Steel clashed against shadow, and the battlefield descended into pure chaos.
The cries of war and the roar of magic ripped through the torn landscape. The sky overhead churned with dark clouds, as if the heavens themselves recoiled from the devastation below.
At the rear, a desperate formation of mages huddled together, protected by a battered line of adventurers and knights. Their shields cracked and groaned under the relentless onslaught.
The mages' voices rose in unison, casting layers of barrier and fortification spells, desperately bolstering the frontline forces with borrowed strength and fleeting courage.
At the vanguard, Roderic was a force of nature. His greatsword became a silver storm, carving arcs through the air with unrelenting precision. Gale battled fiercely, his wind-infused blade dancing with furious grace, though each of Malraketh's savage strikes drove him back meter by meter.
Garron, the living wall, braced his tower shield against monstrous claws, each impact sending violent tremors through the earth. Beside him, Kai flashed like a comet, flames coiling around his katana as he weaved through the battlefield, slashing through the monster with burning fury.
Darin, his staff a blazing beacon of radiant magic, unleashed volley after volley of fireballs, his voice hoarse from constant shouting.
"Hold the line! Push forward! We need to hold that thing at bay!" he roared, blood dripping from a gash across his cheek.
For a moment—a fragile, fleeting moment—it seemed they could turn the tide.
But then—
BOOM.
A deafening shockwave exploded from Malraketh's monstrous cores, an eruption of corrupt power that shattered the sky.
The ground buckled. Trees split apart. The very air cracked with violent energy.
An invisible hand of annihilation slammed into the defenders.
Gale was hurled through the air like a broken doll, slamming against a jagged boulder. Garron crashed into the earth, leaving a crater where he fell. Kai slammed into a twisted, dying tree, the bark shattering like brittle glass. Even Roderic, the mighty Roderic, was blasted backward, his greatsword slipping from his fingers as he skidded across the battlefield.
Cries of pain and despair rang out as knights and adventurers alike were tossed aside like leaves in a hurricane.
When the dust settled, the battlefield was silent.
A heavy, suffocating stillness fell over the land. Dust hung like a veil. Groans echoed weakly through the choking haze.
Malraketh stood alone at the center, towering, its corrupted wings spreading wide, its silhouette a monstrous blot against the ruined sky.
And yet—even it paused.
Because something else was coming.
A pressure, alien and overwhelming, descended upon the battlefield—a weight so immense it pressed against the heart and soul of every living being present.
Not Malraketh's malice.
Something greater. Something primal.
The mages, still alive, faltered mid-spell. The adventurers and knights gripping their broken shields froze, wide-eyed.
Malraketh's monstrous head tilted ever so slightly, a flicker of unease glinting in its abyssal eyes.
Through the dust, a figure moved.
Slowly. Deliberately. Unbent. Unbroken.
Each step was a declaration.
A figure wrapped in a shimmering aura of impossible power, the very fabric of reality bending around her presence.
Belle.
Her silver hair, once matted and torn, now flowed like a banner of defiance.
Blue, ethereal circuit-like veins traced intricate, glowing patterns across her arms and legs, pulsing like the heartbeat of a living machine. Her silver-blue eyes, now slit like a dragon's, burned through the fog of war with an inhuman brilliance.
The air itself shimmered around her, vibrating with raw, untamed energy. The dust parted at her approach, fleeing her like shadows before the dawn.
The wounds that had marred her body were gone. Instantly healed.
In their place, a radiance—a terrifying, beautiful vitality—as if death itself had been denied.
Lena, standing among the rear guard, her hands trembling, whispered as if afraid to believe.
"...Belle…?"
Kai, battered and bloodied, wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. He saw her—truly saw her—and a slow, reckless smile curled across his face.
"Hah…" he breathed, a chuckle escaping his lips despite the pain. "Took you long enough, rookie…"
Even Malraketh took an instinctual step back, its wings twitching, sensing the ancient, cosmic force now walking toward it.
Darin blinked up at her, dazed, his voice a reverent whisper.
