The air above the battlefield hung heavy with the suffocating stench of ozone, blood, and scorched flesh. The laws of physics were being torn apart and rewritten on the spot by pure, brute force.
Balamore stood at the absolute epicenter of this cosmic chaos. The totem gem on his chest no longer pulsed with a simple glint; the artifact dug into the surrounding energy with a possessed, hungry fury, acting like a black hole that sucked all matter toward itself. Because he was a living, walking totem, awakened right here on the battlefield by the earring, the logic of his powers operated completely differently than anything the world had ever seen. He was no longer bound to the spirit of a single creature; he had become a living beacon that channeled the pure primordial might of the specific totem beasts from this exact area. His channel beast human form manifested with terrifying, razor-sharp precision. Jet silver, metallic scales broke through his skin with a loud, icy snapping sound. They gleamed like liquid, polished steel, forming an impenetrable armor modeled after The Ward, the legendary and feared dragon of this world. His pupils narrowed into razor-thin, vertical slits emitting a glowing, golden heat. With every heavy breath he exhaled, a thick, glowing vapor escaped his mouth, instantly scorching, blackening, and splitting the ground beneath his boots.
This overwhelming presence acted as a pure catalyst on everyone fighting by his side. The bystanders became fully hyped and spontaneously ignited, their bodies drenched in a sudden shockwave of pure adrenaline and untamable energy. For the allies standing around him, muscles tightened to the absolute limit, veins pumped thick on their foreheads, and the blades of their swords began to resonate so violently that the surrounding air trembled. Warriors who were on the verge of collapse just moments ago cast their eyes wide open as a deep blue fire aura with meters-high flames shot from their pores. Lightning bolted wildly across their arms and jumped to their weapons, while the earth beneath their feet tore open with deep cracks to make way for churning streams of energy. The entire field of vision transformed into a blinding sea of raw, unleashed destruction.
In the middle of this roaring storm of light and violence, the faces of Miki and Ren lit up with pure, intense relief. Their eyes grew large, and all fear vanished from their bodies in an instant.
"BIG BRO BALA!!" Miki roared with a vocal cord-shredding scream that easily thundered across the entire battlefield, shaking the enemy lines. "WE FELT YOUR PRESENCE FROM AFAR!! I KNEW IT!!"
Before the echo of her own scream could fade into the rising plumes of smoke, Miki turned toward Ren with an arrogant, triumphant rotgrijns. She immediately began talking trash to his face with utter bravado, her eyes glistening with pure greed. "I TOLD YOU HE WOULD COME BACK!! THAT IS TWO PASTRIES FOR ME!! YOU ARE GONNA PAY, REN!! RIGHT NOW, NO MORE EXCUSES!!"
At that exact moment, the entire dynamics on the field shifted. The intense pressure of the war dropped away for a fraction of a second against the intense shame of this absurd bet. All surrounding allies and even a few bewildered enemies held their breath for a moment. The eyes of dozens of warriors simultaneously locked onto Ren with mockery, disbelief, and grinning faces. Ren froze completely, his entire body locking into a cramp as big, thick beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. With a dead-serious, pale, and utterly desperate look, he immediately shifted his focus to Silarias. His eyes begged for mercy, a non-verbal scream cutting through space: PLEASE SILARIAS, HELP ME OUT OF THIS!! SAVE ME FROM THESE PASTRIES AND THIS SHAME, KNOCK ME OUT, DO SOMETHING, I BEG YOU!!
But the enemy granted them not a single second of respite to breathe. Everything began to detonate at a murderous pace. Brother Sanguis, the Manic Monk, had completely lost control of his own psyche. His eyes were terrifyingly rolled back in his sockets so that only the whites showed, and thick, white foam coated his beard as he swung his gigantic, blood-smeared weapons around like a madman.
"MORE BLOOD!! THE PURIFICATION DEMANDS MORE FLESH!! I WILL REAP YOU ALL FOR THE SLAUGHTER!!" Sanguis raged with a hoarse, insane voice, while a toxic, deep red aura of pure, unadulterated madness sprayed upward from all his pores.
