The request left Scathach in stunned silence. Granting it was impossible. Melody may petition for an entire year, but there weren’t any manuals to give. Luxinna’s [Static Glass] was her exclusive True Magic. Even if Melody magically crowbarred into Luxinna’s head, she would be powerless to learn it.

“Is there any problem?” Ebony said. “As bad of a friend you are, Ma said you never broke a wager.”

“That’s… look, I cannot fulfill this one,” Scathach said uncomfortably. “The technique is unique to Luxinna.”

Alas, the red-head was undeterred.

“Oh please,” Melody responded, gesturing at the immobile elf. “I could master anything she learns. I refuse to believe I couldn’t learn the power of someone beneath me.”

Rem lifted his eyebrows. If the Demonic Continent worked by this logic, then screwed down to the next seven generations was its fate. Again, the country was a logistical dead-man ship.

“The technique has commonality with Inherited Skill,” Scathach played the diversion card.

“How does it work then?” Melody scrutinized every syllable from Scathach. “Perhaps you have forgotten I wield the most prestigious Inherited Skill of the Aztellic Dynasty.”

The world went silent for a few seconds before Melody resumed speaking.

“Inherit skills are a powerful addition to fighting the power, but they are not techniques,” Melody spoke. “In simple terms, they lack growth. Cultivation Technique, Spell Casting, both have multiples learning steps, overlaying progress to take the technique to a pinnacle. We grade those priceless manuals proportional to the profound intricacies of each layer. Compared to them, Inherited skill is static. It’s gifted when you were born. The Isle of Knowledge even suggests its implantation. This is the first instance in history of ‘Inherit Skill’ exhibiting traits of growth.”

Melody couldn’t hide an excitement in her voice. [Static Glass] felt like an Inherited Skill, but it was league more advanced. Even Heavenly Eyes couldn’t do this.

“Lady Scathach, surely you know this power will revolutionize magic itself,” Melody drunkenly exclaimed. “Please don’t take me for an idiot and brush this discovery as a mundane occurrence. Those glass lotuses have an attribute of life imbued into it, while bring gilded with force, and powered by lightning. No Inherited skill ever specialized in these many properties, only a technique built over generations by the Ancient like our [Demonic Blood Cultivation] could. But even then, we fell short.”

Luxinna blinked. No way. Did this girl understand [Static Glass] more than even herself?

“The brilliance of her Mana outstrips mine,” Melody grudgingly confirmed. “It’s intensity and purity trumps average B-rankers by their lonesome. Only experience and pedigree allow me to come out on top. This leads to the most important subject. Her tactic, timing, and strategy — everything told me she at most has two months of formal training. Are you telling me an average Inherit Skill allowed her to match up to me? As someone who practice Phantasia’s most prestigious technique for a decade, these charades are an insult!”

This was the moment Scathach had to admit Melody was ridiculously dangerous. She got intelligence, power, and charisma of a natural emperor. Maybe taking the throne was within the realm of possibility for her.

Rem also saw it. He finally realized why Satholia sent them here.

Recruitment was part of the mission, but the real one was crisis prevention.

Melody Solarmaria was a self-center girl with the potential to lopsided the Demonic Continent. Let her be, she would chase that throne by allying with Heavenly Daughters and worse. She was a fuse to spark a civil war which, given the chips involved, would lead to a major world war between the Heavenly Daughters, Lightwell Forest, the Aztellic Dynasty, and the Emma clan.

A carnage on the level of World War I was emerging, and Rem couldn’t let it unfolded.

“Look here, Melody, I can’t. The pow-.” Scathach spoke as Rem stepped forward. The boy’s will be that of Superman — unbreakable steel powered of the star.

“What? The power that be?” Melody countered, reading the Scathach’s lip with Heavenly Eyes, barely glancing at Rem. “Why she, and by extension your other disciple, can learn it and I can’t. And yes, I saw their Mana, they knew the technique too, right?”

“Give it up,” Rem recommended Scathach with a stern voice. “She won’t quit with she is this close. I think it’s time to tell where she sits in the pecking order.”

The boy’s tone sent a shiver down Scathach’s spine. It was the calm and controlled way he said it. Rem was serious.

Cytortia used every inch of her heart to stop from fleeing to hide in a nearest hole. This wasn’t the anti-social, yeah-let-go-with-that Rem. His posture — this presence — it belonged to the superhuman who faced the Paracis outnumbered thirty against two and won.

The voice of the protector who refused to fall until justice triumphed.

“Anyway,” Rem called out. “Good job, Lux.”

The prone elf twitched.

“I meant it,” Rem said. “If not for your sacrifice, we would have lost. With this loss, we have a path to victory. I want you to know that. For this humiliation, we have prevented a Phantasia-scale war before it even begins. Thank you Luxinna, your loss is not in vain.”

Lux lifted her hand and gave Rem a middle finger. Rem better took the win, or she would beat him to piece.

From the other side of the playing-field, Melody wasn’t amused.

