Chapter 584: Seraphina’s Last Stand

’Not that it truly matters for the grand alliance,’ Leona thought with her fingers white-knuckled around her dagger. ’We made a mutual non-aggression pact with Aki before the drop so our standing is already secure but damn it all, I am not rolling over like a kicked dog without leaving a scratch on that pretty golden chestplate—’

She lowered her center of gravity, preparing to throw her life into a desperate, all-or-nothing blitz...

"We yield."

The words were spoken so casually that Leona’s boots slipped on the metal.

Valerius didn’t draw a sword as he casually raised both hands in the air, his slender palms open toward the sky, offering an easy polite smile that belonged in a drawing room rather than a war zone.

Beside him, Rook let out a low grunt and raised both of his hands as well.

WHOOOSH!

The spatial extraction arrays pinned to their armor flared with brilliant white luminescence.

Before Leona could even take a single forward step, the spatial spell swallowed them whole with their forms dissolving into shimmering pillars of light that rocketed into the upper stratosphere.

Leona stood completely frozen, her dagger still pointed at the empty flagstones.

"Huh?"

She blinked once and then she blinked twice.

"Huh?!" she yelled, lowering her blades in pure, unadulterated exasperation. "Are you kidding me?! He had all that power humming behind his teeth, and he just... threw his hands up and walked away?! What kind of high-born bastard just gives up without swinging his sword?! What a monumental waste of good mana!"

"You look like you just got dragged through a rock crusher, Leona."

The dry voice drifted from her flank as Leona turned her head to see Kara sauntering over from the edge of the crater.

Her dark coat was draped casually over her shoulders with her single working hand resting loosely in the pocket of her tailored trousers and her face wearing that same infuriating unbothered smirk that looked like she was on an evening stroll through a garden.

"Haaah..."

Leona let out a long shuddering breath, sliding her trench-machete back into the leather sheath at her hip with a dull clack.

"Look who’s talking," Leona grunted, leaning heavily against her left knee and wincing as her cracked ribs protested. "You’re walking around like you didn’t just turn an Indus titan into a pancake. Though... damn it, Miss Kara. What about Maya?"

Leona’s face darkened genuine panic flashing in her hazel eyes.

"Her core power vanished right at the end of the skirmish... Gareth had a full metal-arsenal deployed, and Maya was using that insane technique, I think she took catastrophic internal bleeding, Kara. Did she—"

Kara casually waved her right hand dismissively, rolling her uninjured shoulder.

"Calm your nerves," Kara said smoothly. "Before the World Council initiated the territory compression stuff and dragged us all up to this ring, I dropped into the lower gully and stabilized her meridians, spliced the torn channels, flushed the internal pooling out of her lungs, and made sure her body could circulate mana... Whatever spell she was doing, she took enough recoil to kill a war rhino, but her body is built like a granite wall so she’s completely out of danger."

Up in the air above them, a soft emerald-tinted breeze began to spiral downward.

Aki gently lowered herself from the sky with her boots touching down onto the star-iron floor without making a sound.

Her composite bow was slung across her back and her slender hands resting against her thighs while her azure hair dusted with fine quartz silt.

"Phewwwww~"

A massive trembling sigh of pure relief escaped Aki’s chest.

Her smaller shoulders sagged with her fingers unclamping from her weapon strap as she pressed a trembling gloved palm over her racing heart.

’Thank goodness...’ Aki thought, her azure eyes welling with emotional warmth. ’Maya is safe. If she had died because I was too clumsy to handle the Australis skirmish quickly, I never would have forgiven myself...’

"Now then," Kara murmured, her tone shifting slightly as she turned her head toward the eastern perimeter. "There’s only one matter left to settle."

Leona and Aki turned their eyes toward the edge of the platform as the heat was still radiating from the blackened stone, but it was thinning rapidly.

Standing alone amidst the scorched flagstones was Seraphina Bloom.

Her long celestial waves of silver-white hair were rapidly losing their brilliant luster, flickering violently between pure divine silver and her native fiery crimson.

Her breathing came in shallow, agonizing hitches, her scorched leather cuirass stained with streaks of black soot and drying red.

Her delicate porcelain face was pale as chalk, save for the dark bruising circles under her eyes.

The Primordial Spirit fusion was reaching its limit as the overwhelming divine fire was no longer radiating outward... it was eating her internal stamina from within, turning her channels into brittle carbonized thread.

WHOOSH!

Kara drifted forward, hovering a few inches above the floor, closing the distance until she stood barely ten paces from the trembling noblewoman.

Kara tilted her head with her dark eyes locking onto Seraphina’s flickering gaze.

"So," Kara asked, her voice carrying a quiet ease, "you’re the one who dismantled Crown Prince Alexander, huh?"

Seraphina’s chin snapped upward.

Even with her legs shaking so violently that her knees clicked beneath her dueling leathers, her pride refused to yield an inch.

She planted her boots into the cracked star-iron, forcing her scorched weapon up into a stance.

"So what if I am?" Seraphina challenged with her voice hoarse and the ethereal dual-toned spirit echo peeling away to reveal her raw strained human vocal cords. "Are you going to step across this line, Kara White?"

Kara looked at the trembling point of the rapier, then raised an eyebrow.

"Are you sure about that?" Kara asked. "Your mana channels are running on dry fumes. In about five seconds, the spiritual backlash is going to collapse your nervous system, and you won’t even have the strength to hold that piece of metal."

