The blessed light shone down from the heaven, rending Sol Grandy’s body to ash and sending his soul drifting to nowhere.

Hikma floated down, riding on a triangular [Conceptual Construct] — his [Nimbus]. Three more [Construct] — [Aegis] — glowed behind Hikma as he addressed the survivors. He sported new combat gear made by Melody. A black-linen shirt woven with specialized fibers protected by Aria Steel lined Kevlar jerkin with Horizon Dawn’s symbol — the man embracing the sun — emblazoned on his chest. Hikma’s trouser resembled that of collaged professor but lined with protective lining tough enough to stop withstand a chainsaw. Unlike others, Hikma didn’t wear a mask or visor, but a helmet alongside a classic flowing cape.

“Am I in time?”

“What with the cape?” Hikma’s get-up was new to Luxinna.

“Theoretics,” Hikma explained. “Unlike you, I fight with Arcane so I can afford to look dramatic. And in case you are asking — call me Chronicler.”

“How long do you spend on that code-name?” Melody spoke.

“A few hours,” Hikma admitted. “At least it better than Mel.”

“Hey!”

Andries coughed, grabbing the trio’s attention.

“I am grateful for your aid, but can you please explain the current situation? Who are you? What is Orwell Mehest’s goal? What is going on?”

Luxinna and Melody gestured at Hikma.

The boy sighed.

“How much do you know?”

Andries opened her mouth to answer, but Kruger beat her to the answering machine.

“Orwell drop this dome on us, revealing himself as a member of the Deathless clan aiming to avenge the genocide committed by the late Emperor. Wayward and Sol turned traitor and wiped the royal-mages. The royal-knights attempt to arrest Wayward and die—”

“Wait, Wayward is out, isn’t he? Why did he off the royal-knights?” Asked Luxinna the oblivious.

“I call shenanigan.” Melody added.

Hikma looked confuse for a second.

“Oh yeah, Dream only informs you about our agreement with Wayward,” Hikma refused to meet their eye. “I think we skip the fact an overzealous Hex pick a fight with him after Dream defused the situation.”

Melody and Luxinna groaned.

“And he bit the dust,” Melody rolled her eyes. “I am not the one to talk, but don’t tell me all the royal-knights are dead?”

Hikma nodded.

“Fuck,” Luxinna swore.

“What are you talking about?” Chamomile’s body turned stone stiff. “What is your relationship with that monster?”

Melody cut the story short.

“Wayward is a part of Willow Heart Street spies in Venistalis, tasked with dismantling the royal-mages and protecting the Street’s investment in this debacle. He is the prime suspect of a series of murders happening through the last months in Venistalis.”

“Murders?” One noble cried. “I heard of no such thing.”

“Not surprising,” Luxinna scoffed, reflecting on the fear she saw in those kids. “I don’t expect a noble in the Central Palace to hear about a street-rat in Earth and Wind-quarters being kidnap by a random gang and sacrifice to power Orwell’s ritual.”

That one caught the nobles and the surviving officials by surprise.

“What?” Kruger blinked, remembering his confrontation with Wayward. "It is that bad?”

“The Madam asked you to look into at the ball remember,” Melody stated. “Don’t tell me the welfare of someone less important than a baron slip pass your mind? Disappointing. Wayward utterly stopped the entire Venistalis from digging deeper with fake report and emotional distraction” Melody dryly chuckled. “Wow, Dream is not joking. With this level of obliviousness, Mehest would have completed the ritual unimpeded.”

“Ritual?” Andries asked.

Luxinna pointed at the eldritch moon with a thousand eyes.

“That thing is an uber World Enemy Orwell Mehest sacrificed more that 30 kids to summon. If Orwell summon it at full power, Venistalis will die a blink. After that, Orwell can offer your soul as sacrifices to achieve godhood. We stop him before he completed the 111 kids’ milestone and kill everyone in this city, including your Emperor and generals. However, he still got enough power to partially summon that thing to trap you inside. The rest is history.”

Hikma finished the narration.

“With his fast-track gone, Orwell must hit 5-million death by a hard invasion of the entire city. We don’t know what godhood entails, but our leader assumes Orwell will be invincible once he hit that point. To leverage more playing field, Orwell planted five crystals which in the Four-quarters and the Royal Palace to produce his army. Those crystals are also keystones to Venistalis’ Leyline. Dream stresses that unless we destroy the crystals, Orwell will be too powerful to defeat.”

The detail of Horizon Dawn’s intelligence blown the crowd to kingdom come.

“W-Where did you learn these informations?” Chamomile stuttered. Her information network aged like typewriters compared to the trio’s resources. The Vice-Captain wanted to crawl into a hole and die at how oblivious she performed.

