“Alina. Looks like we've got some challengers.” Caligo said, glancing towards Icy and Shadow with amusement, “I will leave them in your care.”

Without a word, Alina stomped her heavy paw and darted in front of Caligo, shielding him with her outline of the Great Northern Wolf as she became enveloped within and started floating in midair.

Caligo smiled before levitating off the ground and flying away from the main hall, as he had further preparations to perform.

Wave usage and Cast creation are art forms that he had spent many years perfecting. Though he was born a Manifester of the mist element, he knew that Casts simply had the highest potential for achieving the impossible for absolutely every with an ounce of Wave within him. Though he was not one to be naive or selfless enough to create technology that can help all the disadvantaged people in this world, he still had glimpses of the future that Wu had tried to bring forth.

Perfecting the simplest techniques for ensuring his survival, Caligo then dived deep into recreating the ancient yet powerful Casts left behind from the aftermath of War of the Third Millennium, and he eventually came across the records of the Gate of Rebirth. It was a desperate attempt at duplicating what the Third Savior had tried to do with his connection to the anti-Wave wielding demon behind his back, but the project was soon abandoned after it was found out by the Savior himself.

Now that the outlines of the Cast had already been put into place, Caligo then brought himself into the center of it all, towards the dark red orb hovering above Fang city before bringing forth the progress of the Cast as gigantic rings of right formed around the city’s outskirts, trapping everyone inside.

“Hurry up! Get out of here!” Wu said, directing the groups of people that were just on the verge of complete and utter panic, as they each sought their way out and kept running into individuals that did want to undergo the transformations, leading to the occasional clashes between the flow of the people.

Ita was supported by her long elongating strands of hair from above and kept watch of anyone that fell during the evacuation before more branches of her long white hair reached down, wrapped around the waists of the fallen, and gently tossing them over to a soft and bouncy structure Cast to guide them down to the ground.

Down at the street level, the other Leodora forces that came with Ita helped direct the crowds away into the branching alleyways and paths of Fang city, but it quickly became clear that they needed to save the entire city, not just a church full of people.

“Wu!” Lera said through the communication Cast, and her voice barely penetrated through the chaos below, “That Cast! We need to stop it! It’s…developing too quickly, and there were already strange looking light rings that is forming along the outskirts of the city!”

“Any Cast must have well-defined boundaries. Remember our training.” Wu said quickly, “Did you catch a glimpse of it? Was the Cast built into the city itself?”

“Unless Caligo had planned this since the inception of the city…” Lera threw one hand straight up, sending a Scouting flying straight towards the nearest red glowing Wave line that rose from the ground and extended towards the floating orb, "I...don't see it. It just seemed to grow from nowhere!"

When looking from far away on the slopes of the mountains that surrounded Fang city, it looked as if a small bamboo basket was placed on top of the city itself, with each of the thick red wave lines being a single strand of the bamboo basket's fiber.

“If it were built into the ground of the city, could you uproot it by extending your Cast array from under it?” Wu added, “Bringing up the entire basis of those Casts before the light rings are fully developed? Or could you try to apply Void domain directly onto the control module?”

“The control module…” Lera glanced towards the floating orb where all of the red is heading towards. That must have been the one, and she remembered seeing Caligo’s body floating towards it, “On it!”

Looking back at the projection from the Scouting Eye that has now reached full height, Lera immediately gasped as his heart nearly leapt from within her chest.

“Shit. The basis of those Casts…are individual Valkyries.”

“What?!” Ita spun around, “How was that even possible?!”

“Their bodies…it seemed like they were held in position by something with those massive Wave lines channeling through them…” Lera hurried, her heart aching as Ita growled out in anger and slammed her fist into the side of the wall.

“As if they hadn’t suffered enough…”

“Leodoras, focus on evacuation here.” Wu said, glancing at the far smaller light rings that Caligo had created initially that had stopped its forward travel after fully transforming all of the Descendants of Winter that still remained within the Church, “We need to focus on stopping Caligo now.”

That was when massive explosions went off all around them as the partially transformed believers rampaged along the main streets, shattering buildings as they went and causing nothing but destruction everywhere they went.

With uncontrollable comes uninhibited chaos.

“Shit…” Ita leaped up into the air and drew the attention of her people immediately, “I will go stop them! Half of you, follow me!”

“Be careful! He wanted us to divide our forces!” Wu warned.

“Go and help Icy and Shadow get Alina back!” Lera said with wind rushing in her ear, “With her Great Northern Wolf manifestation on our side, maybe we will have enough fire power to actually destory the Cast itself! Void domain can isolate and disrupt, but to destroy it...we need something with a massive amount of fire power!”

“Got it!” Wu said, spinning around and rocketing down towards the battlefield at the stage behind the walls of ice.

“I…I can buy some time here, but not for too long!” Lera said, landing directly under the floating red orb before jumping from her chariot. From the moment she touched onto the ground, she had already established her Cast array before Void Domain was projected straight up, cutting off the flow of the Wave in and out of the red orb.

“Oh?” Caligo sensed the sudden disruption, and he looked down at Lera who raised her hand up in the air, drawing the atmospheric Wave into her Casts to support her efforts of disruption.

