Nero did not hesitate.
Drawing upon every drop of the ancient light newly ignited within his core, he became a streak of golden lightning. The First Stage of the Supreme Realm surged through his limbs, compressing the air into razor-thin shockwaves as he propelled himself straight toward the breach beneath his father's left wing—the single point where celestial mana thinned beneath the turbulence of the storm.
He poured everything into the strike, his blade of condensed dawn aimed directly for the immortal heart.
Yet the 6 winged angel did not even turn his head.
With a cold, dismissive sneer, the angel simply flicked his right arm outward. It was not a calculated parry; it was a casual, contemptuous backhand.
BANG!
A concussive shockwave of pure Ninth-Level Supreme mana detonated against Nero's chest. The radiant blade shattered into glowing fragments, the protective aura around the youth broke like brittle glass, and Nero was blasted out of the sky like a broken doll. He hurtled downward, crashing violently into the jagged stone of the cratered earth, spitting a fountain of crimson blood as the impact gouged a thirty-foot trench across the dirt.
High above, something inside Kala snapped.
A sound tore from the primordial demon's throat that was neither human nor beast—a guttural, ear-splitting shriek of unadulterated maternal fury. The battlefield seemed to freeze beneath the sheer weight of her madness. Her aura turned into a frenzied vortex of pitch-black primordial flame, churning the atmosphere into a suffocating tempest.
Her right golden eye ruptured with veins of crimson, turning into a glowing pool of blood-red malice.
"YOU DARE TOUCH MY SON!"
Darkness did not merely answer her call; it congealed, crystallizing into a jagged, seven-foot spear of compressed abyssal mana that drank the very sunlight around it.
The angel was still lowering his hand, a disdainful scoff parting his lips as he watched Nero lie motionless in the rubble—a single, fleeting moment of divine carelessness.
Kala did not miss it.
She tore through space itself. Her speed broke the sound barrier thrice over, leaving an ink-black rift trailing behind her silhouette. Before the angel could fully rotate his six wings to summon a barrier, Kala slammed into him like a falling mountain.
The sheer momentum drove both of them straight out of the sky. They crashed into the earth with apocalyptic force, stone splintering into thousands of flying shards as the false god was pinned flat against the pulverized ground beneath her weight.
Before he could channel his divine aura, Kala drove the abyssal spear downward with feral, unrestrained savagery.
The dark spear plunged through his upper right wing, pinning the pristine white feathers into the bloody rock beneath. Golden ichor hissed and sizzled against the darkness.
"TASTE THE PAIN YOU INFLICTED ON HIM!"
She ripped the spear free and drove it down a second time, burying the jagged head straight through his left shoulder, shattering the immortal bone beneath.
"SUFFER AS HE HAS SUFFERED!"
A third thrust tore ruthlessly through his right arm, severing tendons and pinning his wrist to the shattered earth.
For the first time since he descended from the clouds, a roar of genuine, undiluted agony ripped from the angel's throat. The golden light in his eyes flared violently with humiliating fury.
"GET OFF ME, MAD WOMAN!"
With a burst of incandescent wrath, his left hand surged with blinding celestial power. He caught Kala by her long, silver hair, his grip like an iron vice. Golden lightning crackled along his fingers as he brutally ripped her away from his chest and hurled her across the valley with enough force to shatter fortress walls.
Kala's body skipped across the broken ground, tumbling relentlessly before coming to a halt only paces away from Nero.
Her mana turned into wisps of fading smoke. Her primordial aura was entirely extinguished, her meridians scorched and torn from burning away her very soul-essence in those three desperate strikes. Wounded, bleeding from every pore, and utterly drained of mana, she dragged herself forward by inches through the dirt.
Her trembling, blood-stained fingers stretched weakly toward the fallen boy.
"My son..." Her voice was a fragile, breaking whisper, barely carrying over the wind. "...I'm sorry..."
Her hand collapsed against the cold dust, her crimson eye fading back to dull gold as her consciousness slipped into absolute darkness.
"Filthy demon wench!" the angel snarled, tearing himself from the earth.
He rose back into the air, but the effortless, untouchable godhood was gone. Golden blood dripped from his punctured shoulder and shredded arm, his pierced wing hanging slightly bent behind his back. His pristine robes were stained with crimson and dark ichor, his face twisted in a murderous scowl.
Before he could unleash retribution upon Kala's unconscious form, a tempest of crimson foxfire descended upon him.
Scarlet appeared above him like an avenging phantom. Her five magnificent tails of celestial fire flared across the sky, and her steel tessen snapped shut, releasing five curving blades of scarlet lightning that slashed across his perimeter. Space buckled under the heat of her Fifth Stage Supreme assault, forcing the wounded angel to raise his battered wings in defense.
The detonations pushed him back a dozen paces, the air howling with scorched wind.
"Tch!" The angel deflected the final flame arc with his uninjured forearm, his golden eyes narrowing into razor slits as he glared at the Fox Matriarch. "Persistent vermin."
He hovered in the air, his chest heaving with cold fury as his aura reignited, suppressing the agony in his severed tendons.
"Only you remain who can barely put up any resistance," the false god hissed, his voice echoing with venomous promise. "And you are fighting on borrowed time, fox. Once you fall... every single piece of vermin crawling in this dirt will be harvested for the Devourers!"
His gaze suddenly broke away from Scarlet, sweeping down toward the struggling fighters below.
In the chaotic melee, the paired battles raged on. June and Julie, their four tails whipping through the smoke, wove intricate fire traps around a thrashing beast alongside Prince George and John. Emperor Darius stood guard over Marcus's lifeless body, his golden blade parrying tendrils while David and Talon held the flanks.
And near the center, Silva stood back-to-back with Cornelius. The boy's wooden staff hummed with the crushing, dense darkness borrowed from Pandora's resting consciousness, smashing through an advancing Devourer's barbed sensory node.
The angel's eyes locked onto Silva.
He recognized the aura. It was not mere demon darkness, nor the raw demonic power Kala possessed. It was something far older, an ancient shadow that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
"An eyesore," the angel whispered coldly.
Without a warning movement, he raised his uninjured index finger.
A needle-thin beam of pure, concentrated celestial light shot from his fingertip faster than thought. It tore through the smoke, slicing through the battlefield with blinding velocity.
"SILVA, LOOK OUT!" Cornelius roared, his veteran instincts screaming as he lunged to shove his grandson aside.
He was a fraction of a second too late.
The beam struck Silva's left shoulder, punching cleanly through flesh, muscle, and armor like hot iron through parchment. The kinetic force lifted the masked youth off his feet, spinning him backward through the air before he slammed hard into the dirt.
Pandora's swirling darkness abruptly collapsed inward, extinguished in an instant. Silva clutched his smoking shoulder, his vision swimming in white agony as his body convulsed, his wooden staff rolling from his limp fingers before he collapsed motionless into the ash.
"SILVA!" Cornelius's roar tore through the valley, the old general throwing himself over the boy's fallen body, his staff planted into the ground as his Aura flared in desperate, terrified defense.
High above, the false god sneered, raising his hand once more to obliterate the grandfather and grandson where they lay.
"Die, insect."
"Look at me, you bastard!" Scarlet's voice rang out like thunder.
Her tessen snapped wide, her five burning tails swelling to the size of falling comets as she hurled herself between the angel and the earth below, dragging the heavens into an inferno of roaring foxfire that forced the angel's hand back up to meet her strike.