“You speak as if you already won,” she said, her eyes shining golden. “You think Mana’s quality can overcome the advantage of my species’s superiority.”

“Assuming that gap existed,” Rem pointed out. “The difference between us already bridged it”

“Difference in what?” Melody fluttered her hair. “Our lineage, our bloodline, our training, so much qualitative divide separating us it’s downright amusing.”

“It’s simpler,” Rem looked up at the bright blue sky. “Our conviction.”

Melody shifted minutely. Her confidence shook for a millimeter.

“My conviction is genuine. I can tell you this.”

“Real but misguided,” Rem corrected her. “You pitch to fight for a throne, in the name of a father you never know for stakes you dismiss. The tragedy is you never love your continent. People who love it won’t proudly proclaim atop their lungs that they will start a civil war on their own home. No, your conviction stems from the gratitude toward your mother. It’s not prosperity you seek, but revenge.”

Ebony shook. That assessment hit too close. Melody remained silent, but her eyes sharpened into a murderous glare.

“Your filial royalty is beautiful,” Rem continued to twist the knife further. “But I won’t let you bring hell to this world. Those innocent people deserve to live a happy life. There is always another way. You are hacking your father’s dreams apart and drowning it in blood. Please look at yourself before you commit the action you might regret when you lay dying by the sword.”

“Shut up,” Melody said. “In a moment, I will floor you next to that elf, and Scathach will teach me exactly how your power work.”

“Oh, you will learn,” Rem moved into a ready stance. “I will teach you. You won that right. Let I hope you like how I teach.”

Melody didn’t reply, but move into her attack stance.

...

In the background, Cytortia was nursing Luxinna back to sub-functional form.

“Ow,” Luxinna clutched her jaw, leaning on Cytortia for support. “That punch hit harder than I thought.”

“Do you believe he could win?” Cytortia said in a mixture of fascination and dread.

Luxinna frowned.

“On paper, Rem is dead meat. I hope you notice how bad his stamina has gotten lately. And the demon bitch is stronger than me. That fire is no joke.”

“What is your current score?” Cytortia asked.

“5 wins, 3 lost,” Luxinna answered. “And I am the one winning.”

Cytortia gulped. All logic translated to a toasted Rem, but looking at that back, she believed otherwise.

The mighty hero who stood for a cause when no one believed in it. The knight struggling on his last-leg because he couldn’t pay the price of defeat.

She refused to believe that the hero would lose to a mere Princess. Even if said Princess sat among the most blessed in Phantasia.

....

“Fight!”

Scathach lifted the flag for the carnage.

And a carnage it was.

Melody rushed toward Rem, her hand glowing in deep crimson. A single blow would end it; her humiliation, her frustration, all of it wiped away in a single punch. She would lay him flat on his back and pummeled him until he begged for mercy — just like any other who dared to criticize her.

“[Demonic Blood Cultivation: Asura Fist]!”

In the tome of [Demonic Blood Cultivation], [Asura Fist] was, without doubt, the most sophisticated attack method. It was a brutal move combining on the reaction force from the ground, profound law of fire, and the enhancement effect from the user bloodline; flaming fist that with unstoppable momentum taking the form of the bloodline itself.

Flames wrapped around Melody’s hand, forming into a head of a dragon. The dragon roared frightened Cytortia and sent Scathach’s hair standing.

“[Sky Dragon Bloodline]!” Scathach’s eyes widened. “So, this is how she overpowers Luxinna. That Holy Beast’s bloodline must give her a body as tough as some demonic monster!”

Cytortia panicked. Against that, Rem’s only chance was [Arrival of Dream]. What would he do?

Rem — decisive and calmer than ever — met the rampaging dragon with his bare fist and no hesitation.

“He met it head-on????” Luxinna cried out. Cytortia nearly fainted. Scathach’s jaw dropped.

“Is he an idiot!?” Ebony exclaimed, frightened by such a suicidal impulse. “He wants to beat the ultimate technique of the royal family with an insignificant punch! Does he love death that much?”

Like everyone else, Melody was stunned, but against this offense to her pride, she must crush this rebellion under her foot.

The roaring dragon crashed against Rem’s fist. To nobody’s surprise, Rem’s fingers cracked. Each bone shattered from brute force. The hungry flames charred his arms black. Blood vessels busted from the pressure no mortal man could withstand.

Rem gritted his teeth in pain, his burnt and broken right arms flung back like a broken kite’s string. Yet, despite his injury, the boys shouldered forth and boosted forward with his Magic.

That was how Melody deduced Rem’s plan. The realization left her in a millisecond of disbelief. Remus Breaker purposefully sacrificed his arms to land a hit. He overcame the impassable distance and raw offensive power that was [Asura Fist], not by winning, but losing to get himself closer to his victory.

For the girl who never lost her entire life, this was the ultimate insult.

Realizations came and gone under microseconds, but unquenchable bitterness remained. Rem made her victory pointless, exploiting it as a stone to move into perfect zoning for his counter.

