The two reanimated saints completed their cellular restoration, dark magic surging through their vessels once more. Rebuilding their physical frames, they summoned their corrupted armaments: Ganada’s husk wielded twin daggers that blazed with pitch-black aura, while Yonan’s husk manifested a dark staff topped with a writhing, crimson orb.

Neither entity resembled their former selves. The pressure radiating from their vessels was far more suffocating than before, carrying a lethal intensity that seemed to bypass physical armor to gnaw directly at flesh and spirit.

Alicia recognized the reality instantly. Has Shura unsealed their full parameters? Even across the dimensional divide separating them from the physical plane, the Demon Lord had severed the binding seals on both thralls, leaving them to go completely berserk in this isolated world.

This was catastrophic.

"Barsha, be careful!" Alicia called out, her voice echoing across the basin.

Barsha dropped into a low, vigilant stance. The kinetic pressure radiating from the two saints pressed heavily against her vessel, straining her defensive field.

With Shura unsealing their absolute output, every movement from the reanimated grandmasters felt like a razor-sharp blade carving through the air, rendering standard defensive barriers nearly useless against the sheer weight of their aura.

Drawing on the rigorous conditioning taught by Warrior Jiro, both Barsha and Alicia absorbed ambient natural mana to reinforce their defensive domains. They had trained to weld offensive momentum and defensive deflection into a single, seamless cycle—allowing them to switch between counter-attacks and parries in a fraction of a second.

This fluid discipline was their sole lifeline against opponents whose raw parameters vastly outmatched their own. By treating defense and offense as a single, continuous flux, they could neutralize heavy kinetic impacts and strike back during the briefest openings.

The assault began without warning.

Ganada’s husk surged forward at blinding velocity. Before Barsha could even register the movement, her grandfather’s reanimated vessel materialized directly before her eyes, moving like a flash of ignited lightning. Raising its dark daggers, the thrall swung a lethal arc aimed straight for her throat.

Focus!

Barsha locked her concentration, channeling a rapid wave of defensive aura into her forearms. Her swift reflexes met the surprise ambush just in time.

CLANG!

Barsha’s left trench dagger intercepted the incoming dark blade inches from her neck, deflecting the kinetic strike.

Without a moment's pause, Ganada’s husk swiveled its right hand, driving its second dagger in a horizontal slash aimed at her temple. Rotating her wrist with absolute precision, Barsha brought her right blade around, locking the second dark weapon in place.

TRANG!SPARK!

The collision of high-density auras generated violent electric sparks that danced along their locked steel.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Ganada’s vessel escalated its assault, its daggers blurring into a seamless, invisible flurry. Barsha fought with absolute focus, parrying every high-speed strike with fluid, instinctual precision. The combat parameters of a legendary saint were staggering; even with her supreme conditioning, Barsha found herself pushed to her physical limits under the thrall's relentless flurry.

Yet she refused to lose her composure.

Feeling her physical stamina strain, Barsha unsealed her internal spiritual circles to their absolute threshold, opening her pathways to assimilate a vast deluge of ambient natural mana. Her vessel adapted to the rapid influx, allowing her velocity to match the thrall's movements as their blades clashed repeatedly across the basin.

They blurred across the field, vanishing and reappearing in split-second intervals as their daggers collided. Each impact resembled a burst of black lightning whose branching roots illuminated the plain, leaving behind lingering shockwaves at every point of contact.

Across the field, Alicia found herself locked in a similarly desperate struggle against Yonan’s husk—a battle of descendant against ancestor, though the ancestor before her was a mindlessly driven husk stripped of its soul.

High-tier elemental spells collided mid-air as fire, wind, and concentrated mana detonated in continuous explosions. Alicia and Yonan’s vessel engaged in long-range spellcasting warfare, trading high-yield elemental strikes across the basin. For the moment, Alicia was forced onto the defensive, straining to absorb the catastrophic spellwork unleashed by her grandfather's thrall.

She had zero margin to launch a proper counter-attack, her full focus dedicated to maintaining her defensive barriers against an unbroken barrage of dark magic. Yet despite being driven back continuously, a soft, confident smile touched her lips. Her grandfather was every bit as formidable as the histories claimed, denying her even the briefest window to strike back.

