Shigeo didn't look at her.
His eyes burned brighter, lightning veins sparking across his skin.
"I can handle it."
(Just two more seconds… all I need is two.)
Bakuza turned suddenly, sensing something—
His grin widened.
"You think you can predict the void, boy?"
The Shade-Fire aura exploded outward.
Flames turned black, spiraling like wings of a dying sun.
The shockwave tore across the ground, heading straight for Shigeo.
Saya's eyes widened.
"Shigeo!!"
She moved instantly petals of blighted Bloom spinning around her as she raised both hands, forming a crimson barrier.
The impact hit shattering the ground, tearing the air.
She coughed blood but stood firm.
Shigeo blinked once the entire world frozen in a single frame of thought.
(Pattern aligned. Path calculated.)
He raised his right hand, lightning converging into a single point.
"This is it!!."
A chain of blue-white light erupted from the ground, wrapping through the battlefield like a digital thread — piercing Bakuza's anchors and destabilizing the void field.
For the first time, Bakuza's laughter faltered.
His shineri flickered one eye widening in brief shock.
Khael sensed it immediately.
"Now!" he shouted.
The team moved in perfect synchronicity fire, lightning, wind, and storm striking in harmony.
The world detonated in brilliance.
The world detonated in brilliance.
A lattice of light and flame tore across the battlefield, searing the earth into molten glass.
Shigeo's Counter-Path had triggered — a predictive web of a thousand mirrored futures collapsing into one perfect strike.
For a heartbeat, it looked divine.
Then came the backlash.
The air rippled, and through the blinding glow walked Bakuza, wreathed in swirling shade and crimson flame laughing.
That sound wasn't human. It was deep, guttural, vibrating through the bones.
"You… made me use sixty percent of my strength."
His grin carved across the shadows, eyes burning like coals in an endless night.
Flame spiraled down his arms, black and red intertwining, the mark of a dual affinity: Shade and Fire.
Shigeo's shield fractured, shards of light scattering like dying stars.
"That… wasn't enough?" his thoughts burned through the static, blood dripping from his nose. "No—he's adapting. Even predictive flow can't stabilize against that chaos."
Saya darted forward, intercepting a shadow spear aimed at him.
Her bloom shimmered with pale silver her stance steady, breath uneven.
"You think you can just ignore me?" she hissed, her Shinrei flaring like a moonlit flame.
Behind her, Shigeo's eyes flickered, calculations reweaving.
A thousand new paths spiraled open predicting not victory, but survival.
"He's learning mid-battle. Shade affinity distortion rate rising… Tch, 4.3 seconds until he pierces again. Saya, stay low—!"
But Bakuza was already there.
He blurred through the ash with a single step, heat and shadow fusing in a monstrous roar.
The ground shattered as his flame-touched fist struck the barrier Shigeo had hastily reformed, a dome of refracted reality.
The impact cracked it like glass.
Then came Rael.
His voice cut through the chaos like a blade of light.
"So arrogant!!"
Rael's blade, Seraphis, glowed veins of gold crawling along its edge as runes ignited from hilt to tip.
The air trembled. The world dimmed.
"Eclipse Gate… open."
A surge of divine energy tore through him, wings of light half-formed behind his back.
His eyes shone not gold, but judgment itself.
"Judicator Form… eighty percent!"
The ground beneath him folded, Shinrei pressure collapsing into an axis of pure will.
A translucent halo sharpened behind his head not soft and holy, but razor-edged, like the crown of a god ready to kill.
Bakuza's grin faltered for the first time.
Across the battlefield, another war unfolded.
Khael, Juno, and Ceyla faced Kero, the pale swordsman whose black bangs masked most of his expression.
Each slow motion of his wrist left afterimages of wind and shadow intertwining, Shade-Wind Affinity, the rarest hybrid of stealth and lethality.
Khael's dragon-veined arms gleamed faintly in the firelight, each breath steady, calculating.
"He's not like Bakuza… He's surgical. Cold. We can't let him isolate Ceyla."
Juno clenched her fists, stone-like veins pulsing under her skin as she braced for impact.
Ceyla's hair flickered with lightning, eyes sharp as thunder screamed above.
Kero exhaled softly.
"You've trained well. But you're still bound by emotion."
He stepped forward a blur and the world split into wind.
Khael blocked with his arm, dragon-scale fragments scattering as sparks burst outward.
Juno's Taishin reflexes kicked in — Tendon Gate his body a blur of living endurance.
Ceyla's storm erupted, lightning chasing wind like a desperate lover.
But Kero was already behind her.
A whisper of blade on air
and Ceyla barely twisted away, her sleeve sliced clean.
Khael roared, "CEYLA—!"
His aura exploded, wind and dragonfire fusing into a spiral storm that ripped the air apart.
Meanwhile, Kaen and Rael's battle with Bakuza burned into the sky.
Kaen's flames mirrored his rage, spiraling with reckless grace 60% control, no more, no less.
He'd mastered that much under Master Genzo's brutal discipline — but this enemy, this monster… was one of the Hollow Nine.
And Bakuza wasn't fighting alone anymore.
Through the veil of shadow, a second figure emerged beside him —
long black hair, pale skin gleaming under the embers, his blade still wet with condensed Shinrei.
Eyes half-lidded, indifferent.
"You took your time, Kero," Bakuza growled, grin widening.
"You were enjoying yourself too much." Kero replied, tone flat, blade humming with layered wind seals.
Khael froze for half a second.
"No… don't tell me, he's one of them too."
On the ridgeline, Shigeo's thousand-path web continued to flicker collapsing, rebuilding, collapsing again.
He was sweating, pale, eyes unfocused, lips moving in rapid whispers.
"Paths diverging, Khael's chance ratio forty-two percent… Kaen's stable at fifty-nine… Rael's overdraw potential rising, stop, damn it, stop before…."
Saya knelt beside him, hand on her blade, eyes soft.
"Don't push yourself too far, Shigeo. You can't fight the whole world in your head."
He didn't answer, couldn't.
His gaze stayed locked on the chaos below, where dragons roared, gods burned, and the Vein of Emotion itself trembled.
"If we fall here… there won't be another dawn."
Khael's voice cut through the storm, his dragon blood humming.
Wind coiled around him like an ancient prayer.
"Everyone… hold the line!"
And as his roar met the echo of Rael's Judicator blade and Kaen's hellfire—
The battlefield of Elysera blazed once more.
To be continue