The tower of electricity separated the two vampires. Serina sailed across the air, landed on her feet, and faced the mighty beast leaping down at her. She growled at the figure cladded in glass armor coming down like a truck.

Serina leapt up to meet the juggernaut.

…

Inside a forest, draped with cloudy mist a sour, toxic scent, another battle was taking place.

Luxinna crashed through several trees. This was ridiculous. Rem wasn’t kidding when he said it could take down the entire civilization of the elves.

A figure draped in purple chitin and green skin walked toward her, bringing the sour smell and atmosphere heavier than lead. It was barefoot, but those animalistic crawls and chitin covered leg would never need a footwear. The rest of its body was cladded in shells of chitin—a mocking parody of Luxinna’s glass armor. The monster bared her teeth, revealing shark-like fangs. The elf’s eyeballs were gone. Instead, a mutated horn emerged from its eyes socket. Long forked tongue slithered out of the monster's mouth, tasting the fear in the air. The elf’s black hair quivered like a lock of purple snakes.

Gross. Luxinna nearly emptied her stomach. She was infinitely thankful for Rem rescuing her. Being stuck as a piece of parasitized monster for eternity didn’t do her stomach favors.

The monster moved, transforming into a blur. Luxinna triggered [Overflow].

A sharp claw to blocked with an elbow. And a kick—shit.

Luxinna knew what was coming. It happened many times before. She mentally magnified her processing ability, but the monster was simply too fast; fast enough to surpass [Overflow] and interrupted her. Luxinna successfully blocked the claw, but a kick smashed her through another tree. Pieces of glass armor went flying as the elf’s body dug a trench across the soil.

The pattern repeated endlessly. Luxinna could dodge few initial strikes using [Overflow], but Luxinna Alter would overcome her rapid response. The gap between them was too large. She needed to think faster instead of fighting faster. If she didn’t produce a solution soon, she would be beaten to death.

Luxinna reformed her broken armor and focused all her attention on the next attack.

She caught the animalistic spin kick with both arms and used her True Magic to create the strongest shackle possible. First, she must immobilize the beast.

Beast Luxinna found its arm being cuffed to the elf at an awkward angle. Growling, it provided a simple solution to this humble barrier. The beast broke her problematic arm into a ‘U’ shape to launch an attack. Luxinna didn’t expect a punch after successfully immobilizing her opponent’s limbs. She was so flabbergasted she couldn’t complete [Guard Fauna] intime.

Boom!

The blow sent Luxinna flying, freeing the beast from her shackle.

The beast glanced at its arms. The broken limb was flapping in the wind like a piece of paper. The handcuff also ripped the beast’s skin clean during their last exchange and broke her thumb. The corrupted elf frown and flexed its arm like pieces of cloth. The problematic limbs immediately snapped back to shape. Skin grown over the pulped muscles and the mutated bones realigned itself. The beast pulled its thumb back in place and resumed its barrages.

The dazed Luxinna somersaulted across the sky. Thankfully, her bout with Melody gave her mid-air combat experience. The elf righted her center of gravity and opened with her [Assault Fauna].

[Flower of Victory: Penetration Round]

Luxinna employed the winning combination of [Electro Lorde] and her rail-gun attacks to deliver a barrage of electromagnetically accelerated, super-heated blades of glass at her evil doppelgangers. Luxinna grinned as her alternate self-ran into the storms of blades. That was the corrupted weakness. Unlike Luxinna, she never developed the ability to maneuver in mid-air.

Blades of glass impaled the beast, turning her into a porcupine with swords sticking out of her body like needles.

It was then that several tentacles shot out from the corrupted elves. Despite Luxinna’s best effort, she could not evade getting tangle in the tentacles. Luxinna felt her leg being dragged by the retracting tentacle and into the beast’s waiting fist.

The elf got the close up at the damage she did to her ghastly alter ego.

Golden blades turned it into pincushion. The heart, stomach, several spots on both pairs of arms and legs were skewered. A sizable length of [Serene Glass] blades even buried itself through its skull where its eyes should be. Yet, despite eating attack that would extinguish vital organs and had the brain ran through, that monster barely felt anything. The corrupted Luxinna already surpassed the need for brain or necessity of life-sustaining organ. Purple fluid which bled from its wounds was more than blood. The Corruptor had replaced those internal organs with bio-soup and chitin skeletons. It had no organ system to fail or damaged. Instead, that body was like a water bag of non-Newtonian healing liquid that doubled as muscle and digestive acid — a monster without fear or pain.

