"Aurora Burst."
A white flash burst out and lit up the whole gray wasteland.
From the white magic circle above the defiled Spirit's head a bombardment of pure light roared out, tearing the air, flying straight toward Leo.
Her first target was still Leo, the one who had just gotten in her way.
The defiled Spirit's malice could not have been more obvious, filling that beautiful face with a savage quality that ruined its goddess-like beauty.
She would not stop until the eyesore was wiped out completely; that was the viciousness she showed, nothing like a monster's.
If not for the Giant's Battle Garb protecting him, shedding a good deal of the damage and the impact, Leo would not have been able to react in time and dodge this blow.
"Race onward like a comet."
His vision blanketed by the intense flash, Leo triggered his flight magic almost by reflex, turning into a comet at full speed and shooting skyward, dodging that lance of aurora, which struck the rock behind him and blew it apart.
"Laaaaaaaaa!"
Seeing the blow she had counted on dodged, the defiled Spirit cried out in anger again and lashed her tentacles again and again, each one turning into a huge python roaming in every direction, all of them scrambling to pounce on the comet climbing into the sky.
At the speed of those tentacles, of course they could never catch Leo, who could accelerate without limit.
But that was also this flight magic's weakness. Once the speed went too high, even Leo, the caster, could not keep up with it, could not make agile movements, and certainly could not attack while accelerating, only ram straight ahead.
So as long as the density of attacks was high enough to hem in the space Leo could move through, even flailing wildly would hit him sooner or later.
That was what the defiled Spirit did.
She let out a shriek, and the whole floor shook with it.
Then, on floor 59, the walls, ground, and vault covered in green flesh all began to move, forming flesh wall after flesh wall that began to compress the space of the whole battlefield.
The flesh walls rose from the ground, pressed in from all sides, dropped from above, closing and shrinking like a sealed room being built, making the area the comet Leo could fly through smaller and smaller.
Countless tentacles thrashed inside that space, packed dense as vipers, until the comet, able only to ram straight ahead, finally slammed into one of the huge tentacles and was whipped away hard.
"Meteor Dance!"
With the protective starlight and the Giant's Battle Garb on him Leo was not hurt by that much of an attack, but a situation with nowhere to dodge still left him no room to breathe, so he spread his magic circle and fired countless meteors at the tentacles and green walls around him.
Roaring explosions bloomed all through the walled-in space, the meteor shower hitting every part of the battlefield, one unbroken barrage.
With Leo's magic firepower as it was now, the petal armor the defiled Spirit kept for her own protection might hold, but the green walls around him and those tentacles were another matter.
So the meteors' wild bombardment not only blew apart huge tentacle after huge tentacle, it also shattered heavy green wall after heavy green wall, freeing the compressed space and returning it to that vast wasteland.
"Fire, come forth."
The sweet voice rang out, and the battlefield's newly opened air froze.
Leo's face changed and he whipped his head toward the defiled Spirit, and saw her with her arms spread, showing him a smile full of malice.
"Roar, roar, vortex of flame, crimson-lotus cliffs, roaring hellfire, borrow the strength of the sudden gale to seal the world, burning sky, burning earth, burning ocean, burning springs, burning peaks, burning life, turn everything to scorched earth, fire the signal cannons of wrath and lamentation, at the cost of the life of the hero I love..."
An ultra-long chant magic under an ultra-high-speed chant!
The calamity that could bring heaven and earth to ruin was being called up by the defiled Spirit again, the huge fire-red magic circle spinning wildly and spreading, growing larger and larger.
The terrible magic-power light was like a pillar rising to the vault of the ceiling.
The horrifying magic power spread out in all directions like a tsunami.
Danger roared, death stormed, and it came down over Leo's whole body for real, making him clench his teeth.
Honestly, he had known the defiled Spirit was strong, but he had never thought she could be strong to this degree.
In the original work, this defiled Spirit alone had nearly kept all of Loki Familia's main force from coming back, leaving Finn and Ais and the others struggling on the edge of death countless times.
Leo had thought that this time, with one more person, himself, however bad things got they would not get that bad.
He had taken too much for granted.
Under that unreasonable Spirit magic, one more Lv.6-level fighter or one fewer might not make any decisive difference.
This defiled Spirit had matured; her power far exceeded Udaeus, and even Balor, the Floor Boss of floor 49 classified at Lv.7, might not necessarily match her, never mind that she could use a Spirit's magic on top of that.
