan members – two blood-red spikes for each ear – having been attached to his ears as well.
As for the young man’s attire, it now reflected different parts of the design of Deathaxe’s axe – his arms and chest were covered in metal like the axe’s blades, the rest of the body being covered in the black leather from the axe’s handle and horns like the four serving as the axe blades’ backbone sticking out of him in different places. He also had a tail, the spike at the end of which was identical to the one at the end of the axe’s handle, this spike being enveloped in hellish flames, however.
Overall, not an ounce of the old Goran was left.
As the master starting walking down the path formed by the parting of his demonic troops right in the center of the courtyard, the pupil did not say a word and his emotionless expression did not change in the slightest. Deathaxe was the only one doing the talking and although his face was concealed by a darkness cloak, Yuki could tell just by the sound of his voice which was even more blood-curdling than she remembered, that he was smiling underneath all that darkness.
(Deathaxe) ‘Well, well. I must say you came right on time.
Goran and I just got ready after our training session. I’m sorry I couldn’t join the party outside earlier, but I had to train up my apprentice to match Gurahorn and darkan standards, didn’t I?’ – he paused to raise his hands with the most disturbing chuckle Yuki had ever heard, looking around as if waiting to get some kind of verbal reaction from his enemies and continuing after no voice was heard for a while – ‘We can catch up now, though, so no worries.’
Goran’s expression finally changed the moment Deathaxe finished, now having the same terrifying evil grin full of long and sharp blood-red fangs like all the other Gurahorn demons.
Apparently all of them had been waiting for their master to make his way to the front-most row of their ranks, now that he had done so, the time to unleash a combined technique of their own having come.
The moment it started forming, Yuki realized a very simple fact: whatever was coming was going to be worse than the technique Deathaxe had hit the Allied Forces of Deckstoru on the night the invasion had begun. And considering the effort everyone had put in the attacks executed during the final stretch to get inside Dreadblade and how many injuries they had suffered along the way, using an attack to counter this attack would be useless.
All New and ex-Martians needed to focus on defense and defense only.
Neana ran forward along with the Martian Phoenix Squad girls to stand in front of everyone else as the first line of that defense, meanwhile a veil of pure blackness coming from Deathaxe and rivers of hellish flames – from Goran. Seeing that, Yuki threw Hikaru at Seiren and while he was still overcome by surprise, she and Exo ran to join Neana and the girls.
(Yuki) ‘Take care of him, Seiren! And watch out for all the others as …’ – she suddenly crashed into something so hard that coming in contact with it made even a superhuman like her fall on the ground, realizing upon looking up that it was a very thick wall of restructured dirt surrounding Zoran, everyone from the Goran Rescue Team and Mara and the ex-Martians – ‘What the hell?! Neana, did you make this?!!’
(Exo) ‘Let’s cut through the wall, Yuki! Even if Neana only wants to keep us safe, we’ve got to help hold those things back!!’
The ground started shaking as Yuki and Exo created a massive blade mixing ice and several different metals to cut open the dirt wall, by the time they were done, a familiar figure having loomed over all of Dreadblade Fortress and the vicinity. It was the dark purple skeletal colossus with horns bent inward, a cloak of Karaid surrounding it and eyes and an X on its chest made of pale green energy that Deathaxe had made during his decimating attack against the Allied Forces of Deckstoru.
Only this time, the giant reaper had not two, but a hundred arms, a scythe of hellish flames forming in each one while a single massive Cerberus and thousands of smaller ones, all of which made of the same element as the scythes, appeared under the reaper.
Seeing this nightmarish annihilation incarnate in an even more dreadful form than the original one made a part of the ice maiden realize how futile any attempt to stop it would be, but the rest of her still fought on despite all the desperation. Just as the colossus’s hundred-swings-in-one came down, Yuki and Exo sent forth waves of quickly hardening ice and metal to reinforce the walls Neana and the Martian Phoenix Squad girls were putting up while shouting at them.
But those shouts were drowned by the earth-shattering roar that followed as a ridiculously impossible amount of hellish flames, pale green energy and Karaid was released by the swings, the three elements mixing to create a source of blinding light that was mostly red in color.
Just as it had happened before, Yuki felt time slow down when the attack came into full force, due to being superhuman, probably she alone being able to perceive more of what happened during the period of slowed time than anyone else.
Neana had used a bigger restructuring technique powered by a mixture of white and dark blue energy than any Miss Iceflame had ever seen in order to restructure away the skeletal colossus’s swings and though that made them diminish in size to an extent, they still remained potent enough to cut her up.
