"Talk about crude and simple — just pouring in energy to manufacture minions. A thing made that way can never ascend to a higher level of life." The devil watched Brown, now a monster through and through, and spoke with contempt.
Cristel was surrounded by a sky full of wind blades. She kept fusing them together until at last they became a single slender thread of wind — but even Adam could not help backing away from her. He had no doubt that his own body, even with the newest psychokinetic barrier, could not take that spell head-on.
"But it works. Brown's energy fluctuations have already hit the critical point." Even as she spoke, Cristel flicked out that thread of wind. The shield formed of flesh-and-blood energy was pierced clean through, and the thin wind struck Brown exactly.
The wind tore Brown's whole body apart into a sky-full of shredded flesh, but a second later fleshy buds sprouted between the pieces and pulled them back together. He let out an agonized roar and glared at them with venomous hatred.
"And his recovery is astonishing, too." Cristel took out an energy stone to restore her mana; clearly that spell had cost her dearly.
Ophelia raised her greatsword high and brought it down savagely. Her high-speed-vibrating arms set the blade shuddering until it gave off a humming ring, and with mana reinforcing it, it displayed a beauty of power beyond compare — a great hole burst open in the shield in an instant. William was just about to hurl in the fire spell he had been holding ready when he saw Adam lift the devil by one hand and toss it into the hole.
"This..." William was dumbfounded.
The devil was stunned too. When it came to its senses it shrieked and tried to squeeze back out through the hole before it healed, but Adam kicked it right back in and shut down every complaint with a single line: "This time you're allowed to go wild."
The devil's eyes lit up and it cackled with glee, cack cack. The energy in its body could not be wielded like its own limb, nor did it match the traits of the devil race, but it was, after all, power that had once surpassed the critical point — killing a few ordinary people was no problem at all.
William knew how Mages regarded negative energy, and asked worriedly, "Is this really all right?"
"Mm. What they're doing is crueler than the Magefoe."
Above them, Adam made ready to trigger the formal fire-element spell stored in the ring — Embers. He needed someone to buy him a little time. The blood sacrifice, he saw, was entering its final stage: the energy fluctuations of every Servitor had risen sharply, and Brown had truly reached the critical point. Now a stable, safe breach had to be opened.
Inside, the devil was perfectly at ease, swimming through the royal city's brimming human despair like a fish in water. The Servitors' flesh-and-blood magic did nothing to it, and their energy attacks could not break through its negative-energy defenses. The devil was happily harvesting Servitors' lives.
Brown threw back his head and howled at the sky, then stamped one heavy foot on the altar; the altar's topmost tier shattered and caved in on the spot. Using that force, Brown shot up into the air, his enormous deformed arm knotted with muscle, and smashed it down at Adam.
William and Cristel hurriedly blasted him with wind and fire magic, but the wounds the spells opened on Brown healed over in an instant. Brown was exultant. "Under this power, what use is magic? Die, you animals!"
The two of them paled and were just beginning to construct a high-tier spell when Ophelia shoved them both aside, her greatsword trailing behind her, and charged straight at him, unstoppable.
Ophelia released her mana with everything she had. The blade ground against the air and struck sparks, and the farther she charged, the stronger the power in the sword grew.
Pfft.
The blade met Brown's body and cut into his muscles layer after layer; Brown was hacked so hard he flew backward, screaming.
"Damn it, damn it!" Brown's muscles surged and actually locked the greatsword inside his body, halting his backward flight. He seized the blade with one hand, drew back the other fist, and punched hard. "Just die!"
At that same moment, an intense sense of danger rose from behind him. William stared in terror at the wisp of black fire in Adam's hand. He could sense no heat from it at all, yet it seemed as though even his spiritual power and his mana were trembling together.
Ophelia was about to counterattack when she heard Adam's voice: "Move."
Without a moment's hesitation she let go, dispersed her mana, and let her body fall freely.
Brown grinned viciously and gripped the greatsword, about to cut Ophelia down — only to find that there was no one in front of him anymore, just a single black spark of fire drifting toward him.
"Magic, is it? Then today I'll show you: beneath great divine power, magic can't withstand a single blow." With that he swung the greatsword, intending to simply swat the black fire apart.
"Foolish," Adam said calmly.
And then Brown simply became a heap of ash. The power of Embers was still enormous; the instant it touched the shield, all the flesh-and-blood energy ignited, and traveling along the energy channels it entered the bodies of every Servitor who was drawing on it, burning them to nothing.
The devil, strutting about inside the shield, shuddered and shrieked, "Master! Do you want to kill me too?!" It no longer cared about absorbing the negative energy it had just plundered; it instantly dispersed its body, leaving only its most primal chaos form, and slunk back to Adam with its tail between its legs.
The three of them stared in shock at the ring in Adam's hand. It was the first time any of them had seen the power of a formal spell with their own eyes. William could never have imagined that fire — his own main element — could reach such a level. Just what kind of mystery is hidden inside that flame?
Even Adam, the one who had used it, was deeply shaken. Before buying the ring he had known only that it contained a one-time high-tier fire spell; he had no idea it carried such power — especially that chain-incineration property, which was simply terrifying. After all, he had only wanted the ring to break open the shield.
A short while later, the mana in the Embers spell was spent, and what vanished along with it was the entire royal city and every Servitor within it.
Violent air currents rushed in to fill the vacuum the ash-burning had left in the royal city, and countless black ashes whirled away on the fierce wind, scattering in every direction like so many black torrents.
Crack.
The ring shattered into pieces and dropped from Adam's finger. Ophelia could no longer keep up the cold composure she had worn all this time. She wanted to say something but could not get it out, only murmuring blankly, "My sword..."
Adam descended, and actually found the wreckage of the greatsword on the ground. Forged from some high-grade material he could not identify, the weapon had not been completely consumed by the Embers' burning; what remained of it seemed sharper than before. Adam tossed the wreckage to Ophelia and said, "When we get back, I'll apply to the academy for compensation..."