Chapter 95: The Saintess Takes the Field

The air over the eastern courtyard of the refinery didn’t merely warm; it ignited.

The heavy rainfall, which had been drenching Sector 4 for hours, vaporized instantly as it approached within fifty yards of the eastern gates. Plumes of scalding white steam hissed violently off the asphalt, blinding the surviving Vanguard Coalition engineers who were huddled terrified behind their reinforced inner blast doors.

"You worthless, incompetent insects!" a furious, distorted voice echoed through the boiling haze.

Stepping through the ruined perimeter wall was Apex Guild’s second A-Tier Commander, Ignis the Pyromancer.

He was a tall, lean man with wild, crimson-dyed hair and eyes that burned like superheated coals. Clad in a lightweight, heat-resistant combat suit lined with glowing orange mana-conduits, he hovered three feet above the ground, supported by twin jets of roaring, white-hot flame shooting from his boots.

Floating around his upper torso were six high-purity fire elemental cores, each spinning rapidly and emitting an intense, blinding radiance that melted the nearby steel fencing into liquid slag. Ignis stared down at the street ahead, his face twisted in a snarl of pure rage.

He saw his fellow commander, "Ironclad" Vance, slumped, bleeding against an overturned truck. He saw over a hundred Apex contractors retreating in utter disarray, completely terrified by three dark iron giants and a shadow phantom that seemed to strike from nowhere.

"A-Tier Vance... brought down by summoned constructs?" Ignis spat, his voice laced with venomous contempt. "Pathetic! I don’t care what kind of rogue guild or high-tier anomaly deployed you monsters here! In this sector, Apex Guild’s word is law!"

Ignis threw his arms wide. The six spinning fire cores surrounding him flared with blinding intensity.

[HIGH-TIER MANA FLUX DETECTED]

[Target: A-Rank Pyromancer Ignis]

[Spell Activation: Hellfire Carpet - Grand Abyssal Domain]

[Output: Superheated Plasma Surge (3,200°C)]

"Vaporize!" Ignis shrieked.

A massive, tidal wave of roaring, white-hot flame erupted from his outstretched palms. It was an apocalyptic wall of fire thirty feet high and a hundred feet wide, surging down the narrow avenue like an unstoppable river of molten gold. The asphalt buckled and boiled, iron streetlights dissolved in seconds, and the surrounding concrete walls cracked under the sudden, catastrophic thermal expansion.

The heat was so intense that even the Heavy Vanguard Knights two hundred yards away braced their adamantine tower shields, their pale-blue soul-flames flickering as the ambient air turned into a furnace. They immediately grounded their feet, using the leftover kinetic force from Vance’s attack to construct a massive wall of pure kinetic energy to fight the ocean of white flames.

Even with that, they were against an A-Tier elementalist using various elemental cores as fuel. It wasn’t going to be an easy fight. As for the Shadow Assassin, he had retreated back to Raphael’s side, clearly dangered by the flames.

...

High above the inferno, on the elevated catwalk of the industrial silo, Raphael stood completely unbothered. The roaring heat wave didn’t even singe a single thread of his coat; his personal spatial barrier naturally bent the thermal energy around his frame.

Beside him, Vanessa stepped forward.

She stepped off the catwalk, her white hooded mantle and dark rose-thorn battle dress fluttering gracefully around her as she descended straight into the heart of the roaring firestorm.

THUM.

The moment her boots touched the boiling asphalt, a wave of profound, absolute stillness washed over the street.

Vanessa raised her right hand, holding the staff horizontally before her. The intricate, dark-thorny circular head of the staff flared, and its central, hyper-dense core of royal purple light gave off a low, resonant chime that echoed above the roaring flames.

[A-TIER SKILL ACTIVATED: GRAVITATIONAL OVERWRITE]

BOOM!

A dome of deep, shimmering purple gravitational light erupted outward from Vanessa’s staff, expanding instantly to encompass the entire avenue. The moment the thirty-foot wall of roaring white-hot fire hit the edge of her purple dome, they stopped.

It was an uncanny, terrifying sight. The massive tidal wave of 3,200-degree plasma was violently crushed downward by an invisible, multi-ton gravitational weight. The roaring fire was pinned directly against the street, flattened into a thin, harmless sheet of flickering orange light before being completely extinguished under the absolute physical pressure.

The boiling steam dissolved, the blinding heat vanished, and within less than three seconds, the raging inferno that threatened to incinerate an entire block was reduced to faint, harmless wisps of grey smoke rising from the blackened asphalt.

Ignis’s jaw dropped, while the jets of fire supporting his boots flickered wildly, nearly causing him to fall out of the sky.

"What... what did you just do?!" Ignis gasped, his wild eyes fixing on the solitary figure standing in the center of the smoke. "My Hellfire Carpet... it was crushed?!"

Vanessa stepped through the fading smoke, her high-collared black bodice and white hooded mantle looking pristine, spotless, and completely untouched by a single speck of ash. Her glowing violet eyes locked onto the floating pyromancer with a cold, terrifying elegance that made Ignis’s blood run cold.

She held her staff in one hand, the base tapping lightly against the scorched concrete.

CLINK.

"Your flames are noisy, crude, and utterly lacking in refined structure," Vanessa said smoothly, her voice carrying clearly across the quieted street. "Is this the pinnacle of humanity’s A-Tier pyromancy? How disappointing."

Ignis’s face flushed with a mixture of sheer embarrassment and blinding rage. His veins bulged along his neck as his mana core surged to its absolute limit, the six fire elemental cores around him spinning so fast they turned into a solid ring of blinding, white-hot energy.

"You arrogant bitch!" Ignis screamed, pointing all six cores directly at her chest. "I am a high-ranking contractor of Apex Guild! I’ll reduce your pretty face to ash!"

"You will try," Vanessa whispered, her violet eyes flashing with dark, unyielding majesty.

High above the battlefield, Raphael rested his gauntleted hand on the silo railing, a faint, proud smile gracing his features beneath his hood as he watched his True Dark Saintess take complete control of the domain.

"Show him the weight of a true Saintess, Vanessa," Raphael murmured into the quiet night.