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Wind whispered through the ravaged clearing, carrying ash and fragments into the air as if the earth itself recoiled. Rubble drifted weightlessly around the two figures, suspended in defiance of gravity. Their clash's sheer force bent the fabric of the world, muting natural law—shattering absolutes, distorting divinity, and unraveling the will of sentient thought itself.

From a distance, it resembled a radiant dome of sanctity—gleaming with divine poise and unwavering self-righteousness. Yet tendrils of scarlet and black coiled through its purity, corrupting it inch by inch. The dome pulsed and expanded, a slow, contested invasion that met resistance at every boundary as if the sanctified space itself fought to repel the encroaching blight.

Inside the eye of the storm, moments of eerie serenity shattered beneath successive ruptures—each blast sharper, more unforgiving than the one before. Marisia carved through the swirling haze like a rapier, a symphony of precision, wrath, and elegance fused into a singularly destructive force. Her eyes blazed with primal satisfaction, and beneath the shifting glow of chaos, her marble-white skin flushed with thrill, reminding her of times of no worry.

'Yes, that's it,' she mused excitedly, slipping into a trance where thought dissolved and instinct reigned. Her body moved with eerie autonomy, each motion steeped in violent grace. Distilled madness radiated from her armor—etched grooves shimmered, and shifting plates writhed with [Energy], pulsating like awakened parasites clawing free from their cocoons.

Marisia's tail danced like a war banner caught in a stellar gale, tracing the arc of every strike. Her martial display was not just technique—it was ritual violence, and every blow echoed outward like the drums of liberty marking the unraveling of order.

She unleashed technique after technique in a relentless storm—clawed strikes charged with [Energy] tore through the air while her body flowed from one motion to the next, pivoting into devastating kicks that shattered the ground beneath her. She twisted and contorted like a serpent wreathed in flame, evading counterstrikes with impossible finesse. Each movement embodied the wild elegance and unpredictable rhythm of the Leonandra martial arts—an art forged not for form but for survival through chaos.

No ordinary opponent could have withstood such a relentless onslaught—only a guardian angel, its form flowing with sovereign elegance and its blade shimmering with sanctified light. It intercepted each strike with uncanny precision, every movement fluid and seamless, like a single unbroken technique unfolding endlessly. The angel's steps and counters painted luminous streaks through the air, composing a deadly ballet—refined, ethereal, and exacting—as though it were not wielding the blade but was the blade given divine motion.

Throughout the devastating exchanges, there was no flicker of frustration nor a glimmer of triumph—only unwavering stoicism. Its form was sculpted like living marble, flawless and cold. Its eyes blazed white, rimmed with golden light, and its long hair drifted like silk in a breathless wind. An uncanny beauty clung to the figure, its naked body less a summoned vessel and more a masterwork—divine art in motion, untainted by mortal emotion.

Chaos clashed with order in a duel that felt ripped from the pages of a myth, a battle of fable and fury. They exchanged not mere strikes but philosophies in motion—dozens of techniques, hundreds of intricate moves, each one a brushstroke of lethal artistry. Every slash, every graze, every flicker of contact was intentional and unrelenting. Tails and wings spun in spiraling arcs, dancing around each other in a seamless storm of motion, their bodies locked in a rhythm that never faltered, never ceased.

For Marisia—thrust into the role of Architect of Warfare—this clash was freedom. Her mind emptied in the blur of motion and purpose, leaving only the purity of combat. But all clarity must meet its edge, and ending this dance proved far more elusive than expected. Each strike from the angel was a sanctified, radiant, and merciless abomination, denying her even the narrowest opening for a decisive blow. Yet the symmetry held—no matter how flawless the angel's counter, Marisia deflected or absorbed it with equal poise. Her armor forged through pain and will, stood on equal footing with the holiness's own arsenal.

'Huh?' As she slipped past another devastating strike, Marisia caught the flicker of the angel's gaze shifting—drawn not to her but toward the Saint. The earlier glimmer of arrogance had vanished, replaced by something more wary and calculating. The Saint, meanwhile, was far from idle—engulfed in her own struggle. Lili hovered nearby like a shadow given hunger, a spectral predator offering no reprieve, keeping the Saint under relentless pressure.

