Silence swallowed the battlefield, not just at their position but across the entire capitol. All eyes were on her.
Francis stared upward.
For the first ti since arriving here, the grin on his face disappeared completely.
His claws flexed slowly.
Every instinct inside him scread.
The pressure pouring from the sky was overwhelming.
His skin crawled violently as if every nerve in his body already understood one terrifying truth.
She could reach him whenever she wanted.
Distance ant nothing.
CRACK!
The lightning around Aris intensified.
KRRRRRRKKK—
Entire sections of cloud vaporized around her descent. White arcs lashed across the sky like living creatures before snapping back toward her wings.
Each flap distorted the air itself.
Francis narrowed his eyes.
"...Interesting."
But his voice no longer carried the sa confidence as before.
Below him, chunks of broken concrete slowly lifted off the ground.
The pressure field surrounding Aris kept growing stronger the closer she descended.
At the capitol building.
Aris landed.
The ground below her gave way on impact. A wide section of road collapsed and split, throwing dust and broken concrete into the air.
Lightning crawled across the cracks like it was searching for sothing to burn.
Her wings stayed open for a mont before folding slowly behind her back.
Across the her stood the one she ca for.
A man in full power armor.
Twin swords rested in his hands, angled slightly downward. His helt looked like a lion’s head, heavy and closed, with no visible face inside.
Only a dark slit where eyes should have been.
He tilted his head once, not showing any sign of fear despite her overwhelming aura.
She stepped forward.
Lightning cracked under her feet again.
The man finally moved.
He rushed in without warning.
Fast, but not careless.
Both swords ca from different angles. One aid for her shoulder. The other aid for her ribs.
Aris shifted her body slightly to the side.
Steel passed close enough to cut through air beside her face.
She raised one clawed hand.
CLANG!
tal t feathered armor.
The impact pushed her arm back, but not enough to break her stance.
The man followed instantly.
He twisted his body and brought the second blade up.
Aris blocked again.
CLANG!
The force spread through her arm and into the ground. Stone cracked beneath her feet.
Her eyes narrowed.
He was adjusting too quickly.
No wasted motion.
The masked man stepped in closer. His sword work beca tighter. Short cuts followed one after another, aid at joints and weak points in her wing structure.
Aris shifted backward. Lightning gathered along her arm, then condensed into a single strike.
No warning.
Just execution.
She swung.
A bolt of blue light ca with it, sharp enough to lt steel before contact.
The masked agent reacted instantly.
Both swords crossed in front of him.
CLANG!
The sound was wrong for what it blocked.
tal t lightning.
The blades did not lt.
They held.
For a fraction of a second, the swords turned white-hot, edges glowing under extre heat.
The armor behind them absorbed the force through layered structure, spreading the impact down into the ground.
The street under him fractured outward.
But he stayed standing.
Aris’s eyes narrowed slightly.
That was not normal resistance.
The agent slid one foot back, then rotated his body.
His next motion was no ordinary strike. He swung one blade in a wide arc.
No visible energy at first.
Just movent.
Then the air changed.
A compressed wall of force ford along the path of the sword.
It tore forward like a blade made of pressure itself.
The wind hit Aris’s lightning mid-air.
For a split mont, her energy resisted.
Blue light pushed against invisible force.
Then it split.
The wind shear carved through the lightning, breaking its shape apart and scattering it into wild arcs that lost direction.
Aris moved imdiately.
The pressure wave passed where her torso had been and tore through the ground behind her, slicing clean through concrete and steel fras like paper.
Her wings flared once.
Electricity snapped outward in response, but even that was disrupted by the unstable air left behind.
The agent did not follow up right away.
He reset his stance.
Both swords lowered again.
Aris did not dare to be complacent.
Her focus stayed on the masked agent.
She opened her mouth. "So the rumors are right. The Lion’s Pride is in this city."
"Tell ," she continued. "Why are you here instead of protecting the capital? Did your bastard master send you?"
