In direct contrast to the girls' palpable concern, Lyra pushed herself off the holographic tree, the simulated cherry blossoms dissolving before they could touch her shoulder. A chilling, predatory smile—a visual that was equal parts amusement and malice—crept across her face.
"All this worry for what?" she asked bluntly, her voice a silken thread of absolute disdain. "Some pathetic B-Rank soldier who's far too full of himself? He spouts nonsense about 'destabilizing the balance' as if he's a true arbiter, but he's just another cog in a rusty machine."
She let out a short, sharp laugh, a sound devoid of all humor. "Maybe if this were a week ago, he might have been somewhat interesting. A 'mid-tier B-Rank' from a 'military Province' sounds so very imposing."
She practically spat the titles. "But now?"
Lyra's gaze drifted to her own hand, which she slowly clenched into a fist. "I suppose he'll make for an amusing little show before he breaks."
Elysia and Lisanna narrowed their eyes, their Aether flaring instinctively at Lyra's boundless, dismissive arrogance. A week ago, they would have called her delusional for challenging any seasoned B-Rank veteran from a powerhouse like the Argent Federation.
But now… now they couldn't be so sure.
After witnessing the terrifying, conceptual leap in their own power, fostered and evolved by Orion, the established boundaries of the ranking system felt brittle and meaningless.
All the while, Terra swallowed her mouthful of pastry, tilting her head in cute confusion.
"So," she remarked, her voice clear and guileless, "that weirdo is really coming to fight us? I guess you did make him really, really mad when you laughed at him, Orion."
Her hazel eyes suddenly gleamed with an innocent, almost savage excitement. "Oh, this will be fun to see! I always wanted to smack those weirdo nobles, but everyone at the Academy always tells me 'no, Terra, that's assault'."
Elysia clicked her teeth, letting out a heavy sigh as she massaged her temple. Any tactical tension or serious, high-stakes atmosphere she was trying to build was utterly impossible to maintain with these two around. Lisanna just sighed alongside her, but a wry smile of amusement returned to her face as she shrugged. It was pointless.
Orion casually chuckled, his gaze still soft and endlessly amused. Without moving from Terra's side, he beckoned with his hands toward Elysia and Lisanna.
"Worried about me? You two are just so cute," he said, his voice a warm, reassuring balm that instantly cut through their remaining tension. "Come here, both of you."
Lisanna paused for only a second before her golden eyes gleamed with her usual unrestrained, passionate joy.
"Oh, I can't resist you!" She practically launched herself across the small distance, landing on Orion's other side and clinging to his arm as if he were a beacon of warmth in a cold, hostile world.
"You…" Elysia sighed, the tension visibly melting from her shoulders as a faint, wry smile graced her lips.
She walked over with her typical noble grace, her every step a picture of poise, and took Orion's offered hand, clutching it tightly.
A gentle, profound warmth flowed from his palm into hers, spreading throughout her entire being like a comforting fire. Soft affection bloomed in her silver-blue eyes as she looked up at him. "I just wish you would take some consideration sometimes. What if something happens to you?"
The very moment the words left Elysia's lips, Lyra spoke up, her voice cutting through the air with a strange, sudden intensity.
"Something happen to him?"
Elysia and Lisanna both turned. The predatory amusement on Lyra's face was gone, replaced by a cold, flat, absolute stillness.
"Don't speak foolish nonsense," Lyra stated, her voice dropping to a low, fervent timbre that was rarely, if ever, present. It was possessive, absolute, and chilling. "Nothing can, or will, ever happen to my brother."
Elysia and Lisanna both curled their brows for a brief moment, stunned by the raw, almost fanatical heat in Lyra's tone. It was a declaration not of confidence, but of inviolable, universal law.
Before they could question it or think further on the matter, Orion's chuckle brought their attention back to him.
"Seriously," he said, looking between them with that infuriatingly calm smile. "These guys are just some random soldiers who think they're hot shit. They're loud, obnoxious, and in love with showing off their shiny uniforms to intimidate the weak-willed."
He gently tugged Elysia closer, pulling her into him until their faces were inches apart.
"I suppose it's hard for you to know just how much you've grown with only C-Ranks to measure against," he murmured, "but trust me."
He gave her a soft, lingering kiss.
Her eyes widened, a soft moan escaping her lips as a faint pink blush dusted her cheeks. He pulled back, his gaze steady and filled with a conviction that mirrored Lyra's, but was born of knowledge, not fanaticism. "A simple wave of your hand and you'll freeze that little navy to the ice age. That's how amazing you are now."
"You… hmph." Elysia scoffed, but her lips were unable to suppress a beautiful, bright smile that lit up her entire face, the cold nobility melting away to reveal the girl beneath.
