Seeing the bizarre constructs draw near, the two knights flared their Battle Aura like torches and braced for a blade-to-blade clash.

But the machines didn’t close in as expected. They hovered ten meters out, midair like vultures on a thermal, their 9mm rotary cannons spinning up.

Lethal fire poured in a constant stream, like rain needles from all angles. They couldn’t dodge, so they wrapped themselves in Aura, a shell of wind and light.

The all-around barrage was too dense; even Aura-armored, wounds crept in like cracks in ice. “Damn it! Damn it!!” Pinned in place, they howled, rage sparking.

Shelika felt a flicker of shock at their toughness, like stones weathering a storm. Under such fire, anything normal would be a shredded sieve, torn to pieces.

These two weren’t. Their armor didn’t break. They carried only surface wounds, blood like thin paint on steel.

“Don’t underestimate us!” Pinned bodies or not, they surged a storm of Battle Aura. It blasted the nearby drones away like leaves in a gale, and they laughed.

“We’re knights of the Celestial Race, the Light Deity’s favored. Your petty tricks can’t touch us!”

They broke the drone ring in one burst, then flash-stepped in a blink, dropping to a point below and before Shelika.

“Die!” They leaped, blades raised to split her like a log.

“Tch.” Annoyance pricked first. She’d read their intent, but they were too fast. Less than a second had passed.

She snapped her wings, rode the air like a hawk, and slid aside by a hair, slipping their fatal cut.

But it wasn’t just two. It was a five-man squad. Their mage seized the beat of her dodge and suddenly flung a radiant arrow, cold as winter glass.

It aimed to pierce her belly like a spear of dawn. She braced to take it, shut her eyes, jaw tight against pain.

In that blink, the expected pain never arrived. Instead, a bright, impossible cry rang like a silver bell.

“Don’t you bully my Lady Sister~~!!”

The familiar voice snapped her eyes open. The radiant arrow hung inches from her skin, frozen by a defense spell like ice on a stream.

A hard arc of lightning slashed in from the side. It smashed the light arrow into the ruins, and together they churned a whirl of mana like a dust devil.

“Another Blood Clan mage?!” the enemy caster barked, shock like a crack of thunder.

Shelika used that heartbeat. She dropped back and down like a feather falling behind the line.

Landing, she turned toward the arc’s source. Sure enough, Charlotte came into view at the street’s end, leading hunters like wolves trotting through dusk.

In moments, Charlotte reached Shelika. “Are you alright, Lady Sister?!”

“I’m fine. Weren’t you leaving?” Confusion rippled, soft as wind.

“How could I abandon my Lady Sister!” She tipped her chin; a thin glimmer of tears shone like dew at her lashes.

She wiped her tears, spun on her heel, and with a stomp pointed at the Heavenly Spirit five-man squad. “You white spirits dared bully my Lady Sister. You’ll pay!”

Another arc of lightning hammered toward them, a jagged bolt like a falling tree. “Heh.” The mage flicked a hand, and a shield erased it like rain into sand.

More attack spells followed, a flock of meteors crossing the night. It wasn’t just Charlotte. The other Blood Clan who should’ve fled turned back, rushing to bolster the field.

Seeing reinforcements pile in, the enemy Sky Knight laughed, satisfied like a cat with a full larder. “Jackpot. We finished a Dark Spirit grand mage, and all these Bloods rush to die.”

The Legion commander, after shattering a divine servitor like clay under heel, leveled his sword and shouted, steel voice like thunder. “Spare us your swagger! This place will soon be your grave!”

Charlotte stomped and chimed in, voice like a drum. “Exactly, exactly!”

Another rain of spell-lasers washed toward the five, streaks like needles of sunfire.

They blocked the bombardment, and the Sky Knight laughed again. “A grave? Not so sure. Handling this many is messy.”

“So—” He snapped his fingers, a spark in dry grass. “Let me show you this Divine Warrior’s bite.”