The masked agent twitched. "Don’t ntion my father’s na."
Aris tilted her head slightly.
"Father?" She scoffed. "You still call him that? You’re just another science project he built and threw into armor—"
SWOOOSH!
He appeared in front of her in a single step.
The ground cracked where he launched from.
Both swords swung at once.
CLANG!
Aris raised her clawed arm in ti. tal t lightning-hardened armor. The impact sent a shock through her body.
She slid back half a step.
The agent followed imdiately.
Left blade ca down.
Right blade twisted upward.
CLANG! CLANG!
Aris blocked both, but the force kept building. Each strike carried more pressure than the last.
Aris’s wings flared once as lightning surged along her arm, trying to push him back.
But he stayed close.
Too close.
His rhythm changed again.
One diagonal strike slipped through her timing.
She twisted her body, but the blade still caught her side plating. tal cracked and sparks sprayed out as she exhaled sharply through her teeth.
The agent stepped in at the sa ti, trying to widen the opening.
Aris caught his wrist mid-motion.
"My turn."
Lightning exploded at point-blank range between them.
For a fraction of a second, his armor locked up under the surge.
That was all she needed.
But before she could follow through, the agent tore his arm free with brute force and drove his shoulder straight into her chest.
BOOM!
Aris was thrown back, boots dragging hard across broken stone until she regained balance.
Dust rolled between them like a curtain.
The agent reset instantly, both swords lowered again as if nothing had changed.
Waiting.
Aris straightened slowly. A thin line of blood ran along her side.
She wiped it away and lowered her hand, never breaking eye contact.
The masked agent did not move.
For a brief mont, the battlefield was quite.
Then his presence changed.
It wasn’t an explosion of power. It was a release, controlled, like sothing being unsealed under pressure.
The air around him grew heavier. Dust stopped drifting. Even distant debris seed to hesitate mid-fall.
Aris felt it press against her skin.
Her wings tightened slightly.
"Thought I’d join the party," Francis landed beside her. His eyes stayed on the masked agent.
In his right hand, he held Lyrica’s body. Well so of it.
"Here. A gift."
He tossed the corpse forward.
It spun through the air, heading straight toward the agent.
The mont it crossed the midpoint, it broke apart into pieces before it even got close enough to land.
"Why are you helping ?" she asked.
"Well," he said, rolling his shoulder once, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
His gaze drifted toward the other party.
"That guy looks tough. All that reflection, all that wind tricks." He let out a short laugh. "So let’s work together and end him."
The masked agent did not react to the words.
He only raised one sword slightly.
The air around him shifted again.
Pressure deepened.
Even the dust stopped moving.
Aris finally spoke. "I’ll take this as you want to ally with us?"
Francis gave a small shrug. "If it helps kill him, sure."
In reality, he was interested in obtaining the agent’s body. There was no denying that it was superior in quality compared to Lex.
So far, the only people he had fought on Lex’s level were Vance and Lyrica, but their strength was not far above Lex’s, so he never took the chance to infect it.
However, the person before him was on an entirely different level.
He was able to casually tank the lightning attack that could hurt him, showing just how durable his armor was.
Even so, it also ant that the user of it was equally powerful.
"I have a plan, but you have to follow ," Francis spoke.
Aris kept her eyes on the masked agent. Her wings stayed half-open, lightning still crawling in thin lines across them.
"What is it?" she asked.
Francis didn’t look away from the target.
"Let’s attack together."
She moved first.
A flash of lightning tore across the air as Aris vanished from her position. The air cracked in her wake, and she reappeared directly in front of the enemy.
Her claws ca down without hesitation.
Francis was supposed to be a few seconds behind.
That was her estimate of his speed.
But sothing was wrong the mont her attack landed.
Francis was already there.
One second behind her movent, not several.
His claw swung in from her blind side, cutting through the space she just crossed.
The attack forced the masked agent to react instantly.
He twisted his body and brought both swords up in defense.
CLANG!
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