“Vice-Captain Kruger!” One noble with a bushy beard lost it. “This is outrageous. You allow a disaster of this magnitude to brew under your nose. If these informations is true, these sinister conspiracies must incubate for months. How can you miss such an activity?”

“I have no excuses,” Kruger whispered. Vision of his friends still breathing in a timeline which he paid better attention flashed by, nailing his utter failure. “If I survive this, I will court-martial myself. You can have my word for it.”

The bushy beard noble saw the depth of Kruger’s misery and he sympathized. He also served in the military in his youth.

“We cannot undo the past,” the bushy beard tried to stoke some morale. “We have a way forward — destroying the crystal.”

“Are you serious, Lord Uther?” One posh lady cried. “Can’t you see we have no chance of winning! Orwell have an army and Captain Wayward who is a step away from S-rank!”

“Don’t worry about Wayward,” Luxinna said. “He’s gone.”

“Onee-sama, you beat him!?” Eliza the enthusiastic cheered, but Luxinna shot her down.

“No, I got my ass kick,” Luxinna couldn’t meet the girl’s eyes. “The fight last only a few minutes.”

“I survive two.” Melody’s voice was untraceable. “It will take me several more years to catch up to Wayward.”

“You mean he still out there!” Andries yelled in panic.

“Don’t worry, he exited Venistalis four hours ago,” Hikma explained. “Our leader offered an incentive to make him quit this case.”

Chamomile remembered her battle with Wayward. Her intelligence finally caught on from the moment this crisis begun. Chamomile worked out the truth and drew her sword.

“Your leader — this Dream — does he also have alias of Samadi?”

“Yes, whoa!”

Chamomile slashed came so fast only his experience sparing with Scathach saved Hikma’s head from decapitation.

“You strike a bargain with that monster!?” Chamomile crackled with rage. Her voice rained blames on everything but the eye of the storm. “Do you know what he did?”

“Yes,” Hikma refused to meet her in the eyes. “Dream made that agreement to push Wayward out of this war, because if he sided with Orwell, the battle will become unwinnable. If he didn’t do so, Ace and Empress would have died.”

“So, you throw me and my friend under the bus!” Chamomile addressed the nobles. “Do you even hear them!? They will cut corner with a traitor who sold us out! Kruger! Say something! You also lost everyone to Wayward! Why don’t you three murder that bastard? If you did, the royal-knights would still be alive to keep things under control. Captain Hex wouldn’t die! It is your fault everyone dies.”

Silence. No one expected such behavior from the mild-manner Chamomile — her fury visible for all to see. In Chamomile’s eyes, the three strangers who saved them did not differ from her tormentor, Samael Wayward. Several nobles even started wavering in contemplation of Chamomile’s accusation.

Luxinna was starting her retort when Kruger responded.

“They have no obligation to save us, Chamomile. We should be grateful they do it anyway,” Kruger turned toward the group — particularly at Melody. “Are you there when your leader makes the arrangement with Wayward.”

Melody shook her head.

“You also know nothing about this agreement?” He asked the elf.

“Yes.”

Kruger turned toward Hikma.

“And you?”

“I am there,” Hikma honestly replied. “I heard everything?”

Chamomile rushed at Hikma and grabbed him by the collar.

“And you let that bastard go?”

“Dream said he makes the argument in good faith.”

“Good faith! Ho! How honorable of you? You treat that traitor with more respect than us! Whose side are you on! You fucking bastard!”

“Chamomile!” Andries tried to separate them. “Stop it!”

Chamomile brushed Andries aside.

“Don’t you get it, Andries! We are suffering because of them.”

In the sky, a certain man riding an Amalgam bird finally got tired of the show and projected his voice using an amplification spell.

“Don’t you realize your current behavior justifies my disdain for you, Vice-Captain Chamomile Elragorn,” Orwell Mehest addressed the crowd from the skies. “Laying blame on your own savior. An ungrateful witch who exists day by day with no pride, bemoans fate instead of overcoming your flaws. And people wonder why I can’t stand you.”

The crowd gazed upon Orwell Mehest riding a giant bone construct, surrounded by an army of Amalgam.

“You,” Lord Uther stared in shock. “Why are you here?”

“Well, let us say I am here to withdraw my mercy,” Orwell grumbled, gesturing his army to fire. “You can blame Chamomile for annoying the generosity out of me.”

Orwell signaled his army to open fire.

…

Spears of bones. Explosions from Spiritium Scarab suicide-bombing. Shower of green magic-eroding flames. Multiple Amalgam beasts launching a beam of inky darkness. Various attacks of endless variety fell on the party,

“[Guard Flora]”

“[Anima Enchanting]”

A single lotus materialized. Melody — tracing the very structure of the [Flora] — strengthened the sculpture with an impenetrable enchantment, developing as red circuits pattern inside the lotus. [Anima Enchanting] most fearsome attribute was that it could interfere directly with techniques and spells’ composition. Normal enchanter forged their craft on solid object, but through [Anima Enchanting] the two Duchesses of Craft worked their trade in all they perceived as material from liquid to soul and energy.

