Chapter 713: Two Stars

Blazing light washed over the silver-white holy armor, accentuating the girl’s delicate, snow-pale features. The advancing flames had not yet reached her, but the scorching wind arrived ahead of them, sending Lyra’s long cherry-pink hair whipping wildly behind her.

After Moserria revealed his true identity, Lyra intentionally took a moment to change her holy armor from its original heavy form back into the lighter configuration she had worn at the beginning, adapting to the circumstances.

There was no doubt that Moserria’s source magic was far more efficient at casting than the human common-tongue spell system, while also granting him greater authority over elemental particles. Even the briefest graze moments ago had filled Lyra with a powerful sense of danger. Despite the holy iron’s incredible durability, the intense heat had scorched straight through it, at one point burning Lyra’s skin beneath the pure-white lining.

If she took those spells head-on, even with layers of bright heavy armor protecting her, she would still be seriously injured. Since a single touch meant damage, she might as well cast off all baggage, sacrifice some defense for speed, and rely on the most agile bodily movements to attempt to evade.

Besides, she’d always been more accustomed to the high-speed style of a light-armored knight, not standing there like a post, taking hits and counterattacking passively.

Facing the scalding river of light, Lyra rapidly vibrated her light wings, flying tight along the wave of light-elemental surge toward the right. In her hand, the [Sword of Light] seized the opportunity to anchor part of the elemental particles, growing even more luminous than before, its tip aimed straight at Hebrew not far away.

[Holy Light Manifestation Torrent of Light] had already unfolded. Dodging alone was pointless, so long as she remained within the barrier, Moserria would inevitably be able to strike her.

To break the deadlock, she had only one choice: concentrate all her power and find a breakthrough from Moserria.

However, the attack range of [The Holy Judgment Descends, Blinding Radiance Advances] was clearly not as narrow as Lyra had imagined. As Moserria shifted his gaze, the waterfall-like wave of holy light and flame instantly widened, sealing off her path.

Then, above the man’s head, that extreme brilliance, already banishing darkness, like the reappearance of heaven’s all-seeing eye, flared violently once more.

In that instant, the vast canopy of sky seemed to be torn open temporarily. Holy-white light surged from the inside out, rapidly staining reality itself.

And it was precisely this change that made Lyra realize: Moserria’s earlier assault had only been the prelude to the full spell [The Holy Judgment Descends, Blinding Radiance Advances]. What came now was the real course.

Across the surface of her blue eyes, a resplendent sea of light rippled in layers. Scorching beams lanced out less than inches behind Lyra and continued their pursuit, the closest one nearly pierced the light wings on her back, missing her holy-white knight’s boots by mere millimeters.

At the same time, the other kingdom mages also noticed that "Hebrew" was focusing his offensive. Convinced that the descent of the Lord must have its cause, these zealots likewise chose to pour their magic onto Lyra.

Stasis spells, air seals, sensory numbness, one negative spell after another was imposed upon her, and Lyra immediately felt her mind stutter, the sword in her hands turning unnaturally heavy.

The next second, the specks of light accumulated on the surface of the holy sword surged along her palm and wrist to cover her arm, then sank into Lyra’s body, instantly dispelling the effects of many debuffs. Her light wings, which had just begun to slow, took in the renewed flow of mental power and accelerated again.

The empire mages did not miss such an opportunity. Taking advantage of the zealots’ brief casting gaps, several destructive spells slammed into the enemies around them, returning in full the pressure Lyra had borne on their behalf.

The reek of blood spread again through the center of the battlefield.

On another front, Brennild, using the layered shadows cast down by the Arcanist mages’ high-altitude clash, barely managed to draw out a portion of dark-element particles. She gathered them, and all her attention, to face the imperial regent not far away.

Having suffered once at the head maid’s hands, Brennild dared not be careless. She kept the surrounding concentration of dark elements abundant at all times, ready for Elise to launch a sudden strike; if it were only an early tier Crusader, this would be flawless. The problem was that Astrid Calliste could chant source spells, and under the reinforcement of those source spells, that black-haired woman dressed like a maid gained the ability to resist plague and break through dark-element defenses.

Put simply: as long as Astrid Ovesia, the caster, was present, Elise the assassin could use her weapon to pierce Brennild’s defenses and thus threaten this ruined husk.

