The world shook. The sky crackled. Valencia wailed with every clash that rang through its streets. At least for the observers, the death battles were nothing like the duels that took place within the arena's confines. The barrier was not present to guard the spectators from the backlash and damage; they felt the rattling in their bones, and some of the more fragile were immediately obliterated by the accompanying shockwaves.

Had the buildings near the battlefield been of a cheaper construction, they surely would have suffered the very same fate. But built and reinforced primarily with magic, they easily endured. The fighters, for the most part, were managing to do the same.

Gladora was the slightly worse off of the two. She had her weapons on hand, but she'd stashed her best armour back at the colosseum. The somewhat shoddy set that she'd thrown on was already full of holes. Anyone that didn't recognize her as a warrior likely would have assumed her a harlot; the leather barely held together and the damage had exposed many of her more sensitive parts. Still, she carried on, a confident grin on her face regardless.

It was hardly the first time someone had burned away her clothes in a fight. She hadn't capitulated to shame before and she didn't see any reason for that to change, especially not with so many citizens still watching; they'd evacuated further in the time that she stalled, but their eyes were still fixed upon her.

If she was to serve as one of their champions, then she could hardly back away from a duel in public, even if she was on the back foot. Much to her chagrin, the enemy was simply more powerful. None of her slashes made it past the flowery blade that was the pig girl's defense. Her rapid regeneration was the only reason she still lived.

Leutgar was in much the same boat. The elf chased the mage through the air, his blades and body becoming bolts of lightning as he delivered a million slashes. But even with his arc plasma striking her head on, he did no notable damage. The bolts harmlessly bounced off of the barrier formed by her wings, leaving not so much as a scratch on her person.

The two shifted gears in tandem.

Leutgar activated the ability that boosted all of his stats, while Gladora engaged her racial class' signature ability. The mass drained from her oversized muscle fibres. She went from being twice the width of a regular centaur to looking the part of a well-toned fighter. The change suggested a shift in gears, but if there was any such change, it was too small to note. The lion's share of the boost had gone straight to her brute strength, while its secondary effect focused on her flexibility. Most notable of all, however, was not the bonus to her raw numbers, but the enchantment applied to her attacks. Every single time she struck, her opponent was subject to a knock back.

It moved her a fixed distance, exactly twelve meters in the direction that Gladora was looking regardless of the force or angle of her swing. The alliance warrior opened her eyes wide when the effect first kicked in. Flying backwards, she collided with a small tree and activated the knockback's secondary effect.

It was a chunk of systemic damage; her maximum health was shaved away, decreased by a flat ten percent of its total value. And at the same time, her movements were slowed. A numbing agent spread through her limbs, dulling her reactions as Gladora went for the kill.

All she needed to do was slam her axe into the enemy a few dozen more times. Each would splat her against the tree or ground, rob her life force, and weaken her even further.

But Gladora was given no such opportunity.

A storm of petals danced through the air in the midst of her charge. Glistening beneath the moon and shimmering beneath the lightning, they looked not even the slightest bit out of place. Perhaps, if Gladora knew about her enemy's designation, she would have been more cautious, but she charged straight through the withering blizzard, and emerged with her body torn to shreds.

It wasn't like the petals had cut her.

It was nothing that crude.

They had simply dug into her skin, grown fresh roots, and ripped her flesh away.

Gladora immediately began to regenerate, but a dozen magical harpoons bore into her body as soon as she was healed and sapped away more of her strength.

She grimaced. Leutgar was supposed to be distracting the mage. But looking up in the sky, she found him plummeting to the ground unconscious. He'd somehow lost his duel in no time flat.

Cursing, she expelled her enemy's magic from her body and dug in her feet, but another three waves pelted her before she could fully recover. It was starting to look like her time was up. She didn't have the necessary tools to turn the battle around.

"You seem to be having a bit of a rough time."

But the magic that bound her was immediately dispelled.

Looking towards its source, she found a cottontail mage with a hat too big for her head. Gladora recognized her immediately. She saw her posters all over town growing up and remembered the many speeches she'd given.

She was the Grand Magus—the mightiest of all pure mages.

"Allegra Cedr."

"Good evening," said the rabbit, with a smile. "Would you like me to drive them off in your place?"

"That'd be great," said Gladora, with a cough. "I owe you one."

"Don't worry," said the rabbit. "I'll make sure to carry on your will."

Gladora didn't catch on to the odd phrasing until it was too late. A spell erupted from within her skull and splattered her brain throughout its interior.

The last thought she had was to kick herself in the rear.

In her desperation, she'd forgotten that Allegra had joined the enemy.

The rabbit flicked her wand as if to clear it of a nonexistent bloodstain before sending a pulse of mana into her surroundings. It was the same spell that Virillius was using to monitor the city, only on a much smaller scale. Allegra's mind was sharper than most, but she wasn't that much of a monster. The spell read everything in its range and reported it back in vivid detail. Processing all the information was a sisyphean effort. Allegra typically opted for a lighterweight variant—she could process a block's worth of unfiltered data at most—but given the number of unknowns, she'd erred on the side of caution.