Sunbird’s headmistress was closest to the attack and thus took perhaps the most damage, both her legs being cut at full length as well as pretty much all of her left arm, her stomach being cut open with the cut being so wide, it reached almost to her back. And to top it all off, when she started falling to the ground, it was revealed her right eye and ear had been cut out as well.
From Neana, the cutting three-element wave continued to meet with the multilayered wall the Martian Squad Girls had made, this further weakening said wave, but still not being enough to stop it, instead splitting it up into two with each half going around a side of the crumbling dirt wall meant to protect Yuki and co. The wave was so powerful, that its aftershock alone was sufficient to cut up and burn the girls behind the headmistress – which was the last thing Miss Iceflame saw before she became too blinded by the wave’s light and got cut by it as well to fall into an infinite dark emptiness.
*
There were times when Yuki really hated being superhuman, one example of that being her experience upon waking up in the aftermath of Deathaxe and co.’s attack. Although the few additional wounds she had suffered did not hurt too much as a result of her superhuman stamina, her superhuman senses provided her with more information than she would have ever cared to know.
By the looks of it, Yuki had been the first person in the area to manage to get back on their feet, searching the immediate vicinity to check the state of her fellow Goran Rescue Team members. Exo was lying right next to her, Seiren having protected Hikaru nearby, King – Vega and Tokura – Reimei, all their wounds thankfully being as superficial as Yuki’s.
The same was valid for Zoran further back and Mara whom he had protected, the majority of the ex-Martians behind them seeming to have come out completely unscathed.
Then the white-haired beauty looked beyond.
Beyond Dreadblade’s courtyard and the remains of the gate.
As it turned out, a similar thing had happened to the Sunbird School Force there upon being reached by the two halves of the Cerberus-riding reaper’s attack – those who excelled at defense and were the most selfless ones had tried their best to protect everyone else.
What this had led to was the ground forces’ de-facto leader, Liney Beo, getting torn to pieces with just a little of her head and torso still being intact.
Eny Saileen, her second-in-command, had been beheaded.
Tens of mangled students’ corpses were spread around them, the same being valid for the members of the Two Pillar Guard and the Multi-talion who looked like they had just come to their aid when Deathaxe and co.’s attack had hit.
Out of those two groups, Jill Lahala, who led half of the Two Pillar Guard, had jumped in to protect her brother Rafael, her back having been incinerated to the bone due to that.
The leader of the Two Pillar Guard’s other half, Xen Ikity, had been affected mostly by the Karaid’s decay effects as he had protected as many of his students as he could, in the present whatever remained of his blackened and cracked body crumbling away.
Many students from the Multi-talion had defended others with their devas for multiplying different body parts, but had failed to protect themselves, thus having wound up beheaded, torn up, burned, missing one or more limbs and with other fatal injuries.
Cane Garasu, who had led the Multi-talion alongside Yuki until recently, had not been spared the effects of the cutting wave, either, for him the burns being the most severe and having reached all the way to the bone in parts of the head and torso.
As for Obur Segune, Gudard Beo and the Stormbringers and captured undead Deckstorians they were supposed to be protecting, Yuki couldn’t see what their state was due to them being some distance away and a lot of smoke having risen already from the fires started in the advent of the cutting three-element wave.
The surviving teachers in the vicinity were still too shocked to respond, the students, on the other hand, starting to scream in terror of the massacre scene all around them.
And that was just the beginning of their nightmare because the Gurahorn demons who had aided Deathaxe and Goran in executing their technique wasted no time in launching forward to finish off all survivors while they were at their weakest. They filled the air with their unearthly shrieks as they did that, the mixture of those shrieks and the screams forming a symphony of dark madness.
For some reason, the Gurahorns were completely ignoring the Goran Rescue Team and the ex-Martians, after all of them had moved on, Yuki finally getting the chance to look in the direction she dreaded the most – just ahead of her inside Dreadblade’s courtyard. There, at Deathaxe’s feet, lay Neana and the Martian Phoenix Squad girls – the girls from Yuki’s class.
And as she looked at their bodies, images of her past experiences with them juxtaposed with their present state started flooding Miss Iceflame’s mind.
Annabel healing Yuki after her fight with Ulura Nightsong on her very first day at Sunbird and introducing her to Neana later that day. Now trying to put her intestines back in her body while spitting blood all around.
Yonira fighting with Annabel all the time and Yuki being forced to put off breaking up Hikaru and Seiren’s fights to go and stop their female equivalents. Thankfully, Yonira couldn’t show how much pain she felt because of her perpetually expressionless face after saving Rose’s life, but her trying to crawl without having any arms to rely on due to bloody holes being left in their place was still heart-wrenching to watch.
Miluna desperately searching for overdrive syringes while at the Sunbird Shelter Complex and Yuki having to explain that no such syringes were kept at the Complex, but not managing to get through to her after many attempts. Now her classmate was holding her throat that had been cut open while blood was leaking between her fingers.
