“Elunis, doesn’t your Elven Kind always claim neutrality?” Molor’s face darkened like stormclouds rolling over a black sea.
He thanked the cold stars it was only Elunis’s avatar here; if her true body descended, he’d be dragged from fresh resurrection back into winter-long sleep.
“We were neutral during the war-torn years,” she said, voice calm as a still lake. “But since the Mizumi Clan rose, we stand as their allies. Molor, the leaves have fallen; you see where you stand now, don’t you?”
Worry rippled under her composed surface like wind through reeds. This avatar matched Molor’s current strength, and she couldn’t tell what cards he hid, yet her first duty was to shelter Yumigawa Senki and Elyar like lanterns in storm.
If her true body had come, Elunis wouldn’t waste breath; blades of dawn would have ended Molor at once.
“You’re the Elven Queen… no, that aura’s early-stage Law Realm. Don’t tell me you’re the Elven Queen’s avatar?” His pupils tightened like pinpricks in night.
Their mutual caution bought Yumigawa Senki a sliver of spring. Supreme Divine Spirit Medicine, paired with the Sacred Life Sword’s glow, mended body and spirit like warm rain over cracked earth.
“If you can, leave this place,” Elunis said, gaze fixed on Molor like a hawk on its prey. “Find your sister and Elyar. Rejoin them.”
“…Alright. I’m counting on you.” Resentment burned in Senki like embered coals, yet she drew a deep breath of frost and slipped away like a shadow at dusk.
“Don’t even think about it!” Molor roared, lunging like a wolf, but Elunis’s guard rose like a stone cliff and turned him aside with ease.
“Elunis, have you set your heart on being this king’s enemy?” His voice grated like iron on slate.
“There’s no talk of enmity,” she answered, steady as riverbed rock. “My aim has been clear from the first—even if this avatar shatters, I will keep you here.”
Sensing his urge to flee, Elunis called the power of Law, and the space locked tight like winter ice sealing a lake.
Molor’s curse burned silent, a coal in his throat. Since his name rose millennia ago, he hadn’t felt this suffocation; even before Yugou Sage, he’d walked the mountains unafraid, but an avatar of Elunis now tied his wings like wet silk.
A fallen tiger in a flatland, hounded by village dogs—the tide pressed him down. He was far from his peak; even to steady this early-stage Law Realm would take time, blood, and quiet, and only if he reclaimed the Demon Heart shard from Senki and slipped away like smoke.
He swallowed pride like bitter medicine and said, “Losing an avatar won’t be small pain for you. I bear no old grudge against the Elven Kind; why die-to-the-last drop? Have that Mizumi girl return the Demon Heart shard, and I’ll withdraw like tide at dusk.”
“Is that even possible?” Elunis lifted her Scepter of Life, voice cool as mountain snow. “You’re the Former Demon King—enemy of the world and the Mizumi Clan’s sole wanted man.”
Law surged to her call like a stormfront, weaving countless arrows that gleamed like frost-tipped reeds, and she sent them flying at Molor without hesitation.
He hadn’t expected the snap of thunder so soon. Those arrows carried the weight of Law like lightning in old oaks; caught flat-footed, he threw up a thick wall of demonic miasma, a black rampart to catch the rain of blades.
Even that brief clash sent his aura into chaos, a gust tearing loose leaves. Rangetsu’s body couldn’t carry Law’s fire like a kiln; cracks crept through the vessel.
Molor had revived by usurpation, wearing Rangetsu’s body like a borrowed coat. If he failed to tame the riot of Law, he’d burst like an overheated crucible and die without ashes.
The last Demon Heart shard would have to wait like a buried seed. Right now he had to depart, find a hidden vale, and steady the unruly current of Law drop by drop.
Seeing his fraying edges, Elunis understood like dawn breaking—a revived Molor couldn’t master Law, his strength capped at a half-step Zenith of Law Realm, a peak glimpsed but not climbed.
Good news flowed like fresh wind. She pressed the attack, each strike braided with Law, waves upon waves that left him only a shield. Within half a minute, his stamina bled out like sand through fingers, his body a map of wounds and ash.
Keep it like this, and his end was certain, erased by an avatar’s patient rain. Her stance said it plain—no room for parley, no bridge left unburned.
He could choose mutual ruin, a dead tree falling across a river, but his soul would scatter with Rangetsu’s flesh like smoke in high wind, and no second dawn would come. He couldn’t accept that; he clawed for another path.
“Puh!” The sound tore from him as a thunderlight arrow bit deep, a white flash like split sky. He flew back like a broken kite and spat a mouthful of blood, crimson pooling like sunset. He lay prone, breath thread-thin, eyes burning with rage, hate, and a drop of black despair.
Elunis raised her will to finish it, when a force slammed through her spatial seal like a hammer through glass. A middle-aged man in strange garb stepped in, power spilling like a mountain avalanche.
He hauled Molor up and slung him over his shoulder like a bundle of reeds, then brushed aside Elunis’s attack as if wiping dust from a sleeve.
“Who are you?!” Her voice tightened like a bowstring. She felt it at once—at least high-stage Law Realm, a storm far above this avatar’s canopy. Only her true body could stand in that gale.
Molor recognized him at a glance, memories of Rangetsu opening like a ledger—Wilsar. Why he came was fog, but relief flowed like warm tea.
“Who I am can wait for a quieter night,” Wilsar said, tone smooth as lacquer. “Guild President Rangetsu is a key partner of mine. Losing him now would be… inconvenient. I ask the honorable Elven Queen to leave a gap in the net.”
His words were polite rain, but his pressure was a cliff-face, Law bearing down like noon sun.
“The Rangetsu you speak of is already gone,” Elunis replied, swallow hard as bitter bark. “He’s the Former Demon King, enemy of the world.”
She loathed this taste of threat, a thorn under the tongue, but his strength dwarfed her avatar like a mountain dwarfing a stone; she had to endure.
“I’ll confirm that in time,” Wilsar answered, eyes glinting like night steel. “No need for the honorable Elven Queen to worry. I have urgent errands in this wind, so I’ll take my leave.”
His voice faded like a bell over water. In the next blink, Wilsar vanished with Molor, and Elunis’s spatial seal stood like a broken ring, useless under the vast sky.
…
