Supreme Swordplay!

Alicia unleashed her sword magic, channeling a brilliant wave of incandescent mana generated by combining her internal reserves with the absorbed natural elements. Within two seconds, both skeletal dragon wings belonged to Yonan’s thrall were sheared off. Only three seconds remained before the thrall’s core completed its casting recalibration.

It was a narrow, critical window of opportunity.

By the third second, with the thrall’s wings disintegrating into fine ash, Alicia channeled her remaining parameters to their absolute maximum. Sweeping her blade in a radiant arc imbued with sunlight, she struck Yonan’s physical vessel with full force.

By the fourth second, the divine light slash bisected the thrall, incinerating its corrupted tissues until the frame dissolved like dust scattered in a furnace.

By the fifth second, Alicia’s continuous bombardment denied the thrall any opportunity to gather its parameters. The catastrophic detonation shuddered through the air, sending violent shockwaves rippling across the terrain of the Mirror World.

"Rest peacefully at last, Grandfather..." Tears welled in Alicia’s eyes, trailing down her cheeks as she thought of Saint Yonan. Though the entity she had slain was merely a dark husk forged in her ancestor's image, destroying it had been her painful, unavoidable duty.

Driving her sword forward in a final thrust, she pierced the heart of the collapsing thrall. The weapon manifested as a massive, glowing blade of pure light, disintegrating Yonan’s physical husk from within.

WOOOOOSH!

The giant spectral sword pierced straight through the thrall, embedding itself deep into the earth.

BOOOOOOM!

A catastrophic blast detonated upon impact, shattering the terrain below and sending heavy tremors through the basin. Observing from the distant ridge, Jonas and Marie watched the display in utter awe, amazed by the sheer parameters of the young female spellcaster. The world had clearly evolved; a new generation of grandmasters had risen to uphold peace across the five continents.

Human civilization was in capable hands if the martial world produced warriors of such caliber.

A gentle breeze swept across the Mirror World, signaling an end to the violent clash. Silence returned to the basin, though the terrain remained scarred by continuous explosions.

Yet as the smoke began to clear, a disturbing phenomenon unfolded. The severed, charred fragments of dark tissue on the ground began to vibrate. One by one, tiny black tendrils sprouted from the remains, writhing and twisting as they reached out to reconnect. The finger-sized tendrils merged rapidly, expanding into massive, pulsating roots.

It was far from over!

The destroyed vessels of both Yonan and Ganada were attempting to regenerate. The sheer persistence of the Blood Supreme artifact defied all logic; even after their physical frames were completely pulverized, the dark magic bound to their cores continued to synthesize new tissue.

Did Shura plant a larger fragment of the Blood Supreme inside these two saints than he granted to the Four Gates? It made horrifying sense. This was the true, terrifying capability of the Demon Lord’s dark art—a self-perpetuating cellular regeneration that restored a thrall even after total physical destruction.

The writhing tendrils merged into larger masses, rapidly reconstructing the lower limbs of both saints.

Refusing to let the thralls re-form, Alicia unleashed a flurry of elemental energy slashes, detonating the emerging limbs. Simultaneously, Barsha materialized beside her, sweeping her dual daggers in a high-speed assassin flurry to shred the regenerating tissue.

Explosions erupted across the crater, scattering the black tendrils once more. Yet every time they destroyed the writhing masses, the dark energy responded by accelerating its merging speed. The larger tendrils actively bypassed their incoming strikes, weaving together in split-second intervals to rebuild the torsos.

The regeneration was defying all physical laws!

"Young warriors!"

A loud voice echoed across the basin, startling both Sky Squad members. Looking down toward the edge of the crater, they spotted two figures stepping out from behind a large tree trunk. It was Jonas and Marie.

"Destroy their central cores!" Marie shouted, her voice carrying across the crater. "That is the absolute weakness of the dark thralls! You must shatter their core source!"

Barsha and Alicia exchanged surprised glances, bewildered by the sudden appearance of two strangers in this isolated dimension. Yet Marie's directive held an undeniable authority, prompting them to act immediately.

Locking her concentration onto the writhing mass before her, Alicia expanded her sensory domain to locate the central energy reservoir. Deep within the dark tendrils, she caught sight of a tiny, dark-crimson light—the core source holding the thrall's parameters together. The crimson orb was encased within a dense, protective shield of dark magic.

That is the anchor!

