The next second, every "Rimururu" simultaneously raised her ice-crystal mirror.
"Divine Ice Blade—Ice Cascade!"
Countless ice rays—more refined, more frigid than before—erupted from the mirrors on all sides, forming a flawless web of death that sought to freeze and shatter Cloud completely!
Facing this attack that would give anyone with trypophobia nightmares, Cloud simply stood calmly in place, slowly raising his right hand.
A cluster of purple flame quietly ignited at his fingertip.
The flame was small, barely the size of a bean, yet it radiated a chill that seemed capable of freezing the soul itself. It carried no heat whatsoever—in fact, the surrounding temperature dropped even further.
"In my BGM, nobody beats me with ice... no wait, wrong channel. It should be... in the domain of flame, I, Iori Yagami—pfft, I mean I, Cloud, am invincible."
Cloud muttered his chuuni lines to himself, then gently flicked that purple flame forward.
"Style 108: Yami Barai."
The most basic technique of Yagami-style ancient martial arts.
The purple flame exploded outward the instant it left his fingertip!
It didn't transform into fire serpents as before. Instead, it bloomed around him like a gorgeous purple lotus!
"Ura Style 108: Ya Sakazuki!"
Sizzle—
Those ice rays capable of freezing anything they touched dissolved the moment they contacted the purple lotus—devoured and annihilated as if moths flying into fire!
Not only was the purple flame undiminished by the cold, it seemed to draw fuel from it, burning ever more brilliantly!
"How... is this possible?!" Rimururu's real body, hiding behind one of the mirrors, stared at the scene in shock.
Her ice had become fuel for his flames? This completely violated her understanding of elemental interactions! Water (ice) beats fire—wasn't that an immutable law?
"Another point beyond the syllabus for you, little sis-in-law." Cloud's voice drifted lazily over. "Who told you fire has to be hot? This kind of flame is called Azure Flame. It doesn't burn matter—it burns existence itself. The stronger your ice, the happier it burns."
With that, Cloud flicked his finger.
The massive purple lotus split into dozens of smaller flames, each homing like a heat-seeking missile toward every mirror around him.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A chain of explosions rang out. Those impossibly hard ice mirrors shattered like detonating firecrackers the instant they touched the Azure Flame, exploding into showers of ice shards.
All of Rimururu's illusory clones vanished, leaving only her true body stumbling out from behind the last broken mirror.
Her small face was written over with shock and disbelief.
"Now it's my turn."
Cloud's figure appeared before her like a ghost.
Rimururu tried to retreat instinctively but found her body locked in place by an invisible force, unable to move.
She could only watch helplessly as Cloud's right hand, wreathed in burning purple flame, slowly pressed toward her forehead.
"No..."
Rimururu squeezed her eyes shut in despair, certain she was about to be reduced to ash by this terrifying fire.
Yet the expected searing pain never came.
Instead, she felt a warm—no, a cool palm lightly touch her forehead.
The purple flames that radiated an aura of absolute destruction caused no harm whatsoever when they touched her skin. Instead, they transmitted a... rather comfortable cooling sensation?
Rimururu cautiously cracked open one eye and peeked at Cloud, now mere inches away.
His face bore a teasing smile.
The Azure Flame at his fingertip danced and swirled before her forehead in an exquisitely controlled pattern, like a gentle purple butterfly, yet not a single wisp of fire actually touched her skin.
This level of absolute control over power was simply inconceivable!
It was like a world-class bomb disposal expert precisely cutting one wire among a million interconnected explosives—without detonating a single one.
"See? I told you." Cloud withdrew his hand, and the Azure Flame at his fingertip extinguished. "Power itself has no morality. What matters is whether the person wielding it wants to use it to warm people or to burn cities."
He looked at Rimururu's face, still written over with shock, and added with a smile: "For instance, right now I could easily give you an 'ice-and-fire dual-treatment forehead spa' instead of turning you into ash. Understand now, little sis-in-law?"
Rimururu stood frozen, unable to say a word.
She had lost.
This time, she'd lost with complete conviction.
She finally understood that the man before her was utterly different from any enemy she'd ever encountered—even from the legendary Demon Kings of legend.
He possessed power more terrifying than any Demon King's might, yet he controlled it as precisely and effortlessly as his own fingers.
His body contained both "divine" and "demonic" qualities—extreme opposites that nonetheless merged perfectly, forming a kind of transcendent "existence" she couldn't comprehend.
Perhaps... Sister was right.
This man really wasn't a bad person after all?
Watching the young girl's expression shift from hostility to shock to curiosity to confusion, and finally to a hint of admiration, Cloud knew his "psychological warfare" had succeeded.
Initial Sister-in-Law Strategy: Complete!
...
One week later.
Inside the village chief's great wooden house in Kamui Kotan.
Cloud sat cross-legged by the warm fireplace, enjoying the herbal tea Nakoruru had brewed herself.
Across from him, Rimururu sat perfectly straight like a diligent student, cradling a copy of Introduction to Basic Elemental Theory that Cloud had "printed" from the system, reading with rapt attention.
...
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