"ZHOU RUI!" Julius screamed, his voice echoing across the vast chamber of scorched black stone and smoldering magma veins.
He wanted to join the battle—every fiber of his being itched to do so—but for some reason, some unspoken contract of fate or some unseen force, he could not step in.
The Magma Tyrant did not halt its assault. It slowly turned its massive horned head, the embers around its crown flaring brighter as it fixed its molten gaze on Julius.
Julius gritted his teeth. He was ready.
He began chanting under his breath, the language of ancient wind weaving around his staff in swirling runes. The moment the final syllable left his lips, the Magma Tyrant lunged forward at inhuman speed, dragging its colossal sword along the ground behind it—shearing glowing trenches into the stone with shrieking friction.
The monster raised its blade overhead, gripping it in both charred hands, preparing to cleave him in half with a single vertical stroke.
But then—
In the blink of an eye—its right and left arms were severed cleanly at the elbows.
"Wind Turbo," Julius said calmly, though his heart thundered in his ribs.
The Magma Tyrant didn't roar in pain. Instead, molten blood hissed against the floor as, impossibly, new limbs sprouted from the stumps—flesh reweaving itself, bone reforming.
Julius's eyes widened.
"Regeneration magic?"
He felt cold sweat trickle down his spine.
"But how? It's not even a mage."
The Magma Tyrant charged again, a blazing streak of fury, this time closing to within barely three meters of Julius in a heartbeat.
Julius reacted purely on instinct. He chanted and felt the mana drain from his body as spectral wings of wind burst from his back, lifting him high above the magma-scarred floor.
The sword slashed through empty air beneath his feet.
But from that same swing, a wave of liquefied rock howled upward in a crescent—an air slash made of lava itself. It tore through the darkness, striking Julius's levitating form.
The chamber filled with blinding smoke and the sharp stink of scorched stone.
When it cleared, Julius was miraculously still there—his robes singed but his body unbroken. He was hovering just above the ground, staff held out, the air around him whirling in tight spirals.
"Wind Shield."
He had conjured it in the instant before impact.
He swallowed hard, feeling the strain in his bones.
"I can't let this battle drag on any longer. I don't have enough mana left."
He whispered it to himself, as if admitting it out loud might doom him faster.
The Magma Tyrant's ember-like eyes flared. With a deafening roar, it leapt, sword raised to the vaults of the chamber ceiling. In one heartbeat it was directly above Julius, the colossal blade coming down like a judgment from hell itself.
Julius barely managed to chant:
"Wind Shield!"
A new barrier shimmered into being—smaller this time, a translucent disk of compressed air just wide enough to block the descending strike.
The impact cracked the shield in a heartbeat, the runes splintering apart. He poured every drop of mana he could muster into holding it, but the creature's strength was simply too vast.
The barrier shattered.
The sword slammed against the haft of Julius's staff with a ringing shockwave. Though the staff held—by some miracle of craftsmanship—he was hurled bodily from the sky, tumbling across the broken floor.
He landed hard on his side, choking down pain.
"Fuck it all," he rasped.
He pushed himself to his knees, eyes glaring pure defiance at the towering figure.
"You know what, you damn Magma Tyrant—I'm going to make you suffer."
The creature's voice rolled out, deep and cavernous as an erupting volcano:
"You're going to make me suffer?"
Even Julius, battle-hardened as he was, felt his blood chill.
"You know what, human? You are not the one who's going to make me suffer. You humans are the ones who make your own kind suffer."
Julius clenched his jaw.
"What the fuck do you mean?"
"That is for you to understand, human."
The Magma Tyrant lifted its blade in both massive hands. Though it hovered above the blackened flagstones, a storm of embers spiraled around its body. Sparks of molten power danced across the sword as the blade thickened, sheathed in a seething layer of living lava.
It leveled the weapon skyward. The entire chamber grew brighter as though a second sun was being born right there at its tip.
"Magma World."
The Magma Tyrant roared the words as it swung downward in a single, cataclysmic motion.
From the sword's edge erupted a wave of lava, an impossibly vast crescent of molten death that flooded across the chamber straight for Julius.
As it rushed toward him, Julius murmured something the Magma Tyrant could not hear.
Just as the lava slash was about to consume him, it abruptly collapsed inward on itself, vanishing into a pinpoint of darkness—
—revealing a woman standing between Julius and annihilation.
Saya.
She stood poised with her black katana already drawn, the blade's edge shimmering with an inky gravity that had devoured the lava in an instant. In her other hand, her white katana remained sheathed—ready.
The Magma Tyrant turned in confusion—just as an arrow of glacial light pierced its back, exploding in a burst of frost that momentarily locked its molten body in brittle, cracking ice.
Serena emerged from the shadows of the far corridor, her bow raised for another shot.
But the ice was melting fast.
Saya moved without hesitation.
She blurred forward in a flicker of speed, appearing above the Magma Tyrant's towering head. With a fluid motion, she unsheathed the white katana in her left hand and brought it down in a gleaming arc.
From the blade's edge erupted a blinding torrent of pale energy—like a white hole birthing everything the black katana had devoured.
The stolen Lava Slash burst free, striking the Magma Tyrant square in the chest.
The impact hurled the colossal figure across the chamber. It crashed to the ground with an earth-shaking impact.
Saya landed gracefully beside Julius.
At the same moment, Serena stepped forward, nocking another arrow with calm precision.
Both of them spoke in unison, voices cold and resolute:
"It's been a while since Master let us out for a real battle."