The assault from Saint Ganada’s reanimated vessel grew relentlessly faster and more destructive. Every time the thrall’s dark blades clashed against Barsha’s trench daggers, kinetic shockwaves pulverized the surrounding terrain. Their combat velocity reached an astronomical level; observing from afar, Jonas and Marie felt as if they were witnessing a duel between two living saints.

Each violent collision produced localized energetic detonations and crushing air pressure, whipping the surrounding wind into a chaotic, directionless tempest. The intensity of their clashing aura fields flickered across the sky like an endless succession of day and night.

It was an apocalyptic spectacle. Barsha executed a swift aerial spin, sweeping her dual daggers in a high-speed counter-attack, but her blades sliced through empty air—Ganada’s thrall had already repositioned high above her vector.

His velocity is terrifying... Barsha marvelled silently. It was no wonder her grandfather was revered as a legendary saint in the historical archives—the supreme icon of the righteous sects. His parameters were awe-inspiring. Though the exertion threatened to drain her reserves, the high-tier spiritual circles she maintained—combined with her parameter absorption from the celestial artifact, Heart Dragon—accelerated her internal mana replenishment to near-instantaneous speed.

Without those two foundational advantages, her internal energy would have been completely exhausted early in the duel against her grandfather's vessel.

Hovering high above, Ganada’s thrall crossed its twin dark daggers, tracing a massive, glowing circle around its frame. The circular array burned with pitch-black aura infused with eerie, azure flames. Expanding rapidly, the dark ring expanded until it formed a suffocating dome over the entire sector beneath the thrall's vector.

It functioned like a giant energy net, swallowing the terrain below in absolute darkness. Within the perimeter of that black cage, a localized vacuum domain manifested, completely isolating everything inside from the external environment.

Trapped within the vacuum domain, Barsha lowered her center of gravity as the thrall prepared to deliver its absolute parameters. Corrupted dark magic, interwoven with crackling threads of black lightning, saturated both of Ganada's daggers. As the thrall spread its arms, the sky behind it appeared to warp and distort under the weight of its atmospheric illusion.

Barsha felt her internal parameters instantly constrained by the dark domain. A suffocating gravity pressed down upon her vessel, heavy as a mountain, rendering her limbs leaden and unresponsive. It felt as though thousands of invisible, spectral hands forged from dark magic were pinning her to the spot.

What kind of technique is this?!

High above, the thrall’s eyes blazed crimson as it prepared a high-yield execution strike. Pulling both dark daggers behind its torso, its gauntlets radiated a terrifying density of corrupted aura.

Unsealing its absolute velocity, the thrall plunged downward like a falling meteor, aiming to eradicate Barsha in a single strike.

Barsha strained against the domain, but her arms and legs moved in agonizing slow motion. Constructing a defensive barrier at this speed was impossible; the thrall would bisect her long before her aura field could materialize.

Closing her eyes for a split second, a voice echoed clearly in her memory.

"Barsha!"

It was Aji. She recalled a private conversation they had shared moments before the global war erupted outside Prisma.

"Do you know how your grandfather, Saint Ganada, deployed his absolute, peak discipline?" Aji had asked, leaning casually against the trunk of a massive ancient tree. He had urged her to prepare for the reality of facing her ancestor's true parameters. At the time, Barsha had found the notion almost surreal, yet Aji's calm, serious expression held no trace of jest.

"Is an assassin's ultimate discipline not super-high velocity that denies the enemy a reaction, paired with lethal kinetic output?" Barsha had replied, looking at him sideways.

Aji had let out a soft sigh, looking up at the sky. "Your grandfather transcended even the grandmasters of the assassin path. At the absolute apex of his cultivation, he mastered the realm of a Magic Assassin. That discipline allowed him to manifest a domain that dramatically decelerated everything within its radius, rendering enemies virtually immobile. In that frozen space, he executed his targets effortlessly."

Barsha had frowned, struggling to grasp the concept. Why decelerate an opponent when an assassin's sheer velocity was already more than enough to claim victory? At peak velocity—moving like an invisible dark shadow—an assassin could strike down an enemy before they could draw a breath.

"Higher velocity overcomes lower velocity—that is basic combat logic, Aji," Barsha had argued, curious. "Why force the target's movement to slow down?"

"You still do not see the whole picture, Barsha," Aji had explained gently. "A higher-tier assassin can easily overcome a single lower-tier opponent. But what happens when you face a hundred opponents of equal rank? Does a true master rely on mere luck?"

Aji had turned his gaze back to her. "At its absolute peak, Saint Ganada's domain did not merely slow down an enemy's physical movements—it decelerated the flow of time itself within his casting radius. Anyone caught inside his domain was bound by sluggish temporal flow. That was the essence of Saint Ganada's Magic Assassin discipline. The only way to shatter that spatial trap is to detonate the temporal field from within and invert its rotational axis."