Orion then turned his attention to Lisanna, giving her the same tender, possessive kiss. Lisanna squealed in pure joy, her entire body pressing against him as she nearly tried to deepen the kiss right then and there.
Before she could, Orion slowly pulled back, his voice just as certain. "And you can simply flick your hand to turn that little navy to ash. You're far more amazing than you know."
Lisanna giggled brightly, nuzzling into Orion's shoulder contentedly. "With your words," she purred, her voice dripping with affection, "I feel like I can break the sun itself."
"Ugh."
A loud, theatrical gagging sound cut through the tender moment.
Lyra was leaning against the holographic tree again, her face twisted in a perfect mask of revulsion. "You seriously can't go one second without being cringe," she said bluntly. "Whatever. Just call me when that Stone prick gets here."
She turned, her form already starting to blur as she prepared to walk off into the shadows she preferred.
"Wait."
The voice that stopped her was, surprisingly, Elysia's.
Lyra scoffed, barely turning her head, her expression one of utter boredom. "What? Want to join me to get a beatdown? Be my guest. Nothing will change even if you go crying to Orion afterward."
A competitive fire ignited in Lisanna's eyes. She jumped to her feet, her cheeks puffing up adorably. "Hmph! We're B-Ranks now, too! Separately, you might be better than us, but let's see how you fare when it's both of us at the same time!"
Lyra paused for only a moment. Her brows curled slightly, a flicker of something—genuine curiosity, perhaps—flashing in her cold eyes. She analyzed them. The proud, icy noble and the brilliant, fiery heiress. Both had reached a B-Rank Aether Core, just like her. A true B-Rank.
In the end, she just scoffed again, a sneer twisting her lips. "One or two, doesn't matter. You'll make for a good distraction for a little while, I guess."
She didn't walk away. Instead, she gestured to the open field. "Show me, then. Show me what my brother's 'love' has made of you."
Lisanna eagerly pulled Elysia along. "Come on, Ellie! Let's show her that noble maidens are the real deal!"
Elysia snorted, but a newfound, glacial confidence was surging within her. "Naturally," she said, her voice crisp and clear as winter air. "But we will need seamless cooperation."
Lisanna giggled. "That will probably be the only easy part, eh?"
The three women moved to the center of the vast training facility.
Orion, with Terra sitting beside him, casually waved his hand. A near-invisible pane of solidified Aether shimmered into existence, shielding them from the impending storm.
A profound, heavy silence fell, stretching taut like a bowstring.
On one side, Lyra stood alone. Her posture was the physical definition of indolence, hands shoved deep into her pockets, a mask of sheer, unadulterated boredom on her face. She looked less like a combatant and more like someone waiting for a bus that was five minutes late.
On the other, Elysia and Lisanna stood shoulder-to-shoulder, a unified front. Their Aether was already in motion.
Elysia's aura was a brilliant, diamond-hard frost that caused the very air to crackle and glitter. Lisanna's was a radiant, searing light, a golden warmth so intense it made the dark obsidian ground glow as if kissed by the dawn.
The two energies, polar opposites, began to swirl and intertwine, creating a shimmering, unstable mirage around them.
"Now!" Elysia commanded, her voice crisp and absolute.
She raised her hand, and the very concept of cold answered her call.
With a deafening, tectonic groan, the floor in front of her exploded. A mountain of jagged, translucent blue ice erupted from the earth —a glacier born in a single, violent instant. It was not a mere projectile; it was a continental ice shelf, a billion-ton wave of absolute zero racing towards Lyra, designed to crush her, freeze her, and erase her from existence.
Simultaneously, the ambient temperature of the entire facility plummeted to a horrifying low, the atmosphere itself threatening to crystallize and freeze solid around its target.
At the exact same moment, Lisanna thrust her palms forward.
A churning, blinding vortex of pure, solidified light erupted from her hands. This was no simple laser or flash. It was an ocean of golden plasma, a searing, miniature sun—her newly mastered [Explosive Light Manipulation]. It was a raging storm of light-flames designed to incinerate and vaporize everything in its path.
Their powers, light and ice, fire and frost, didn't just fly side-by-side. In a display of perfect, instinctive cooperation, they fused.
The glacier, a monument to [Cryokinesis] , became infused with veins of brilliant golden light, making it shimmer with an unholy beauty. The solar vortex, a testament to [Photokinesis] , became filled with millions of razor-sharp, absolute-zero ice shards.
