Chapter Title Part 1: The Blue Spirit and the Red Ice
The Western flank was windless and cruel, a barren ridge of shale and shattered ice. Cain landed hard, boots cracking the frosted surface beneath him. Perched on his shoulder was a child-sized figure glowing faint blue, her legs crossed, her expression unimpressed.
SungMo, the Blue Spirit of Mockery.
Across the field, the Red Ice Walker General rose like a dying god, steam hissing from his breath. Shards of crimson frost hovered around his shoulders. He lifted his bow—slowly, methodically—and drew two arrows in one pull.
TCHHH.
The red ice arrows gleamed with lethal chill.
SHUNK!—FWISH!
He loosed both at once, twin streaks of blood-red vapor racing through the air—directly for Cain and SungMo's skulls.
SungMo didn't flinch.
"Cain—he's going all out. Wake up, dull-head."
Cain exhaled, raised two fingers upright. SungMo did the same.
"Spirit Manifestation: Curse Reflection."
WUMMMMMM!
A concussive air wave exploded outward from their fingers—invisible, harmonic—meeting the twin arrows mid-flight.
TINK-TINK!—SHKKRRAAAK!
The arrows spun off-axis, twisted by the wave—and collided with each other, detonating in mid-air with a brittle shriek. Red ice scattered in all directions. Both attacks and the wave canceled themselves out in a perfectly timed nullification.
SungMo leaned back lazily on Cain's shoulder.
"I swear, you only summon me for boring fights. And guess what? My churry stew's burning, Cain. Like, literally burning. I'm getting a call right now."
Cain ignored her.
"Hey. Dumbbell. Cancel the summon contract. Cain. Cain. Hey hey hey—cancel it, loser—"
SKRRRRRK-KRAKKK!
The Red Ice Walker raised both arms, his fingers trembling.
From the ground beneath them, a massive ice pillar erupted—glowing red at its core, rising straight into the clouds like a divine spear. The sound was deafening.
VRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
It tilted mid-air. Then—
Freefall.
WHHHHHHHHOOOOOMMMM!!
The entire pillar thundered down toward Cain and SungMo.
SungMo's eyes widened.
"Cain. You stupid brat. Handle that. I'm not punching that. That's a building."
Cain raised his hands. "We're both gonna die then."
"I'm a spirit, you moron. I'll reincarnate into someone funner."
"Handle it and I will cancel the summon—"
SungMo's eyes burned blue.
"Fine."
⸻
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The massive red-ice pillar descended like divine punishment. Wind howled beneath its plummet, the ground quaking, air-pressure collapsing in a down-draft roar.
SungMo launched upward with a single knee bounce off Cain's shoulder—no run-up, no wind-up—just a casual leap straight into the falling monolith.
"Spirit Fist it is!"
With one hand cocked back, she soared to meet the oncoming tower of frost, her face twisted in a bored snarl.
CRACK!!!—K-K-KRRSSHHHHH!!!
Her fist met the pillar at full velocity—
and the entire structure shattered into a raining avalanche of red crystal.
Shards exploded outward, thundering into the ground in a cascade of deafening TINK-TINK-TINK-TINKs, flattening frost, cracking terrain, and kicking up clouds of sparkling red mist.
SungMo dropped back down onto Cain's shoulder as if she'd just punched a light switch.
"Okay. I'm officially mad. I liked that pillar. It was dramatic."
Cain blinked. "You can't just go around calling yourself dramatic."
"I don't. I call you boring. Now shut up—I'm ending this."
She leapt down, landing softly with one foot planted and both palms raised. Her fingers moved in a slow, sacred pattern—air trembling around her as her spiritual energy twisted.
"Spirit Sage Art: Carnage of Death."
From between her palms, a long, blackened tongue uncoiled—thin, elastic, and lined with grotesque teeth, each one grinning.
SungMo grinned back.
"Eat him up."
The tongue howled forward with a shrieking hiss—tearing through the air and crossing the battlefield in a blink.
The Red Ice Walker tried to move.
Too slow.
The tongue wrapped him, teeth clamping, slicing, biting—until his entire body was swallowed whole. There was no scream. Only the sound of spiritual grinding—SHHHHHK-KRUNCH.
He was gone.
SungMo brushed dust off her robe, looked over her shoulder.
"Now. Cancel the summon contract. My job's done, my stew's calling, and I swear if I come back to burnt onions—"
Cain finally smiled. "Fine. You're unsummoned."
"Good."
POP.
SungMo vanished into thin blue mist.