The Divine Warrior dragged its steps forward, heavy bulk like a moving mountain. No one here, except Shelika, had seen this imperial secret.

Everyone’s guard rose like spears bristling in a field. Charlotte watched it walk a few steps, then stop, tilting her head like a sparrow. “What’s that big iron barrel trying to do?”

Shelika shared the doubt. A second after the Divine Warrior halted, the previously idle Eternal War Armor suddenly moved again.

It roared at full power—whoosh—and planted itself in front of Shelika like a shield wall.

She had lived this scene before. In a heartbeat, she knew its intent.

She hugged Charlotte tight, folded over her, and covered her under her wings like a canopy against hail. “What are you doing, Lady Sister?!”

While Charlotte protested, the imperial Divine Warrior stirred. Spikes jutted from its shoulders, wicked thorns like a demon’s crown.

They were spell devices. As they unfolded, they scattered a storm of glowing orbs like fireworks bursting in all directions.

“Hide!” Shelika’s voice cracked across the field like a whip. The sudden sight plus her warning made everyone understand at once.

Except the five-man squad, almost everyone darted for cover among the ruins, scurrying like rats to their holes.

Soon they were tucked away. Then the glowing orbs detonated, all at once.

White light swallowed the scene in an instant, as if dawn fell like a curtain over midnight.

When the white faded, a hard wind swept the dust away like a broom. Aside from the spot Shelika and Charlotte had claimed, nearly every ruin lay flattened.

Naturally, those who had hid behind the ruins were gone as well. Not escaped or otherwise.

The places they had stood were now like relic tablets. On ground bright as daylight in the night, faint silhouettes remained like shadows burned in.

Shelika stared at those ghostly prints. “Evaporated into nothing…?”

She glanced at Charlotte on the ground. Good grief. Had the blast’s roar knocked her out?

“But that’s fine.” Calm settled like ash. Shelika stepped alone to the Eternal War Armor’s fore, facing the five elites of the Heavenly Spirit Empire like a lone tree in wind.

Their leader saw the Eternal War Armor’s true face now that its cloth had burned away. Realization lit his features like a torch.

He snarled at Shelika. “So that’s why two rounds of Radiant Cinder Annihilation didn’t finish you. You’ve got a Divine Warrior too.”

“Where did you get it?!” His voice stabbed like ice.

Shelika said nothing. She let the breeze comb the bare ground like fingers through sand.

A mage whispered to the Sky Rank Knight. His eyes widened, then he squinted and smiled like a fox. “So it’s the Blazing Fire Knight’s Eternal War Armor. A five-hundred-year relic of the Elf King. No wonder it held against Annihilation.”

“That also means the Blazing Fire Knight died to your hand, doesn’t it?” He laughed, teeth bright as knives.

Shelika stayed silent, her gaze cold as winter iron. “……”

“That saves us trouble. You pulled the nail we wanted gone but couldn’t touch. Thanks.”

Shelika lifted her head, hid her face behind one hand, and her form slid like a mask change. In an instant she became Lance, the Blazing Fire Knight.

“You mean the one I want gone but can’t touch?” Her voice cut without mercy, cool as a blade.

The shift stunned the five like a thunderclap. Their leader laughed. “Trying to scare me with the Blazing Fire Knight’s shape?”

He thought it was a mere morph spell. Then he felt the Battle Aura ahead, solid as a stormfront rolling in.

His face snapped to disbelief. “Impossible. You’re actually the Blazing Fire Knight!”

He laughed again, madness like sparks in dry straw. “Perfect. We’ll erase you here.”

“Erase me?” Lance’s voice slipped away like mist. Her stance blurred, and her true body—Fulin—took the stage.

She became white mist, drifted to the War Armor’s shoulder like fog on granite, then showed herself.

With a flick she cast a quick-strike spell. Flames roared and blasted an Earth Knight to ash, paper in a furnace.

She looked down at them, eyes calm as moonlight. After erasing one of their strong with such light ease, she smiled.

“Can you really erase me?”