“HAHAHAHA! AT LAST, I AM FREE!”

“What do you mean? You had always been so free.”

“Shut it!”

As the prisoners poured out from their individual cages and broke free onto the courtyard, the deafening alarm had already been blasted out through projection Casts all around the prison. Instantly, the remainder of the guards were mobilized to the lower levels when they were immediately met with resistance from the rest of Leodora’s girls already stationed there.

“Come on!” Wu said, turning back towards Lera who landed gracefully beside her thanks to a single vine dispelling the impact under her feet. The group of soldiers started clashing against the angry inmates, though the mob started to quickly lose their momenutm due to the Wave suppression Casts over their body.

“Screw you bastards!” One of the inmates cursed when a wooden staff empowered with the Wave slammed into his jaw and shoved him onto the ground.

“Shut up and stay down.” The guard stomped onto his chest before hitting himon the head when suddenly, Ita spun through the air with her long white hair carrying her slender body like flapping wings and slashed the guard across the helmet. Then, she channeled her Wave through her hair strands, sharpening its edges and forming a single blade.

“You...you again...” The guard said through gritted teeth from under the helmet, and she moved lightly on her feet, kicking down the inmate further before sending her staff straight through to Ita, clashing against her hair blade with a loud metallic clank. A light blue Cast glowed over the surface of the staff as the glowing Wave lines then slowly propagated down the body of the staff and back into the hands of the owner, “I see the loli monster had returned from the Academy. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You had always been this boring, Anda Tigris.” Ita said, slicing her twin tails through the air while Anda bounced the staff back and forth in between her attacks before lunging forward, forcing Ita to cross guard right over her breasts and glide backward, riding the momentum of Anda's strike.

“You know her?” Lera asked, covering the entire courtyard with her cast Array as long-spanning vines shot up from all around, knocking up the guards into the air at intervals before yanking them back onto the ground.

“She’s a bit of a…rival, and the boss of this prison. I will take care of her,” Ita half-turned when Anda leaped into the air with a furious roar, ready to crack her head open with a vertical slam when Ita caught the staff with both of her hands wrapped in her hair as Wave poured out from her body, “You get my girls and Shadow out of here!”

“Speak for yourself.” Shadow hung onto the walls as she watched the chaos down below, “I am fine where I am.”

“You are not going anywhere!” The voices from one of the prison guards filled the air when he launched a range Wave blast, though Shadow looked at the guard with disinterest before she slipped into the darkness she had been residing in like a ghost. The blasts exploded upon the stone surface and splattered into individual Wave lines that dissipated as heat.

“Go!” Ita said, “Once you start moving, the girls will be able to identify who and where you are!”

“How would they know?” Wu asked as he blew back another trio of guards that tried to press forward with shields Casts raised high.

“A lion always knows what’s going on in its environments.” Ita said before her face turned red, "It...sounded better in my head. Just go!"

Guess he will just have to get moving then. Wu thought when suddenly another set of guards jumped down from the levels above and landed in front of him. Glancing all around him, it also seemed like the prison guards had been overpowering the escaped prisoners despite the difference in numbers. Many of the fiercest fighters were Ita’s girls, though they were also slowly losing the battle.

It’s time for the great equalizer.

“Lera.” Wu said, redirecting his power into his first and still strongest Cast, “I am going to use it.”

Lera looked at him, and she nodded slowly.

“Stop right there!” The guards said, their hands outreached with Casts in the motino of activation when Wu puffed out his chest and breathed in as deeply as he could. Then, he felt the warmth of the Wave over his skin as the switch was flipped and Wave poured out from the gemstone into the tattoo lines all over his body.

A dark orb materialized around him, and he opened his eyes.

The guards opened fire, and the spherical blasts of Wave darted through the air at the same moment the dark orb expanded. It expanded like a silent balloon, instantly covering the entire courtyard and the nearest two levels before cutting off all flow of the Wave in everybody instantly.

The ranged attacks vanished in the midst of darkness, and Wave suppressing collars around the prisoner’s necks let out a gentle click before flopping onto the ground.

“What…what the hell is going on…” The guards, struggling to move their bodies when the dark orb disappeared as quickly as it appeared in the first place. The prisoners took an instant to process what happened when strength returned to their bodies, and with a synchronized roar, they started to push back against the guards with the powerful individual Wave abilities that got them into the prison in the first place.

That would have been the case normally, but right now, the prison was filled with far more people that opposed the rise of Descendants of Winter within the political circle.