But Melody still kept her confidence. As the wielder of [Heavenly Eye], predicting his counter was child-plays. She had the [Sky Dragon Bloodline] as assurance. Luxinna’s lightning couldn’t defeat her. Rem needed to do better than that.

The demoness activated her Heavenly Eyes to its fullest degree. The world she saw was one of blackness and white outlines. A sacred space where the present overlapped the future.

Here Mana existed as a white hue of light. That was why she was so fascinated with their power. The golden lightning, the emerald ripples. In this sea of darkness, they outshone the dull white hue in a display of brilliance.

The boy anticipated this scenario, and the moment he detected the hint, he tossed his chip.

Rem poured his magic into the air and reinforced it with such a speed that the spectator could smell the hint of ozone.

For Melody, it was like a flashbang detonating in her face. Her [Heavenly Eye] screeched in pain as the blinding multicolor radiation blinded it. These signals of agony left her reeling. Ultimately, it was her eye resolution and magnification that landed her the second defeat of the day.

A hand grabbed her forehead, and exotic power slammed into her [Heavenly Eye].

“You know things often break if I reinforcement them too much,” Rem said. “Technically, my ability works by supplying my cell with power, but even then, I have to control its intensity and slowly get used to it.”

Melody didn’t like the direction Rem’s suggested.

“Wonder what happens when I used it on your precious eye? I’ll assume you said yes, so let do this.”

The power surged. Melody saw a world inverting on itself. Her [Heavenly Eye] sparkled like someone just ran a national grid worth of power through her with a thousand electrical cable.

She tried to scream, but she couldn’t. A karate chop landed on her throat before a red vial jammed into her mouth, stopping the scream dead.

The vial exploded.

...

“Melody!” Ebony screamed, watching a crimson cloud exploded in her daughter’s mouth in dread.

“You know what,” Luxinna watched Melody rolled across the ground in tears, spatting up shards of glass, coughing up a throat-scorching cloud like she wanted to die. “I think I have it easy.”

“Where is Rem?” Cytortia said with dread. Losing track of Demon King Rem sounded like a terrible way to die.

What answered her was a loud crash.

The spectators turned to see a boy kicking a house — Ebony’s dwelling, to be accurate.

A crack ran across the section of the hut, severing a part of the structure away along with a third of Ebony’s mental capacity. Rem dragged the foundation with his remaining hand, and using his back as a lever, he sent it flying like the mighty Atlas tossing heaven itself. Two goddesses, an elf, and a demon gaped, mystified at the undaunting determination sending tons of stones and woods flying across the air. Their definition of the word limit died the moment Rem leaped on top of the improvised projectile and reinforced it with multicolor light.

“Oh. My. God,” gasped the young goddess. A chair crashed down next to her, but she gave up caring. “Is he doing what I think he is doing?”

“Yeah, he is throwing a house at Melody,” Luxinna watched in awe. A brick narrowly missed her head, but she ignored it. “How am I alive as that thing sparring partner?”

“Stop!” Scathach screamed desperately, much to everyone’s surprise. “She is already down! She is already dead! Stoooooop!”

As for Ebony, she wished for dear life that this monster never landed on Demonic Continent. Her daughter could survive many things, but she couldn’t rule the dead dynasty. All she dared to hope was her daughter surviving this beating.

…

Melody spat out a shard of glass. She felt like someone put an automatic grater on maxed and went wild in her throat. She wiped her eyes; her brain shook to find a counter.

Clink!

Red tiles fell next to her.

Thump!

This time it was a brick.

Melody looked up to see the part of her bedroom flying into her face. That moment, a waterfall of tears threatened to shatter her determination. Topping of her nightmare was an unforgiving avatar of karma, demanding her repentance. Melody screamed and unleashed barrages of punches in desperation. It appeared to work, but as strong as she was, destroying over a ton of Rem’s supercharged rock was impossible with the half-succubus current strength.

Craaaaashhhh!

Melody’s body was crushed underneath the wall, and Ebony screamed.

The young demoness blackout.

...

Melody woke up a moment later and groaned in pain. A practitioner of [Demonic Blood Cultivation] wasn’t unfamiliar with pain, but these severe injuries were new. Her lower half trapped beneath the rubbles. Her arms and lower body fractured in several places. Blood dripped from her forehead. Her brilliant crimson hair coated with dust.

Tap!

That was when she saw that thing. Melody no longer believed he was human. A child of men wasn’t supposed to terrify her. How could a powerless man walk strong with such a badly burnt and twisted arm, anyway? That gritted teeth and pained face must be a lie. That limping must be a ruse, no matter how real it looks.

He must be a god in disguise. What else could he be? A man of such steel couldn’t emerge from a race forsaken by heaven.

Melody tried to claw away, but Rem on top of her, his knees pinning her broken arms to the ground. Then she finally saw the brick in his hand.

“Oh,” she managed, seeing Rem lifted the brick. “This is gonna suck.”

Thwack!