Because he was channeling power into the spike rig, the body drive sagged—like pouring a river into a needle, the limbs lost their tide. It was normal.

Inside the Divine Warrior’s cockpit, the Imperial knight watched the charge meter climb, like sun rising behind stained glass. He saw service, he saw cleansing light.

He saw the Dark Spirit’s taint burned off this land like frost at dawn. Devotion surged, then mania, and his face twisted like melting wax.

“For the Empire, for the Light Deity! Yihahahahaha!” His features knotted into a lump of zeal. Laughter burst like a cracked bell.

It died in the next heartbeat, cut short like a string.

“Don’t you dare!” Because Fulin, riding the Eternal War Armor, came surging in like a stormfront.

He knew the Divine Warrior’s body output dropped during an AOE—like a bear on hind legs. He was sure she didn’t.

So when he saw that armor charge like it didn’t want to live, he screamed, voice shredding like paper in wind.

“Don’t come any closer!”

“Don’t you dare get near me!”

He shouted again and again, a child under thunder, face white as lime.

But so what? The Eternal War Armor she piloted still drove straight for him, like a tide that wouldn’t turn.

He tried to meet her. Weak limbs answered like reeds in flood. Punches and guards came dull and late, miles worse than before.

The result spoke for itself. The Divine Warrior was crushed under her advance, like iron under a hammer.

One punch sent him flying. He slammed into the city wall, a nail in stone. Fulin’s Eternal War Armor closed in, shadow like an eclipse.

One hand pinned the Divine Warrior, wedged by the wall. The other seized a shoulder spike, fingers like a steel vise.

“Watch me snap this toy.” Her iron grip went full. Tendons sang like bowstrings.

Crack—!

“AAAHHHH!” The knight howled from the cockpit, a scream ripped up by hooks.

“And then this one.” The iron hand clenched again, casual as breaking twigs.

Crack—!

“AAAAAAHHHH!” The second wail tore through the hull, raw and salt as blood.

Smoke and sparks crawled over the Divine Warrior like fireflies in soot. Fulin stepped back, dusted her palms, then crossed her arms with a small, wicked smile.

“Heh. That’s you done.”

In the cockpit, the knight stared at the ruined interior, wires like ripped veins. The front glass spidered, coolant wept down the display.

Bitter and rabid, he threw his head back and roared at the ceiling. “You… you bastard… you… you monster!”

Then, like a corpse waking, he bellowed, hollow and loud. “For the Light Deity, for the Heavenly Spirit Empire… I fear not even death!”

Seeing his machine go strange, Fulin made the armor ease back, instinct tight as a drawn bow. “What are you trying to do?”

Her forward screen flashed with alien numbers, cold as rain. She couldn’t read them, but the Eternal War Armor translated in a calm voice.

“Report: abnormal Battle Aura detected, channeling toward the core. Predicted enemy action—”

“Self-detonation.”

Fulin held her breath, anger flaring like a match. In the cockpit she flailed her tiny fists, like a kitten swatting a thunderhead.

“Can’t win so you blow yourself up? What the hell!”

One second passed. She sucked in air, cooled her head, like frost over boiling tea. “How big is it?”

“Analyzing…” Text scrolled like ants. “Based on aura scale, estimated two-kilometer blast radius.”

Good grief. That self-detonation outmuscles a nuke, doesn’t it?

She swallowed the gripe and fired the next question. “Can we stop it?”

“Detonation in four minutes. Suggest pilot abandon unit and evacuate.”

“So I ditch the city. And ditch you too, big guy?”

“…”

A long minute bled away, slow as molasses. Then the screen again: “Detonation in three minutes. Suggest pilot abandon unit and evacuate.”

Her answer came with a child’s eyes made iron. “Even if it’s only for you, I’m stopping that blast.”

Almost at once, larger letters hit like hail. “Explosion triggered by Soul-Core can’t be halted. Suggest pilot abandon unit and evacuate.”

Fulin closed her eyes, like folding a blade back in its sheath.

“I am the Blazing Fire Knight Lance, I am the Dark Blood Clan Shelika, and above all I am the Chaos Vampire Fulin Belit—”

“I’m of the Blood Clan, and I crave a quiet life. This city holds many like me—not just craving, but living quiet lives.”

“To guard them is to guard my dream.”

“It’s time I put strength behind what I guard.”

She opened her eyes. They were clear as lake ice.

Power gathered all over her, distilled essence like dew beading on jade. She’d hoarded it for long seasons.

The Chaos Vampire’s Essence Transmutation Law fed growth. It also lit the wick of ultimate magic.

Fulin shone with essence, a corona coiling like auroras. Not evil, not holy—just power, and a poise as sublime as mountain dawn.

To fight by burning essence—this is the Chaos Vampire’s true hand, shown at last.

But she didn’t plan to crush the Divine Warrior. Breaking it might not halt the self-detonation, like smashing a bomb won’t snuff the fuse.

She vaulted out of the cockpit, light as a falling petal. To the Eternal War Armor behind, she called, “Cover me, big guy!”

Cover, meaning: don’t let the crowd see this shape of me.

The clever armor fired its rear thrusters. Whoosh—black smoke billowed like storm-clouds, a smokescreen veiling an epic scene.

In his cockpit, the knight saw her coming—a small figure wreathed in golden motes, a childlike Blood Clan walking like a true god.

Panic cracked him open again. “Don’t come any closer!”

He was a baby beneath thunder, crying, pleading, drowning in his own voice.

“I must fulfill the miracle the Light Deity bestowed! I must serve the Heavenly Spirit Empire! For all humans of Nordland—”

“I must stand before the Light Deity’s throne!”

He begged with his heart torn raw. He hoped piety could sway this other god.

Too bad—

“Your daydream ends here.”

Fulin stopped before the Divine Warrior. She raised both hands, index fingers and thumbs forming a triangle—clean as a sight.

She aimed that triangle at the enemy, breath a steady thread. Then she spoke, voice like a seal pressed in wax.

“Invoke the Chaos Vampire birthright. Burn essence to cast the ultimate arcane—”

“Tectonic Eruption.”

Her words fell, and with them the hammer of ending fell.

The ground cradling the Divine Warrior lit up like dawn under ice. Then—boom—earth split, and a pillar of magma roared skyward.

The surge was unstoppable, a red whale spouting fire. It scooped up the Divine Warrior and its bedrock cradle, roots and all.

Then it shoved them higher, like strapping rockets on a mountain. Higher, and higher, the horizon dropping away like a curtain.

They speared for ten thousand miles, a fiery spear through the firmament. The world below shrank to a bowl of ash and rooftops.

Inside, the knight suffered hundreds of Gs, a black ocean of weight. Heat bled through shattered plates, licking him like a kiln.

He baked and he was crushed, a beetle between stones. His screams stretched thin by acceleration, a ribbon pulled to fray.

“Don’t—aaaaaaaaaahhhhh—!”

Time tipped over. The self-detonation bloomed.

It should’ve been a world-splitting blast. But it had risen too high, far beyond ten thousand miles, where air becomes prayer.

From the ground, it was only a star flicking once, like a blink on a winter night.

Fulin looked up at the blown-out stardust, and let a breath go, light as mist. “The farce is over.”

The stardust thinned, like snow in sun. The city was saved.