He rapidly dived down onto the ground with his body turned into a stream of red mist and slammed straight into a Bubble bubble around Lera as ripples were sent through the shields as tiny red tentacles from Caligo's mist tried to tear their way through.

“You intend to defy the destiny of Talonia by yourself, outsider?” Caligo taunted, “An elegant Cast to sever the Wave, but how long can you hold it?”

“As long as I need to!” Lera growled back when Caligo chuckled before surrounding her shields with mist and called on the Fang city royal guards from nearby to pound into her shields with everything they have.

“Can’t you see what he is doing to your city?!” Lera shouted, redirecting some supply of the Wave into her Cast array as massive vines grew out from the ground and swiped back the guards as one of the vines swiped straight through Caligo’s body.

The royal guards didn’t say anything, and when Lera knocked their helmets off their heads, they all had red lines over their foreheads.

“Like I said.” Caligo reached his hands out to the side, “It’s done. It’s already been done. Once your little resistance is finished here, then you shall join us on the other side of the rebirth. I will make sure you train you specially~More gentle than I did with any of the Valkyries, of course.”

“It won’t happen!” Lera shot back, “They will bring Alina back, and we will take you down together!”

“Oh?” Caligo paused for a moment before laughing out loud in Lera’s face, “You wanted to bring Alina back?! As in…undo years of conditioning and treatments? How do you intend to do that? With power of friendship, perhaps?"

With a smile of amusement on his face, he waved off the guards before turning around and heading up, "Please stay around here. I want to see your face when faced with reality. After all, you need to be completely torn down to be rebuilt.”

“Gargh!” Shadow cursed as Icy broke her fall backward with a soft pile of snow. So far, Alina’s movements had been completely and utterly flawless, moving with such raw speed, power, and precision that she could easily avoid any and all of Icy’s perfect synchrony-level attacks while making sure that Shadow couldn’t ambush her from the side despite her best efforts.

Despite being the Manifester of the Great Northern Wolf, Alina was historically trained as a Channeler. Channelers at the highest level are also widely known as the hardest and most annoying Wave users to deal with. With their unreasonable physical superiority, it was hard enough to land a solid hit on them, let alone deal enough damage to truly make them back off.

“Stop holding back just for me! You idiot!” Shadow cursed, “Use your strongest spell already!”

“No…it wouldn’t work on her anymore.” Icy cursed, “It would have worked before, but now, the colder it gets, the stronger her manifest becomes! She...she had gotten even stronger than before!”

“Damn, you are pretty useless then.” Shadow said, when Icy conjured a column of ice in between them, shoving their bodies apart before Alina slammed her body into the space that they were just standing in, shattering the column of ice in the process.

“ARGH!” Alina yelled, slashing her hands to the side when a five-meter wide manifest of the Wolf’s claw etched through the air with its glow-giving Shadow no room to hide in.

“Fuck.” Shadow cursed, conjuring up her dark blades in front and hoping it will help delay her gruesome death when a dark beam silently entered from the side and pierced straight through the arm of the Great Northern Wolf, causing the rest of the manifest to disappear into thin air the instant before coming into contact with Shadow’s body.

“You okay?!” Wu asked, landing hard onto the stage next to them as his boots slammed onto the stone surface and dented it slightly, “We need her alive and kicking!”

“Sure. Very easy to do.” Icy rolled her eyes, “Are you in love with her or something?!”

“Someone is, but that’s not the point!” Wu said, “We need the power of the Great Northern Wolf to take down Caligo’s Cast!”

“So how do you suggest we defeat her in such a way that makes sure she could keep fighting against Caligo, but not kill us right here and now, genius?!” Shadow said, when Wu projected both of his hands forward, carving out a cone shape from Alina’s manifest as she leaped back and away while locking her eyes onto him, the newest threat on the battlefield.

“We bring the real her back.” Wu said, “We will break Caligo’s conditioning and bring her back.”

“Didn’t you say the transformation is irreversible?” Shadow asked.

“But she wasn’t transformed, was she?” Wu pointed towards Alina as Shadow looked towards her, “Plus, this wasn’t the first time that she had gone into a drug induced rampage…Last time, someone was able to get through to her, and…maybe this time, it can happen again too.”

“We will create an opportunity for you to get close enough.” Wu continued, pointing at Shadow as her purple eyes started to widen, “But after that…it will be up to you to help bring her back, okay?”

“How am I supposed to do that?!” Shadow threw her hands up, “She abandoned me! She hates me! She will never listen to me even if I get close to her!”

“I know it’s not true, and you know it too.” Wu said, turning around slowly, “She’s lost somewhere out there, and only you could get her back.”

“That’s a crazy plan.” Icy said coldly, “But seeing that none of us could really do any damage to her with our skill set, getting Shadow close enough is also the only chance for her to land a killing blow.”

“Not ideal, but…I am not that naive.” Wu said, “Shadow, I trust that you will make the right decision when the time comes.”

Yeah yeah…Shadow sighed and watched the backs of Icy and Wu as they both darted forward, and she held her dark blades while her heart pounded in her chest uncharacteristically.

“Guess I can’t hide in the shadows for much longer.”