Moments after Kaze got forcefully taken away from the group by M, Sera and the others quickly found themselves in a difficult situation. They were to decide whether to retreat or stand their ground.
Obviously, with the way things were, it would be no surprise if one of them suddenly ran away. Thanks to them being huddled together along with the quick reaction from Sera and Rena, they were able to prevent some of them from running after Kaze. Not that it was a bad thing to do, but that would cripple their already fragile structure even more since Lunaea and Luniel had left in pursuit of Kaze.
Sera quickly ushered everyone under a pile of rubble, out of plain sight. Not wanting the same thing to happen to any of the others, they knew full well that Kaze's wellbeing would be left up to the dragonkin twins.
"We have to make a decision, immediately," Sera pressed her words to the others in a harsh yet silent manner. "Leave and let the officials handle the work or stay and do practically nothing."
"I don't think we have a choice, do we?" Irene asked nervously, looking around them while trembling. "We should definitely leave."
"I'm with Irene," Chris nodded, supporting his girlfriend's choice. "We can't do much even if we are here anyway."
"Are you saying you want to leave without Lunaria?" Shoko widened her eyes at their words and stomped her foot. "Fine. Whatever the case, I'm staying."
"Shoko, this isn't the place to be stubborn. We know that you are worried about Lunaria," Rena tried to persuade her foxkin friend. "Heck, we all are! But at the same time, do you want to risk the lives of everyone here?"
"That's why I said I'm staying. I never forced anyone to stay with me," Shoko muttered. "Sera, Rena, bring the others away. I'll stay here till Lunatea or Lucentia comes out with Lunaria."
"… Alright," Sera nodded after considering it for a bit.
"Wait, are we really going to go along with that?" Yuuji asked, feeling a little surprised that Sera was willing to allow Shoko to stay back.
"What? Are you willing to accompany her?" Rena raised an eyebrow at the prince's question. "I don't know about you, but I trust Shoko. She might have seemed useless to you from the centipede battle, and only because of the circumstance at the time, but I can assure you she is much more capable than that."
"No, I wasn't questioning her ability; I am concerned about her safety," Yuuji rephrased his question in a frustrated manner. "Mitsui, what are you going to do?"
"W-Well… if I was Mia… I'm pretty sure she would rather you return with everyone else and leave someone capable here…" Mitsui stammered, her eyes darting all over the place in fear for her life. "Yuuji, please… lets listen to Rena."
When faced with such a situation, it wasn't just Yuuji who was reluctant to make a choice. Albert and Noel, who both fell silent since earlier, were also unsure of what to do at the moment. They joined the group in their search for Lunaria on impulse. Now that the situation had gone out of hand more than they had expected it to be, the answer, which should have been clear, had now gone murky. Fear was interfering with their decision-making abilities that normally would guarantee their lives over anything else.
The hesitancy quickly spread to the others. Since there was no considering what could happen next, they were all on the fence. With Sera and Rena being put in charge as usual, it was up to them to lead the group to make the next best possible move before the situation could worsen any further.
"… Alright, we leave," Yuuji nodded after taking a few seconds to think about it. "Everyone's safety comes first."
"Y-Yuuji, don't do anything rash," Noel looked at him desperately, taking out her sword as a precautionary measure. "We leave quietly, okay?"
Once Noel uttered her plead, the group felt a sudden increase in magical pressure around them.
It was different from the kind exerted by people like Lunaria. While they had never experienced the true extent of Lunaria's power, they were able to get a good glimpse of it when Lunaria fought against the centipede before. Not taking into account of the double-edged partial transformation, it was clear that her magical aptitude and swordfighting was already on a mastered level, as a genius would when they lived up to Lunaria's age.
What they felt right now was completely different. While it certainly was still magical pressure, the scale and feel of it gave off a more ominous aura. Everyone let out an instinctive gasp as they directed their sight to the air, where the source of said pressure came from.