Thankfully, her scan confirmed that Leutgar was truly unconscious. She would have had to eliminate him had he witnessed Gladora's culling and she would have preferred not to waste his talent.

To that end, she cast a recovery spell. It was the usual kind, a searing ray of light that would burn her enemies and bestow their health upon her allies. And coincidentally, there happened to be a pair of hostiles standing directly in front of her.

It looked like they had intended to speak, likely to question the motive behind Gladora's removal, but Allegra had no intention of entertaining their idiocy.

She ordered her sunbeams to cut through the night and shine directly on their bodies.

The mage nearly reacted in time. Recognizing that her wings wouldn't suffice in blocking the damage, she threw up a last-minute barrier, but Allegra deleted it with a counterspell before it could even manifest. It was custom-made on the fly; she designed and activated a brand new magic simply by reading the flow of her opponent's mana and predicting the most likely output.

The Kryddarian gasped and threw up her hands, but she didn't have the time to put up another shield. The heavenly rays had already crossed the heavens. They weren't taking a straight line path. They bounced around the skies, reflecting off one another as they were concentrated into a single beam of all-consuming annihilation. It was a lengthy, thousand-stage process. But even so, the lightspeed projectile far outpaced the royal moth's brain.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The world melted. The earth and stone that lay beneath the city was turned straight into plasma. Even with her incredible resistance to magic, the Kryddarian found it hard not to follow suit. Her wings charred, her flesh bubbled, and her innards boiled into oblivion. Likewise, her partner was blackened. Even with her petals to guard her, she was instantly turned from a Kollondite warrior to an overcooked pig. Her fat sizzled and evaporated, leaving her as a dried out husk covered in flabby loose skin.

The spell was as powerful as the one that the moth had cast on Gladora despite lacking the mana cost and mythological association. Rather than working off pure magic, the Grand Magus had used physics to amplify her might.

The cottontail could have easily layered on a few other attacks, but she didn't bother. She turned to Leutgar instead, threw a barrier over his freshly-healed body, and even adjusted her hat, just to make sure she was presentable, before turning her wand to the invaders once more.

As was to be expected of a pair of aspects, neither had quite died from the attack. Though they lacked the Cadrian ability to regenerate in a heartbeat, both were visibly healing; a few odd minutes was all it would take for them to fix their flesh.

The enemy mage raised her staff and prepared a healing spell, but Allegra read and negated it before it could take effect. Hrefna immediately cast a dozen more, each with a few slight differences, but they too were immediately erased. Each time, the rabbit crafted the exact formation she needed to invalidate the other caster's efforts.

The warrior wasn't quite as easy to stall. She quickly grabbed a potion off her belt, crunched it between her jaws, and returned to peak condition. She charged Allegra right after, but a diamond wall sprung up between them. She slashed at the stone with her blossom sword, leaving deep gashes each time, but another barrier spawned just before she broke down the first. She spun around and looked for another angle of attack, but more diamonds rose with every turn, eventually closing her in a cage from which there was no escape.

Allegra cast a shrinking spell on the makeshift enclosure, dooming the invader to a slow, crushing death and dispelled yet another one of the enemy mage's techniques. It was another fire spell, a roaring inferno that would have impressed anyone else. But while the fiery vortex certainly required a complex, expensive incantation, it was dismissed as readily as ever.

Biting her lips, the Kryddarian negated the enchantment threatening her partner before launching into her mythical spell again. It was risky. Allegra could easily attack her before she finished the cast, but Hrefna continued regardless. There was no way that the Grand Magus, in all her infinite hubris, would back down from the challenge. She would probably try to put up one of her silly, half-magical defenses, forgetting that Dawnbreaker's Wrath could burn all of creation.

It took all of three seconds, an unfathomably long time for the silly cottontail to stand still.

And yet, the circle was broken.

It didn't make any sense.

Breaking a spell had two conditions. The first was for the caster to fully understand the spell. That part was at least believable. The Grand Magus was known for having a wealth of knowledge, and while absurdly complex, the goddess' algorithms were not truly impossible to interpret.

Far more unbelievable was the second condition's fulfillment. Casting a counterspell required parsing and writing out the original spell's formula, supplying the necessary mana, and then reversing the actualization effect. It was effectively the same as casting the spell with an additional instruction. Allegra had shown no sign of even trying to cast.

It was absurd, absolutely insane given that she was using a wand. Not even the best among the shorter magical catalysts could do any more than halve the cost. Hrefna herself was wielding one of the accursed war goddess' spiders. The living staff cut mana requirements by upwards of 95%. And even then, it cost 250 billion points. Without it, casting the spell would've been impossible and Allegra's body clearly didn't radiate nearly as much magic as hers.

She didn't understand.

It didn't make any sense.

Allegra had not just completed the counterspell. She'd completed it in an instant.

