Lixue’s Ice Illusion Moon and the Emperor’s Shattered Light are both Origin Artifacts, steeped in Primordial Source, yet her strength is a shallow well, drawing only a trickle from a glacier.
At the opening clash, Nakart, an Overdeity Level brute, went all in; the power gap fell like a mountain, and Lixue was swept under like a leaf in floodwater.
Even with her special Sword Domain—Heavenly Snow Dance Burial—pushing her to the brim, she still lagged far behind Nakart, whose full output hit mid Overdeity even under suppression.
The Primordial Source field pressed on him like deep water, and it mattered, but only like morning frost; once Nakart read her patterns, that chill no longer bit.
His weapon was alien to her eyes—like a hunting arquebus reborn in steel—sleek, compact, metal-bright, spitting mana rounds with thunderhead force from a small black mouth.
She’d seen its type in fantasy manga—magic guns, perhaps—and its power, range, and speed blew past her borders; any sword art she cast crumbled like ice in a furnace.
Worse, Nakart wasn’t alone; three general-like peak deity magi-warriors circled like wolves, and their formation strikes linked like chains, more troublesome than Nakart’s lone storm.
And three elite corps harried her from not far off, peppering with SS-grade to early Saint-tier spells and strikes, a steady drizzle that eroded stone.
Thank the cold stars, Lanxia rushed in as the battle was still young, and the pressure on Lixue eased like wind cutting through fog.
“Lanxia, is everything fine on the Emperor’s side?” Lixue asked, sliding past mana rounds like a swallow through rain.
“No! It’s very not fine!” Lanxia’s voice bit like a bitter wind. “This dragon’s too weak; if I stayed, I’d only weigh Yumigawa down, so he sent me to you.”
“You, of all people, calling yourself weak… what monster is the Emperor facing?!”
“…Law Realm,” Lanxia answered, batting a score of elites aside like leaves, her mood heavy as stormclouds. “That terror crushed my will like a mountain; only the Dragon God felt the same. That man is Law Realm.”
“Law Realm…” Lixue halted; the ice-blue glow around her deepened like twilight on snow. She’d thought tonight’s foes were hard, yet the Emperor faced a peak that dwarfed all these hills.
The gap was a canyon; the priority was survival, not victory, like choosing the shore over the wave, because winning wasn’t real.
Lixue was never one to flee—no matter the storm—but this time… her odds against Nakart were a flickering candle, and the Emperor faced a lightning strike from the Law Realm.
Decision fixed, she blew open her reserves and surged, her offense a whiteout blizzard grinding straight at Nakart.
Yet no matter how hard the gale screamed, it couldn’t catch him; his speed matched her step, and distance was his river, drowning her edge.
I have to get in close.
She loved wide, distant fields of ice, but here she admitted the plain truth—at range, she couldn’t match him; thankfully, as a Sword Wielder, her close blade was still a storm.
She stepped in Mirror Calm Water across the sky, slipping through waves of mana shots like a carp breaking ripples, and she sprinted to close the gap.
“Extreme Snow Flash.” She became a streak of sword light, a comet splitting the night, cleaving past the air’s fetters in a single straight flash.
Clang!! Nakart had felt it coming; a dagger rose like a sudden cliff to catch her slash, and his magic gun tilted like a viper, finger snapping the trigger.
“Snow Moon: Mirror Flower, Water Moon!” At the razor instant, she fell into that mirrored stillness, sliding past a point-blank shot; life brushed death like cold sweat down her spine.
The shock cracked her Mirror Calm Water; her heart still shivered like a disturbed lake, and she’d need a minute or two to still it again.
“Sharp senses,” Nakart said, voice smooth as oiled steel. “As respect, I’ll show a bit more sincerity.”
His left-hand dagger blinked into a silver magic gun, a moon to the purple-black one in his right; Lixue’s mood sank like an anchor—without Mirror Calm Water, her senses dulled, and one gun had already pushed her to the edge.
“Ice Moon Feather.” She cut off thought, seized the initiative, and wove her Sword Aura into a storm of feather-shaped, ice-blue short blades, sending them shrieking toward him like winter birds.