His manic fury, however, was abruptly and mercilessly crushed in the bud. From his blind spots on either side, Balamore and Izamaru flashed toward him with an unreal, blinding speed. They moved in terrifyingly perfect synchronicity, unbreakably linked by the blood of their own tribe. This was their family tribe combo attack, a technique perfected over generations. Izamaru launched himself razor-sharp and extremely low to the ground, his drawn sword cloaked in a jet-black, shadowy tribal energy that blurred and distorted the texture of reality around him. Simultaneously, Balamore came crashing down from above like an all-destroying meteor, his silver dragon-scaled fists heavily charged with the golden, all-consuming heat of The Ward.
"Tribal Combo: Cleaving of the Earth Spirit!!" their voices echoed loudly in perfect, spine-chilling harmony.
With a brute, circular motion, Izamaru hacked away the legs and the entire red aura beneath Sanguis, causing the Manic Monk to lose his balance completely and hang helplessly in the air. At that exact fraction of a second, Balamore slammed both fists directly onto Sanguis's sternum from above. The impact was deafening, a dry, hard crack that went through bone and marrow. A massive shockwave of golden and black light exploded outward, causing the solid ground within a ten-meter radius to sink deeply into a perfect crater. Bones splintered audibly on all sides as Sanguis was smashed flat against the rocks, his weapons shattering into pieces, leaving him motionless and completely incapacitated in the rising dust.
On the other side of the front, Apollo and Nicola advanced in perfect, intimidating synchronicity. Their heavy steps left deep craters in the hard earth, and their weapons lit up with a murderous, terrifying intensity. They charged with drawn blades straight toward Qayin and Herr Von Jacko. Their goal was simple and ruthless: to cleave and crush the False Bard with his trumpet and his master in one single, destructive stroke.
Qayin looked up and saw absolute, icy death flash in their eyes. Pure panic immediately struck like ice into his bones. Without hesitating for even a fraction of a second, he broke formation, left Herr Von Jacko entirely to his fate, and took off on a frantic, panicky run straight toward Maelo Poro.
"We need to get out of here, right now!!" Qayin screamed, his voice cracking with pure, unadulterated death anxiety as he stumbled over loose stones. "There is no chance of success left!! This is no longer a fight, this has become a slaughterhouse!! Maelo, run!!"
Sancta Valeria, the False Saint, absolutely refused to listen. Her religious fanaticism had long since warped into a deep, unhealthy obsession. She activated her holy powers to the absolute limit and shifted into an extreme speed mode. Before the eyes of the spectators, she transformed into a white-gold, flashing beam of light that began running circles around the entire battlefield at an insane, blinding speed. Her velocity was so inhumanly high that dozens of her afterimages lit up all around, slicing sharply through the dust and completely obstructing everyone's vision. With a loud, hysterical, and spine-chilling shriek, she launched herself hard off the ground, her body propelled in a gigantic, predatory leap straight toward the exposed Ren and Miki. Her fingers were curved like the talons of a bird of prey, ready to slit their throats in a single motion.
Midway through her flight, her momentum was stopped with a brute, ruthless blow. A heavy, mud-caked boot planted itself with terrifying and devastating force right into her face. The sickening sound of her breaking nasal bone and jaws echoed across the entire field as she was kicked entirely out of the air. She flew backward meters through the sky, her face plowing hard through the dirt and stones.
"Hahahaa… And what exactly were you planning?!" the mocking, icy, and arrogant voice sounded above her. "Attacking little children? You are incredibly easy to read and see through… Pff… 'Holy' my ass. The only thing I see here are slow minorities who think they can fly and amount to something."
Sancta Valeria scrambled to her feet from the mud with trembling, furious limbs. Thick, dark blood streamed in torrents from her completely deformed and crookedly kicked face, her once spotless holy veil now drenched in filth and gore. Every ounce of reason or human sanity vanished completely from her glowing eyes.