It was a paradoxical storm of annihilation. A churning, impossible maelstrom of frozen light and searing ice. The attack screamed through the air, shattering the sound barrier with a high-pitched wail, vaporizing the obsidian plains beneath it and leaving a molten, glassy trench in its wake as it bore down on Lyra with the weight of the world.
Lyra watched the oncoming apocalypse, a conceptual attack that defied the very laws of nature, with a flat, utterly unimpressed gaze.
She didn't move. She didn't dodge.
She merely lifted her hand, and an unfathomable wave of golden, vibrating Aether Energy streamed from her body. It was not a shield. It was a conceptual razor.
The wave of vibrating energy smashed into the ice-plasma storm.
There was no explosion. No earth-shattering impact.
The paradoxical storm, the mountain of ice, the vortex of plasma—it all just… stopped.
As if hitting an invisible, absolute wall, the combined Aether constructs simply disintegrated. They were unmade at a fundamental, molecular level. The vibrational frequency of their Aether was savagely torn apart, the complex, fused energies deconstructed and reduced to a cloud of inert, harmless particles that drifted down like dust.
Elysia and Lisanna stared, their eyes wide as they slightly panted. They had poured nearly all of their Aether Energy into that single, combined assault.
How... how could the difference still be this wide?
Lyra finally took her other hand from her pocket, using it to cover a delicate, mocking yawn.
"Is that all?" she snorted, her voice cutting through the stunned silence. "You're wondering why the difference between us is still so large, right? It's simple."
She tapped her own chest. "My grasp over Aether Energy is something you two pampered nobles can't even begin to imagine."
"This..." Elysia and Lisanna narrowed their eyes, their pride stung but their wills unbroken.
While behind his barrier, Orion wryly smiled. Lyra was only half-right. The real reason she was so much stronger, he knew, was a matter of purity. While all three were now B-Rank, Lyra had possessed her power for far longer, giving her more time for the constant refill process of their perfect bloodline fusion.
Her Aether Core wasn't just larger; it was denser. Her Aether was qualitatively purer, more potent, which was why it manifested as that brilliant, destructive gold.
Before anyone could speak again, Lyra stomped her foot.
The entire obsidian plain thrummed as an invisible, high-frequency wave shot through the ground, impossibly fast.
A split-second later, dozens of sharp spikes of vibrating golden Aether energy erupted from the floor, each one a [Vibrational Construct] powerful enough to shred apart mountain peaks.
The duo reacted instantly. Elysia slammed her palm on the ground, creating a platform of ice to launch herself into the air.
Lisanna willed her [Photokinesis] to propel her body backward and skyward, moving like a beam of light.
They thought they were safe for a moment. But in that same split-second, the golden spikes, having missed their initial targets, didn't shatter. They extended, bending at impossible angles and soaring from the ground like sentient javelins of pure deconstruction, still screaming towards the duo in mid-air.
"Hah!!"
Elysia and Lisanna shouted in unison, their Aether exploding from their bodies in a desperate, defensive maneuver.
Elysia condensed dozens of glistening, intricate ice shields, forming a lattice of diamond-hard frost in front of her.
Lisanna surged a roaring, defensive vortex of her light-flames, shielding herself in a cocoon of searing plasma.
BANG!
A deafening cacophony echoed through the facility.
The ice shields shattered into a billion glittering fragments, the vibrational energy tearing them apart as if they were brittle glass.
The storm of light-flames was continually blasted away, nullified and dispersed by the golden spikes.
In that moment of impact, Elysia and Lisanna skillfully used the resounding force of the blast to propel themselves away, their feet carving two deep gouges in the obsidian floor as they skidded to a halt.
Lisanna panted lightly, sweat dripping down her chin, but she laughed with a fierce, defiant pride. "Hmph! What's wrong, Lyra? Thought you were going to beat us in one hit!"
Elysia let out a slow, controlled sigh, her silver-blue eyes holding a firm, cold determination.
"I would suggest you take this seriously," she stated, her voice as crisp as winter air. "Unless you want to get hurt."
Lyra merely raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. She tilted her head, a cold, predatory smile finally touching her lips. "Me... get hurt?"
She let out a short, sharp laugh, a sound devoid of all humor.
"My, my. I guess I'll stop completely playing around, then." She rolled her neck, a series of sickening cracks echoing in the silence. "At least you're helping me crack my joints."
Behind the barrier, Terra blinked, watching the two girls grimace slightly from the sheer, resounding force of that last impact before getting even more fired up. They didn't seem hurt at all.
She then turned to Orion, who hadn't moved a muscle.
"Uhm… why are they so fired up to get beat down by your sister?"
Orion watched them go with a wry smile. "I may have given them a little more courage than I expected. Oh well," he shook his head, "at least they'll be doing something other than arguing."