Out on the wasteland the huge explosion was still going, the crimson-lotus hellfire raging in every direction, covering the whole battlefield, present everywhere, burning everything.
In the face of that extreme heat, enough to vaporize anything, the existence of any terrain feature was meaningless.
The ground was scorched black, rock turned to charcoal, soil turned into red magma, and even the air was burned into twisting distortion, a terrifying sight.
Clearly, the power of this Magic had not only exceeded the range of an ultra-long chant, its area was also absurdly large.
At the least, neither Lefiya's nor Riveria's wide-area annihilation magic could match this fire magic.
Fallen though she was, defiled though she was, a Spirit was still a Spirit, a born magic race stronger and more mysterious than the Elves, one that possessed miracles close to Arcanum, so there was nothing surprising about whatever it brought about.
Under magical power that terrible, even the strongest defensive Magic that Riveria of the High Elves could use was starting to give way.
At one point the dome-shaped barrier of green light gave off a sound like cracking under the crash of those horrific waves of fire.
"Ngh...!"
Riveria, both hands holding her staff up as she poured out magic power, let out a groan full of pain.
"Lady Riveria!"
Lefiya's and Alicia's faces changed, and they hurried forward to hold her up.
But the dome-shaped barrier of green light kept giving off crack after crack under the impact of the horrific waves of fire, and blood ran from the corner of Riveria's mouth.
"How... how can this be...?!"
Raul's cry came out disbelieving.
As far as he knew, the barrier magic released by Riveria, the city's strongest Mage, had never once until today cracked like this.
On past expeditions, so long as this High Elf put up this barrier magic, anyone protected by it was absolutely safe.
No matter what attack landed on that barrier, none of it could leave so much as a mark.
But today, this barrier magic that could shut out everything had cracked.
The front, the sides, even the space overhead, the barrier was cracking everywhere, and everyone's eyes went wide.
The blast flow of flame kept slamming into the barrier, the scorching heat vaporizing everything as if it blew in from hell.
"Riveria!"
"Riveria!"
Everyone was calling Riveria's name, but in the end it could not change what came next.
A second later the dome-shaped barrier of green light let out a sharp sound and shattered.
The crimson-lotus storm poured in, turning into towering waves of fire and vortexes of flame, and everyone was swallowed by that savage blaze.
The flames swept away everything and drowned everything, turning the whole battlefield into a sea of fire.
"Riveria! Everyone!"
Ais was caught in the sea of fire too, but because she had not joined the fight at the start she was some distance off and had not taken the attack at its full strength. She spread a barrier of gale winds, holding off the flames while she watched her companions get swallowed up by the huge explosion, and let out a wail of grief like nothing before.
But before Ais's wail had faded, a brilliant comet came racing in from another direction.
Carrying dazzling starlight, the comet split the sea of fire as it flew, riding the wind and cutting the waves, and rushed toward the spot where Finn and the others had been.
"Leo!"
Ais's eyes went wide at the sight.
What answered the girl was a calm voice chanting.
"Come from the golden palace."
Leo's figure appeared in the sea of fire, the protective starlight over him shutting out the flames and the heat, and with the Giant's Battle Garb's defense on top of that he barely held out against that terrible firestorm.
He appeared in front of the spot where Finn's group had been, Starlight raised high in his hand, the two magic treasure stones on the sword and the holy gold veins blazing together with brilliant light, and a magic circle spread beneath him.
This magic circle was different from before. Inside it still gave off brilliant starlight, but as a whole it showed a heavy brown like the earth.
"Taurus's Star!"
When Leo's voice fell, new light of Magic bloomed.
A thick pillar of rock rose out of the ground and blocked the way in front of him.
Then, one after another, more pillars of rock rose in turn, spreading in good order around Leo, holding back the storm of flame coming in from every direction.
Cut off by those pillars, Finn and the others, who had been swallowed by the crimson-lotus hellfire, were freed and their forms showed again.
They lay on the ground, scorch marks all over them, clearly badly hurt.
But their arms were moving, their limbs were moving, and they were groaning in pain, so they were plainly all alive.
Then, with a bellow that rang through heaven and earth, a giant golden bull appeared behind Leo.
The bull stood a good five meters and more, one of its legs taller than all of Leo, its whole body golden yellow, chunks of rock drifting around it, giving off a heavy feeling all over, like a mountain god that had taken shape out of the earth.
It stamped its feet lightly and the ground around it heaved up, lifting rocks, sending sand and stone flying to circle around it.
"That's..."
Ais stared.
"A new... Magic?"
That was right, this was the third magic Leo had learned not long ago, Prayer of the Twelve Zodiac.
This was a magic that could summon star beasts of different attributes at will, according to the content of the chant and the change in how much was chanted.
Just now Leo had used it to summon the earth-attribute star beast, Taurus's Star.
"Go!"
Leo raised Starlight and pointed the tip at the defiled Spirit, and the giant golden bull let out a long bellow.
The next moment the giant golden bull charged, crashing straight at the defiled Spirit.
As an earth-attribute star beast, Taurus's Star had the power to control the earth.
Its charge made the ground shake with every footfall.
"Aria! Aria!"
The defiled Spirit was still crying out in delight. The fire-red magic circle beneath her had not yet faded and the dregs of magic power were still drifting, but the tentacles around her stirred, passed through the sea of fire, and struck at Taurus's Star.
Taurus's Star paid them no mind at all and kept charging.
Just as the tentacles were about to land on it, pillars of rock rose from the ground one after another and blocked them.
The pillars held the tentacles off and at the same time pushed Taurus's Star up into the air.