“Shit! Alert the capital! We need more…” Anda said quickly when Ita slammed her hands onto the body of the staff, forcing Anda to stumble backward as Ita spun herself into a tornado, her hair forming dozens of smaller blades as she chainsawed against the body of the staff.

“It’s over for the Tigris family.” Ita said, emerging from the tornado of her own creation when Anda lunged forward for a quick thrust at her neck, to which Ita avoided easily as she turned her body by planting her hair into the ground, “You never should have sided with that cult.”

“You know nothing of our aspirations, privileged brat,” Anda growled, sweeping the other side of the staff low to the ground as a Cast glowed like a knife near the end of it. It chopped straight through Ita’s Wave-strengthened hair as she landed lightly on her feet and closed in the distance between the two, making the length of the staff a disadvantage.

“No…the Valkyrie system was wrong, but what you are planning to do with the new version…it’s just as bad…Don't you think they have suffered enough already?!” Ita asked, forming a fist before she slammed it straight into the body of the staff when Anda shot her eyes open and gripped tightly onto her staff, parrying the initial hit before a second punch arrived with far greater ferocity.

“You have no idea! The new system is…painless! Nobody has to die! And everyone can be strengthened up to the level of a Valkyrie! Even…even with someone like me!” Anda cursed, twisting the staff and allowing Ita’s attack to land onto her torso with reduced force while she slammed the side of it against Ita’s head.

“And what will be the catch for it?” Ita asked, “Losing everything, even one's humanity?”

“Humanity isn’t worth shit in the face of absolute power.” Anda said, tearing off her mask and revealing her face with a single dark pulsating line over her forehead, “Humanity is defined by power! I have seen the results of the transformation…you became something far more powerful…and you became something far more than what’s possible with the measly vessel and a flawed training system.”

“What are you now...? What have you done?!!” Ita asked when Anda ran her finger down the side of her bruised face with a wicked smile.

“A demon. Well, partially.” Anda said with her hands raised to the side, “An army of demons were able to decimate the entire world in the times of the Third Savior, imagine what a far greater army of it can do now with all of the advancements in Wave usage. PORA? Yarka? Sky Guardian Corp? They aren't going to be shit!”

Ita quickly looked towards Wu, who clearly caught the rest of the conversation as he returned her look with a shocked stare. He would have never thought that when Shadow was talking about upgrades and transformations, she was talking about the involvement of the same beings that plunged the world into ruin nearly a thousand years ago.

“We will stop it all. Together.” Wu said, blasting off into the air as he shook off the guards that started firing at him from the higher levels. Lera charged after him as the rest of the girls from House of Leodora followed suit, leading the prisoners to move in a single formation and pushing back against the guards.

“This is the end for you.” Ita said, leaping up into the air and following after Wu as her hair flapped like wings, “How could you ever agree to something like that...”

“You have no idea how much we needed this…” Anda growled, “It’s inevitable, Ita. Just you wait. Your crimes here will be remembered, and soon, the entire house of Leodora will be transformed into devils. This is only the beginning of your downfall...”

Breaking through the inner shields of the Polar Prison, Wu, Lera, Shadow, and Ita with the rest of the girls from Leodora grouped up outside in the snow as reinforcements slowly started to trickle in from the capital. However, Lera was able to hide the entirety of their presence through her Void Domain Shield Layer.

“So…what now?” Wu asked, and Shadow put her hand up into the air like a kid in a classroom.

“Do you know how long the transformation would have taken?” Ita asked, “Are we…too late?”

“Maybe…maybe not.” Shadow shrugged, “Only one way to find out.”

“And…where would they be performing such a process?” Wu asked, “Do…you Valkyries have a way to track down one another?”

“Yep.” Shadows sighed, “It would not have been that easy to set traps to catch us all otherwise. Like idiots drawn to fire, half of those stupid girls got drawn towards Alina, and the other half to us…It doesn't matter, since now we are also going to be drawn to them, like idiots. Excellent.”

“You can find them, right?” Wu asked when Shadow waved her hand in annoyance.

“Assuming that any of them is still alive…yaaaas.” Shadow said quickly before closing her purple eyes and placed both hands behind her head.

“Speaking of Alina…we did save her.” Lera added, “And we were actually supposed to meet her here. Can you…track her instead?”

"Oh?" Shadow opened her big eyes, and a shot of life seemed to have been injected into her body, "That would be much easier. Almost too perfect~”

Her eyes glowed with joy as she sat down cross-legged and started humming an exciting little tune, “Her stink is noticeable from the Western continent. And…here you go~ Let’s go crack some heads.”