I looked at the place Artoria stood a moment ago, then turned back toward the ink solution.
Liquified mana acted as a base, my blood as a catalyst—rendering this solution compatible with me—and finally, Dragon Marrow as a core ingredient. Its very nature was to absorb and store pure mana from the atmosphere.
Three steps carried me to the vat. Inside it, my ink had deepened from dark blue to midnight. Bubbles sizzled across its surface in thick, restless clusters.
All three ingredients were compatible but highly volatile. Left as they were, Dragon Marrow would overpower the other two in moments, destabilizing this solution and rendering it useless.
I needed something else. A stabilizer, something to fuse these three ingredients harmoniously without any single one dominating.
My eyes went to [Avalon] on the low table nearby. I walked over and closed my grip around it.
Without a change in expression, I submerged Artoria's golden scabbard into the solution—exactly as a blacksmith would when quenching a blade.
What I did, however, was more accurately reverse quenching.
[Avalon] was the Everdistant Utopia of King Arthur. That same sheath was responsible for suppressing Artoria's dragon physiology, locking her physical age in her teens.
If it could suppress a pure-blooded dragon's physiology, it could certainly suppress the Dragon Marrow in this solution.
I watched as Avalon met that ink. Vapors of bluish-black rushed from the vat, and every bubble that had cluttered its surface dissolved in moments.
A glance toward the clock told me that—
9 minutes remained.
...
..
.
A magic circle of violet flashed, illuminating the night for an instant and stretching shadows of some splintered and shattered trees nearby.
Artoria walked out from that light. Her first step crunched against cracked earth and overturned soil.
She surveyed her surroundings. Craters releasing residual smoke and mana signatures numbered in the hundreds around her.
Some distance away, to her back, a temple was perched on a small, rising cliff.
The Ryuudou Temple.
Fissures ran across that cliff—certainly from earlier clashes. A spiraling trench was carved to her right, stretching for hundreds of meters, the crushed land and felled trees of its aftermath still visible.
She stood in the forest behind Ryuudou Temple.
Artoria didn't have long to take in her surroundings before the ground beneath her feet trembled as sounds of continuous detonations rang out from her left.
Magic circles upon magic circles rotated to life in the sky, interlocking with one another and releasing beams of mana so compressed that each discharge illuminated the forest below like a lighthouse.
Far to her left, Medea floated mid-air. Some distance away, standing between crushed trees with no cover left, was Archer.
His composite bow was aimed at Medea, releasing arrow after arrow at her. In response, she aimed her circles at him, hurling spears of light down one after another.
"Haah..."
Artoria inhaled a slow breath. Then, she took a step forward.
Gold bloomed beneath her heels.
Grass flattened, trees lost their boundaries like smeared paint. Sky above remained static, yet the ground moved so fast that the cracked earth beneath her became a mere blur of uniform brown.
Craters passed her by in quick succession. Soil exploded upward in her wake like a geyser. Sparks showered from Invisible Air's tip as she brought it up.
Archer was a distant, blurred silhouette a moment ago.
Then, a flash. One of Medea's beams swept the battlefield, and both his and her faces were lit in luminous violet. Archer's eyes constricted to pinholes; Invisible Air was already an inch from his neck, displaced air howling in its wake.
He didn't react. Couldn't. Yet, his body moved anyway—a fractional tilt, pure instinct dragging him out of her wind's trajectory.
Invisible Air hissed where his neck had been an instant ago, shearing a distant tree in two. Artoria continued forward, Archer shrinking behind her in a blur.
She arrested herself. Gold flared at her heels once more, her body halting its forward momentum so violently that her heart crashed against her ribs. The world swung on a pivot—smeared green, smeared brown—and then she was facing toward him again.
Kanshou and Bakuya traced into Archer's grip, his composite bow dissolving into blue particles.
Artoria was already moving.
Two Artorias existed in this forest for a single heartbeat—the real one already a meter ahead, while a fading outline of blue and gold dissolved like smoke where she had stood.
Invisible Air and Kanshou collided, sparks exploding along their edges. Dust flattened behind Archer as he was pushed back relentlessly by her momentum.
Knowing he couldn't withstand her accumulated force, Archer twisted his torso and pushed Invisible Air sideways with Kanshou, breaking aside in a roll.
Residual momentum carried Artoria forward, carving two deep furrows beneath her heels before she came to a halt meters away.
She had just turned when Archer entered her peripheral vision. Kanshou and Bakuya had dissolved from his grip; a composite bow was in his hold once more, already nocked with three arrows, string pulled taut.
No one moved. Somewhere above, Medea's circles continued to rotate, their hum reduced to a distant thrum.
Archer loosed his arrows. Each arrow was saturated with tremendous mana, each aimed at a different blind spot, spread in a fan that no single parry could intercept.
Artoria did not parry.
She erupted.
Gold. Brown. Green. Gold.
The forest became a slideshow of frozen moments—trees mid-shatter, arrows mid-air, soil mid-fountain—all illuminated by the golden pulse of her mana, each burst a camera flash capturing a single frame of devastation.
And then she had reached him.
Archer tried to block with his bow. Invisible Air cleaved through it like paper. A fraction of a second before it could pierce his heart, Kanshou and Bakuya traced into existence and crisscrossed over his heart.
BOOOM!
He flew back—crashing through trees, crushing soil, rolling for meters—before vanishing into the distance. Artoria did not give chase. Instead, she looked up at Medea.
The Caster held a container in hand. Magic circles flashed around it one after another, and right before Artoria's eyes, it vanished from Medea's grip.
"Caster... have you sent the final ingredient to Master?" Artoria asked.
Medea wiped sweat from her forehead, her floatation wavering for just an instant.
"Yes. It's done. Now, we just wait."
"And hold them back." Artoria spoke, lowering her gaze.
Archer was walking back toward them, Kanshou and Bakuya in hand.
Above him, across the clouds, ten golden portals flashed open. Then hundreds. Then thousands.
A Pegasus neighed.
Another fight was already underway—under the moon, a winged horse wove between golden portals, diving toward a luminous ship where a single figure sat enthroned.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[5 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Alright... I want to ask, should I continue to write with these new techniques or go back to the old way?
Have a delightful day, everyone!