The cottontail mage raised her wand to the sky, only furthering Hrefna's disbelief as she wordlessly twirled her magical catalyst in a circle and formed the exact spell that she had just broken. It was already fully charged. Ready to go at a moment's notice.

Eyes opening wide, Hrefna lifted her giant mana jug, emptied it into her stomach, and started chanting as quickly as she could.

But then, she stopped and fell still, eyes open wide as the Grand Magus flicked her wand again and integrated Dawnbreaker's Wrath into an even larger magic circle.

Allegra lowered her wand as soon as the spell settled.

And brought the full force of a newborn sun down upon them.

A dozen system messages fired at once, registering into the logs of everyone nearby. Anyone who read them would surely have discovered that the system's automatic protections had engaged and guarded the planet against a threat. But that much was clear from the shield that appeared in the sky.

It was a giant, grid-like barrier that extended from horizon to horizon. Thinner lines extended between the thicker ones, forming smaller and smaller grids. The smallest had exactly a centimeter of distance between them; they were woven to ensure that no world-ending object would be able to sneak its way through. They were so meticulously spaced and drawn that they inherently revealed their origin; they could only have been crafted by the goddess of order.

Allegra's spell vanished the moment that it touched the shield.

It wasn't bounced back or otherwise exploded.

It simply disappeared.

Such was the fate of any spell too powerful, anything that would permanently disfigure the planet and leave its mark upon the inhabitants. And such was the fate that awaited any truly powerful spell—the reason that even the mages of old had pursued complicated spellwork over demonstrations of brute strength.

Not waiting for her opponent to regain her senses, Allegra immediately drew another circle and crafted a magical domain. To those not caught within, it was a dark sphere, a splotch of ink upon the world's canvas that spanned only the distance between the combatants. But to its victims, it was an alternate dimension twice the city's size.

The combatants themselves were placed just outside of a fortress—a small, defensive construct built in Northern Cadria. At the time, it was near the border, near the northernmost front where the cottontails and centaurs held against the thoraen threat. In modern times, it sat square in the Imbrex County, one full state south of the now Postumus domain that eventually came to border the mountains.

In the realm, it was slightly later in summer, just a few days before the shift to autumn. The leaves were starting to yellow and loose their fervour. But the thoraen threat rang strong, as was evidenced by the troops advancing on the fortress.

The alliance's invaders were among them, mere soldiers in the crowd that moved as ordered.

They stood out on account of their non-thoraen shape, but that changed as they continued to march. Slowly but surely, their bodies took on the insectoid features, until they were but common thoraen rabble. Their abilities were, likewise, warped and changed, reduced to match that of the average soldier.

The only one who retained her progress was Allegra herself.

And she alone stood in front of the fort, ready to unleash a spell made specifically for the purposes of widespread slaughter. It was a highly reactive cloud of curses guaranteed to exterminate all who held even the faintest hint of thoraen blood.

A spell that would would lead to their genocide.

All Allegra needed to do was lower her wand.

But her realm was invaded.

The veil suddenly cracked open. A tired-looking human entered after a brief delay. He appeared as would a typical member of his species, albeit not of the common variety found on the northern half of Pria. His tawny, chocolate skin was indicative of a human from the great desert, or perhaps another continent altogether.

He looked middle-aged; streaks of grey could be seen running through his short but wavy hair, the bottom half of his face was covered by stubble, and one could see crow's feet forming at the corners of his eyes. If unascended, he probably would have been around forty.

Allegra furrowed her brow and immediately switched up her magic.

She cast two spells at once. The first was the one that the goddess denied—a classic loophole dictated that her realm was not subject to the same protections as the rest of the world—while the second was her most reliable ars magna. Scripture of the Sun allowed her to take her goddess' form and manifest the concept of ignition.

But all the man did was yawn.

Walking through the crowd, he pinpointed his allies, knocked them out with near invisible blows, and threw them over his shoulders. The sun bore down upon him—them—but he rejected it with a kick. It wasn't a superpowered attack backed by magic, but just a simple leg raise. That was all it took for him to burst the falling star and send it exploding into the sky. Everything else caught fire instead. The fortress was practically melted by the heat while the world became an apocalyptic hellscape. There was fire everywhere, nothing that wasn't burning, rendering, bubbling into tar.

Except for maybe the phoenix gunning for his throat. Looking at his occupied hands and sighing, the man caught her midcharge with a headbutt and knocked her to the ground. He frowned when his bangs caught fire. The flames were meant to be eternal and all-consuming. Anything they touched was supposed to be caught in a violent conflagration and burn until there was nothing left. But he put them out with a casual puff.

"Sorry." He yawned. "But I can't have you killing these two just yet."

A light stomp shattered the cottontail's realm, but she was the only one brought back to reality. The bronze-skinned man had already vanished and taken his allies away.

Such was the power of the self-proclaimed walking ambulance—the guardian angel that served as the alliance's hero of restoration.

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