Luxinna tried to stop the punch, but its haymaker shattered the arm she used to guard and the follow-up kick demolished her breast plate, shooting her to the ground.

…

Serina landed with a painful crunch and cough blood.

Not wasting a single beat, she rolled across the floor, barely evading the crushing knee-drop that would turn her face into a watermelon smoothy. This was insane. Serina spared against combatant equal and above her often, but this was too much. Normal opponent cast a spell or used technique, but the creature facing her did neither. All her attacks were fast and organically woven—a perfect combination of martial prowess, magic and biological marvel.

The monster cladded in golden glass whipped its tail. Serina, knowing the coming attack, evaded it in a spin jump, but this left her vulnerable to a maximum velocity rush. Serina felt a solid grip choking her as they flew into several war drones.

Robot, metal and loose floor sailed from the carnage. The monster dragged the vampire from the center of the room and into the wall, using a propulsion system of ionizes air that should be too advanced for Luxinna. The monster slammed Serina to the wall, crumpling the steel behind her. In a display of ruthless desperation, Serina slammed her palm at the possessed elf and released her attack.

[Sacred Blood: Razor Cross]

X-shape blade of blood-color steel released from Serina's waiting palm. The steel dusts, vibrating like the world most lethal sander, hit Luxinna at point blank and sent her flying. Normally, that technique would function like a chainsaw,turning anything in front of it into grind meat-paste. But the new golden glass armor withstood the attack before a burst of ionize air utterly dispelled it.

Serina felt a brief glimpsed of hope as she witnessed her attack shaving the beast's armor. The relief then got dunked into a fresh heap of reality when a new chitin shell slowly reformed over a bundle of intertwined fibre of glass cables protecting the elf.

It was then that the facility defense system prioritized this newest threat. Turrets and war-drones turned their attention toward Luxinna Alter. Firepower rained on her. Robot enclosed it in the circles of drones. The beast growled. Glass tentacle flews in the air, snatching flying robots to the earth. Armored hand caught a punch from a war-drone. The fibrous glass-cables within the armor flexed, giving the berserk elf the mechanical might to rip the robot to pieces. The beast swung her armored arm to block the turret barrages, but Serina could tell the obvious was happening.

One or two metal bots piling on her wouldn’t even slow the monster down. But an entire room? That was another story. Enormous numbers wear anything down eventually.

True to the vampire's expectation, every single robot stormed the elf in thunderous march. She destroyed several drones with ease, but getting rapidly fired by every single turret — over twenty in total — was doing a number on her. The elf ripped a few humongous war drones before getting buried under a mountain of robot. Not taking any chance, the entire room of drones kept piling on the mountain of metal, keeping the unstoppable beast imprisoned.

For a naïve second, Serina deluded herself into thinking that the facility’s defenses got the elf under control.

Yeah, like it would be so easy.

Light sneaked from the mountain of war-drones, and a beam of blinding plasma carved the mountain apart. Torrent of ionized particles traced a path of destruction acrosee the ceiling, blowing apart turrets and flying drones, which abruptly exploded into fireworks. Delivery systems and electronics within proximity immediately short-circuited. Not settling with that tiny revenge, the monster spread her tentacles and began firing electrical discharges from their tips, roasting any robot that dare looked funnily at her.

In the decision formed out of two-third overconfidence and one-third courage, Serina picked that instant to fire a sneak attack.

[Sacred Blood: Swirling Shred]

Metal dust swirled around the beastly visage of Luxinna, forming a tornado of razor winds, but a burst of ionize air ripped her tornado of crimson blades apart.

[Sacred Blood: World of Sword]

Serina ordered her metal dust to barrages the monstrous being before her from every direction. Fifty blades and increasing dropped on Luxinna like a shower of stars. Ten more sprouted from the ground like a landmine. From every angle conceivable, the sword kept coming. Average A-rank would have been shredded while low-level S-ranker would be in hot-waters.

But not that monster.

The possessed elf agilely slipped past her attack in five strides. It was an insane display of footwork. Beast Luxinna slammed its fist into the vampire who barely lifted her arm to block in time. The impact instantly fractured her bones, bashed apart the wall behind her and sent the vampire into the steel production ring surrounding the mustering area head first. Serina slammed into several of many robot arms operating the facility, ripping them from their base as her battered body rolled across the floor.

The vampire watched the monster walked toward the gaping hole in her entrance left and prided it wider. Lightning crackled around its body like a demonic aura.

The fight was hopeless. This wasn’t an opponent she could defeat, but that didn’t mean she would roll over and die.

