Chapter 172
Chapter 172: Azure Flames Consume the Moon, Blood Stains the Royal City (Part 6)
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That voice was like a gentle whisper right beside the ear, rippling outward through the night like waves on water.
The dense, blazing, vein-like eerie markings crawled up Theresa's arms and cheeks once more, lighting up the battered and tattered nun's habit covering her body. Both her eyes were veiled in an uncanny crimson, and with each breath in and out, wisps of black smoke drifted from her lips, rising up and disappearing into the dark.
The night wind surged.
Loose black hair swept across her face.
I reached into my torn and ragged collar and pulled out a pair of pristine white lace gloves, putting them on. My right hand quietly closed around Captain Grey's cold scythe handle, then loosened, then gripped it tighter still. As I stepped forward with one foot, my left arm rose lightly and extended to my side, reaching out to grasp at the air in the flickering darkness.
Crack, crack.
The ice-blue short scythe, wreathed in swirling pale white mist, let out a hissing sound like a viper flicking its tongue, and in an instant it was in my left hand.
Clang—
One long, one short. One black, one white. 2 mismatched scythes gleamed with an equally bone-chilling edge in the darkness, lit by the firelight reflecting off Theresa's body. The bone-piercing white mist nearly engulfed my entire left side, and the earth beneath my feet froze solid as rock in an instant.
In the main building of Cataloma not far away, candles flickered to life one by one across rooms on every floor, and through it all came the faint sounds of shouting mixed with frantic conversation. At the same time, I heard Lecter calling out loudly behind me: "Hol, get the kids out of here—!"
The battle erupted in the next instant, in a manner that was utterly staggering to behold.
In my line of sight, the nun 10 steps away crouched and swung a simple punch at the air before her. Blinding red light burst forth in an instant, nearly lighting up the entire night, and a crushing wave of pressure crashed down on me all at once. My heart screamed with alarm. A pale blue glow radiated from my body as my Frost Order erupted with everything it had, and through the rolling white mist I swung up the ice short scythe in my left hand in a reverse upward slash.
Bang bang bang bang!
Countless thick, razor-sharp ice spikes, sweeping along with a surging torrent of icy mist, fanned out and exploded forward, meeting the oncoming surge of raging flames that roiled like a deep-sea whirlpool.
BOOM—!!
With a sound like muffled thunder, 2 massive shockwaves slammed into each other at the center. The violent forces churned and coiled together for a brief moment, then an icy gust and a scorching blast, carrying clearly visible shockwaves, suddenly blasted outward in all directions, sending chunks of lawn, bricks, and dirt flying 7 to 8 meters, even over 10 meters, into the night sky. Some were frozen solid, some were reduced to ash in the flames, and steam erupted like a crashing wave, billowing up to form a mushroom cloud.
Crack crack crack!
A tall, thick wall of ice shot up from the ground before me, blocking every terrifying aftershock as rubble and debris slammed against the wall with dull, repeating thuds.
The whole thing took no more than 2 or 3 seconds, shards of ice and fire were already dancing through the night sky, and the air shifted from freezing cold to scorching hot and back again. The turbulence coming through the ice wall sent my clothes snapping and flapping, and my hair whipped back behind me as if someone were pulling it. The violent shockwaves nearly knocked me off my feet, and all I could hear was a constant ringing in my ears, with Lecter's shouts behind and to the side of me fading in and out: "Take them... get far away... evacuate... too dangerous..."
I turned and looked back. I saw another member of the Sword of Kanri had already picked up Elle and the little boy, and was now running quickly toward the main building. The heavy stone in my chest finally settled. At that moment, Lecter's figure came up to my left side, his grave expression flickering in and out of the unsteady, dancing light.
"Let me help you..."
I looked at him and gave a gentle shake of my head, just about to say something.
"'Boswell' is gone, what on earth did Theresa do—!"
The words Lecter shouted in my ear brought me to a sudden standstill.
Boswell is gone...
My mind was still turning over the meaning of what he said. In the next moment, the ice wall in front of me suddenly cracked with a loud bang, fracturing into a web of splits that glowed red, and collapsed rapidly. My heart lurched. Lecter and I scrambled to leap apart in opposite directions, and scorching crimson flames gushed and surged from behind the crumbling ice, swallowing the patch of lawn where I had just been standing.
As the waves of heat rolled through, Theresa's figure launched into the air. The massive black axe blazed with the Fire of Sin, carving a blazing red streak through the sky and coming down with a roaring vertical slash from above.
This strike... was unstoppable.
I realized it almost instantly, and quickly used Moon Step to fall back over 10 meters away. The moment I steadied myself, I swung the ice short scythe again, slashing toward Theresa's position—
Crack crack crack!
Countless half-height, razor-sharp ice spikes erupted with the slash, detonating all the way to 30 meters beyond my line of sight. The bone-deep, howling cold painted everything around in white frost, and the temperature of the air plummeted sharply before rising again just as fast, the Fire of Sin erupted with a roar from within the ice spikes.
BOOM—!
Swaths of ice spikes were reshaped by the flames and the shockwaves. At the center of the fire, the slender figure in her nun's habit pulled back her force for a brief moment, then trailed black smoke as she began charging toward me at full speed. The hem of her habit billowed in the raging wind, and the oversized double-bladed great axe swung in her hands with a terrifying momentum, the axe blades wrapped in flames as they smashed apart one ice spike after another blocking her path.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
The distance of over 10 meters closed in an instant, and the sounds of clashing rang out one after another through the air.
Clang! Clang! Crack! Clang! BOOM—!
The figures of a girl and a nun spun and streaked through the darkness, the black-and-white twin scythes and the burning axe blade dancing with deadly edges. Dozens of collisions, breaks, and collisions again, ice and fire clashing in fierce opposition, crimson and pale blue light flaring and dying in the dark night, whipping up the raging Fire of Sin, or blooming into delicate and deadly ice flowers.
Clang——!
Another full-force swing was blocked solid by Theresa. The metallic crash thundered in my ears, my arm went numb and aching from the impact, and I stumbled back 2 steps. Then came a soft snap, and I looked down to find that the ice short scythe in my left hand had shattered apart from the blade, falling to the ground.
My brow furrowed slightly.
The next moment, Lecter's figure appeared behind Theresa without a sound. He pressed a short sword against her throat and yanked hard.
Blood immediately came gushing out in torrents.
"Ugh... cough, cough!"
Theresa coughed lightly twice, completely ignoring her own wound, and twisted around to bring the great axe swinging back behind her.
Lecter clearly knew that this alone was not enough to kill a heretic. He had already used the wind force to pull back over 10 meters before Theresa even began her turn. Now he stood in the distant firelight, his expression serious and face grim, eyes fixed intently on Theresa's face.
"Theresa, where is 'Boswell.'"
Boswell...
All at once, I widened my eyes and looked up into the night sky.
The moonlight was thin. The stars were sparse.
Tonight's night sky was nothing to look at, but it seemed... not all that different from any other night.
Except...
The thing that should have been drifting above the royal city, that faint, wavering yet undeniably real "eggshell" was nowhere to be found.