⸻
The Southern Gate was quiet now, save for the wind and the distant echo of molten frost cracking under collapsed stone. Sakamoto stood hunched over, drenched in sweat, every breath he took scraping his lungs raw. Steam rolled off his skin. His chest rose and fell like a bellows on the edge of collapse.
Asger knelt beside a bloodied heap—Madagascar, his face slack, his eyes gouged out in the previous assault.
In Asger's right hand, she held one of his eyes.
They pulsed faintly.
She didn't flinch.
"You alright?" she asked Sakamoto without looking up.
Sakamoto wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. "I'll live. You gonna fix him?"
Asger's lips twitched—equal parts focus and sarcasm.
"I'm not in the mood for a eulogy, so yeah."
She shifted Madagascar's head gently and lowered herself behind him, his lifeless face turned upward in her lap. With methodical precision, she pressed the first eyeball back into its socket—flesh resisting, then yielding with a wet schlp.
Sakamoto grimaced.
"That's unsettling."
Asger smirked.
"Wait for it."
She placed the second eye.
Then she inhaled and closed her own eyes.
"Blood Manipulation: Cellular Coaxing."
The red aura around her fingers ignited, then softened, seeping into Madagascar's eyelids and cheeks. Flesh began to move, as if being rewritten—sinew stretching, blood vessels rerouting, nerves twitching back into life.
Tshhhhhh—pop.
Madagascar twitched.
He gasped.
His chest rose violently, fingers spasming. His eyes blinked open—once, twice—shaking, but intact. Breathing ragged.
"He's back," Asger said, not unkindly.
Sakamoto was about to respond—
When his head snapped toward the horizon.
6 o'clock.
A distant roar—not thunder. An explosion. Far off—but massive. Towering plumes of smoke were rising into the sky.
He stared.
That was the Central Front.
A few paces from where Asger was finishing her gruesome field work, the Red Ice Cocoon—once a solid fortress of crystalline frost—began to melt.
Not drip. Not shatter. Melt.
Like dry ice dissolving into fog.
Hssssssssssssss—
Steam hissed into the open air as the cocoon softened and dissolved in perfect symmetry, vanishing upward like it was never real.
From within the cocoon stepped Sir Caelum, his skin gleaming, armor flawless, his blade humming faintly with celestial energy. Osiris followed—his cloak flowing behind him like shadow smoke, his mask cracked but intact, body fully restored.
Osiris cracked his knuckles.
"Well," he said. "That was a nap."
Sir Caelum turned, his gaze immediately locating Sakamoto.
"He's breathing too hard," Caelum said. "He burned too much power."
"More than usual," Osiris added. "Something's not right."
Sakamoto didn't wait to explain.
His pupils narrowed. He squinted into the sky—then fixed his gaze due north.
KA-KOOOOOM!!!
A tremor echoed across the plains.
Smoke bloomed from the Central Front like an erupting volcano, its tail punching into the clouds. Black, red, and pale light flickered at the edge of the blast wave.
Sakamoto's expression tightened.
He turned to Caelum. "Sir Varion may be there."
Caelum gave a single nod.
Sakamoto leapt, body tearing upward in a sonic lurch—FWOOOOOOOOOM!
Sir Caelum joined him, launching after with a gust of radiant force.
Below, Osiris watched them disappear. He cracked his neck.
"I'll catch up."
⸻
The Central Front was nothing short of obliterated.
The landscape had been flattened, carved into rings of scorched stone and melted earth. Nothing green remained. No shadows. Just concentric circles of ruin—like someone had taken a god's fingerprint and pressed it into the world.
The smoke rose in towers, thick and black, curling into the sky like funeral veils.
Then—
From the epicenter of the blast, something stirred.
A figure.
Charred but upright, draped in steam and caked ash, his body outlined in glowing threads of white energy.
Sir Varion.
He rose from one knee, one palm pressed to the cracked earth. His cloak was in tatters, his silver armor scratched, scorched, and bent—but he was alive.
And standing.
His chest rose with controlled breath. He flexed one arm, then the other. Around him, hundreds—thousands—of glowing white lines crisscrossed his body like a cocoon of silk or circuitry. Each line moved, adjusted, adapted, reacting to the heat and pressure.
His voice was quiet, but sharp:
"Lining Release: Hapkido."
The technique wasn't flashy. It didn't explode. It didn't roar.
It defended.
The billions of microscopic lines across his body had absorbed the full brunt of Julius's Four-Horse Chariot—redirecting force, splitting vibration, distributing kinetic chaos into the air and earth around him.
He had tanked a cosmic-level strike and was still standing.
Smoke coiled tighter around him.
Then—
A voice cut through it.
Low. Ancient.
Feral.
"Shall we… go berserk?"