Ais had only inherited a Great Spirit's wind magic and it gave her the ability to challenge above her own class; as a fellow Spirit, how much worse could this defiled Spirit's magic be than Ais's wind magic?
Magic that could sweep away Loki Familia's whole main force was not something one more Lv.6-level fighter could handle.
To overturn the whole battle, there was only one road left.
Throw in everything he had, and fight for his life.
"...Then let's fight."
Muttering that, Leo pulled several high-grade Magic Potions out of his belt pouch and downed them all in one go.
The Mind recovery, several times higher than an ordinary Magic Potion's, worked together with the Spirit Healing Development Ability to rapidly restore the Mind he had spent down so far.
But that Mind had barely recovered before Leo wrung it out again.
The two magic treasure stones on the Starlight in his hand blazed with light, and the holy gold veins gave off a brightness beyond anything before.
Leo released every bit of his Mind without hesitation, converting it into magic power, amplifying it through Starlight and letting it out.
Magic power almost as vast as the defiled Spirit's came into being.
"Come from the golden palace."
Leo chanted aloud.
Only, this time, he did not stop there.
"Beasts of radiance that must prevail, spirits of the stars that trample the battlefield, sweep past bearing the undying fire of the world's core, and roar with all your voices."
This was the full release of Leo's third magic, the complete chant that left out no link.
"Meteors of thunder, flood, storm, ice and snow, and flame."
"You are the incarnations of calamity, the war hammers of divine punishment, galloping from the ends of the world, descending upon boundless disaster."
"Judge! Pass sentence! Wash away all filth, chaos, darkness, evil, and madness in this world!"
"Let the primordial order return here."
This was the chant of Leo's third magic.
Meteor Dance and Comet Chase were both ultra-short chants, but Leo's third magic was an ultra-long chant, and it had a multi-stage chant effect that let him change the number summoned by varying how he chanted.
If he only summoned a single star beast, chanting the first line was enough, which put it in the range of an ultra-short chant.
If he wanted to summon more star beasts, he had to increase the amount he chanted.
The more he chanted, the more star beasts he summoned, but the Mind it consumed multiplied along with it.
Now, with Leo chanting and holding nothing back, all the power of this summoning magic was released.
The magic circle giving off thick starlight spread outward, layer on layer, intricate beyond measure.
"Prayer of the Twelve Zodiac!"
Leo held Starlight high, and under the light of the magic treasure stones and the holy veins, he completed the release of the magic.
Twelve golden palaces rose one after another out of the huge magic circle.
The first star palace opened, and a giant white ram walked out, bringing vigorous life: Aries's Star.
The second star palace opened, and a giant golden bull appeared, chunks of rock drifting around it: Taurus's Star.
What appeared in the third star palace was two giants burning with flame all over: Gemini's Star.
What appeared in the fourth star palace was a giant crab, unreal as a bubble: Cancer's Star.
What appeared in the fifth star palace was a lion whose whole body was hard as steel: Leo's Star.
What appeared in the sixth star palace was a beautiful goddess holding an ear of grain: Virgo's Star.
What appeared in the seventh star palace was a golden balance: Libra's Star.
What appeared in the eighth star palace was a giant scorpion wreathed in poison mist: Scorpio's Star.
What appeared in the ninth star palace was a centaur with an arrow nocked: Sagittarius's Star.
What appeared in the tenth star palace was a beast with a long snout, sharp teeth, and a fish's body, swaying like a black shadow: Capricorn's Star.
What appeared in the eleventh star palace was a mermaid holding a jar: Aquarius's Star.
What appeared in the twelfth star palace was two whales stirring up currents of freezing cold: Pisces's Star.
Twelve star beasts, twelve attributes, all appearing at once, all descending at once.
The turbulent flow of magic power formed a storm and burst around those twelve star beasts, and they roared together, the sound shaking heaven and earth.
"In the name of the proxy, I command. The name granted to me is salamander, incarnation of flame, queen of flame..."
The defiled Spirit's expression changed, a change like nothing before.
Her chanting was fast to begin with and should have gotten her magic off ahead of Leo, but she seemed shaken by that earth-shaking third magic, and her chanting faltered several times, so the magic that should have come first came a step slower instead.
Yet as the twelve star beasts all appeared, the defiled Spirit's magic still finished.
"Fire Storm!"
The hellfire that swept the battlefield descended again.
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