"I… I don't even know who's scarier anymore. That monster…" He swallowed hard. "Or her."
The battered warriors turned, one by one, all eyes drawn irresistibly to the girl who should have been broken… who instead strode forward as if she were the reaper of gods.
Belle walked past Garron, who could only gape at her.
Past Gale, who winced and muttered a low curse under his breath.
She stopped before Roderic, who struggled to rise on one knee, his greatsword trembling in his hand.
He looked up at her, stunned, almost in awe.
"…Belle…?"
For a moment, Belle said nothing.
She smiled. Soft. Calm. Certain.
"Sorry for being late."
Her voice was clear and steady. It cut through the chaos like a blade of light.
The ground beneath her feet shimmered. Magic itself seemed to gather around her, drawn like moths to a flame, orbiting her in faint spirals of stardust.
Then her smile faded, her gaze sharpening as it turned toward the battlefield ahead.
Malraketh snarled, the earth quaking beneath it.
Belle's silver-blue eyes narrowed, and in them burned a fire fiercer than any flame.
"Roderic," she said, voice soft yet unyielding, "I need a favor."
He blinked, still processing.
She tilted her head slightly, silver strands falling across her brow.
"Get everyone away from the frontline."
Roderic stared at her as if she had lost her mind.
"What…?"
Belle turned her head, and for the first time, he saw the full, terrifying glow of her dragon-slit pupils.
"I'm going to get serious now."
A low hum filled the air. The earth trembled beneath her feet. The sky dimmed as if the heavens themselves dared not look.
A gust of wind curled around her, lifting her silver hair like a halo. The glow from her body intensified, cracks of blue lightning arcing around her.
Belle took a step forward. And with that single step, the very battlefield tilted.
The earth responded. The sky wept static. Reality itself seemed to hold its breath.
Her voice, calm and resolute, carried across the battlefield.
"This time…"
Another step. A pulse of silver-blue energy exploded outward, rattling shields and cracking stone.
"I will win."
Malraketh roared in defiance—but even its voice was swallowed by the rising storm around her.
The earth had gone still. The wind stopped.
Above the broken battlefield, the skies churned—dark clouds swirling like a vast maelstrom, crackling with violet lightning.
This was it. The final battle.
Roderic and Gale exchanged a glance as they herded the remaining adventurers and knights back, away from the crumbling frontlines.
"Are you sure we are leaving her alone?" Gale asked, his voice tense, edged with doubt.
Roderic didn't answer immediately. His gaze was fixed ahead, at the lone figure standing between them and the abyss.
When he spoke, his voice was low but certain.
"Did you see her eyes?" He turned slightly, his lips pressed into a grim line. "Those aren't the eyes of a human anymore."
"They're the eyes of someone who's crossed the boundary of mortal limits. She'll definitely win."
Gale fell silent.
Across the battlefield, Malraketh spread its vast wings, wings that blotted out what little light remained. Its molten, eldritch eyes narrowed, not in anger… but in an almost primal terror.
Belle raised her hand, almost casually.
The ground responded first. A deep, resonant crack.
The battlefield fractured in spiderwebs around her feet, mana-drenched earth unable to withstand her awakening any longer.
Then came the aura—a tidal wave of blue and silver, surging outward in an expanding hurricane. The air twisted and screamed. Space itself seemed to shudder under her presence.
Lightning spiraled around her arms like living serpents. Her silver hair whipped violently behind her, a streak of starlight in the storm. The glowing blue circuit-like veins across her skin blazed with raw energy, moving and shifting like a celestial pattern.
Above her, the storm clouds parted. A single pillar of light pierced down, illuminating her like a chosen avatar of the gods.
Aura Amplification: Overdrive—Activated.
No more drawbacks this time. No more limits.
Her Draconic Heart throbbed inside her chest, each beat harmonizing with the world around her. Instantaneous regeneration. Infinite mana replenishment. A body and spirit that no longer obeyed mortal rules.
"Come," she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper, but it thundered across the battlefield like the pronouncement of a divine sentence.
"Let's finish this."