"YOU DARE DEFILE ME?! PURIFICATION BY THE ABSOLUTE LIGHT!!" she shrieked with a voice that tore eardrums, and unchained her holy form on the spot. A blinding, unstable, and flickering white light sprayed with immense power from all her pores, so intense that it literally scorched and burned away the surrounding shadows on the walls and the ground.
In the background, half-faded by the thick, black plumes of smoke rising from the ground, the voice of Maelo Poro echoed one last time, desperate and with a cracking tone: "Miss, we must leave now!! The priest is on a suicidal path!! If we leave them behind here, we are all irrevocably doomed, listen to me!!"
From the thick smoke came no reaction whatsoever. Not a sound, absolutely nothing, no sign of life. Sancta Valeria did not even hear it anymore; her entire consciousness and mind had completely narrowed down to an all-consuming bloodlust. While the chaos on the battlefield reached its absolute boiling point, Qayin and Maelo made clever use of the blinding light and disappeared silently and quickly, fleeing into the dark background.
Sancta Valeria now stood entirely alone in the center, her body hovering just a meter above the ground, completely glowing in the white-hot, unstable light that crackled terrifyingly. But then, her skin suddenly and unnaturally began to burst. Deep, jet-black cracks pulled like lightning bolts across her face, her neck, and her bare arms. The pure light pouring out of her began to rot before everyone's eyes, changing from gleaming white-gold to a rancid, ashen, and dead gray.
"Yess… My voice has been heard!! The heavens finally answer me!! I am the chosen one!!" she cried out in pure, insane, and terrifying ecstasy, her arms spread wide toward the jet-black clouds above her.
Then the light died out abruptly and completely. An icy, sinister, rancid, and deeply demonic laughter suddenly began to seep through the physical cracks of her own body and reality itself. It was a heavy, echoing, and guttural sound that cut deep into the stomach, a sound that made the soul of every living being on the battlefield shudder with pure horror. This was anything but the sound of a loving god; this was the laughter of a Hellish Demon from the deepest pits of the underworld.
The reality of Sancta Valeria shattered into a thousand sharp pieces with a loud, deafening imaginary sound of breaking glass. Thick, white foam now began to form on her lips in massive quantities from pure, total shock and disbelief. Her pupils shrank away into minuscule, terrifying pinpricks as she stared with open mouth at her own mutating and distorting hands. "No… This is not… This cannot be true… This is not the voice of the creator… Why?!" she stammered with a trembling, faltering voice into which total realization forced its way.
"Thank you for your rich offerings, my faithful, blind crusader…" the heavy, terrifying, and rumbling voice of the demon spoke directly into her mind, yet so loudly that the heavy vibrations were felt in the hard ground by everyone standing there. "Hell stands wide open for you from this moment onward… and grants you this gift."
Her body thereupon began to completely tear open and mutate with an inhuman, terrifying speed. The spine-chilling sound of splitting flesh, tearing muscles, and massive bones cracking, breaking, and being contorted into entirely inhuman angles on all sides filled the sudden silence of the battlefield. Her entire spine curved at an unnatural angle and shot outward through her skin with razor-sharp, bloody protrusions.
But instead of screaming from the unbearable pain, her total death anxiety instantly flipped into a mad, possessed, and animated ecstasy. Sancta Valeria suddenly began to laugh incredibly loudly and hysterically in the air. It was a shrieking, screaming sound that went through bone and marrow and set the hairs on your arms straight on end, while her limbs stretched out unnaturally long and thin, and her fingers turned into razor-sharp, jet-black claws that absorbed the light with a loud cracking.
The False Saint simply no longer existed. In her place now hovered a skeletal, terrifyingly fast, and agile speed demon. She bathed completely in the jet-black, smoking blood of her own burst and torn humanity, her eyes glowing like red coals as she stood ready to rip the entire battlefield and anything that still dared to breathe into a thousand bloody pieces with an inhuman, flashing speed.