Each time the Saint tried to retreat and call upon a healing or protective skill, Lili was already there—swift, spectral, and unrelenting—closing the distance with uncanny precision. The Saint's liquefied, swirling staff offered only fleeting defense, barely fending off her assailant's sharp, adaptive movements. Lili's newfound spells and techniques bent expectations, her flexibility matching the Saint's skills in unpredictable ways. It left the Saint breathless, scrambling for strategy, unable to form a coherent plan beneath the unyielding pressure.

Patient and precise, Marisia activated [Mana Overload (Body)]. Her already formidable frame ignited with raw force, amplifying the strain to excruciating levels. The flicker of the angel's gaze was all the signal she needed—she surged forward, clawed gloves shining with destructive [Energy], her intent as sharp as the edge of fate itself.

Sensing her rising momentum, the guardian angel's wings flared open with surgical grace. Glowing runes etched into each feather pulsed as they detached, slicing through the air like divine arrows. Their trajectory was flawless—each piercing shot tearing a brilliant, destructive path through the jungle, uprooting trees and carving trenches in the earth like celestial wrath made manifest.

Marisia expected nothing less—she slipped between the incoming feathers with sinuous precision, her spine bending and stretching like a viper in mid-strike. Her armor flexed and shifted to support her contortions, feeding off her momentum, but even with its aid, a few divine feathers grazed her—sharp, searing reminders of just how narrow the risk she took could be.

"Humph!" Her [Energy]-laced claws tore across the guardian angel's shoulder, carving a shallow gouge into its immaculate flesh. She dropped low, narrowly evading the angel's retaliatory slash—the sheer force of it warping the air around her like heat off molten metal. In a seamless motion, she twisted into a sharp backkick, knocking the radiant blade off course. "I don't know why you're here," she growled, retreating just in time as a second divine strike scorched a hole into the earth beside her. "But the Church will pay for meddling in Moorgrel's affairs!"

The guardian angel staggered back several steps, its wings flaring wide in reflex as scorched feathers shimmered and began to regenerate. Its once impassive face curled into an expression of disdainful arrogance. "Moorgrel?" it spat, the name like poison on its tongue, its voice reverberating across the battlefield like judgment made sound. "The Hero has no use for vermin like you."

This response unsettled Marisia more than she expected. It was true that the Church and beast kin had long been locked in bitter, generational conflict, their animosity deeply woven into history. Yet over time, some human kingdoms and border territories had brokered ceasefires, seeking to grow stronger by aligning themselves with beast kin through neutrality and diplomacy. These factions acted as intermediaries, threading the line between alliance and opportunism.

Moorgrel respected such agreements. While it was acceptable to skirmish with the Church on neutral ground or face the occasional rogue zealot, sending a Saint directly into an active warzone was tantamount to declaring war. No laws were broken, but custom held just as much weight in these lands.

'This is going to be... a long letter,' Marisia muttered under her breath, frowning behind her helmet as the guardian angel continued its sermon. She readied her next strike, dreading the report she'd have to send to her Master about a Saint appearing in her jurisdiction. The mere thought brought a weight to her chest. 'I hate my reign,' she admitted inwardly, tension knotting her spine. She had inherited a mess: an overambitious mother who nearly bankrupted the fief with her schemes, a borderline deranged son and heir whose radical ideas even the Count was unable to address, and a husband whose quiet but persistent religious ties were weaving themselves into the fabric of their land. Eastward Leonandra had become a volatile crucible of ideology and ambition—a boiling cauldron of factions and beliefs with no sign of cooling, only rising pressure, waiting to burst.

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"And as my Hero said—"

She smiled—subtly and sharply—the moment her preparations clicked into place. Before the guardian angel could finish its pompous tirade, threads of scarlet and black fur burst from the ground, slithering upward like sentient vines. They wrapped around the angel's calf with unnatural speed, piercing porcelain flesh and anchoring it in place. Marisia's lips curled into something far more dangerous. "The Hero should," she hissed, her voice charged with venomous conviction. A tremor ran through her frame as surging [Energy] coursed into her limbs; her torso armor split along the seams as her muscles expanded violently beneath it. "Then he'd best be ready to die young."