Barsha’s eyes snapped open. The memory of Aji’s final counsel clicked into place with absolute clarity.

He didn't just slow my body... he slowed time itself!

A surge of profound pride for her grandfather filled her chest. He had truly been a peerless grandmaster. Yet this was no time for admiration—she had to overcome his absolute discipline right now.

Detonate the temporal field and invert its rotation!

Every energy structure possessed a central axis. To reverse the rotation of a temporal domain, one had to strike its origin point with superior internal force—meeting power with absolute power. To break her ancestor's domain, she had to transcend her ancestor's strength.

Barsha opened her spiritual pathways to their absolute limit, forcefully unsealing her Rank 8 spiritual circles to draw in a boundless deluge of natural mana. She completely disregarded her physical safety.

Channeling parameters beyond a vessel's structural threshold carried extreme risk; overloading internal pathways with raw natural mana could shatter organs and rupture spiritual channels. Yet Barsha refused to hesitate. Locking her focus, her eyes ignited with incandescent light. For the first time in her life, she bypassed her vessel's innate limiters, assimilating natural mana without restraint.

"HAAAAA!"

A violent energetic shockwave erupted from her frame as her core rapidly refined the incoming influx. Barsha focused every ounce of her willpower on filtering the ambient energy, purging volatile dark magic while retaining pure natural mana. It served as an absolute booster, elevating her perception and operational velocity to divine heights.

Unfiltered natural energy poured into her vessel from all directions. The rigorous conditioning she had endured under Warrior Jiro—combined with the celestial immunity granted by the Heart Dragon artifact—shielded her internal pathways from collapsing under the strain. She knew she could achieve it.

The continuous influx of pure mana began to fracture the temporal cage created by Ganada's thrall. The massive wave of natural energy radiating from her frame actually halted the descending thrall mid-air, forcing it to fight against an expanding gale of raw aura that threatened to disintegrate anything in its path.

Barsha felt the sluggish weight lift from her limbs as the temporal manipulation dissolved around her. Swiveling her wrists, she organized the massive volume of natural mana swirling within her core—an absolute, cosmic force.

This was the decisive moment. She would surpass her grandfather's legacy and honor his memory in the afterlife.

She gathered the accumulated energy before her vessel, preparing a concentrated kinetic detonation. To break a domain capable of slowing time, the blast had to be absolute.

BOOOOOOM!

With precise, split-second timing, Barsha detonated the concentrated mana field directly before her.

FLASH!

A blinding sphere of incandescent light illuminated the entire sector. High above, Ganada’s thrall was hurled backward by the explosive feedback. The pitch-black domain collapsed instantly, restoring the natural flow of time to the basin.

Now... end it!

Barsha surged into the sky toward her grandfather's reanimated vessel. In that split second, a vivid memory from her early childhood flashed across her mind. When she was four years old, her grandfather Ganada had spent endless hours by her side, guiding her first steps along the martial path.

She vividly recalled the day he had presented her with her very first pair of custom trench daggers—forged by his own hands. Tears welled in her eyes, trailing down her cheeks unnoticed as she accelerated toward the target. She moved like a catastrophic meteor, a brilliant tail of kinetic aura blazing behind her frame.

Her dual daggers blazed with absolute, lethal force. Rebounding mid-air, Ganada’s thrall recovered its stance, raising its dark weapons to execute a counter-charge.

Yet Barsha’s velocity now transcended anything her ancestor had achieved.

WOOOOOSH!

Before Ganada’s thrall could even begin its parrying arc, Barsha flashed past its vessel in a blinding streak of celestial light, illuminating the heavens like a rising sun.

SPLASH!

Barsha materialized ten meters behind Ganada’s thrall. A fraction of a second later, a million kinetic slashes detonated simultaneously across the thrall's vessel, tearing its physical frame to shreds.

CLANG! TRANG! SHATTER!

A million lethal cuts executed in a single, fluid pass—the absolute zenith of the high-tier assassin path. It was an impossible feat achieved only through brutal conditioning, absolute mental fortitude, and unyielding resolve.

A massive energetic explosion detonated behind her, turning the sky radiant with residual aura. Barsha did not turn to look; her eyes remained fixed on the sky ahead, her back turned to the destruction of her grandfather's physical husk.

Hovering peacefully in the sky, Barsha closed her eyes, feeling the vast, open heavens so close she could almost touch them. A soft, serene smile touched her lips—her final farewell to Saint Ganada.

"Rest peacefully, Grandfather... Thank you for guarding the peace of this world. Leave the future to our generation."

High above the Mirror World, the sun broke through the remaining haze, casting its warm, brilliant light across the open grasslands as the dark clouds dissolved in the wind.