Thane watched the sky like a man forced to witness a circus act in the middle of a war.
The boy, because that's what he was, zig-zagged across the night in a pattern that made zero tactical sense and yet somehow kept him alive.
Twenty-six double-barreled spell cannons fired in perfect coordination with every affinity the two ships had at their disposal.
All aimed by the two Souls calculating every possible intercept trajectory.
And the kid… dodged all of it, somehow.
Thane's eyelid twitched as he said, "Nymira?"
And the girl floating inside the crystalline pod lifted her gaze.
"Target's flight pattern recognition is still in progress," she said with two voices overlapping perfectly: hers, and the Soul of Luke's vessel, linked directly into her mind.
"How long?" Thane asked calmly, but his clenched fists betrayed him, "I need that man down before Chimera B-41 makes its move."
She scanned again, runes circling her faster.
"Flight patterns appear reactive instead of learned," she reported. "Target possibly possesses heightened cognitive capacity."
"Just great…" Thane let out a slow exhale through his nose.
He didn't even get to finish being annoyed before Nymira's entire body jolted.
"CAPTAIN!" she shouted, both voices cracking in unison. "Boomstick's signature detected! Target has the artifact! Requesting permission to fire the Rail Gun!"
Thane's mouth fell open.
Luke would never, under any circumstances, let Boomstick fall into enemy hands.
And even if he did, it wasn't something anybody could pick up and just use.
"Nymira," he began, but she cut him off.
"Captain! Requesting permission to use the Rail Gun!" Both voices overlapped, urgent, panicked, like a pair of twins screaming the same sentence.
"No," was all he said.
Nymira blinked, both of her voices stumbling as she said, "Captain, the ship-"
"Kids," Thane said, turning to face her fully, "... you're a homunculus built for insane cognition. And Luke's brat over there? Same thing. Brilliant, but you both lack experience."
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"What do you mean?"
Thane smirked, "The man doesn't have enough mana to power Boomstick far enough to destroy this ship," he said.
He then began counting on his fingers.
"Not enough mana to fuel it to its full potential."
"Not enough circuits to channel the mana even if he did have it."
" And even if he did, he wouldn't have needed a divine artifact just to crack a Tier 5 barrier."
Thane continued as he turned back towards the night sky, "We're reinforced with Mystic Adamantite. And every weapon system has a personal barrier. We'll be fine."
"But-"
"Reloading the Rail Gun takes twenty seconds," he said, overriding her. "And twenty seconds is more than enough time for B-41 to reach us. I am not wasting the only anti-dragon system we have on what is probably bait."
Nymira paused, runes flickering around her like nervous fireflies.
"Probability of success," she murmured, "... estimated at… fifty percent."
The hesitation in her dual voice said everything: she hated that number.
"Uh-huh." Thane grinned, feeling his heartbeat finally kick up. "For now, focus on landing a hit on him. And use what we know about Boomstick's mana requirements, and analyze how much virtual mass he's added so far."
"Acknowledged," she said, eyes sharpening. "Assessing-"
Then she froze again.
"CAPTAIN!" she shouted, both voices spiking in perfect panic. "Strike imminent! Predicted VM: approximately one kilogram!"
Thane laughed out loud, "Like I said!"
And then-
-Thard-!
What followed barely registered as anything more than a brief flash of white, instantly drowned out by the flood of spellfire tearing through the night sky.
But what that flash represented was anything but small.
A Doom-Doom shell isn't just another shotgun round.
It's a slug, buckshot, and birdshot packed into a single shell, designed to deliver maximum trauma.
And the round Nico had just fired, the round what felt to him just a normal shotgun blast, was anything but normal as soon as it left the muzzle.
The runes lining Boomstick's barrel mimicked a fraction of the First Hero's Esper spell, forcing the projectile into a state that barely resembled conventional matter as it infused one kilogram of virtual mass onto it, and boosted its muzzle velocity by fifty percent.
The worn-out semi-auto shotgun normally launches a slug at roughly 400 meters per second.
This one hit closer to 530.
In half a second, it reached the Southern Vigil's barrier, carrying hundreds of thousands of newtons of impact force, compressed into a surface area no larger than Nico's fist.
And the barrier reacted exactly as it was designed to.
It bowed inward, stretching like a reinforced net catching the projectiles as its golden surface rippled with layers of enchantments working overtime to disperse the energy across its surface.
For a split second, it looked like it might hold.
Then it didn't.
Thane watched, breath locked in his chest, as the barrier fractured in a silent burst of golden dust, its runes collapsing in on themselves as the spell matrix failed all at once.
But it still wasn't enough.
Crossing the remaining distance in the same heartbeat, the shot slammed into the secondary barrier wrapped around the rail gun itself.
That barrier flared violently, surging brighter than the first as it absorbed the impact head-on.
The massive field warped inward, straining under the force as alarms screamed silently through Nymira's rune feeds.
While Thane's fingers dug into his palms.
And for a moment, he was certain he'd misjudged it.
That he'd gambled wrong.
Then the barrier stabilized.
Its surface snapped back into shape, light flickering unevenly before settling into a steady glow, before going invisible again.
"The rail gun held," Thane exhaled slowly, not realizing until then that he'd been holding his breath.
Behind him, Nymira did the same.
While high above the water, Nico didn't wait to see what survived, but he did see the opportunity.
Through the Familiar Bond, he pushed the thought forward.
[Nom. You're up. Eat whatever they throw at you… and don't try to tank it.]
The response from the shoreline came in a storm of violet fire erupting into the sky as the sudden surge of power rolled across the island like a shockwave.
And then-
-BOOM.
Nom-Nom leapt.