A figure hovered several meters above the ground. Whoever it was was cloaked in a grey stained fabric that wrapped around his body like a cape, acting as a cover that made it difficult for them to determine his figure. Even his face had a mask in front, preventing his identity from being exposed. More importantly, he had one hand extended up to the sky with a ball of magic in it. From simple observations alone it was enough to tell that he wasn't there as help or reinforcement.
"Oh god, what is that thing?"
"I don't think we should stay around to find out. Rena, lead the way."
With Chris cringing at the pressure exerted by the creature, Shoko ordered for her elf friend to get the others out of the area before things got worse. Removing a blade from her bag, Shoko was going to distract the creature.
"Hey!" Shoko jumped out of their hiding spot and threw the blade imbued with magic, rigged to explode upon contact.
Unfortunately, the blade exploded before impact. As soon as it got close to the person, they raised their other hand and cast a barrier instantly. The blade hit the barrier and activated, creating a small blast mid-air. Shoko gritted her teeth at this since the element of surprise was now out of the picture, leaving her with no choice but to take on the person upfront.
With their arm still in the air, the person shifted their gaze to Shoko and began chain-casting. Their left hand was targeted at Shoko, releasing fire magic at a rapid rate. From Shoko's perspective, it looked as though she was facing a barrage of arrows in the form of fire magic if she were to quantify the quantity and speed of the magic. Only a handful of mages were capable of doing something like that.
As Shoko began dodging, countless holes formed in the ground. The dirt was already loose from all the trampling and uprooting that happened over the past few hours, so the addition of magic only served to further damage the foundation that made up the already rough surface. Bodies littered all over got blasted away from the fire magic which caused explosions wherever it landed, making it a rather messy fight.
"Run!!" Sera shouted, deploying a barrier around them before scurrying away from their hiding spot. "Rena, cover us!"
Rena, being the Sniping Ranger, charged one of her arrows with more magic power than usual before releasing it at the figure. When the figure tried to use barrier magic to block it again, the arrow pierced through it. The figure barely managed to dodge it without the arrow scraping their cloth, but it was enough to let Rena know that their attacks could work.
She released a few more arrows consecutively, not wanting to allow the figure to get a moment of rest. Just as she did so, Shoko took it upon herself to launch a simultaneous attack on the figure. To prevent herself from getting caught in the crossfire, Shoko jumped into the air and swung her short sword by positioning herself directly below the figure.
The figure noticed this attack pattern and immediately adapted, generating multiple barriers around themself as soon as possible. It did make Rena and Shoko question why he wouldn't move, but they weren't going to waste time in combat to think of it when every second counted.
"Hmph!" Shoko timed her attack mid-air where her sword struck the next barrier after the first one shattered from Rena's arrow.
Just as with Shoko, the rest of the arrows began hitting the barriers one after another, digging deeper into the layers deployed. Since the barriers were deployed with different strength, the more brittle outside barriers that got destroyed exposed the stronger inner core. When it hit a certain point, the arrows only bounced off the barriers like they were nothing even with magic.
Shoko took the form of partial transformation for a split second, just to give herself enough strength to break through the remaining barriers but not enough to exhaust her instantly. Since partial transformation couldn't always be done at free will, she had to make her attack count. Her sword got imbued with dark magic, with her landing on the floor and launching herself upwards again. This time, she aimed herself at the figure since the barriers were still in place.
With her sudden burst in athletic performance, the figure acted in panic and barely scraped by an attack from Shoko. The remainder of its barriers got destroyed in that one attack, causing Shoko to barely miss due to the last second swerve to avoid her sword. Still, that wasn't enough to slow down Shoko who was already prepping for the next attack. As the assassin she was, it was going to take more than that to make her give up.
"Not yet!" Shoko shouted, disabling her transformation since the barriers were broken. "Rena!!"
Shoko's voice reached Rena, who had been waiting for this moment. She knew that her arrows weren't enough to officially break through the barrier, hence why Shoko needed to break through the last few stronger barriers for Rena's arrows to pass through. As unimpressive as it may seem, they could only do so much against a barrier-specialist, as proven by the fact the figure's actions so far composed of simply casting barrier magic.