[Sacred Blood: Crimson Armor]

Red metal covered Serina from head to toe, protecting her in a [Blood Armament] that boosted her strength and endurance. It was a form with perfect elemental and physical protection. At least, it would buy time. Her fractured arm was half-way healed. She was their leader. She needed to set an example, which meant not giving up no matter how harsh the fight got.

Luxinna’s punch plowed into the vampire. The armor softened the blow, but metal was an excellent conductor for electricity.

Serina fell to her knees, barely able to withstand the electrocution. She barely gasped for breath when a glass tail whipped her into a conveyer belt. The vampire painfully ripped across the metal track and banged into another wall, caving it. Another round of lighting followed her. Serina managed to bank to the side and activated a technique she copied from Sun Senwei.

[Sacred Blood: Dragon Rampage]

Metal enchanted with crimson energy transformed into a swirling metal around

Blood swirled around the vampires, forming the image of eastern dragon created from crimson wind and metal dust. Serina rushed forward at the speed rivaling Luxinna at her peak and planted her foot at the monster’s chest. The attack landed with a crimson explosion of light. The girl gritted her teeth and let her power flew. The power sealed within her heart unleashed in that moment.

…

In the mustering area, the survivors and the 33 Stars picked their shambled self from the wreckage. The carnage generated by out-of-control True Magic and the super vampire inadvertently saved them from the giant robot. Yes, they were exhausted, injured and stranded in the middle of the room that was quickly becoming a health and safety disaster, but they were breathing.

Then the wall collapsed as a spectral image of a dragon came hurtling through with an elf cladded in golden exoskeleton rampaging inside its jaw. The dragon shone like scarlet stars as it slammed into the wall, smashing the monstrous beast in golden armor into metal platings and ran two circuits around the mustering area, filing the monstrous elf against the metal.

Then the dragon tore through the opposite metal wall with the elf still in its jaw.

Every 33 Stars turned toward Senwei.

“Yeah, she copy my moves,” Senwei answered the question in their mind. “That is why I never want to run into her again. That girl just learn too fast.”

…

Inside her mental scape, the sane Luxinna crawled on the forest floor in a bloody, bruised mess.

The elf groaned. Her gum was killing her after having her teeth knocked out by that stupid punch. Countless wounds leaked precious life fluid from her body. Her arm was in glass cast — a vain attempt at fixing her fracture bone. Blood trickled down Luxinna’s face and seeped into the earth below. She rolled on her back and studied at the damage she sustained.

Her glass armor was crushed to smithereens. Criss-cross cuts and injuries turned her abdomen into a mess. Lacerations painted her arms red. Luxinna winced. Those broken ribs were agonizing.

Crash!

The green-skin alternate version of her slammed into the ground. No sign of injuries was visible on it.

Luxinna recalled the brutal battle. She tried her to put a dent in the monsters. Hell, she was still trying.

[Assault Fauna]

Two blades impaled the Paracis’ strongest creature. The first stabbed through its heart another impaled its brain, but the monster kept growling. Luxinna already tried paralyzing the monster, but it shared her immunity to lightening.

As for explosion…

“Discharge!”

The sword blew its head apart and opening a window where the monster's heart should be. The monster craned the head which lost everything above its nose and walked toward Luxinna without its heart and part of its lungs. Luxinna trembled with fear. This trail was impossible. How could she beat something which was immune to her electrical attack and shrugged off decapitation?

The tentacles appeared behind Beast Luxinna's back and opened fire with the beam of purple sizzling energy.

Luxinna raised her [Guard Fauna], but the force of the beams still sent her flying.

…

In the real world, the exoskeleton’s tails plugged Serina from the mouth of the crimson dragon and flung her into the floor as the dragon smash into the wall and dissipated into dark-red sands.

Serina back-flipped to her feet, only for a golden tentacle to wrap around her foot. The vampire felt herself being dragged into a punch. The blow knocked her down, but the punishment was just starting. Blade sprouted from the glass tentacle and stabbed her in the shoulder, penetrating her armor, and ran a voltage into her body. Amidst her scream, Serina could make out the face plate opening up like a fanged beast, gathering the energy of another plasma beam.

The attack landed at point blank, blasting her across several tools, robotic arms and conveyer belts before exploding.

The vampire's best effort apparently wasn’t enough.

…

In the center of the base, Rem peered over the massive dropped leading to the glowing inferno of the furnace below. He nodded to Cytortia who stood with much fear and hesitation in her eyes.

Both heroes counted to three and jump down to the citrine glow of inferno.

They both knew the truth and path to victory was hiding inside the conflagration of heat and burning flames.

The question was finding it amidst the hostile environment.