However, Alicia held a secret advantage: she had thoroughly memorized the confidential manual detailing Yonan’s martial legacy, provided to her by Aji. The ancestral scroll explicitly outlined the structural strengths, casting rhythms, and hidden flaws of Saint Yonan’s techniques.

Aji had entrusted her with the scroll, suggesting it had been penned by Yonan himself prior to his final battle—a legacy designed to ensure his successor could transcend his own limits and counter his techniques should his physical vessel ever fall into enemy hands.

Now, the time had come to unseal the ultimate technique of a Rank 9 Arch-Mage—the absolute zenith of martial refinement achievable by a mortal vessel. Beyond Rank 9 lay only the divine realm reserved for the gods.

Though Alicia currently stood at the peak of late-stage Rank 8, this trial was her bridge to absolute ascension. It was her moment to demonstrate her growth, overcome her ancestor's legacy, and make her grandfather proud.

He can rest peacefully in the afterlife, knowing his line is carried by a worthy successor!

"Supreme Swordplay!"

Alicia opened her spiritual pathways to their absolute limit, drawing in boundless natural mana at maximum absorption speed. Her eyes blazed with incandescent light as a torrent of high-density aura erupted from her vessel.

FLASH!

Radiant light blazed across the basin. Hovering in mid-air, Alicia shone like a miniature sun, the searing heat radiating from her frame forcing Yonan’s husk to retreat several paces. The intense heat field disrupted the thrall's ability to close the distance for a point-blank strike.

Recognizing that Alicia was preparing a high-yield spellwork, Yonan’s thrall condensed its dark magic, wrapping its vessel in a dense, pitch-black shroud as its hands mutated into massive, clawed gauntlets.

Gripping its dark staff tightly, the thrall channeled corrupted aura into the weapon, igniting a searing blue-black flame at its tip. Dark magic gathered from all directions, saturating the air.

The pressure radiating from Yonan’s husk reached a terrifying peak. Both combatants were preparing to unleash their absolute parameters in a single, decisive clash.

Observing from the ridge, Jonas and Marie watched the exchange in utter awe, amazed by the sheer scale of the battle. As former Annihilation Demons, they recognized that the two dark entities were reconstructed thralls fueled by Shura’s dark art—and that they were the physical remains of two of the legendary Three Legends.

Jonas’s premonitions and Shura’s deep-seated malice were laid bare. The Demon Lord sought absolute dominion over the five continents, utilizing psychological terror to break the martial world's spirit before moving in for total subjugation.

At his core, Shura derived a sadistic satisfaction from inspiring terror in his enemies, harboring an unyielding vendetta against any who dared defy his mandate.

Reanimating the legendary saints to slaughter their own descendants was Shura’s idea of ultimate entertainment—a psychological game designed to exhaust the defenders so his main army could extinguish human civilization without facing meaningful resistance.

Shura demanded absolute, unquestioning submission; he styled himself a god destined to rule over a realm of mindless thralls.

It was a terrifying vision that would inevitably result in total extinction. Jonas had perceived this truth long ago, though he had shared it with no one save for Marie. Marie now understood that beneath Shura’s rule, human civilization had zero future—mortals would exist as soulless puppets, executed the moment they stepped out of line.

A world governed by such suffocating malice could not endure.

Keeping their eyes on the field, Jonas and Marie observed Alicia’s movements. She held her steel sword in her right hand, while her left hand condensed a long, writhing lance of high-density lightning mana.

Yonan’s thrall raised its dark staff, releasing a continuous stream of corrupted dark tendrils from the crimson orb at its tip. Dozens of dark tendrils poured endlessly into the air, twisting and writhing like living serpents.

The dark mist vibrated violently, expanding as the tendrils coalesced into massive, monstrous shapes.

The smoke solidified into colossal, nightmarish dreadnoughts forged from dark clouds—massive entities with lower bodies composed of swirling black smoke, wielding heavy shadow armaments in their spectral hands. Roaring with dark magic, the massive summoned entities surged forward in a terrifying wave, targeting Alicia as she finalized her spellwork.

Both sides were committed to an absolute, decisive blow. Jonas felt an urge to step onto the field to assist the young spellcaster, but Marie laid a gentle hand on her lover's shoulder.

"Wait, my love," Marie whispered softly. "The time for our intervention has not yet arrived."

Her calm voice centered Jonas's focus, and he nodded, suppressing his aura footprint as they continued to observe from the ridge.