Standing on the pillars, Taurus's Star took heavy, ground-shaking steps, then leaped at the defiled Spirit.
"...!"
The defiled Spirit was about to react, but Taurus's Star beat her to it.
The rocks that had been floating around it moved without any warning, turning into cannonballs of stone that shot at the defiled Spirit.
Caught off guard, the defiled Spirit took every one of the sudden stone cannonballs head-on, her delicate upper body struck again and again like it had been hit by lightning until her skin was bleeding.
"Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
The smile vanished from the defiled Spirit's face, and her face twisted as she let out a shrill cry, all her tentacles lashing out at once to tangle with Taurus's Star as it kept firing rocks.
"Leo!"
On the other side, Ais finally reached the others, and looking at Leo controlling the star beast to fight the defiled Spirit, she called out to him.
"Save them!"
Leo shouted at Ais without turning his head.
Seeing Finn and the others lying on the ground, blackened and covered in wounds, Ais felt her chest tighten.
Knowing there was no time to lose, she went straight to Lefiya and the others, took bottle after bottle of Elixir out of the three Supporters' packs, pulled the corks, and poured them over everyone.
Taurus's Star had landed, and it charged wildly at the defiled Spirit and slammed into her, only to be stopped by the petal armor.
The stone cannonballs it fired collided fiercely with the tentacles while it rammed the petal armor, roar after roar coming without pause.
"Ground, growl."
The enraged defiled Spirit began chanting again, and a pitch-black magic circle spread beneath her.
"Come, come, come, shell of the earth, light of black iron, hammer of the flashing star, by the contract of creation I command you to reverse, burn the sky, shatter the ground, raise a bridge, join heaven and earth as one, descending axe of the sky, calamity of destruction..."
This was Magic completely different from the last.
"In the name of the proxy, I command. The name granted to me is gnome, incarnation of earth, queen of earth..."
The volume of the chant had dropped, from an ultra-long chant to a long chant, which showed that the magic to come should at least not be as terrifying in power and range as the previous one.
But it also meant that under her ultra-high-speed chanting, the magic would go off faster.
And so it did.
"Meteor Shower."
Pitch-black magic-power light burst out of the equally pitch-black magic circle and shot up to the vault of the ceiling, turning the sky of the whole floor into a domain wrapped in darkness and light.
Enormous magic power erupted and gathered at a single point, and a swarm of meteors glowing with black light came down from the sky.
"This is bad!"
Ais, still treating her companions, saw it and felt a thread of despair rise in her.
This magic's attack range might not match the last one's, but it was still huge, and even if she wanted to get her companions clear of it now, it could not be done.
Fortunately, Leo was still standing in front of them all.
"Aries's Star!"
He used his third magic again and summoned a new star beast.
The magic circle beneath him changed too, from the heavy brown of the earth to a vivid, living green.
Taurus's Star, in the middle of its assault on the defiled Spirit, vanished, and a giant white ram of the same size took its place, appearing out of the green magic circle.
The moment the giant white ram appeared it cried out at the meteor shower in the sky, making the ground around it tremble as huge trees pushed up out of it.
Aries's Star was a wood-attribute star beast, able to generate endless trees and vines, and it grew a sea of trees across the battlefield in a moment.
The sea of trees layered up, the trees winding around one another and growing into one another, until they formed a great wall of wood across the sky to meet the meteor shower coming down.
Countless meteors glowing with black light slammed into the wall of trees, blasting the roots apart, smashing the crowns, shaking the whole sea of trees.
But under Aries's Star's control the trees kept growing, and not only were they not destroyed by the meteor shower, they grew more vigorous and denser, using up every last meteor and stopping the defiled Spirit's long-chant magic.
"Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
Seeing her magic stopped, the defiled Spirit seemed furious, and the shrill cry she gave no longer held the hair-raising joy of before but was full of venom, full of malice.
In her fury she whipped her head around to look in Leo's direction.
"Charging spear of thunder, I am the proxy, thunder spirit, incarnation of thunder, queen of thunder..."
The fierce incantation was chanted out, and a golden magic circle formed above the defiled Spirit's head, magic power gushing from it.
This was short-chant magic, and it was aimed at Leo.
"Thunder Ray."
Countless brilliant bolts of thunder-light spilled out of the huge magic circle floating in the air, turning into lances of lightning that shot toward Leo.
The scale of it showed that even though this was a short-chant type of magic that went off extremely fast, cast by a Spirit monster beyond all specifications its power was still immense, nothing an ordinary Mage could reach.
That scale could match the great bombardment of a high-tier Mage; only a Spirit could cast magic on such a scale.
But the magic was too fast, so fast that Aries's Star could not react in time to grow trees to block it.
The immense thunderbolt punched through Aries's Star's body, ran it through, and burst into ten million bolts of lightning that plowed through everything around.
Leo, Ais, and Finn and the others who were being treated were all thrown by the exploding lightning.
Every one of them, without exception, went tumbling across the ground like kites with their strings cut, rolling a long way.
Leo and Ais in particular, who at the last moment had chosen to shield the others, hit the ground several times and rolled several times before they slammed into rock and into the green wall and finally stopped.
"Cough...!"
Ais coughed up blood and slid down the green wall.
"Ngh...!"
Leo let out a strained sound as well, smashing the rock to pieces.
"Light, race forth."
Of all moments, right then, as if she still was not satisfied, the defiled Spirit launched a lethal follow-up.
"Cut through the darkness, I am the proxy, light spirit, incarnation of light, queen of light..."
The high-speed short chant was finished, and a huge white magic circle appeared above her head like a flag of death.
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