Nalisia taking too long to brush her hair instead of going to join her classmates in training sessions with Zoran and Neana and Yuki being forced to go and drag her out. No amount of brushing was going to make her hair look better in the present, though, because most of it had been burned away, which had happened with the rest of her body as well.
Kataleya losing control of her lime-green light deva whenever Yuki would hug her from behind because it made her feel embarrassed and starting to glow as a result. But Kataleya would never glow again, because her body had been cut clean in half across the waist.
Rika giving into her exhibitionist compulsion and walking around the Sunbird Shelter Complex naked and Yuki having to follow and cover her with a blanket as protection from the gaze of any pervert (Seiren and Tokura, in particular). Whether intentionally or unintentionally, though, Rika would never be able to display her naked body again after it had sustained such deep cuts and heavy burns.
Violet jumping and running around from happiness after Yuki had made her a special surprise cake for her birthday to the point where she had got exhausted and just fallen flat on the floor. Having had her right arm and leg chopped off in the precent, running to reach such a state and running as a whole was no longer an option.
Zilly acting as the de-facto lawyer of the class during any major conflicts involving more than two people and asking Yuki to serve as her bodyguard while she pleaded different cases. This time around, the white-haired beauty had failed to protect her, however, and as a result her skin was turning blacker and blacker and got more and more cracked to the point of crumbling, much like Xen Ikity’s case.
Keiry D pretending to be too tired and using her super cute baby face to convince Yuki to carry her on her back. She would gladly give her a piggyback ride now as well, but having been beheaded, Keiry would not be able to appreciate it.
Vix wearing a revealing close-fitting get-up to try and seduce Yuki and Yuki having to explain to her tirelessly she is not interested in girls. She was now holding her cut-up face with just one hand, because the other had been cut off.
Ayli getting overly scared after Vega had pulled a prank on her and running to Yuki for help, Miss Iceflame hugging and calming her down little by little. Her hair, that was normally close in terms of color to Yuki’s, was now covered in blood because Ayli’s eyes had been cut out along with a part of her skull.
Vale getting comically hysterical after seeing Yuki had not cleaned the tables at the Sunbird Shelter Complex’s canteen the way she wanted due to her obsession with cleanliness and hygiene and Yuki having to sort things out with her. With the holes left in her torso and especially in the chest in the present, Vale was in no condition to even get hysterical over how covered in blood she was.
Aria begging Yuki again and again to release a full force attack against her to test if her healing deva’s cloak would be able to heal the damage caused and Yuki continuing to refuse until their argument became ridiculous. Probably because she had tried to protect others with cloaks of the same type during Deathaxe and co.’s attack, Aria was among those in the worse state, having lost all four of her limbs.
Feoria getting distracted the way she often did during training and getting hit hard on the head, Yuki going over to her side to protect her from suffering additional damage with an ice shield and the two smiling at each other. Even though she had been focused during the attempt to stop the cutting wave, that hadn’t managed to save half of Feoria’s body from getting burned to a crisp and the other – from decaying under the effects of Karaid poisoning.
Turora starting to become sickly again after the effects of using her life force steal deva had worn off and asking Yuki to let her take a little of her life force to feel good for a bit longer, to which Yuki agreed with a cute smile. She would let her classmate drain all her life in the present, but considering Turora’s head had been cut diagonally to a point where the two halves were almost completely separated, even that would probably not be enough to save her.
All the while Miss Iceflame had been going through this heartbreaking experience, Deathaxe had been explaining something with a confident voice to her, the rest of the Goran Rescue Team and the ex-Martians, but she hadn’t heard any of it. Yuki started paying attention to him only after he swung with a Karaid-made scythe to decapitate Neana on whose torso he had stepped.
Before the first of the many tears of sorrow and helplessness that were going to fall from the white-haired beauty’s eyes reached the ground, a burst of phoenix flames blasted away and then destroyed Deathaxe’s scythe. This was Zoran’s doing, having landed next to Neana with a mortifying serious look on his face while Seiren had climbed on his back, both of them jumping forward with a roar now – the former at Deathaxe and the latter – at Goran who he was carrying.
(Zoran) ‘Enough talk from you, Deathaxe. Time to die.’
(Seiren) ‘And time for your dumb ass to come home, Goran!!!’
Others from Yuki’s team seemed to have managed to move beyond the shock, pain and grief to focus on the only thing they had left – avenging the ones lost and saving the rest. So she put every ounce of her superhuman strength into swallowing the lump in her throat and making her body move again to follow her friends’ example, despite not knowing how she could possibly go on after what she had seen.
