The downward force vanishes.
Replaced instantly by motion.
He rips the blade sideways in a violent arc.
The shift is abrupt, overwhelming.
Onaga is thrown.
The Morito Sword is torn from alignment, its resistance broken as the lateral force catches it mid-guard. The impact sends both of them spinning apart, bodies thrown in opposite directions through the water.
Currents surge wildly in their wake.
The cursed blade spins slowly through the dark, its crimson veins pulsing as it tumbles, drifting just out of reach.
Teufel recovers first.
His body stabilizes with sharp, controlled movement.
His sword rises vertically before him.
He stills.
Then—
He begins chanting.
The sound does not carry cleanly.
Latin phrases twist through the water, ancient syllables breaking apart and reforming as they travel. The cadence remains intact, measured and deliberate, each word layered with intent that presses against the surrounding space.
Ancient Catholic prayers.
Infused with magic.
Silver light gathers around the blade.
It starts as a faint glow along the edge, then intensifies rapidly, spreading outward in thin lines that spiral upward along the length of the weapon. The light thickens, condensing into a concentrated column that vibrates with restrained force.
The water around it reacts.
It recoils.
Pushed back by something that does not belong.
Onaga reaches the Morito Sword.
His hand closes around the grip just as the light peaks.
He braces.
The blade angles upward—
And the beam descends.
A pillar of holy light erupts underwater.
It slams into him with overwhelming force, a concentrated cascade of energy that drives straight through the water and into his position. The surrounding currents explode outward as the beam carves its path, displacing everything in its radius.
But the Morito Sword responds.
Greedily.
Dark veins flare along its surface as it absorbs the attack, pulling in the energy with unnatural hunger. The blade vibrates violently, drinking in the light even as it strains under the force.
Darkness and holy energy collide.
They do not cancel.
They fight.
The clash creates instability, ripples of distortion spreading outward as the two opposing forces grind against each other within the confined space.
Then—
Something breaks.
The residual corruption still coating Teufel's damaged armor reacts.
The moment the holy beam brushes against it—
It ignites.
Not with flame.
With rupture.
The lingering dark magic embedded in the metal destabilizes under the contact, flaring violently as it rejects the holy energy. The reaction is immediate and uncontrollable.
Catastrophic.
Explosion.
The entire protective bubble surrounding them detonates apart.
There is no gradual collapse.
It simply ceases to exist.
Water crashes inward from all directions at once, the pressure difference slamming shut in a violent convergence. The force hits like a physical blow, crushing, tearing, overwhelming.
Both fighters are caught inside it.
The backlash rips through them simultaneously.
Teufel screams.
The sound is swallowed instantly, reduced to a burst of vibration that vanishes into the chaos.
Onaga's body twists violently, caught in collapsing currents that drag him in conflicting directions. The force pulls at limbs, tears at balance, disorients completely as pressure spikes around him.
The water becomes a weapon.
The Drakolimne reacts immediately.
Despite its injuries.
Despite its exhaustion.
It moves.
Fast.
Its massive body surges forward through the chaos, forcing its way between collapsing currents with brute will. The water bends around it, displaced by sheer presence as it drives toward the source of danger.
Toward Teufel.
Always Teufel first.
It reaches him.
Its coils wrap partially around his body, forming a barrier between him and the surrounding turbulence. Damaged scales press together, creating a shield where none should hold. Glowing currents begin to flow along its form, faint at first, then stronger, pulsing outward from within.
Healing magic.
Channeling through water itself.
The energy wraps around Teufel, stabilizing him even as the environment continues to tear itself apart.
All three are fully submerged now.
There is no air.
No boundary.
No separation.
Only darkness.
Pressure.
Movement.
Onaga steadies himself.
Barely.
Through the shifting currents, through the fading light, through the chaos still unraveling around them—
He sees it clearly.
The priority.
The attachment.
The choice.
The monster chooses Teufel.
Every time.
Over positioning.
Over advantage.
Over survival.
Without hesitation.
Something inside Onaga settles.
Quietly.
A sudden clarity crystallized behind Onaga's eyes, a cold sharpness that sliced through the murk of the depths. He kicked off the liquid void, his body streamlining into a lethal projectile that tore through the water with the cavitation of a launched arrow. Bubbles trailed his wake like a comet's tail as he bridged the distance toward Teufel, his intent forged into a single, murderous point.