Luxinna’s [Guard Flora] was reforged from [Serene Lotus], changing material composition to manufacture a composite shield that outperformed it predecessor. Added Melody’s high-grade strengthening and even army-killing bombardment from Orwell became a joke.

Orwell’s artilleries flattened everything around the survivors. As dust clears, the nobles quickly found themselves amongst a field of craters half a meter deep. Orwell’s attack completely vaporized the enchanted 343 tons of magical concrete comparable to iron. Melody and Luxinna warded an attack equal to 500 tons of TNT, and they looked more piss than exhausted.

Orwell whistled.

“That is one tough shield,” the former-33 Stars stretched. “Better get down—Shit!”

Orwell reacted to the bright light shining from a circular [Construct] above him.

[Holy Force] X 3

Hikma stacked all three [Aegis] on each other and laid down his holy laser, charring dozens of Amalgam familiars and roasted a Death-knight worth a thousand souls to smithereens. Orwell motioned specially designed Amalgam War-machine to delay the attack with its magical shielding.

Then he saw something with wings hurtling at him.

“Fuck!” Orwell cursed again, raining barrage of curses on draconic-form Melody gunning at his throat.

That instance, Orwell Mehest forgot the species of mythological creature infamous for their magic immunity.

It was a mistake.

Melody scanned the curse-bolts with her [Heavenly Eye]. Exhaustion. Pain. Incapacitation. She groaned. The lazy scum-bag wanted to let gravity do his work. Sad for Orwell, Melody was an expert on enchantment whose [Draconic Essence] rendered her nigh-immune to your garden-variety curse. Lord Voldemort could emerge from Orwell’s butt-hole and cast the killing-curse, but wouldn’t stop Melody from turning him into snake-juice.

Melody tanked through the bolts and flew right at Orwell.

“Yo, Mehest,” Melody threw a flaming rock at his face. “Time to kiss the ground.”

[Anima Enchanting: Burning Asura Sky]

Melody practiced Cultivation Technique before adopting True Magic, but Rem decided against throwing the obsolete technique it away.

Even if the name is lame, its concept sound stupid and a flashy to the point of being unbearable, all things had a purpose to exist. Instead of obsessing over rank, learn the key concept of that technique and make it works. Even seemingly useless unit like Boudica become ridiculous with Romulus-Quinrus. Even Aqua can be fish-bait and Holy Water producing factory. There is no useless unit, just a stupid master.

Rem didn’t give advice much, but his advice was always a 1000 WIS worthy.

Melody had this technique drafted in her mind, but she never had the pieces or the opportunity to assemble it until now. It employed [Anima Enchanting] and [Heavenly Eye] to synthesize her Dragon’s blood generated by [Void Surfer Manifestation] into crystalize super-fuel based on from a concept of blood combustion found in Cultivation Technique. Unlike normal blood combustion that damage the user’s vitality, Melody created the crystal and combust it externally, using [Anima Enchanting] to change a syringe’s worth of her blood and 75% of their potential energy into Dragon-certified magical explosive.

Then added in [Radioactive Fire] and you had an EAPS that exploits an artificial suicide-bomb technique to fuel a radioactive fireball — a Melody’s original killing moves derived from her [Demonic Blood Cultivation: Asura Fist].

Orwell saw a crystal flying at his face and glanced at Melody, who flew skyward like her life ride on this maneuver. Mehest’s soul died a little when he realized the implication of his situation.

“You mus—”

Energy wise [Burning Asura Sky] was comparable to Orwell’s initial bombardment.

0.5 kiloton worth of radioactive fireball exploded in Orwell’s face. The 120 meters wide fireball engulfed him. The blast-wave demolished all breakable object within 360 meters. The searing heat expanded even wider, searing living-tissues within 400 meters radius with a 3rd degree burn.

“Mel! You dolt!” Hikma tuned his [Aegis]’s [Holy Armor] full force and created several [Conceptual Seal] to defend himself.

The nobles hung slack jaw. Endlessly thanking the all-loving lotus protecting them.

“Onee-sama is supreme!” The newly invigorated cult (+Andries) cheered before the light-show.

“Monster,” Chamomile crouched down, hand clasping her ears like a child in a thunderstorm. “They are all monster.”

As for the fire-starter, she only made it past 300 meters. Her Draconic-forms made her immune to heat, but the shock-wave sent her stumbling in the sky.

Melody clenched her teeth. What an embarrassment. She must stop field-testing her moves in live-combat. The last thing Melody wanted was blowing herself to smithereens in front of her fans.