The ruined sky above the burning capital trembled under the relentless shockwaves of kinetic force. High-altitude gales howled, tearing away the remaining ash-clouds and exposing the bruised, twilight-purple canopy of the evening.
Lencar's boots ground into the fractured edge of a floating stone slab, his muscles tightening in a desperate, high-tension equilibrium. Underneath his heavy black cloak and the featureless wooden mask, his body was a furnace of overclocked biology. He had triggered Beast Magic: Primal Apex, driving his heart rate into a heavy, thunderous rhythm that surged liquid heat through every fiber of his being. His reflexes were so hyper-accelerated that the erratic flight paths of the falling debris around him seemed to crawl in slow motion.
"Plant Magic: Juggernaut Gauntlets."
Over his forearms, thick, densely braided layers of green light pulsed and compressed, hardening into massive, jagged gauntlets of living ironwood.
The six-meter wind construct—a towering, colossal woman forged from pure, hyper-condensed atmospheric pressure—reared back its massive arm and threw a devastating, horizontal haymaker. The sheer speed of the swing tore the air apart, creating a visible ring of shock-condensation that shrieked like metal on metal.
Lencar didn't dodge. He brought his ironwood gauntlets up in a brutal, crossed-arm block.
CRASH!
The impact reverberated down through his spine and into the stone beneath his feet, cracking the solid masonry into a spiderweb of deep fissures. The force pushed him back two full meters, his boots carving deep trenches into the stone before he managed to arrest his momentum. Without a second to spare, Lencar snapped his hips forward, using the recoil to launch a vicious counter-strike. He drove his right ironwood gauntlet straight into the center of the construct's shifting, translucent torso, burying the spiked wood deep into the dense, swirling winds.
The giant reeled backward, the wind forming its core distorting wildly.
For nearly a quarter of an hour, the sky had been an arena for this relentless, exhausting war of attrition. Blow for blow, smash for smash, Lencar had matched the elemental entity in raw physical combat, constantly repairing and regrowing his shattered plant armor with his bottomless mana reserves while looking for a structural flaw in the spell.
Hovering just a few yards away, near the floating body of her unconscious master, the tiny figure of Sylph watched the prolonged brawl with an escalating sense of dread.
Her tiny hands, clenched into tight, trembling fists, shook with raw anxiety. She had thrown everything she could into this fight—her fierce pride, her mastery over the wind, her instinctive desire to protect the boy who had chosen her. Yet, despite all of that, the masked man simply refused to fall. He was an immovable wall, an adaptive, terrifying force of nature that ignored the laws of conventional combat.
She watched anxiously as her massive construct swung another crushing blow, only for the man to parry it with brutal efficiency and land a heavy counter that rattled the giant's very foundation.
The anxiety curdled into reckless, desperate resolve. She couldn't afford to hold back anymore. She couldn't afford to pace her energy. If her current output wasn't enough to break him, she would simply multiply it tenfold, consequences be damned.
Sylph dropped her defensive posture and floated directly toward the chest of the towering wind construct.
She placed her small, glowing hands flat against the swirling, hyper-compressed air of the giant's torso. Her tiny face twisted with an expression of intense, agonizing concentration, and she opened her spiritual core wide, releasing the absolute final tether of her personal safety.
"I won't let you... I WON'T LET YOU!" Sylph shrieked, her voice echoing like a bell across the ruined district.
She poured every single drop of her remaining mana—every ounce of her elemental essence, her vitality, and her spiritual strength—into the construct in one massive, uncontrolled geyser of power.
The reaction was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The emerald light radiating from the giant exploded, turning from a steady, bright glow into a blinding, violent flash that lit up the entire capital like a magnesium flare. The atmospheric pressure in the sky skyrocketed so aggressively that the air turned heavy, thick, and suffocating.
But the sheer, astronomical toll of draining her own spiritual core completely dry proved too much for the tiny spirit's physical manifestation.
The bright green light surrounding Sylph abruptly flickered, sputtered, and died. Her tiny eyes rolled back, her small wings locking in place, and her unconscious body plummeted gently downward. She drifted like a falling leaf, landing softly across Yuno's chest where he lay suspended in the remaining air currents, dissolving into a harmless, sparkling shower of emerald stardust that blanketed the sleeping boy in a protective, dormant hug.
The spirit was gone, completely emptied of mana and fast asleep in her master's core.
Yet, the colossal spell she had just supercharged did not vanish with her.
Deprived of a conscious mind to anchor its instincts, stripped of the tiny, sharp will that guided its movements, the supercharged wind construct snapped its tethers entirely. It ceased to be a tactical spell controlled by a spirit. It transformed into a mindless, runaway elemental disaster, plunging headfirst into an unthinking, berserk frenzy.
The transformation was terrifying to behold.
The giant's indistinct, featureless face stretched into a jagged, howling maw of pure vacuum pressure. Its mana output didn't just rise—it multiplied exponentially, shattering its previous limits. The ambient temperature around them plummeted to freezing levels as the wind accelerated past the speed of sound, creating a deafening, metallic shriek that tore through the evening sky.
Lencar's instincts screamed a warning a fraction of a second too late.
The berserk construct lunged forward with a speed that defied the physical world. There was no wind-up, no telegraphing of the attack. It simply vanished from its spot and reappeared directly in front of him.
Clang!
Lencar barely managed to cross his forearms, the ironwood gauntlets taking the brunt of a blow that felt like a falling meteor. The sheer kinetic force blew him backward through three separate floating stone walls, the impact rattling his teeth and bruising his ribs deep beneath his cloak.
He hit the floating debris, spitting a hot mouthful of blood behind his wooden mask.
Before he could even catch his breath, new weapons began to dynamically forge themselves out of the swirling atmospheric chaos surrounding the berserk giant. Lances of razor-sharp air materialized around its right arm, heavy maces of compressed gravity formed in its left hand, and massive, multi-bladed scythes spun like buzzsaws along its back.
The giant swung a colossal, spinning scythe in a vicious, tearing arc aimed directly at his neck.
Lencar dropped flat onto his back, sliding across a jagged slab of masonry. The scythe carved clean through the stone just inches above his chest, slicing the massive boulder into two perfectly smooth halves. The ensuing shockwave blasted him backward, tearing the remaining fabric of his heavy black cloak to ragged strips.
This was no longer a duel. This was a juggernaut operating at maximum output, throwing out lethal attacks without any regard for self-preservation or stamina.
Lencar pushed himself up from the rubble, his chest heaving behind the wooden mask. The brute-force brawling and the plant gauntlets were no longer enough to pierce the chaotic, hyper-accelerated tempest surrounding the berserk entity. If he tried to engage it in hand-to-hand combat now, he would be shredded into ribbons within seconds.
"Stubborn, mindless piece of work," Lencar growled, his voice a low, gravelly rumble of pure annoyance.
He didn't hesitate any longer. He reached his right hand down to his hip, bypassing a dozen other magical items in his spatial inventory, and gripped the hilt of his most uncompromising weapon.
With a sharp pull, he drew the heavy, crude, pitch-black broadsword from his ring.