Baiting him in his enraged state was easy - too easy, in fact. His next move proved her gut feeling right, when he deftly stopped his own momentum using jets of curseflame, as if mocking her need to use someone else’s servitor to move in a way he could under his own strength. His tail suddenly formed a shield in front of him, coming from his left. It was only large enough to cover most of his torso, leaving his right arm plain to see and allowing him to peer over its edge. A flash of yellow ran down its length, erupting out of the maw of his dragon-gauntlet and enveloping his blade in a blatant imitation of Zel’s own All-severing Scream technique. She had to admit that such in-battle ingenuity impressed her, excited her even, despite the revolting nature of her opponent.

Nevertheless, she predicted how he would strike, and her prediction rang true when she sent herself into a spinning dodge right past Adalbert’s blade as he surged forward, trying to cut her in half down the middle. Graze Pulse made his blade slip off, and spending her remaining reserves to shore up Skin of Bronze did much the same to his flame. All this, combined with Midnight Wolf’s own flame nullified nine-tenths of his strike; even then, pain surged through her side and she felt several of Midnight Wolf’s ribs shatter, but it didn’t matter. In the process of dodging she’d released half of her second stomach’s contents, a blinding arc of blood-red lightning flashing down to the Broken Butcher in her hand. The colour of its Arcline followed, near-instantly shrouding its attached sword in screaming, blood-red lightning. At the moment she did it, she already knew the sword would erupt into a million pieces seconds later. In that exact same moment, Zefaris fired Pentacle, the mighty ring of a battering ram against a church bell ringing in her ears as the recoil sent her sliding backwards into the cathedral. From her gun emerged a twin-tailed comet, vast arcane energy seething around the physical core of enriched mogralt, rocketing towards Adalbert.

Following through on her spin, Zel whipped her arm into that well-practiced motion, her strike curving right around Adalbert’s shield. Twisting her body to an entirely unnatural degree, she ripped her arm backwards and with it took a chunk of Adalbert’s body. Only the sword’s hilt returned to her. Howling in fury more than pain, the silver-skinned monstrosity did not allow himself to be distracted, using his left hand to blast himself out of the mogralt comet’s way, mirroring Zel’s dodge earlier; it missed him by mere centimeters.

Her face twisted into a grimace as she saw the twin-tailed comet careen right past her target, knowing full well that this had been Zef’s intention all along. She released what was left in her second stomach along with the charge she’d gained from grazing Adalbert’s attack to shroud her right leg in a dozer-blade of crimson lightning. Ontop of all this, she commanded Midnight Wolf to spend what little flame it still had left on further empowering that same dozer-blade. In a flash, the servitor’s flame-shroud sputtered out and a blast of flame erupted from its right rear leg, propelling Zel’s kick to the speed she deemed necessary.

With the sound of a thunderclap the twin-tailed comet was forced to change direction, sent hurtling after Adalbert now imbued with a third tail of blood-red lightning, its shape deformed into one akin to a drill. The continuing momentum of her own move sent Zelsys spinning uncontrollably, the force such that it ripped Midnight Wolf’s inanimate remains off of her before she could steady herself.

Meanwhile, up atop the staircase, Zefaris had re-emerged from the cathedral just in time to see their checkmate play out.

Its fury slammed into him like the fist of an angry god, pushing Adalbert down to the ground and dragging him through the soil, away from the cathedral and right through the river, an explosion of steam marking Adalbert’s unwilling passage through it. Molten metal, viscera, and bone chips sprayed every-which way in his wake, accompanied by great gouts of curseflame and purple-yellow blasts that suggested he was trying to counter it with his own magic, though at some point the rate of Blaze Schneider blasts slowed significantly. By the time it faded and Zefaris could get a good look at him, she saw that it… Hadn’t killed him. Despite its immense power, despite Zelsys having ripped his armor open, Adalbert had sacrificed both his tail and his arms to deplete the mogralt comet’s energy.

“So that’s why he slowed down, his arms got completely shredded…” she thought, utterly bewildered at his tenacity. Not only had he withstood all that, he stood back up, and his armor was already sealing his wounds. He gave a seething, hateful stare, and his voice thundered out through the cavern, plainly solidifying the fact that he didn’t even have lungs anymore, let alone other internal organs in any human sense of the term.

“ZELSYS NEWMAN… YOU WILL DIE. I WILL MAKE CERTAIN OF IT. TEN, A HUNDRED, A THOUSAND TIMES - I WILL RETURN, ALWAYS STRONGER.”

With that he was gone, bounding away through the great cave and up its stairway.

Zel only allowed herself to even consider slipping out of Conqueror’s Mantle when she was absolutely certain that Adalbert was gone. She was simultaneously disappointed and impressed that he’d survived all that, let alone with enough left in him to flee so quickly.

Upon returning to a steadier rate of breathing and willing her body to begin the post-transformation recovery process, her joints immediately stiffened up and began creaking like an ancient machine with even small movements. Exhaustion and ache overtook her in an instant, even walking becoming a challenge, but she laughed it off. She used the Broken Butcher one last time to pull its four wayward shards back to her before stowing the blade; even a weak Arcline from it easily found them one after the next, since they were pieces of the original.