Nakart stayed unhurried; mana rounds fanned from all angles like petals on the wind, meeting the feather-swords in a glitter of frost and sparks.
He tossed both guns skyward, hands free to draw a longer, heavier, tech-etched magic gun—more cannon than rifle, a steel dragon with a wide, dark maw.
He aimed and squeezed; a laser roared out like a sunbeam turned spear, fast and ruinous, and the two smaller guns above lanced thin beams that braided into the main ray.
“Ice Moon: Pierce.” Knowing she couldn’t dodge, Lixue drew a steady breath, became a sharper sword light, and slammed headlong into the onrushing beam.
She held, barely, at the cost of most stamina and Sword Aura, like a glacier calving to stop a flood; good thing Lingxiao’s Supreme Divine Spirit Medicine left her one last sip, or she’d have yielded.
“Ice Illusion Moon, Second Form— Icemoon Bow!” She swallowed the elixir, then bared her last trump, a crescent of frozen moonlight in her hands.
Lanxia’s side wasn’t pretty either; she’d beheaded a peak general, yet her scales and skin were inked with cuts, a map of battle in red.
Against the Basiloth Empire’s edge—three peak deity generals and three elite corps—even with Supreme Divine Spirit Medicine from Lingxiao and Lingsaki, Lanxia could only brawl like wildfire, not gain the high ground; wounds sealed one heartbeat and bloomed anew the next.
Lixue wanted to aid her, but she herself was a candle in wind.
The Icemoon Bow cost little at rest and bled you dry in battle; with what Supreme Divine Spirit Medicine she had left, two or three minutes remained—every second a falling snowflake you could count.
“Ice Moon: Prison.” Nakart’s speed was a hawk; she needed the sky caged.
Arrows from the Icemoon Bow were faster than his wind and truer than a lodestar; in barely ten seconds, he stood inside a lattice of arrows, forced to break out by brute storm.
She drew at once; pure, absolute ice Sword Aura flooded the bow, and three crystalline, art-piece-beautiful ice-blue longswords formed like spears of the aurora.
As they appeared, the air plunged in temperature like a cliff; buildings below frosted over at a pace the eye could chase, and extreme cold braided around Lixue like a mantle.
“Ice Moon: Triple Annihilation.” “What?!” The ever-calm Nakart finally showed a crack, panic flitting across his face like a shadow of wings; the swords’ energy howled like a blizzard from the abyss.
He stopped prying the cage like a bored artisan and ripped out two cannon-like magic guns, spinning as he clamped both triggers, body a turning storm.
“Laser Maelstrom!” In a blink, two beams twisted into a colossal tornado, spearing sky and earth, shredding the arrow cage and crashing into the three flying swords with thunder and ice.
Lixue moved to press the advantage, but a crisp, bell-like loli voice rang in her mind: “Hurry and get to Boss Yumigawa Sumeragi! I have a way to get you out!”
“Who are you?” Lixue asked, wary as a fox in snow.
“Aya—no time to explain! I’m Hill. Just regroup at the boss’ side!”
“Hill? …Understood.” She remembered the Emperor stormed the Nine Cold Labyrinth for an Ice Dream Lotus to heal a loli dragon named Hill, and her chest eased like thaw.
She didn’t know why Hill, who should be on the Eastern Moon Continent, stood in Cerol City’s shadow, but there was no time for riddles; hope hung on Hill like frost on pine.
Choice made, Lixue struck fast; before the three ice-blue swords fully canceled out, she cut down the three nearby elite units like wheat, and Lanxia’s burden lightened.
Hill’s voice had touched Lanxia’s mind as well, so their goal was one moon, one road—break away and return to the Emperor.
She swallowed her last elixir, drew a deep, cold breath, and pulled the Icemoon Bow to its farthest arc, ready to loose her strongest sword art.
This time the Sword Aura ignited from within the bow itself, like a star within ice, not from the world’s scattered ice-element haze.
“Ice Moon: Eternal Sword.” …
