[I am fucking goated! Goated is what I am! Yahooo...]

It had been a couple of minutes since then, but Nexar's triumphant rant showed no signs of ending. It made Elowen clutch her non-existent head in exasperation.

{Yeah, sure. Calm down a bit.}

Elowen couldn't put up with the celebration anymore.

{But why isn't he waking up?}

It had been several minutes since chaos descended upon the Saytan estate. Things weren't looking good for Cassandra. Kael and Selka were fighting their own battles.

[All we did was fill his vitality and let the souls Blood Raven stored decelerate the decay and heal Rune's pierced heart.]

Nexar explained.

Elowen could see Blood Raven slowly slipping back out of Rune's chest, the blade withdrawing millimeter by millimeter.

Sera was totally collapsed against him, their foreheads touching, her tears flowing freely. Lydia held them both, hugging Rune's body and Sera's crying form. Ilya sat nearby, lost in self-loathing, blaming herself for everything that had happened.

None of them noticed the sword slowly extracting itself.

Essence Absorption was doing its job, refilling lost vitality in the form of blood and body heat. Now everything depended on Blood Raven withdrawing slowly enough not to disturb other organs, and completing the process before Essence Absorption used up all the soul essence.

Then the ground shook.

{What is that...?}

[Shit! It's the demons...]

Nexar's window darkened as he recognized their old foe — Dominion Saytan. The one Rune had killed in his last life. Something similar had happened then, except it had been Rune and Kael who'd killed him together.

This time would be different.

Because the one protecting Dominion was none other than the Sword King himself.

Cassandra knew if she went after Dominion directly, the Sword King wouldn't continue entertaining her with sword skills. He'd be forced to use his Sovereign(II) aura and kill all threats in seconds. She had no choice but to avoid giving him reason to escalate, to let her companions live a little longer and hope for a window of escape, even if it meant taking the brunt of the Sword King's blade firsthand.

The blood from her wounds, her torn dress, her sorry state, all proof that no force in this imperium could kill someone under the Sword King's protection.

No force except the apparently-dead eighteen-year-old boy.

The demons tore through the underground facility and erupted to the surface.

Kael grimaced. Selka's eyes widened as hundreds of mindless, grotesque demons surfaced from beneath the earth.

Malformed things with sloughing skin and drooling mouths, twisted parodies of what had once been human.

'Did he turn the inhabitants of the entire enclave into demons and hide them underground?'

Selka's mind raced at the implications. The sheer scale of the atrocity.

Cassandra snorted, looking at the ugly beings rising around them.

"Old dog," she said between ragged breaths, "it's not Dominion who will be responsible for the deaths of countless innocents. It will be you."

Her voice carried venom and accusation. "You alone will be the bearer of this sin. Live with it for the rest of your life."

It was uncharacteristic of Cassandra to spew such poison at her former master, but she couldn't help cursing him for the choices he'd made even with three centuries of wisdom behind them.

"I understand," the Sword King replied softly. "I shall carry them with the many I was already carrying."

His ancient eyes held weight that someone with only two and a half decades of life could never comprehend.

That only made Cassandra angrier.

She looked at Kael and Selka readying their weapons to fight till their last breaths.

"I am truly blessed with the best possible companions," she said, the anger in her voice replaced by something soft, something grateful.

The ancient warrior watched the young duchess before him, satisfied with whatever little life she'd lived, so unlike the life of a dog he'd lived for three centuries. He was both jealous and happy for her.

"But I can't let them die when they're ready to throw their lives away without a second thought, now can I?"

True. Kael and Selka could have tried fleeing. But such thoughts hadn't crossed either of their hearts.

Cassandra's eyes burned with renewed determination. She summoned her tornado of flames again, the seventh-circle mage's fire whirling through the air with complete disregard for her surroundings. The winds alone set fire to the whole estate, the wooden mansion erupting in flames.

The fire surrounded Dominion like a noose tightening.

Dominion turned, trying to use his earth attribute to cover himself with conjured earthen walls to cancel out the flames. His eighth-circle magic should override Cassandra's seventh-circle fire.

But he'd miscalculated one thing.

Kael dashed in with her twin scythes, her own earth attribute countering his. She was only fourth-circle and wouldn't amount to much against eighth-circle magic normally. But that wasn't her intention.

Kael's conjured mud slowed the rate at which walls rose around Dominion. Her twin scythes crashed through the walls left and right, demolishing them as fast as they appeared.

The demons started catching up to her... mouths drooling, skin sloughing off in clumps of rotting flesh.

Kael connected her twin scythes and extended the length, forming her double-scythed staff. She swung it in wide arcs, the curved blades tearing through demon heads like wheat before a scythe.