Malraketh bellowed—a guttural, otherworldly roar that shattered what remained of the nearby trees.
Then, it lunged.
Reality itself ripped open behind Malraketh, dark rifts trailing its movements. Its corrupted blade screamed downward with the force to split a mountain.
Belle moved. No—vanished.
A pulse of light and she was already above it, twin fireballs blazing in her palms.
BOOOOOOM!!
The heavens caught fire as twin pillars of flame plummeted down, swallowing Malraketh in an apocalyptic inferno.
The power output of these fireballs was at least twice… no—maybe triple or even more of her usual fireball. The shockwave flattened the ground for hundreds of meters, turning stone and earth into molten slag.
Smoke billowed upward, a churning tower that swallowed the sky.
But before it could even clear—FLASH. Belle reappeared behind the smoke, a lightning spear in hand.
She hurled it.
It tore through the haze like a comet, piercing Malraketh's shoulder with a deafening crack of ruptured magic barriers. Chunks of corrupted armor exploded outward.
Malraketh screeched, reeling back—but Belle was already there, a breath ahead of it.
It fired retaliatory blasts from its blade cannon, blackened energy spheres howling toward her.
They passed through her.
Only afterimages.
She blurred forward again, so fast the world seemed to lag behind her movements.
Appearing in front of Malraketh, Belle planted her foot and spun—delivering a roundhouse kick to Malraketh's face.
The sheer kinetic force distorted the air, and Malraketh was hurled across the battlefield, crashing through ruined trees and shattered stones, leaving a deep trench in the earth.
It wasn't able to predict her, it wasn't able to react to her. Belle was now moving too fast.
From the safe line, the adventurers and knights stared, slack-jawed.
"She's… overpowering that monster," one of them whispered, hardly believing his own words.
"She's even faster and stronger than during the subjugation quest."
Garron's eyes widened.
"The subjugation quest…" he muttered, realization dawning.
That unspeakable event. The hidden mission no one dared to explain.
"We were surrounded…," one knight said quietly, voice hoarse with memory. "Overwhelmed by monsters twisted from the Mana Overload."
"And she…" another whispered. "She fought them alone. She saved us all when no hope remained."
Darin let out a guilty chuckle. "Guess we have our answer now… and honestly? Even knowing it, I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes."
Their eyes turned back to the battlefield. To the girl who was no longer a mere broken girl, but a force of nature.
Malraketh roared, digging its claws into the earth to halt its sliding momentum. From the shadows beneath its feet, the darkness itself writhed—black tendrils exploding upward toward Belle like vipers seeking to devour.
Belle didn't retreat. She launched herself forward.
Red sigils blinked to life around her in a perfect orbit—homing fire missiles.
With a casual flick of her wrist, the missiles moved, chasing over the black tendrils coming her way.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Each impact vaporized the tendrils mid-flight, detonating with precision.
Before the smoke of the last missile faded, Belle was already moving—warping through the air like a living bullet.
She appeared right in front of Malraketh's stunned face, her fist drawn back, wrapped in a spiraling vortex of silver-blue energy.
KRA-KOOOOOM!!!
Her punch struck Malraketh square in the gut.
A sonic boom rippled out in a perfect sphere, flattening the ground for hundreds of meters.
Malraketh's body bent around her fist. For a moment, reality itself seemed to fracture like glass around them.
The monster was launched, a helpless projectile, crashing through multiple layers of battlefield wreckage, leaving behind an apocalyptic trail of destruction.
Belle floated down to the shattered ground, landing lightly on her feet as the cracked earth rippled beneath her touch.
Her aura surged even higher, her Overdrive state now entering a second, terrifying stage. The very fabric of the world could barely contain the energy storm forming around her.
She exhaled slowly, her dragon-slit pupils narrowing.
"I have a promise to keep."
Her voice was calm, resolute, utterly unwavering. She stepped forward once, the ground trembling.
"And you are in the way."
Above her, the swirling clouds opened once again—and this time, the light that shone down wasn't pure white. It was the same silver-blue as her aura.
As if the very heavens had recognized her as their champion.
End of Chapter 76