Magical Soul Parade - Chapter 358: Order vs Unlimited (II)

The wave of energy pushed her back, her boots carving trenches into the blackened earth.

But it wasn’t just her. The attack also pushed the demon and the Undying Flame backward at the same time, essentially resetting the entire battlefield in a single breath.

The dust was cleared, the fires were flattened, and every combatant was forced to a standstill at the edges of the clearing.

Althea took a ragged breath and felt the heat of the air in her lungs. She had to change her entire outlook on the Holy Son. This was much, much worse than she had initially estimated.

Was this why he was so confident?

She could not reach him through that barrier of raw energy, and had also prepared what was essentially an infinitely evolving watchdog to fight against them.

This is bad… All of Althea’s prior calm was entirely gone. Her eyes moved hastily from the grinning Holy Son to the rest of the battlefield, her mind rapidly working out ways to turn the situation in her favour.

The demon had also been hit by the wave. And to Althea’s greatest surprise, the energy had been so intense that it had actually killed the beast. Its body had been scorched to a husk before blipping out of existence.

It died…? How is that possible? Althea frowned.

The Undying Flame was an Arcanist, someone much more fragile than that demon, yet she had not suffered as much damage from the blast.

The Queen’s mighty red dragon had come down in the nick of time to shield her with its wings, but Althea knew that even without the dragon, the energy at that distance would have at most burned her badly. She would have survived. The demon, which was supposedly evolving to be tougher, should not have died so easily.

Unless…

Her head whipped towards a spot not far away from her where a blip occurred again. The demon returned. This time, its skin was a dull, matte grey, and its body was covered in fine, crystalline scales that shimmered with the same golden hue as the Holy Son’s energy. Not only that, its soul emanations had also at least tripled in intensity.

It willingly let itself die! Althea bit back a curse.

The demon had sensed the nature of the Holy Son’s energy and chose to perish so that it could evolve a trait to withstand such a surge the next time! It was a tactical suicide!

The demon stared at her, and Althea could have sworn she saw a smirk on face. It was as if it had gained more intelligence and was now mocking her current plight.

Suddenly, it turned its attention away from her, looking toward the Undying Flame. The Queen of Aethelos was standing near her dragon, her expression still calm, but it was clear that she was out of her depth in this particular tier of combat. She had only landed that one base level blow earlier, and against this new version of the demon, her normal flames would likely do nothing.

Yet her face didn’t show any sign of dismay. She didn’t look distraught or ready to flee. In fact, she looked every bit as unfazed as she had when she first arrived on the dragon’s back.

Facing the demon’s attention now, however, a smile of challenge formed on her lips. She understood the depth of what she was about to face, and she was welcoming it.

Without preamble, the demon launched itself at her, moving with a speed that surpassed the limits of sight. The Undying Flame raised her hands in preparation for the incoming blow, but the demon arrived before she could even complete the thought of a defense.

The force of the strike was enough to send her rocketing backward. She hit the ground and tumbled for a hundred feet, moving like she had been struck by a meteor. How she was even alive remained a mystery to Althea. Perhaps it was simply a testament to how tough the bodies of Archons were.

The demon remained relentless, not giving her a chance to breathe. Right after it hit her, it charged straight after her and started to pound with even more force.

But suddenly, the Queen struck out. Her body transformed into a literal inferno. These were not her usual orange flames. These were white hot flames that looked like they had been pulled directly from the pits of hell. They burned so bright that the light was glorious and terrifying at the same time.

The heat was so intense that even the demon seemed weary of striking her directly for a moment, but that hesitation disappeared the same instant it came. The demon broke through the heat anyway, its grey scales turning orange as they absorbed the thermal energy.

It swung a heavy fist at her head, but in that moment, despite the massive speed difference between them, the Queen did something impossible.

She caught the demon’s hand in a vice grip, halting its movement entirely. The ground beneath her cracked and subsided from the transfer of momentum, but she didn’t budge an inch.

The sight of it surprised everyone. Althea felt a jolt of shock, and even the Holy Son, who was still standing on his pedestal, frowned very slightly. This was an Arcanist. She was an Archon at the peak of the arcane world, yes. But she was an Arcanist nonetheless. By all rights, her reaction speed should have been miles behind that of the demon.

But then Althea quickly realized what had happened.

The immense heat emanating from the Undying Flame was so extreme that it had begun to liquify the elements in the air around her. The atmosphere had become viscous and plasma-like. It was a localized field of high density energy.

The Queen wasn’t seeing the demon with her eyes; she was sensing the frame of vibrations through that plasma. She was so immersed in her fight, fully in the zone that she was able to sense and use the changes in the air density to predict the exact movement of the demon before it could strike her… It was a masterful use of her environment.

Immediately after she held its fist, she did not let go. She had also sensed the nature of this creature. She saw the way it had returned stronger after every death, and she knew exactly what that implied, just as Althea did.

In a situation like this, the best choice of action was to stall the creature. If you couldn’t kill it without making it stronger, you had to bind it. You had to prevent it from dying at all costs.