Brennild had no intention of wasting this body she’d obtained with such difficulty, one she had yet to fully digest.

Dodging the blood tide spreading across the earth, Astrid silently recited an incantation in her heart. Ice-element particles in the air trembled unceasingly, drawing Brennild’s attention, while another spell was released in secret.

Within Brennild’s red-eyed stare, the condensed ice crystals were engulfed by black mist, stripping them of their ability to carry mental power. A moment later, Brennild, certain that she had successfully neutralized Astrid’s attack, suddenly felt her insides roil as though caught in a raging storm.

The shattered organs that had been pierced by the ice spikes earlier began heating up violently. The once-stable dark-element particles were suddenly disturbed by an outside mental force, causing them to become dangerously volatile.

This spell... could it be...

A rough male hand clutched his lower abdomen. The dark-element particles swirling around Brennild instantly collapsed, forming a small sphere that completely enveloped her.

That ice-element source spell Astrid had just cast not only severely damaged the possessed flesh, but also stamped a mark upon the tiny dark-element particles nearby, and now, at this moment, she was reusing them.

It was a dark-element source spell that targeted corpses: [Corpse Explosion]. If Brennild didn’t calm herself and handle the chaotic elemental surge inside, then in two or three seconds, the new flesh she had seized would explode in front of everyone.

Elise appeared at the right time. The sharp tip of her dagger was effectively extended through materialized mental power, carrying the biting cold wind that Astrid had deliberately attached, and she sliced into the sphere at extreme speed.

Judging from the feedback through mental power, that strike should have cut the corpse Brennild inhabited in half at the waist.

"You lunatics... how dare you..."

As the gray mist dispersed, the man’s corpse was indeed split into two. This unlucky combatant had not only been ill-fated in life, choosing a target he should never have ambushed and dying in a single blow, but found no peace in death. Having endured several rounds of magical cleansing, if those spells had not been ice magic of comparatively less volatile forms, but fire or light instead, he would likely have been reduced to dust, bones ground to nothing, by now.

Hearing Brennild’s voice return to its original female timbre, Astrid still didn’t relax. Several ice spikes manifested, piercing cleanly through the two halves of the body from bottom to top, left to right, completely cutting off Brennild’s possibility of possessing it again.

"With such a miserable death, he can be said to have paid a small part of his debt for his crimes."

As she spoke, Astrid removed the deep-blue brooch from her chest and held it in her palm. Her right hand lifted the staff Charlotte had given her; frigid aura rose within the sapphire at its tip.

"The next one is you, Miss Brennild."

Layered frost spread from the heels of her slender, luxurious high heels, quickly expanding outward. Beneath her cool, elegant black dress, the dark-red tide of blood was frozen inch by inch by the cold, no longer able to trouble Astrid.

Brennild, turned into a shadow, felt the nearby dark-element particles suppressed to extremely low activity by the light element. She barely evaded Elise’s fatal strike, and with a touch of her shadowy hand, tapped the male corpse Astrid had just turned into a pincushion.

Skin, muscle, blood vessels, one after another, the remaining soft tissues melted into a puddle of thick fluid under that casual touch. In the blink of an eye, invisible death flowed as nourishment into Brennild’s body.

Though this simple, brutal method could not fully utilize the corpse before her, wasteful, and yielding less nourishment than slow conversion, faced with such a dire situation, Brennild had no choice but to take this route.

The death of an Arcanist mage, even absorbing only one-fifth, was enough to hold out until Moserria killed all the empire mages. He was nothing like Hebrew, so useless as to have his barrier shattered by an early-tier Arcanist mage.

Replenished, Brennild had no intention of wasting the remaining corpse either. The white bones scattered across the ground recombined under the surging power of death, becoming an undead mage that drove dark-element particles by instinct.

Its lower jaw clacked against its upper. The wheezing rasp leaking through was not even enough to form a note, yet it sufficed to release some simple spells.

Leaning against the bone mage, Brennild’s low voice seeped out of the black fog.

"Pathetic humans... and you dare pass judgment on me?"

Seeing Brennild still struggling, Astrid had no intention of wasting words. Beneath her satin-black gloves, the Grace brooch glittered. The cold frost aura spilling out was so intense that Astrid no longer even felt chill, only as if she were gripping a searing lump of charcoal.

"Look up, Astrid Calliste..."