"Coward!" Shoko tried taunting the enemy, jumping next to Rena.
"Everyone has left," Rena stated, referring to their friends who had already left under Sera's lead.
"Good," Shoko nodded. "What's the plan?"
"He isn't attacking, whoever it is," Rena loaded another arrow while saying so. "It is likely that he, or she, would be one of the masterminds behind Lunaria's kidnapping."
At her words, the person levitating off the ground obviously heard this as the atmosphere around them changed a little. It was slightly more tensed than before, their concentration cut off from whatever they were doing with their hand still raised in the air this whole time. As it would seem, they were distraught by the fact that they had to be more than careless with Shoko and Rena.
"… How troublesome," the figure finally spoke, its deep tone reverberating with annoyance. "Why are small fries always showing up out of nowhere?"
"Oh? You should take more care in declaring us being small fries," Shoko raised an eyebrow at this and made a vicious smile. "If you are comparing us to normal people, that is."
"… Fumu, I will give it to you that you are better than the ordinary, but in my eyes, you are nothing compared to our Lord," the figure stated pridefully. "Leave right now, and I just might spare you."
"How rude. We still haven't returned our thanks for treating our friend so kindly," Rena angled her bow at the figure. "Surrender without causing more harm, and we will let you off without death."
Clicking his tongue, the figure snapped his fingers and instantly the two were trapped inside of a barrier. Even then, Shoko and Rena looked calm, as if the barriers meant nothing to them. They continued remaining hostile to the enemy before them, both preparing for an attack.
"It's useless. Unless you are able to conjure strong magic in such a limited space, you won't be able to break out of the barrier," the person declared. "It's on par with the one you have experienced before."
"So it really was you…" Rena narrowed her eyes. "You were the one who tampered with the barrier on the day of the exam."
"Quite so, but it really wouldn't take a genius to figure that out, would it?" The person shook his head. "If you are here to rescue your friend, she is probably dead by now."
"Oh yeah? If you wanted her dead, you would have done that the moment you captured her," Shoko shot back. "You lot kidnapped her, meaning that she has her worth. Plus, the fact you surrounded this… barrier around us also mean nothing more than a way to delay us."
With a sigh, Rena lightly rapped the barrier with her knuckle to see how strong it was. A sharp zapping sound resounded as soon as she did that, probably because there was an additional enchantment of lightning magic designed to zap them should they try to forcefully break out. Them being trapped was certainly expected, but not that they didn't have a plan to break out of it. Rena was simply surprised by the quality of the barrier.
"Ho, this is probably going to take a bit more effort to break through," Rena glanced at Shoko, who was trapped in an isolated barrier next to her.
As ironic as it sounded, what Shoko and Rena were doing also involved stalling for time. While risky because their opponent was obviously up to something, they needed to allow Lunatea and Lucentia enough time to escape first before they made any flashy moves. Whatever that had been done up till now only involved taunting the enemy to redirect their attention to them. There was also Sera's group whom they had to be worried about. If their enemy was someone that capable of taking out Lunaria, that would mean they would have no easy time against it either.
To demonstrate that they were not fooling around, Shoko charged herself with enough dark magic in one hand and smashed it right into the barrier. Instantly, the supposedly tough magic barrier shattered into thousands of pieces before disappearing.
"As you can see, not a problem," Shoko boldly declared to the hovering person before smashing Rena's from the outside.
Barrier magic worked slightly different from the average magic. To determine how tough a barrier was, it would have to depend on the usage. If it was primarily to block something outside from attacking the caster inside of the barrier, then the outside would definitely be harder to shatter than the inside. The opposite works the same, for anyone who wanted to trap anything inside the barrier. However, what the hovering figure had done was strengthen both inside and outside. That made the barrier tougher to destroy, only that Shoko somehow managed to demolish it without seemingly much effort.
The figure looked surprised from this. He certainly didn't expect the barriers in place to be destroyed that easily.
"It's not going to work again," Shoko swatted the barriers that kept on appearing over and over again, destroying any traces of it before it even began to form.
