Out on the open plain, even the wind seemed to freeze at the sudden turn of events.
A moment ago the air still rang with Nigun's arrogant declaration and the flutter of angelic wings; now there was only dead silence—and a thick, coppery reek of blood hanging like an invisible curtain, pressing heavy on every survivor's heart.
If Gazef Stronoff could still be counted a survivor at all.
Gazef was, indeed, stunned—his mind racing in a split second to process information far beyond his frame of reference.
The three uninvited arrivals looked as if they had stepped straight in from another dimension. The one in front wore black and radiated an otherworldly poise. His face was as calm as a bottomless, ancient well. It was as if the Sunlight Scripture's threat before him—and his own peril—were trifles unworthy of stirring the slightest ripple in his emotions.
The two women flanking him… One possessed peerless beauty, cold as ice. The other was silver-haired and red-eyed, a petite frame housing a madness that made one's heart lurch. Their mere presence kept shattering and redefining Gazef's sense of what "strength" meant.
A flicker of instinctive hope trembled in him like a candle in the wind. Perhaps this sudden variable might break the stalemate? But a stronger chill of caution and dread doused that flame almost at once. Were beings like these friend or foe? What did they want?
He tightened his grip on Razor Edge until the knuckles whitened. For the first time in his life, the Kingdom's strongest warrior felt a profound bewilderment born of the unknown—and of an absolute gulf in power.
Rei Ao did not spare even a glance for Nigun, that self-styled victor. In his perception, Nigun and the Sunlight Scripture at his back were nothing more than noisy vermin—an affront to the very space they occupied.
His gaze pierced through surfaces and landed on Gazef instead, a measuring look that made Gazef's heart tighten.
"Get rid of the noise. Leave the warrior captain."
Rei Ao's voice, flat and unhurried, carried clearly to Albedo and Shalltear. The order was concise; the intent was plain. "Noise" meant everyone here who wasn't Gazef. "Leave" meant this human captain still had his uses.
"As you command, Rei Ao-sama!" the two replied in unison, bowing. Their voices brimmed with fervent devotion—and with the joy of carrying out their supreme master's will. Anticipation lit both faces, the look of predators finally allowed to stretch their limbs.
What followed, to them, was not a battle for life and death. It was a game—a way to stave off boredom. A one-sided, exquisitely brutal feast of slaughter began without warning.
Albedo, Overseer of Nazarick's Floor Guardians, merely stepped forward with elegant poise, and black armor flowed to encase her body. Her figure and aura seemed to slip into the seams of space, turning into a black afterimage too swift for the naked eye as she plunged into the Sunlight Scripture's still-intact formation.
Her movements did not look fast; they carried a strange, lilting rhythm—as if she were dancing a carefully choreographed waltz of death.
Her right hand, sheathed in gauntlet, tapped lightly—terror coiling at her fingertip, invisible to the eye. A white-robed cleric raised his staff to block; layers of magical wards shimmered across his body. Yet before Albedo's touch they were as fragile as soap bubbles in the sun.
Pop—
Not the clang of metal, but the soft, dreadful sound of flesh and wards alike being unraveled by an absolute force. The priest's astonishment froze on his face as he watched his own chest—and the glittering barrier over it—fracture like glass under a sledgehammer, then burst apart. Flesh, bone, torn cloth, and scattering motes of mana sprayed outward in a scarlet mist across the terror-stricken faces of his comrades.
And that was only the beginning.
Albedo flickered and threaded through the crowd; a black axe-blade appeared in her hand. Every lift of her arm coincided with the complete erasure of another member of the Sunlight Scripture. Someone tried to chant a higher-tier defense—his head separated from his body before the incantation began. Someone else turned to run—his first step cut short as the axe tore him open and he exploded into chunks.
No intact bodies marked her path—only a rain of blood and scattered remains, painting the emerald expanse in shocking splashes of crimson. From within the armor came the faintest, chilling hint of laughter—that of absolute confidence in her own might, and indifference to the lives of ants.
Meanwhile, Shalltear—the True Vampire—chose a very different "game."
"My, what a delightful view," she chimed, a bell-clear laugh laced with endless madness and cruelty. Blood-red eyes gleamed with hunger. Crimson armor and a bizarre lance connected to it by a tube—the Spuit Lance—materialized in her hands. The tip quivered, humming for blood.
In the next instant, she became a streak of scarlet lightning. Where Albedo was elegance, Shalltear was naked catharsis of speed and strength. Her first targets were the low-tier angels still wheeling in the air. Terrifying to ordinary eyes, these summoned beings were children's toys before Shalltear.
Rip— The scarlet flash tore through the angelic ranks. Their white bodies parted like paper under the keenest blade, coming apart without resistance and dissolving back into pure motes of light.
With the "trash mobs" cleared, Shalltear turned to those trying to form a proper defense—or priests fumbling to chant attack spells. Her method was simpler, and crueler.
The Spuit Lance struck like a viper, punching cleanly through a priest's throat and strangling the spell forever—or swept in a brutal arc, chopping a cluster of priests in half, guts and blood splashing the ground.
At times she would even slow just enough to hook a target and fling him skyward, watching at leisure as he writhed and screamed in despair—before wrenching with sudden force and ripping him clean in two.
She was enjoying herself—reveling in the fear prey showed before absolute power, and in the most primal ecstasy that slaughter could bring.