She pounced, materializing in a blink before the immobilized guardian angel. Hatred twisted its features, but it had yet to comprehend how dire its position had become. "Suit yourself," the angel spat, its voice booming with divine finality. Reality buckled—the radiance from its sword erupted in a torrent of holy fire, and time itself seemed to pause as waves of sanctified [Energy] surged outward. The sheer weight of its domain crushed the air, blanketing every living thing for miles in oppressive, searing light. "Enough playing around."

Time fractured—Marisia found herself frozen, every muscle locked in place as the world slipped into suspended stillness. Her gaze locked on the guardian angel's blade, inching toward her neck with excruciating slowness. A sick twist of dread curled in her gut. The sword vibrated violently, its form shuddering under the strain of the overwhelming domain as if even divinity struggled to hold the moment together.

She tracked the faintest shifts through her [Mana Sense], the only signals reaching her as the rest of reality stood frozen in place. Coherent thought was nearly impossible—her mind flooded with raw mana in a desperate attempt to maintain awareness. The overload pounded behind her eyes, a migraine blooming into something dangerously close to collapse.

'I knew it,' Marisia thought, watching in horror as the slash accelerated with terrifying inevitability toward her neck. 'The damn stories were true.' She had heard the tales—whispers of the ancient bloodshed between the Church and the Moorgrelian Knightages, of warriors slaughtering each other in droves, desperate to overcome impossible powers. Among those records, multiple chilling accounts always stood out: a power that could kill instantly, without warning or understanding. Through brutal trial and error, strategists theorized that it was a time-stopping ability that was nearly impossible to counter. But not entirely. 'Come on,' she urged herself. 'Work!'

The guardian angel's movement blurred into near invisibility, a streak of divine force propelled by inexorable will. "Farewell," it intoned, each syllable dragging through the frozen air like the tolling of judgment bells across a silent battlefield. "May you—"

Something fractured—time, space, or perhaps both—as a fleeting crack opened in the frozen moment. Marisia twisted at the last heartbeat. The angel's flaming blade missed a clean decapitation by mere inches, instead tearing into her helmet with a screech of rending metal, carving a savage groove across her eye. Her head snapped back as the blow half-shattered her helm, but it held—barely. A numbing calm, too serene to be natural, began to seep into her mind like a drug, threatening to smother thought. Only the tattoo etched into her skin—her last failsafe—flared to life, and with the surge of stored [Energy], she pushed the invading stillness back with agonizing effort.

Clawing at the ground for leverage, she flashed through space several times, reappearing at a distance—just far enough to collapse to one knee, gritting her teeth in agony. Her mind felt like a warzone, assaulted by [Divine Energy] that mirrored her own but carried a foreign, invasive intent. Something about it had changed—it was stronger now, exponentially so. It pressed against her thoughts, whispering distortions, unraveling her focus. Even her iron-willed discipline wavered momentarily, a flicker of madness brushing the edge of her consciousness like a shadow testing the walls of a fragile fortress.

Gazing at the guardian angel with her one good eye—blood streaking from the ruined half of her helm—Marisia felt the hollow victory of a barely-survived plan. 'I owe Alex for that one,' she thought, forcing herself upright, her body trembling like a fraying wire stretched to its limit. Her mind seethed with chaos—a battlefield of madness and eerie calm, bloodlust clashing with resignation. 'Here it comes,' she murmured inwardly, a bitter smile curling beneath the pain, bracing herself for whatever followed.

