Alyssara's jade eyes shimmered with an otherworldly glow, mana coursing through them like rivers of liquid light. They pierced effortlessly through the intricate layers of Cassius's subspace, dissecting his manipulation of space and energy with a glance. To her, it was no more than a child's attempt at mimicry—a carnival trick played by an overeager amateur.
High Radiant-rank.
It was a realm many dreamt of reaching, a summit adorned with legends and insurmountable challenges. For Alyssara, it had been as if the mountain itself bent to her will. She had stood as the strongest before Magnus's meteoric rise to mid Radiant-rank, and now she reigned once more, her power eclipsing even the Vampire Monarch's return.
"Interesting," she murmured, her gaze flickering to Selene.
Selene Kagu, the so-called Twilight Ice Sovereign, stood in stark contrast to the chaos of the battlefield, her glaive shimmering with time-laden astral energy. Alyssara's lips curled into a faint smirk. She could have killed Selene. Not with the ease of crushing an insect, for even an ant can bite, but with the casual effort of brushing aside an inconvenient branch.
The current Alyssara would consider such a task no more taxing than a brisk walk—a momentary exertion, easily forgotten.
Her fingers twitched as she debated her next move. Cassius von Noctis. The vampire prince.
He was pitiable, really. His power paled in comparison to hers, and his ambitions—oh, how small they seemed to her now. Cassius had made his desires plain, his covetous gaze lingering on her more often than she cared to recall. Once, such attention might have amused her, but now it only stirred disgust. Her desires had narrowed to a single individual, and no other gaze mattered.
Still, there was the matter of practicality. Should she save him?
The choice itself was trivial. Even at this distance, Alyssara's crimson threads could weave through the void, bypassing Cassius's faltering defenses and intercepting Selene's glaive before it struck him down. The outcome of the fight was already clear to her. Cassius was doomed, his arrogance blinding him to the simple truth: Selene was far stronger than he believed.
"How foolish," Alyssara muttered, her voice barely audible over the crackling of distant mana storms.
Cassius had always been foolish, underestimating his opponents, overestimating himself. To think Selene was on par with Kem was not just a miscalculation—it was laughable. Selene was a Radiant-ranker, and though she lacked Alyssara's transcendent power, she was no weakling. Her mastery of the glaive, honed over decades of relentless training, far surpassed anything Cassius could counter with brute force alone.
Alyssara tilted her head, the faintest glimmer of amusement tugging at her lips. "He really thinks he can win."
Her crimson threads shimmered, poised to strike. Yet she hesitated, a rare flicker of indecision crossing her flawless features. To save Cassius was to preserve a pawn, a piece on the chessboard she might still move.
Alyssara reclined slightly, her thoughts drifting as she observed from afar. There was no need to rush her decision. Cassius, for all his flaws, was still a peak Immortal-ranker. He would hold out for a little while longer. After all, brute strength and sheer stubbornness had carried him this far.
In the subspace, the battle raged on, and Cassius unleashed another devastating strike. His fist, cloaked in blood astral energy, tore through the fabric of reality itself. Space rippled and shattered, collapsing under the sheer weight of his attack as his Domain amplified the blow to terrifying proportions.
The blood-red energy surged forward, guided with precision, its force strong enough to have matched Kem Kagu's own Grade 6 art in their earlier clash. This was a technique honed over centuries, a culmination of Cassius's relentless pursuit of power. It was a move he trusted, a move he believed would pierce through anything in its path.
But Selene Kagu was not Kem.
Her glaive glimmered in the faint, distorted light of the subspace, a blade of liquid silver infused with the quiet hum of astral energy. Selene's movements were measured, almost elegant, as she raised the weapon, her expression calm and resolute. The power of her Glaive Unity emanated from her, not in explosive bursts, but in a steady, unyielding presence that twisted the very axis of space-time to her will.
Cassius's attack roared forward, a torrent of destruction aimed directly at her.
Selene swung her glaive with deliberate grace. The blade cut through the distorted air, carving a line of serene order through the chaos. The astral energy coursing through her weapon merged seamlessly with her mastery over space and time, creating a strike that carried both strength and inevitability.
The collision was instantaneous.
The blood-empowered fist, augmented by Cassius's Domain, met Selene's glaive in a blinding flash of power. For a moment, the subspace trembled under the strain of their clash. And then, as if the universe itself bent to Selene's will, her glaive sliced through the attack, severing it with surgical precision.
Cassius's blood astral energy dissipated into nothing, its fury rendered meaningless in the face of Selene's technique.
He staggered back, his crimson eyes widening in disbelief as the remnants of his shattered strike dispersed around him. Selene stood unmoving, her glaive held steady, her presence unwavering. She hadn't even used the power of an art—this was simply the strength of her Unity, the product of her mastery over her weapon and the cosmos itself.
Cassius gritted his teeth, his pride wounded far more deeply than his body. "How...?"
Selene didn't answer. She didn't need to. Her calm, unyielding gaze was response enough. The battlefield belonged to her now, and Cassius von Noctis, for all his strength, was beginning to realize it.
Selene drew back her glaive with the fluidity of a dancer and the precision of a seasoned warrior, the air around her humming with raw, focused energy. The weapon seemed almost weightless in her hands, a natural extension of her being as she prepared for another strike.
Her Grade 6 art, a significant departure from the Void Fist tradition of her family, embodied her mastery and unique talent. Where the Void Fist relied on the sheer power of gravity and space to crush opponents, Selene had redefined it entirely, weaving the chill of ice and the inexorable flow of time into her technique. It wasn't simply a reimagining of the art—it was a transformation.
As she swung her glaive again, ice astral energy cascaded outward, spreading like an unstoppable tide. The frost didn't merely cling to the surface of Cassius's blood Domain; it sank deeper, reaching into the core of his power. The freezing tendrils crept through the space, coiling around the threads of blood and night astral energy that sustained his Domain.
Cassius's eyes narrowed as he felt the chill bite into his defenses. This wasn't ordinary ice—it was something far more insidious. Selene's mastery over time magic was woven into the freezing energy, and the space-time axis itself began to buckle under her assault. The distortion rippled outward, warping the boundaries of the subspace they fought within.
The blood Domain quaked, struggling against the encroaching frost that froze not just the air but the flow of time itself. Selene's glaive moved with a deliberate elegance, carving arcs through the air as it projected her will into the battlefield. Her intent was clear, and her ice astral energy followed suit, consuming the blood energy with an unrelenting hunger.
Cassius gritted his teeth, his pride bristling as his Domain faltered under the weight of Selene's power. She wasn't merely attacking—she was unraveling the very fabric of his defenses, rewriting the rules of the space they occupied with every calculated swing.
"You think frost will break me?" he spat, his blood astral energy surging in defiance, a torrent of crimson flames igniting around him.
Selene's lips barely moved, her voice as calm and cold as the ice she wielded. "It's not the frost you should fear, Cassius. It's the silence that follows."
Her glaive descended once more, splitting the frozen air with an almost serene inevitability. The battlefield quaked, caught in the clash between blood and ice, time and defiance.