Lucifer's brows furrowed slightly as he spun his sword, effortlessly parrying the incoming blood miasma spell. It hissed as it was scattered, reduced to steaming mist that dissipated against the ancient stone. His opponent, the Bishop nad Vale, glanced again toward the other side of the chamber—toward the thunderous clash between the Vampire Elder and Arthur.
Through his God's Eyes Gift—active since the battle began—Lucifer could see the currents of miasma flowing around Vale, the intricate patterns of his blood magic taking shape before he even cast them. The world moved slightly slower through his enhanced perception, mana flows visible as vibrant streams of color and intent.
"You're looking away a lot," Lucifer noted, his tone even as he slashed down with one hand. A six-circle spell roared to life beneath his fingertips, bringing down an avalanche of jagged ice shards onto the Bishop.
Vale raised his own hand. A crimson do of blood mana flared up to et the storm. Their spells collided with a deafening crack, sending wind and mana howling in all directions. The floor beneath them fractured further, ancient dust rising in choking clouds.
"I just know both of them," Vale said, eyes flicking toward Arthur again.
"You know Arthur?" Lucifer asked, narrowing his eyes.
Vale nodded. "That boy's grown... terrifyingly fast."
There was sothing like awe in his voice. Maybe even regret.
"In barely a year... he's beco a monster."
"Still going to die, though," Vale muttered, not entirely convinced.
Lucifer smiled.
"That's right," he said. "Arthur is strong."
Monstrously so. Lucifer knew that firsthand. He'd fought Arthur when the boy lost control during mana deviation. That fight hadn't been a duel—it had been a storm wrapped in a wildfire, sealed inside a collapsing star.
And yet Arthur had survived. More than that, he'd grown.
Lucifer had surpassed him once. But Arthur always caught up. Always.
"So he won't die," Lucifer said, taking a step forward. "And neither will I."
His sword shimred, light pulsing from the runes etched along its edge. The resonating enhanced aura around it began to compress—folding in, refining, growing heavier.
Vale stiffened as the air shifted. His eyes widened.
Lucifer didn't waste ti after that fight with Arthur. He studied. Trained. Created.
He found a way forward. A new kind of power—pseudo astral energy.
Born of supre talent, two overwhelming Gifts, and a mind that refused to accept limits.
His sword was now coated in white pseudo astral energy, crackling with barely restrained force. But more than that—his entire body was sheathed in it. A second skin of order and power.
"I am order itself," Lucifer said.
He took a step.
And in that step, he vanished.
When he reappeared, he stood right in front of Vale.
Vale reacted fast. His staff spun, summoning a wicked scythe of blood to block.
Lucifer's blade swung back.
The first movent of the Grade 6 art Myth of the Northern Peak: Winter's Ascent.
It was the ancestral sword art of the Windward family—renowned, revered, almost sacred. A masterpiece of ice-elental swordplay refined over generations. It was what made the Windwards feared.
But even that wasn't enough for Lucifer.
It wasn't that the sword art lacked power—it lacked him.
So he rewrote it.
He added his will, his Gifts, his mana.
The movent changed.
Now it wasn't Winter's Ascent.
It was Winter's Judgent.
The pseudo astral energy of ice wrapped around his blade, rging with the white mana created by his Yin-Yang Body. The temperature plumted, not in degrees but in reality. The ice beca more than cold—it beca absolute.
Order took form.
And Lucifer's sword beca judgent itself.
The clash wasn't poetic—it was violent and loud and full of teeth. Lucifer's sword slamd against a shield of blood astral energy, a crimson seal etched mid-air with alarming precision. Sparks flew. Not ordinary ones—these were the kind of sparks that knew magic and hated silence.
Through his God's Eyes, Lucifer could see the fatal flaw in Vale's shield—a microscopic imperfection in the third sigil, barely visible even to his enhanced perception. But it was enough. He adjusted his strike by re milliters, targeting the weakness with surgical precision.
It was pseudo astral energy versus the real deal. A battle of budget brilliance against high-tier brute force.