After the failed confrontation, the guardian angel's expression twisted—triumph, bleeding into confusion. The strain of maintaining the holy domain, of anchoring itself against the unraveling of time and space, proved too great. Its form began to flicker erratically, phasing in and out of existence. Thousands of runes etched into its wings shimmered, then blurred like smudged ink, their structure collapsing, destabilizing the sacred anchor that bound it. "What—"

'Time is relative,' Marisia murmured, stepping carefully as the guardian angel's form spasmed, no longer fully under its own command. 'But mana... it's abstract—unbound by the laws of the physical world.' She didn't fully grasp the depth of that truth. Still, she immediately saw the tactical implications, the military potential unfolding like a map in her mind—the guardian angel being the first victim.

It became a matter of time once Marisia embedded herself into the guardian angel's defenses. 'At last,' she thought, a grim smile tugging at her lips—she couldn't deny the flicker of sadistic satisfaction at watching divinity unravel—ironic as she felt not much better. The angel's limbs grew leaden, its thoughts thickening into fog. Scarlet-black tendrils etched themselves across its marmor-like flesh, like living veins of corruption, gnawing through its once-pristine exterior. It struggled to lift its blade for another strike, but the effort was sluggish, disconnected—its own body resisting divine command.

Looking down, its eyes widened with dread as it finally noticed the source it had foolishly overlooked—only to be cut off by Marisia's voice, her glare sharp enough to cleave steel. "About time," she rasped, breath ragged. "It usually doesn't take this long for my [Energy] to finish consuming something divine."

Fury and panic clashed in the angel's eyes as it recognized the crippling [Energy] corrupting its divine core. With a desperate slash—draining the last of its strength—it severed the fur entwined around its leg. But the damage was done. It reached inward, scrambling to summon [Divine Energy], to tap into its reserves—only to feel nothing. Every attempt fizzled into failure. Scarlet-black veins spread across its wings and torso like living sigils of suppression, sealing its powers with merciless finality.

Marisia spared a precious moment to stem the bleeding from her eye. With deliberate focus, she wove thin, glowing filaments of [Energy], stitching the wound with practiced precision while a basic healing spell dulled the searing pain. 'The mana really did its work,' she thought, gritting her teeth as she cinched the threads tight. 'Combining my [Energy] with mana wasn't just clever—it was powerful.'

Her parasitic [Energy] had frozen—immobile, inert. But the threads she had fused with mana? They moved freely, unbound by temporal or spatial constraints. That fusion had become something new—something that slipped past the rigid rules of divinity. Once such mana-based techniques spread, they would offer a revolutionary answer to the so-called absolutes of holy power.

Did the Moorgrelian Knightages rely on it as a crutch, something essential to their survival? Hardly. Their only true weakness had always been themselves. Holiness existed as a countermeasure against vile, corrupting forces—fiendish [Energy] meant to spread agony and ruin. But [Wild Demonic Energy] was different. Despite its ominous name, it was neither evil nor unclean—simply untamed, deeply mortal, and unmistakably pure.

Once acquired, it became a force driven not by virtue or vice but by desire itself—untouched by concepts of good or evil, greed or lust, will or morality. It held the potential to usher in bliss or ruin, yet neither outcome stemmed from divine intent. It was purely mortal. And in that, it mirrored mana—a power just as emotionless, just as scientific and exacting. Stoic, distant, and unbound by sacred doctrine, the two energies seemed made for each other—an almost perfect fit forged by mortal hands, not gods.

She cast her gaze over the immobilized guardian angel, a quiet satisfaction stirring as memories of her relentless training flickered through her mind. Mastering the [Living Weapon—Technique] had demanded more than brute strength—it had required anatomical precision, a deep intuition for [Energy] flow, and the willingness to endure pain as both teacher and cost.

Her [Divinity Line] wasn't meant for direct warfare; it leaned toward emotional sway, resilience, and command. But she had forged a new path, reshaping her limits through sheer resolve. That discipline—layered in blood, exhaustion, and unrelenting focus—had granted her the rare skill to rot an enemy from the inside out, precise and unforgiving.

But her moment of triumph shattered under a shrill, panicked cry: "Get away from me, you mutt!" Across the fractured jungle, Luze-Ferris—the Saint in training—reeled beneath Lili's unrelenting barrage, her defenses unraveling as desperation overtook discipline.

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