"… Hmph," the figure snapped his fingers, casting barriers at a faster rate. "Are you trying to use brute force to overcome the strength of my barriers?"
"Theoretically, if I can destroy them before they start to become tougher, then you are no threat at all," Shoko stated as she destroyed a multi-layered barrier with a thrust of her fist. "The problem with last time was that we discovered the flaw too late. By then, we didn't have a chance at breaking through."
What Shoko meant was when a barrier was cast, it wouldn't automatically determine the strength of the barrier itself. How a barrier would function depended on the type casted, but for what the figure was using this whole time was a 'self-nurturing' barrier.
When a spell is cast, it takes mana from the atmosphere and channelled through a person before the magic can be formed. For a magic to self-sustain in purposes of delayed-activation or timed magic, it would have to require continuous harnessing of pure mana from the surrounding itself instead of the 'processed' version sent through the body. This required a specific type of casting, one that did not end the magic instantly but allowed it to have an 'open-ended' type for it to continuously take in the necessary mana to develop and strengthen.
Just like the centipede incident, the barrier that was originally made in place to ward off any beasts and control the area had been configured by the same person they were facing right now. What he did back then was no different than what they were experiencing right now. While the types may vary, the fundamental basis for it was not much different. As long as Shoko was able to destroy the barriers before they grew stronger, then the barriers itself would not prove to be too much trouble.
"Slow!" Shoko shouted, throwing a triple kick to her front, destroying three barriers consecutively just as they were constructed before her.
Getting ticked off by the fact his barriers were getting wrecked, the figure dropped his raised hand and concentrated on Shoko and Rena. Rena, who had been allowing Shoko to destroy the barriers around them, watched the figure carefully. Any slight movement that she deemed to be dangerous would immediately be done in by her arrows.
Shoko was about to throw another punch when a sudden teleportation broke the stagnant battle. Lunatea and the others had teleported back to the surface in a rather frazzled manner, considering how alarmed they looked as soon as they appeared.
"Lunatea?!" Shoko gasped softly, rushing in front of the bunch to protect them.
"Is that Lunaria? What happened?" Rena, inching forward slightly with her gaze partially locked on the figure, questioned the small group of dragonkins.
"No time to explain," Sakuya panted heavily, helping some of her subordinates who got caught up in the teleportation up from the ground. "Take… Lunatea-sama and Lucentia-sama away right now. We will delay that thing…!"
While the group discussed among themselves, the figure raised an eyebrow as soon as he saw Lunaria among the teleported small group. He was fairly surprised that his partner would allow the group to leave so easily without any repercussion, since Lunaria was rescued. Security was lax in the first place, but the original plan was supposed to involve killing Lunaria once they were done.
From the hole that led to the underground raid came a loud explosion. A few soldiers came blasting out of it and collapsed, heavily injured. The reason for this along with what caused the dragonkins to escape showed itself, revealing its true self without fear.
No mask or outfit was enough to hide the features that define the creature before them. A pair of unevenly sized dark horns protruding from the top of its head, dark wings sprawled behind its back from the shoulder blade, skin that reflected the greyness of the ashes of cremated bodies… the creature before them was none other than a devil.
"Oh my, so this is where everyone else is," the devil that showed itself commented once it saw Lunatea's group huddled together. "Did I interrupt something? I felt quite the bit of magic coming from up here."
Shoko and Rena widened their eyes at the revelation of the devil. Seeing that the devil was talking to the person they were fighting, it was safe to assume that he was a devil too. It was already within their expectations to fight against a devil; however shock did not dissipate that easily. All anyone, including them, ever heard about devils were fearsome things.
In the devil's hands, he held an orb of purple. Its ominous glow quickly redirected everyone's focus to it.
"Hey! Give that back!" Lunatea shouted at the devil.
"This? Why should I?" The devil smirked and juggled the orb between his fingers. "I don't believe it belongs to you because it was my hard work that harvested this."
"Neither do we, but the energy you used to harvest definitely belongs to our friend here," Rena nodded with a cross look on her face. "You have every right to return it."