Barsha locked onto a similar dark-crimson core embedded within Ganada’s regenerating tissue. Recognizing their targets, both women unsealed their full parameters, executing a simultaneous, decisive charge against their respective thralls.

Alicia drove her longsword forward with absolute kinetic force, shattering the protective shield and driving her blade straight through the dark-crimson core of Yonan’s thrall.

FLASH!

Simultaneously, Barsha executed a high-speed double thrust, her twin daggers piercing the protective barrier and pulverizing the dark-crimson core of Ganada’s vessel.

The moment both cores shattered, the writhing black tendrils froze. The grotesque masses dissolved into fine black dust, carried away by the wind until zero trace remained.

The trial was finally over.

Barsha and Alicia exhaled deeply, letting out a shared sigh of relief as they stabilized their internal parameters. Exchanging a brief, knowing look, they drifted down from the sky, landing before the mysterious couple who had provided the key to victory.

Jonas and Marie offered warm, welcoming smiles as the two Sky Squad members approached, their expressions a mix of curiosity and caution.

Meanwhile, on the physical plane...

Outside the gates of Prisma, a brutal battle raged between the massive dark army and the defenders of the martial alliance, who were outnumbered nearly five to one.

Yet the battle was not dictated by numbers alone. The defenders fought with an unyielding spirit—holding the line to protect human civilization from falling under the Demon Lord's tyrannical reign.

Nesia remained at Lord Demon Shura’s side, standing as the sole surviving Gatekeeper to guard his war carriage. The eight Annihilation Demons were driving their legions forward with relentless pressure, pushing the alliance vanguard back inch by inch. Victory felt within their grasp; they anticipated the fall of Prisma within hours.

Yet a dense, volatile aura gathered around Shura's right fist as he sat motionless upon his elevated throne, watching the battle unfold.

A persistent unease gnawed at the Demon Lord's mind. He couldn't shake the sudden loss of his two reanimated saints, whose dark cores had vanished into an unsearchable spatial rift. How had an unknown spatial mechanism been executed right under his nose?

Furthermore, the martial alliance displayed an unprecedented cohesion, standing firm against his psychological terror without a shred of fear. Operation after operation had met with frustrating setbacks, yet Shura had brushed them off, confident in his absolute superiority.

Now, he was forced to consider the unthinkable: a subtle, invisible force had been infiltrating his shadow network, systematically dismantling his grand designs from the inside. Was there a traitor among his ranks? Impossible—every operative was bound to his core through the dark magic link.

Yet this hidden hand had thwarted every major scheme: the covert armaments trade, the incitement of civil wars among the sects, the Moon Blossom distribution, and the localized skirmishes across the provinces.

Even his Mondu infiltrators—meticulously cultivated over decades to erode the academies—had been identified and eliminated before this final campaign even began. It felt as though an unknown strategist possessed intimate knowledge of his mind, anticipating his every move before it was executed.

His grandest scheme—deploying the Moon Blossom to trick the sects into slaughtering one another over a fake master-tier artifact—was supposed to have left the five continents fractured and defenseless.

Instead, he was facing a fully united, formidable martial alliance. Who was responsible for this? Who was the hidden figure operating behind the scenes?

"My Lord," Nesia spoke up, breaking the silence, "were you offended by the insolence of that female spellcaster from the Sky Squad? Allow me to step onto the field and eliminate her for you."

Shura offered no reply, his mind consumed by unanswered questions. His gauntleted hand trembled slightly, wrapped in a dense shroud of dark magic. Nesia observed his reaction carefully. No one has ever dared insult the Demon Lord so openly.

To hear a young female warrior compare her master to a throwing child was an intolerable humiliation for the entire dark army. Nesia concluded that Shura’s silence stemmed from suppressed fury, distracting him from directing the battle.

Determined to restore her master's focus, Nesia resolved to capture and execute the insolent spellcaster herself.

Scanning the front lines, Nesia located Gayatri, who was deploying wind arrays to sweep away approaching dark cultists.

WOOOOOSH!

Unsealing her full parameters, Nesia launched herself from the war carriage, streaking toward Gayatri like a dark bolt.

Gayatri picked up the incoming high-tier dark signature immediately. Swiveling on her heel, she dispersed a group of dark operatives with a sweep of her hand and smiled softly. A high-tier commander approaches.

It was time to engage one of Shura’s inner court—just as Alicia and Barsha had done before her.