But fighting the horde made her progress in slowing Dominion's magic even slower.

Then twin daggers roared through the air. Multiple Selkas appeared, tearing through the demons with surgical precision.

The blood that oozed from fallen demons was black and foul-smelling, a rotten stench that made Selka grimace even as she killed.

"You go after Dominion!" Selka declared, standing between the roaring demons and Kael.

Kael nodded and returned to churning down the conjured walls, letting flames slip through the gaps.

'Shit, shit!'

Dominion's calm expression twisted with panic as he realized how much of a threat Kael was with her twin scythes. Her Master(II) aura flowed through the makeshift staff, making the blades appear like death incarnate.

Selka's Master(I) aura filled the space among the demons, causing illusions of multiple Selkas to appear between them. She killed swiftly, assassin-style... precise and deadly.

She spotted Marshal Kassir, the one she'd spared earlier to submit as proof of her Duchess's innocence. Now demons were chewing on his immobilized body. She'd made precise cuts to his joints earlier, rendering him helpless.

She regretted that mercy now.

Dominion was on his last thread. The flames were now a threat he couldn't handle because of Kael's relentless assault.

"Tsk."

He clicked his tongue in frustration.

"Old man!" he shouted.

The Sword King, still facing Cassandra, sighed without even turning to look at Dominion.

He raised his frail arm.

Snap.

Screeen...

In the next instant, the entire Saytan estate froze solid.

The whole width of the estate, the height of the buildings, ice didn't spread through it. The ice simply spawned, appearing instantaneously in a perfect spread of absolute zero.

Silence befell the estate for one terrible second.

Cassandra's flames died out completely. Her eyes went wide as breath burned in her lungs, cold air freezing the moisture in her throat.

'What...'

The expression was universal among everyone who witnessed it.

Such was the power of tenth-circle frost magic.

Dominion's smile widened. No longer needing to focus on impending flames, his eyes shifted to the lone woman before him.

He conjured slabs of molded earth from all sides, converging on Kael like a closing fist.

Kael frowned, her aura flaring as she jumped and rotated her curved blades, cutting off the rising earth. But the slabs rose from every direction, continuing to form even after being cut.

She soon found herself in the middle of raging molded earth attacking from all angles.

'Shit...'

She conjured her own earth to clash with his, reinforcing with her aura. But the eighth-circle earth mage's relentless attack showed gaps in her defense.

She tanked more hits than she dodged or evaded.

Eventually, a molded slab of earth drove itself into her stomach with crushing force.

"Ghh..."

Kael's body arched backward from the impact. The moment she stopped moving, all hell broke loose.

Earthen slabs crashed onto her from multiple sides in a coordinated barrage of stone and magic.

When the dust settled, Kael hung suspended by molded earth, blood dripping from various wounds across her body, barely conscious.

Dominion's eyes then found Selka.

'One down. Time for another.'

He knew Selka was trickier. Space attribute was considered transcendental alongside time for good reason. But he had a plan.

He conjured slabs of molded earth from the ground toward all the Selkas massacring demons. The duplicates tried dodging, but the raging demons made it nearly impossible to evade the ever-rising blocks of earthen mass. The slabs twisted mid-air like snakes, tracking their targets.

Some Selkas disappeared by getting crushed. Others fell to raging demons.

Then, from the shadows directly behind Dominion, Selka appeared... her dagger driving toward his neck.

'Found you.'

He turned. Selka's dagger stopped right before his neck as her eyes widened in shock.

Blood pooled from her mouth as she looked down, finding her stomach pierced by a severed arm Kael had cut down during her earlier carnage.

Dominion's necromancy. It didn't just control dead beings, it controlled anything that had once been alive, including the cells and tissues of a severed limb.

Dominion smiled like a demon as he caught the animated hand and twisted the blade in her stomach.

Selka's face twisted in pain but then she smiled, her lips thinning into a wide arc.

Then she evaporated.

'What? She was fake...?'

Realization dawned. He spun to find Selka's dagger already stabbed into his neck.

Selka took ragged breaths, thinking they'd won...

Until the figure before her melted into mud.

Her eyes widened.

Before she could wrap herself in space...

"Ghuff..."

The mace in another reanimated arm drove into her stomach, forcing all air from her lungs.

Her eyes went wide as she stumbled backward, legs buckling. She fell to her knees.

But she didn't get time to recover.

Multiple earth-molded whips caught her hands and legs, hoisting her into the air in the same fashion as Kael.

Dominion stood between his two captured enemies, breathing heavily but victorious.

Behind him, the Sword King's ice remained absolute.

And Cassandra, bleeding and exhausted, could only watch as her strongest warriors fell.

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