On paper, Vale should have won that exchange. Astral energy beat pseudo astral energy the way a tank beats a tricycle in a head-on collision. The difference wasn't small—it was vast. Like comparing a planetary engine to a very determined toaster.
But fights, as it turned out, weren't determined by whose power source had the bigger resu.
Arthur had already proven that. His technique, Hollow Eclipse, made with the clearly inferior enhanced aura, had sliced through a full astral blade. Not because his energy was stronger, but because the movent behind it was—how did the manuals put it—absurdly complex. A sort of spiritual tax fraud on the laws of magical physics.
Vale was a Bishop. A proper seven-circle mage. He had astral energy, experience, and robes that billowed even when there wasn't wind.
But Lucifer was Lucifer Windward.
He had two Gifts, the ego of a cot, and a sword style more dangerous than most wars. He invented pseudo astral energy during a weekend of boredom and existential crisis. And now, he had a Grade 6 art behind every swing.
The blood seal cracked. Not like glass—that was far too elegant. It fractured like a dam holding back sothing older and angrier than water. Vale's eyes widened in that very particular way mages had when their mana calculations stopped checking out.
The seal broke. The crimson shards didn't retreat gracefully; they retaliated, swarming Lucifer like shrapnel with opinions. They tore into his protective coating of white mana, drawing streaks of red and flickers of light. But Lucifer didn't stop. He walked forward like inevitability, bleeding and annoyed.
This was the mage's mistake.
Never let a swordsman get too close. Especially not one who treated physics as more of a "suggestion." In his confidence—or stupidity—Vale had let the swordsman into spitting distance.
Now he couldn't get away.
He tried. Gods, he tried. Words began to form, glyphs lit up, and mana twisted itself into sothing that might've resembled an escape spell if he'd had three more seconds and a lot less panic.
But Lucifer didn't give him that.
Third movent of the Myth of the Northern Peak: Frozen Zenith.
Lucifer wasn't satisfied with it. Couldn't twist it into sothing new like he had with Winter's Judgent. It didn't quite obey him the sa way. His mastery wasn't deep enough. Not yet.
So he didn't innovate.
He committed fully.
His God's Eyes blazed with heightened perception, ti slowing to a crawl as he analyzed the perfect trajectory. White and black mana surged from his Yin-Yang Body in perfect balance, fusing with the pseudo astral energy of ice, layering the movent in raw weight and a terrible chill.
It wasn't elegant. It wasn't new.
But it was absolute.
And sotis, absolute was all you needed when the blade was already arcing toward the spellcaster's chest.
The sword plunged forward, a perfect strike aid at Vale's heart. But as the blade connected, sothing went catastrophically wrong.
Vale's blood magic, compressed into its final defense, erupted in a desperate counter. The miasma around him condensed into pure corruption, eting Lucifer's strike with equal desperation.
For a mont frozen in ti, Lucifer saw everything through his God's Eyes—the path of his blade, the surge of Vale's power, the precise mont the counterattack would hit him. But he couldn't stop his montum. Wouldn't stop it.
His sword drove through Vale's chest, ice and order shattering the Bishop's defenses in a spray of crimson and black. At the sa instant, a torrent of corrupted blood magic surged up the blade like lightning seeking ground, slamming into Lucifer with devastating force.
Pain beyond reason exploded through his body. His bones felt like they were being crushed and remade into sothing else, his blood boiling in his veins as Vale's dying magic tried to corrupt it. His God's Eyes, still active, showed him the horrific damage in exquisite detail—his own tissues blackening, blood vessels rupturing, mana pathways burning with unnatural fire.
The backlash threw him violently backward, his sword still buried in Vale's chest. They separated with the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bone. Lucifer crashed against the far wall with enough force to crack the ancient stone, blood spraying from wounds that appeared across his body like grotesque artwork.
Vale staggered backward, dead on his feet, the sword protruding from his chest. His lips moved in what might have been a final curse, but no sound erged—only a trickle of black blood. Then he collapsed, his body hitting the floor with a dull finality.
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