"What do we do now?" William had barely gotten the question out when an astonishing sight unfolded before them.
The whole altar seemed to stretch in midair as if waking from sleep, then unfurled from its huddled posture and became a giant of white bone.
Its limbs were covered in exaggerated barbs, and where the barbs met they looked like four blades. Beyond that it was a seamless whole — not the slightest gap at any joint. Adam and the others, nearly twenty meters up, were level with the giant's skull, and there they saw the First Servitor floating inside its cranium, the crystal skeleton cradled in her arms.
"It's because of you that I've become like this. Because of you, the Church's savings of years have been drained dry. Because of you, the Supreme God cannot descend, and because of you my daughter cannot be resurrected! Blasphemers must die!"
Fused with the bone giant, the First Servitor vibrated the air by some special means to produce a hair-raising voice. She — no, it — had been driven to the very limit of fury, and swung its right arm, sweeping the hideous barbs at the four of them.
The only creature Adam had ever seen that was larger than this giant was Mage Victor's true body. There was naturally no comparing the two, but the raw visual impact was just as staggering.
Cristel and the other two reacted first by dodging. Being small had its advantages; the three easily avoided the attack.
"We have to think of something. I think that First Servitor is the giant's core. Adam — Adam?!"
Adam did not dodge. Crackling psychokinetic barriers stacked layer upon layer before him; he meant to take the attack head-on and use it to gauge the white bone giant's power level. In his hand he gripped a Teleportation scroll — his last line of defense. If the force could not be stopped, it would save his life at the final instant.
"Damn it, what are you doing?!" Even Ophelia couldn't help cursing aloud. She couldn't believe Adam would do something so reckless — an egg hurling itself at a rock.
It was utterly one-sided: the giant's arm smashed through layer after layer of barrier with ease, sweeping straight at Adam — and yet it was shedding debris.
That was right. On contact with the barriers, its bony body was continually fracturing. New bone grew at once to fill the cracks, but that didn't change the fact — for all its strength, a body piled up out of ordinary human bones simply could neither withstand nor exert such power.
The moment he saw that, Adam gave up any thought of taking the blow head-on. He used psychokinesis to drop his body and dodged the fist by a hair's breadth — only to be swept away by the gale that came right behind it.
"Blasphemers!" the First Servitor roared, and drove the bone giant at them with earth-shaking force.
Nothing could stop its advance. Trees, boulders, even small hills were shattered by its fists and feet. It had lost the ability to fly, but each casual stride carried it hundreds of meters, and for a while the four had no way to shake it off.
Amid the dodging, the three heard Adam's urgent voice: "Enormous strength, rapid regeneration, but the body is comparatively fragile."
A violent current of air came at them from behind. Cristel cast a spell to bind the wind into one and split it into four kinetic forces pointing in different directions, and used them to slip clear of the blow.
"The Church of the Supreme God draws its power from beings of other planes, but the means of obtaining that power is sacrifice. Without replenishment, this power cannot be endless. So as long as we keep wearing down the giant's body, there's a fifty percent chance it collapses on its own."
"Damn you! Blasphemers!" Two thick beams of white light shot from the bone giant's hollow eyes, straight at Adam.
"Look out!" Cristel cried.
Adam shot straight up and dodged the energy attack by a hair. There was no explosion where it struck the ground — only two bottomless pits.
Adam spun in the air and began flying erratically. "So use everything you've got to drain its power, and look for a chance to hit the First Servitor. Beyond that — you're on your own."
The three memorized every word, then scattered. They knew that at a time like this they could only rely on themselves. Adam had made it sound simple, but plainly enough, one direct hit would hurt like hell even if it didn't kill you.
Adam was the one the First Servitor hated most, so he drew far more attacks than the other three. Ophelia had no ranged attacks to speak of; seizing the chance, she used Adam as cover to close on the bone giant, leaped high, and let her mana burst from her skin like kindled fire.
But she hadn't expected the bone giant to be so agile. The instant it spotted her, it adjusted its fist and met her head-on.
The collision lasted less than a second. Ophelia was blasted away like a cannonball, plowing a trench hundreds of meters long across the ground; she snapped a dozen-odd giant trees before vomiting a great mouthful of blood and slumping to the earth.
The bone giant gave no quarter. It stepped forward to crush Ophelia underfoot, and Cristel and William hurriedly threw the fastest spells they could cast to draw its attention — the only thing they could do.
Ophelia sat on the ground coughing blood, her eyes never leaving the battlefield. She saw Adam appear behind the bone giant by some means, his raised right hand wreathed in thunder that was blinding and deafening at once, and then he charged savagely at the giant.
"Cough — cough — how could I have turned into dead weight..." She pulled a sealed box from her clothes, forced it open with difficulty, and took out a syringe filled with an unknown liquid.
Over the past few years Ophelia's inner journey had been the most tortuous of them all. The most dazzling Valkyrie in the Northland — on all of Madeira Island — had believed she would keep shining after entering the Mage Continent. Instead she had been surpassed again and again, and once she realized that the one she had once protected was now someone she could only look up to, she sank into self-doubt and inner conflict. It had nothing to do with any feeling between man and woman; it was only her competitiveness and her pride.
"You could only survive back then because I protected you — how can I be weaker than you!" Ophelia drove the syringe into her carotid artery and pushed in all the liquid at once.
Without a sound, blazing mana flames ignited across Ophelia's body. Her wounds healed completely in an instant, her physical strength climbing level after level; her hands closed around empty air at her side and mana condensed into a greatsword. She bent her knees, then exploded upward, her whole body streaking across the sky like a meteor, and with unmatched mana and kinetic force she brought the blade down hard on the white bone skull.