Cold air radiated from Snowrealm, her unsheathed straight sword seemingly freezing the very air around her.
Seina drew her bowstring back fully, a pale purple arrow of light forming on the string, its tip pointed toward the mountainside.
Amamiya's twin blades were already unsheathed, and she shifted the weapon in her left hand to a more comfortable reverse grip. Kohinata raised her hammer high above her head, the brilliant orange glow on the hammerhead fierce enough to burn through the clouds.
“Go!”
Kohinata was the first to move, slamming her hammer down onto the patch of ground Star-trail had marked, releasing a dull, thunderous boom.
Before the orange light on the hammerhead could fade, several vines surged from the bottom of the crater, lunging straight for her wrists.
Amamiya intervened in an instant, her right blade slashing diagonally to sever the incoming vines at their base.
Almost simultaneously, she swept her left blade upward in a backhand strike, pinning another vine that lunged from the side.
“Keep smashing, don't stop.”
Mingyue opened up a front on the flank, her scythe slicing through the mass of vines creeping down the mountain wall.
Glancing upward out of the corner of her eye, she saw Seina's arrows of light blasting gaps in the enemy ranks, while Snowrealm's ice crystals sealed off the left slope.
The coordination among the three from Wings of Freedom was far more polished than expected.
“It's moving. It sensed our intentions and is retreating deeper underground.”
Mingyue sliced through a vine blocking her path and shouted without looking back, “Can you relocate it?”
“Yes. But it's not moving in a straight line; it's going in circles.”
Star-trail closed its eyes, narrowing the range of its detection array to the area around the underground core. “It's dodging Kohinata's hammer, but its movement pattern is predictable. Every time before the hammer falls, it shifts a few meters in the opposite direction.”
“Which means—” Night Sakura looked up from behind her camera.
“We need someone to force it toward our target zone.”
Snowrealm took over. “I'll release ice spikes from the left to seal its retreat. Seina, cover the right side with a rain of arrows to herd it toward the center. Amamiya, Kohinata, wait at the center point. Once it's forced into position, deliver the deciding blow.”
“Understood.” Three arrows of light materialized simultaneously on Seina's bowstring, their tips gleaming in the dim light.
Kohinata lowered the hammer from her shoulder and gripped the handle with both hands, the orange glow on the hammerhead now blindingly bright.
“Now—block its path!”
Dozens of ice spikes shot out from Snowrealm's side, piercing the ground in a fan shape and forming a semi-circular wall of ice around the area where the underground core was trying to flee.
The ice spread rapidly, freezing all the vines attempting to break through from the left.
Immediately after, Seina's rain of arrows poured down from the right. The three arrows of light split into dozens in midair, blanketing the entire right sector like a pale purple downpour.
Forced back by the barrage of arrows, the underground core indeed changed direction, hurtling toward the position where Kohinata and Amamiya were waiting.
Kohinata raised her hammer high, sensing the entity beneath the soil rapidly drawing near.
“Here it comes!”
The moment the hammer struck, the entire hillside shuddered violently.
The soil was blasted away, leaving a crater several meters wide that exposed a corner of the underground core at its bottom.
It was a tumor-like mass wrapped in layers of dark green vines. Its surface was covered in pulsing mana lines as it frantically tried to burrow deeper.
“It didn't break—its shell is too thick!” An imperceptible trace of anxiety crept into Kohinata's voice.
“Don't stop, keep going.” Leaving her camera to run on autopilot, Night Sakura jabbed her long-handled umbrella into the ground beside her and drew the rapier concealed within its handle.
“This thing's shell is harder than it looks.” Kohinata struck again, but the dark green patterns on the core's surface only pulsed violently without showing any signs of cracking.
Amamiya's twin blades cut in from the side. The tips of her blades left only shallow scores on the core's outer shell before she was forced back by newly sprouted vines.
“It's making a desperate final stand.” Mingyue swept her scythe, severing several thick vines trying to wrap around Amamiya's ankles. “It's funneling all of its mana into defense.”
Qiluo observed the core shrinking rapidly, its mana density climbing at a visible rate.
It was withdrawing all available power to reinforce its outer shell, but this also meant it no longer had any spare energy to regenerate the vines on the surface.
Now was the time.
Just as she was about to share this assessment with the group, the detection array suddenly caught an unusual fluctuation in mana.
Star-trail looked up.
The position of the star of death in the sky had not changed, but in Star-trail's perception, its mana fluctuations and the pulsations of the underground core were throbbing at the exact same frequency.
The Eye of the End was charging this Erosion Body.
The flash just now had not been intense, its brightness shifting by only a minuscule fraction that no one on the battlefield would have noticed.
Yet, the core's mana reaction altered immediately after that flash, as if stirred from within by something.
The fact that this Erosion Body could grow to such a scale in a short time, and perfectly shield its mana signature so that even she hadn't detected it during patrols, was likely due to that wretched thing in the sky.
“The core's mana concentration is climbing rapidly,” Star-trail said, flying forward. “It's using all of its energy to reinforce its shell. If it survives this wave, it will regenerate. Don't give it room to breathe—strike continuously at the exact same spot.”
In its haste, it blurted out its inner thoughts. “Hurry, before it finishes strengthening!”
Kohinata's hammer slammed into the exact same fissure. Finally, a prominent crack spiderwebbed across the core's surface, spraying raw mana from the breach.
No one held back, for they too could sense an indescribable pressure descending from the heavens.
It was happening again.
In Star-trail's eyes, the star of death in the sky flared once more, stronger than before.
Simultaneously, the underground core's mana density spiked again in an instant, and a dark purple glow began to bleed from the edges of the crack Kohinata had smashed open.
“Its mana is backflowing—it's going to self-destruct!” Night Sakura shouted over the channel, the mana readings on her screen soaring at a terrifying rate.
“We can't let it detonate,” Mingyue's voice cut through the noise. “Kohinata, Amamiya, get back!”
She raised her scythe high above her head, her entire magic circuit lighting up in unison.
A burst of dark purple mana erupted from her body, pouring down her arms and into the blade of her scythe.
Star-trail dropped from the air, landing squarely on Mingyue's left shoulder to pump its own mana into her circuit.
Mingyue knew this was the same enhancement as before—the mana in her body blending seamlessly with Star-trail's celestial mana.
Her outfit flashed, transforming into the Celestial Form she had assumed during her previous physical exam.
A layer of silver-white light coated her scythe, as if it had been quenched in starlight.
The arc of her scythe traced a path of deep blue and silver-white across the night sky, slicing precisely into the fissure Kohinata had cracked open.
The pent-up mana inside the core was shredded by the starlight on the blade. The outer shell began to collapse from the breach, cracks spreading instantly across the entire surface of the core before it was completely swallowed by the silver-white mana.
The entire hillside fell silent.
The still-struggling vines lost all strength, drooping limply onto the piles of rubble before dissolving slowly into black mist.
Where the core had shattered, only a scorched crater remained. Starlight flickered a few times across its surface before fading entirely.
Rate on N.U.