The Drakolimne did not simply move; it warped the space around it, its massive, scaled bulk pivoting with a predatory grace that defied its gargantuan size. A clawed limb, thick as a tree trunk and tipped with obsidian talons, whipped through the high-pressure dark to intercept his path.
The steel-hard points raked across Onaga's side, shredding through flesh and armor alike. Pain ignited in his nervous system, a white-hot flare that threatened to blind him as golden-yellow blood erupted from the gashes. It bloomed into the cold currents like a solar nebula, luminous and thick, before the force of the strike sent him tumbling backward into the abyss.
Before he could recover, the water groaned. A displacement of immense mass signaled the coming of the tail—a colossal, armored sweep that threatened to pulp his bones. Onaga's hands clamped onto the rough, moss-slick scales in a desperate, bone-jarring anchor. He swung his weight around the momentum, driving Morito's Sword deep into the creature's flank.
An oily, violet rot surged from the blade, veins of corruption blossoming outward through the Drakolimne's hide like a fast-acting poison. The creature's shriek was less a sound and more a physical assault, a sonic boom that pulverized the silence of the deep. The water vibrated with such violence that nearby marble pillars of ancient, sunken ruins groaned and toppled, dissolving into clouds of silt and rubble.
With a violent convulsion, the beast threw him clear. Onaga spun through the crushing weight of the lake, his limbs flailing until he forced his body back into a stable crouch. His lungs felt as though they were filled with molten lead, and the black veins of the sword's curse crawled higher, stitching their way toward his shoulder like ink-stained spiders. The whispers in his mind turned into a rhythmic, famished thrum.
He glanced toward the shimmering, distant surface where the sun flickered like a dying candle, then back toward the Drakolimne. The beast remained a wall of muscle and malice, wounded but unyielding, a living shield for the knight. Onaga let out a final, silent exhale, the bubbles rising slowly past his face.
Finish it fast.
No complicated plan.
No strategy debate.
Just an ending.
The decision settles into him like weight dropping into place, final and unmoving, and everything else—noise, motion, uncertainty—falls away beneath it. He does not look for angles, does not measure distance again, does not consider alternatives. There is only one direction left.
Forward.
He gathers everything.
All corruption.
All remaining magic.
Not gradually, not carefully, but in a single, deliberate pull inward, drawing every fragment of power through himself and into the blade until there is nothing left held in reserve. The Morito Sword responds immediately.
It darkens.
Completely.
The faint crimson veins that once pulsed beneath its surface are swallowed, replaced by something deeper, something that absorbs even the idea of light. The blade becomes a void, a shape defined only by absence.
The water around it changes.
Slowly at first—
Then rapidly.
Black spreads outward from the sword, bleeding into the surrounding lake as if reality itself is dissolving into it. The current falters. Movement distorts. The space around the blade becomes wrong.
Fish nearby die instantly.
Their bodies seize mid-motion, then drift lifelessly, eyes clouding before they can even react.
Aquatic plants curl inward, their structures collapsing as decay overtakes them in seconds, leaves shriveling, stems dissolving into drifting fragments.
The lake recoils.
Not physically alone, but instinctively, currents shifting away from the spreading darkness, pressure building unevenly as if the entire body of water is attempting to pull back.
The Drakolimne senses it.
Immediately.
Its reaction is not hesitant.
It gathers everything it has left.
Its massive body tightens, muscles coiling beneath damaged scales as water compresses around it, forming layered barriers that thicken and harden, reinforced again and again. Scale regeneration accelerates unnaturally, cracks sealing over with forced urgency, wounds closing not cleanly but desperately.
Magic floods through every damaged part of its body.
Unstable.
Overloaded.
The creature chooses survival.
Nothing else.
Onaga moves.
He swings.
The motion is clean.
Direct.
But the effect—
Is not.
The slash distorts the lake.
Not metaphorically.
Actually.
The water bends, pressure collapsing inward toward the arc of the blade as if pulled by something beyond force alone. A black crescent tears forward, cutting through the underwater darkness with violent precision, dragging reality along its path.
The surrounding pressure implodes around it.
Space compresses.
Currents snap.
Everything is drawn toward the strike.
The Drakolimne meets it head-on.
Barrier against corruption.
Life against annihilation.
Impact.
The collision detonates through the lake floor.
Stone fractures instantly, cracks racing outward in jagged lines as ancient ruins collapse completely, structures that endured centuries breaking apart in seconds under the force.
The Drakolimne is launched backward.
Hard.
Its massive body tears through the bottom, gouging a trench through stone and mud alike, debris exploding upward as it is driven across the submerged terrain.