"Ahaha, that part is certainly true," the devil made a lazy smirk and grasped the orb tightly. "That is… if you can stop us."
The orb suddenly glowed a bright flash of purple. Its power was being temporarily used by the devil to cast a spell. When the essence of magic being extracted came from a dragonkin as powerful as Lunaria, no doubt the group had to beware whatever it was that was going to be thrown at them. Even harnessing the power itself was already enough to let them know that the strength was immense.
Dark clouds appeared out of nowhere at a rapid pace. Covering the morning sun and its influence of light around a huge area, purple lightning could be seen being generated along with the rapid formation of the clouds. On the surface, it looked to be a Master class spell capable of influencing the weather. Anything associated with weather manipulation was already dangerous enough, so for something like this to happen within seconds showed how much energy had been sapped from Lunaria to be made use like that.
"Oh no, we need to move," Lucentia realized the gravity of the situation and looked at Shoko and Rena. "Any suggestion? We can't teleport into the city, or it would cause more destruction."
"N-No," Shoko gulped, shaking her head. "We initially were just toying around with the other guy in hopes of waiting for you to appear with Lunaria, but now I'm sort of regretting that decision."
"Lunatea-sama, Lucentia-sama, please escape with Lunaria-sama to Reginsleif-sama's side first," Sakuya made the option available to them. "I will be delaying them with the guards."
"There are only 8 of you here, what do you expect to accomplish from that?!" Lunatea shouted, dragging Sakuya away with one hand while struggling to cradle Lunaria to her chest. "We're moving!"
"We won't make it in time!" Lucentia raised her sword to her side in an attacking stance. "Lunatea! We have to 'change'!"
"W-Wait, Lucentia-sama! Even if that is the case…!"
"We can't fight over this Sakuya! There's no time to decide!"
"Protect Lunaria-sama!!"
Meanwhile, Luniel was flying Kaze over the city to the site of the fight. While they zoomed above the buildings, they also noticed how the weather took a turn for the worse. It was clearly evident by the dark clouds and decrease in brightness overall, but more so due to the shift in magic particles in the atmosphere.
"We're almost there," Luniel told Kaze with a worried look on her face. "Oh man, what is going on…"
The graveyard area soon came into view. Tristania itself was a big capital, so it was no surprise it took Luniel a few minutes just to cross the city to where they came from. It also meant that M was no simple enemy if he was able to launch himself and Kaze so far away from the original scene of the fight.
Kaze's skin tickled when they got closer to the area. There was static in the air somehow, causing Kaze quite the confusion and Luniel to become more alarmed. She quickly covered the two of them in a protective barrier just in case they were caught up in a wide-scale attack.
"Kaze, I know I said this before, but you have to be ready," Luniel reminded Kaze once again. "Anything can happen-"
Ironic as it seemed, a loud tremor echoed throughout the grounds and air of Tristania as soon as Luniel spoke about anything happening. A beam of light fell from the clouds overhead, striking a specific spot at the graveyard. The impact of the attack was what sent ripples through the air, affecting Luniel's flight stability.
"Woah!!" Luniel winced, putting her hands up to cover her face from the blast of wind.
"D-Don't let go of me!" Kaze shouted from below, also squinting. "What is going on?!"
"Enemy attack!" Luniel flapped her wings harder to break through the wind torrent. "I'm going to take us higher up!"
The two soared through the air at a higher altitude to avoid the rough current from hindering their flight progress. They got closer to the clouds overhead, which was quite the concern since purple strikes of lightning could be seen appearing at random. One unfortunate strike and the two would be hit. Of course, they had the barrier around them for protective measures, but that didn't make Kaze any more convinced of their safety.
When the light beam dissipated, they had already gotten close enough to see what was happening at the fighting grounds. Both Kaze and Luniel widened their eyes in shock, not at the damage that the beam had caused, but rather what it was that blocked the beam's attack from utterly flattening the area.
"L-Luniel…"
"… Yes, that is what you think it is… or rather, who it is…"
A white dragon, larger than the centipede Kaze had encountered before, let out a deafening cry as it got to its feet.