“Hey. You really don’t know the saying, ‘In the face of absolute strength, schemes don’t exist’?”

Ling echoed it, tone unreadable, like mist hiding a blade.

Ban turned his skull aside.

He understood. He just refused to believe.

Ling had casually unraveled the binding technique he cast. In Ban’s memory, her power had climbed. That didn’t mean he’d admit she could flatten him.

After all… Dust Form ignores physical strikes. One punch won’t erase that.

He brimmed with that confidence. Yet he still put the flute to his teeth and blew. Only Ban knew why the note slithered out.

“Stubborn. Overbearing. Self-absorbed. Eyes on no one…”

Ling ticked the words on her fingers, then smiled at herself, bitter as tea leaves.

“Just like me.”

No more wasted talk.

She lifted her gaze, cold as a winter knife, and fixed Ban. A nameless crisis crawled under his bones—like sipping tea while a beast watched from the brush.

Before a Skeleton could wonder why he had an animal’s gut-feel, the small girl drew her eyes back. She planted both hands on the floor.

Cracks spidered out with a dry snap. The pressure-rated tiles still split like ice in thaw, and green light bled up from the seams like shoots through soil.

“People smoke, or drink. They call it a hobby, but there’s always another motive tucked under it.

Big? Small? Depends… Yeah, that line’s useless.”

She held that palms-on-stone pose. Held it so long that Ban, already coiled to dodge, felt a wrongness. He even wondered if this little thing was throwing a feint.

Ling ignored his look. She sank deeper into her sermon and couldn’t pull free.

“You live a whole life. You taste the chill and the warmth. You learn the ways of people. You change, and change again. But no matter what—there’s one thing every human loves to do: show off.”

She drifted the talk through a hairpin turn and down a gutter, then killed it clean.

She didn’t wait for Ban’s comeback. The ground began to shudder, hard enough to rattle teeth.

Ceiling, tiles, walls—everything in sight split with clean, bright mouths.

From each mouth, that ignored green glow welled up—the same light hidden under Ling’s pressed palms, now no longer shy.

The culprit watched the big Skeleton rack grow frantic. Her lips curled, fox-bright.

“Multi-curse: Rebirth Sparks ~ Lunatic!”

She smiled as she spoke the “command.” The green buried in the cracks flared brighter, like a river breaking a dam.

It punched through the unstable seams. One gap tore wider, three fingers across at least.

Then the light gathered into the most common, yet the most merciless—Magic Cannons.

That was only one mouth. Were the others any less eager?

They burst to life as they should. One line. Two. Three. Beyond counting.

Beyond counting.

From afar, the Magic Cannons didn’t fill the whole room. Yet their layered glow dazzled. Keep your eyes open, and your retinas screamed as if singed.

If it were only a single high-watt bulb, it wouldn’t count as a real crisis.

Too bad. These lights were all Magic Cannons—gorgeous, blinding, mighty, and lethal.

Each beam, three fingers thick, leveled at a Skeleton. A strange one, flute still at his mouth.

No matter what, he couldn’t change the fact: a countless storm of Magic Cannons was about to drown him.

Overhead. From the sides. From underfoot.

Everywhere, barrels flicked and spat. Even a world champion wouldn’t face this many muzzles.

They came in fierce. They went out fast.

After four or five seconds, Ling cut the mana. The Cannons thinned, then winked out.

The glare dimmed. Darkness rolled in, boundless as a moonless sea.

The switch hit too fast. The little one’s eyes went “blind” for a beat.

She rubbed them, not enough to redden the rims. She blinked twice, forced her vision to settle. She checked Alicia and the others, untouched, and pride warmed her chest at her control.

Since the enemy was “gone,” Ling could about call it a day.

She took one step. A low hum rose from the zone she’d just blasted.

She turned back.

Only a sheet of pitch met her—a floor black as charcoal. In kitchen terms, burned to a crisp, pan and all.

Krrk…

The black floor moved.

Not the floor. A lump of charcoal stood up from it. No matter how you looked, it stood out.

Krrk… krrk…

The charcoal fussed with its body and squealed like a rusted machine.

Its eye-sockets were void. Wisps of black smoke curled off its “skin.”

Ling stared at that chunk of charcoal—no, at Ban. Not dead under the Magic Cannons. Just burnt into a walking briquette.