It smashes into the remnants of ruins—
And stops.
Broken.
Bleeding thick streams of yellow liquid that drift and sizzle faintly in the surrounding water.
Immobile.
But alive.
Still alive.
Onaga's grip falters.
The sword almost slips from his hand.
The corruption surges back immediately, no longer contained, no longer directed outward but flooding inward instead, rushing through him with violent intensity.
His vision blurs.
Edges dissolve.
Black spreads across part of his neck, veins darkening, branching outward beneath his skin.
There is no time.
No space to hesitate.
He teleports.
Instantly.
The world snaps—
And he appears beside Teufel's unconscious body.
He grabs him.
No care for balance.
No adjustment.
Then—
He teleports again.
Shoreline.
The world snaps back into place with violent abruptness, and the sudden reappearance hits like a shockwave more than a transition, the air itself seeming to recoil as Onaga materializes, water and pressure collapsing off him in a distorted ripple that spreads outward across the mud and broken grass.
Comtois startles so hard he nearly falls backward, his footing slipping for a fraction of a second as instinct overrides composure, eyes widening before he catches himself with a sharp shift of balance.
Onaga does not pause.
He throws both the sword and Teufel separately onto the muddy ground, the unconscious knight landing heavily with a dull impact that sinks slightly into the wet earth, while the blade spins once more before dropping with a heavier, more deliberate weight.
Then—
He reaches.
His hands shake as they close around a long, thick rope lying nearby, fingers tightening with effort that costs more than it should.
Ryong and Lei Delun move immediately.
No hesitation.
No exchange.
They rush forward in perfect understanding, boots sliding through mud as they drop beside Teufel's body.
Restraints come out at once.
Rope loops tighten around wrists first, pulled firm, knots cinched with practiced efficiency.
Then ankles.
Secured.
Locked.
The knight does not stir, his body still slack from the earlier impact, breath shallow but present.
Ryong grips under one arm, struggling slightly, breath coming faster now as exhaustion catches up with him, while Lei Delun lifts most of the weight without a word, steady and controlled, bearing the load as they begin dragging Teufel backward toward the distant outline of the village.
Onaga staggers behind them.
Each step uneven.
One hand presses hard against his wounded side, fingers tightening as if holding himself together by force alone, while the black veins along his skin slowly begin to recede—not naturally, but through effort, through control, through refusal to let them spread further.
Behind them—
Comtois catches the Morito Sword mid-fall.
The moment his hand closes around the handle—
The blade pulses.
Eager.
Responsive.
Alive in a different way now, as if recognizing something compatible, something willing.
Comtois grins immediately.
"Finally."
He turns his head toward Ryong, who is still dragging Teufel through the mud, glasses slipping slightly, breath uneven.
"So. My turn?"
Ryong adjusts his soaked glasses nervously, pushing them back into place without slowing.
"I think… yes. The Drakolimne is weakened but still mobile. Logistics suggest immediate offensive pressure before regeneration stabilizes."
Comtois blinks.
Then squints slowly, head tilting just enough to show confusion.
"Who taught you to talk like military paperwork?"
Ryong answers without hesitation.
"Aldo."
Comtois groans, long and exaggerated.
"Of course."
He shakes his head, a quiet laugh slipping out despite everything.
"That dude is infecting everybody with management disease."
Ryong smiles faintly, brief and tired, before turning his focus forward again.
They continue dragging Teufel away, their figures gradually moving toward the distant flicker of village lights.
Onaga follows behind them, slower now, but steady.
And then—
Comtois is alone.
The lakeshore stretches out before him, broken and uneven, the wind threading through the pine trees behind him in low, restless currents.
The lake churns.
Dark water spirals slowly, the surface shifting with heavy, deliberate motion where the wounded Drakolimne lingers beneath, unseen but unmistakably present.
Moonlight reflects faintly along the surface of the Morito Sword.
Comtois looks down.
Then smirks.
Not nervous.
Not calm.
Something sharper.
Excitement.
Dangerous.
He swings the sword once.
Experimentally.
The air cracks.
A sharp, concussive sound splits outward, invisible force rippling across the ground as nearby grass bends violently away from him, flattening under the pressure wave.
Birds hidden deep within the forest explode into motion, wings beating frantically as they scatter into the night.
Comtois laughs softly.
Low.
Satisfied.
"Alright then."
His eyes narrow toward the lake.
"Final act. Lemme cook !"