The female voice rang again, delivering to Astrid a piece of bad news she had no time to focus on, yet enough to affect her state of mind.

"...the true usurper is about to be executed under the judgment of light."

High above, two of Lyra’s six light wings had been cut away. The intact left side immediately replenished, filling in the right’s broken wings into a symmetrical form, carrying the girl as she dodged the holy light flooding the sky.

Those slender, scalding light-serpents needed only the slightest graze, and the searing holy fire would become impossible to extinguish. It would burn on until flesh turned to ash. It was only because Lyra, the so-called thief of divinity, had completely drawn Moserria’s attention that the other Arcanist mages present even had the chance to struggle. Otherwise, under an assault of this level, they might not have had time for even that.

In the icy, snowy wastes, rising hot light surged at Lyra from all directions. A thin sheen of fragrant sweat had already seeped across her back, and even her fair cheeks were faintly flushed.

So hot.

Not only the heat naturally radiating from the independent barrier [The Holy Judgment Descends, Blinding Radiance Advances], but the prolonged, high-intensity battle, fighting at nearly zero distance against light and fire magic, had left Lyra unable to feel any sense that she was still in a frigid region.

Lightflame poured down, destructive energy impossible to evade. Facing the cage of light pressing in from all sides, Lyra raised her light sword high and cleaved the oncoming wave of flame with holy iron.

A scalding ray swept past her ear, like the blazing sun of a midsummer afternoon striking her cheek, burning her skin with pain.

Before she could even catch her breath, Lyra felt the heat at her ear intensify further, like the wall of a kettle of boiling water pressed to her face.

A strand of light ignited her pink hair.

In that split second, while it was still only a small strand and had not spread to more hair or clothing, Lyra drove her mental power and cut off that lock without hesitation.

Once this kind of flame infused with holy light clung to you, it would be difficult to remove.

Lyra, who had just walked past the gates of death, had not yet steadied herself when another upside-down torrent of scorching light descended, bearing down on the pink-haired girl below.

From start to finish, Moserria remained high in the sky, expressionless as he surveyed everything below. He seemed to be weighing his current situation, or perhaps he was merely arrogantly waiting for the sentence to fall upon the sinner’s head.

Not far away, Anthony, whose affinity with the light element was weaker, had already been sealed by the cage of light. If his strength were not formidable, splitting off portions of space with arcane magic to hinder the transmission of light, the holy fire would already have reached his robes and burned this pinnacle of existence among human Arcanist mages to nothing.

Barely avoiding the burning wave, the sheen of light flowing across the Sword of Light dimmed by a few more degrees. Lyra bit her lip and looked up at Moserria in the sky; a faint despair spread in her heart.

From the looks of it, he hadn’t even used his full strength.

With nothing more than a casual stance, he had forced them into this state.

She shook her head, forcibly casting aside those emotions she shouldn’t have. Lyra gripped her sword tighter, enduring the ache in her wrist as she leveled the tip toward the judgmental light rushing at her.

She couldn’t give up. At the very least, her stamina and mental power weren’t fully drained yet.

Before the dust settled, there was always a variable.

Her eyes were filled with brightness. She could only rely on mental-power scanning to capture elemental particles, determining the possible threats around her.

With what remained of her mental power, the resplendent holy light reignited along the translucent blade. Lyra held the sword in both hands and braced it straight against the beam, feeling the impact transmitted through the blade’s surface as her wings drove her body forward with all her strength.

Such a hard light...

For a moment, Lyra even felt as though she were chopping into a block of iron. And what she held wasn’t the [Sword of Light] that could cleave through steel like mud, but the best sword she’d carried out of the village.

Her wrist throbbed with pain, almost unable to hold the holy sword in her hands. After gritting her teeth and severing the beam with all her might, a cool, distant female voice suddenly appeared in the pink-haired girl’s mind.

"Lyra."

"..."

In the center of an elemental-chaos battlefield, using mental power to draw wind-element particles and precisely contact someone was difficult beyond measure. The voice came from extremely far away. Lyra’s first reaction was that she was hallucinating.

Even so, out of absolute trust in her lover, Lyra still responded softly in her heart.

"...Astrid?"

In that instant, she didn’t look with her eyes, nor did she search with mental power, yet she seemed able to sense Astrid Calliste’s presence in the blind spot of her vision.

This feeling was... soul resonance...