Seraphina clamped her jaw shut, biting her lower lip until the metallic taste of blood flooded her tongue.

’I know that!’ Seraphina raged internally, her vision swimming in sickening rings of yellow and gray. ’I know I have barely three heartbeats left before my core locks up!’

Under any rational assessment, yielding right here was the obvious choice.

House Bloom had already secured an astronomical political triumph by bringing down the Crown’s prince so there was no dishonor in bowing out after reaching the final circle.

’Except it isn’t just an opponent standing in front of me,’ Seraphina thought, her crimson-silver eyes blazing with fierce desperate determination. ’It’s Silas.’

How could she ever demand his respect... How could she ever stand beside him as an equal partner, or look him in the eye when she confronted him about this female disguise if she dropped her sword the moment she felt pain?

She was Seraphina Bloom.

She was the heir to the Primordial Flame and she needed him to see her as an unbreakable woman of iron.

"House Bloom..." Seraphina choked out, forcing her spine straight, "...never surrenders!"

WHOOSH!

With a final desperate burst of spiritual willpower, Seraphina flared her core.

A thin fragile tongue of silver-white fire ignited along the blade of her rapier as she lunged forward.

STEP... STUMBLE.

Her acceleration failed instantly with her right boot dragged heavily through the basalt grit and her momentum dying before she could even clear five paces.

Mid-stride, the celestial silver in her hair snapped off with the violent finality of an extinguished candle.

Her locks collapsed into pure crimson, and the primordial spirit link shattered as the sudden severance tore through her nervous system like a thousand white-hot needles.

"Gah–!"

A thick spray of crimson burst from Seraphina’s lips with her weapon clattering loudly across the metal floor as her knees gave out completely.

SWOOSH!

In a single fluid blink of acceleration, Kara closed the gap.

Her right arm reached out, catching Seraphina firmly around her slender waist before her face could hit the stone.

Seraphina froze, hanging limply against Kara’s right hip with her head resting against Kara’s shoulder.

Up close, the burning sulfur of the battlefield vanished, replaced by the unmistakably clean scent of her perfume.

’You really pushed yourself right to the edge, didn’t you?’ Silas thought silently behind Kara’s impassive eyes, looking down at the girl’s blood-spattered exhausted face with an imperceptible softening in his gaze.

Seraphina blinked up at her.

The overwhelming physical proximity, the lingering realization of his identity, and the absurdity of being held in this bridal-like grip by his female disguise hit her all at once.

"Um..."

A violent burning flush exploded across Seraphina’s cheeks, turning her entire face completely, unmistakably scarlet.

"Y-You..." Seraphina croaked, mortified to the core of her being.

PING!

Her tournament transponder engaged its emergency sequence as Seraphina’s body dissolved into millions of warm, dancing white particles.

A hundred yards to the north, in the shadowed ruins of the battle between Tyon and the Europa representative, Tyon’s unconscious body dissolved into light simultaneously.

With one final glaring look that held equal measures of embarrassment, fury, and secret affection, Seraphina vanished into the wind.

Kara casually lowered her arm, waving her hand through the dissipating particles.

BZZZZZZZZT!

From the floating optical relays suspended thousands of feet above the ring, the grand administrative trumpet blared across the entire expanse of Sector Forty-Four.

"FINAL TOURNAMENT RESOLUTION."

"All hostile factions have been eliminated from the active theater."

"The surviving combatants on the field represent the coalition of the First Princess’s Group and the Sovereign Territory of Amazonia, operating under a formal treaty of mutual alliance."

"By decree of the World Council... the Continental Sovereign Tournament of Sector Forty-Four has officially concluded!"

"THE VICTORS ARE THE COALITION OF THE FIRST PRINCESS AND AMAZONIA!"

Silence settled over the platform for two seconds then, Leona let out a strange choked wheeze from the back of her throat.

Her hazel eyes went wide, looking down at her battered boots with a deep flustered pink creeping onto her bruised cheeks as reality slammed into her skull.

’W-we did it...’

Aki stood frozen beside her with her small mouth opened and closed in pure shock.

’I... uh...’ Aki’s thoughts stumbled over each other. ’We won? We actually won the entire thing?! Against the Directorate? Against Albion? Against... against everyone?!’

Kara floated over, touching down lightly three paces away, folding her single working arm across her chest with an amused smirk.

"Well?" Kara chuckled, raising an eyebrow. "What’s with the dumb expression, Princess? You just took the tournament so celebrate a little."

Aki’s cheeks flushed a bright delicate crimson.

"H-How am I supposed to celebrate?!" Aki stammered, flustered down to her fingernails. "In the royal palace, there are formal procedures! You recite the ancestral victory ode, you offer thanks to the World King, you bow at forty-five degrees—"

"Protocols are for dead politicians," Kara teased with her smirk widening. "You know how to celebrate. Stop thinking and just do it."

Aki’s face turned completely red.

Her cheeks puffed out into an adorable rounded pout as she looked at Leona, who was holding her sides and laughing through her bruises, and then looked down at the gloves humming softly on her hands.

The relief, the joy, the wild thrill of survival finally shattered her sheltered royal decorum.

WHOOSH!

A sudden sharp pop of emerald wind-mana detonated beneath the soles of Aki’s boots.

She launched herself three feet into the air, throwing both of her fists toward the purple heavens with every shred of breath left in her chest.

"YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!" Aki screamed at the top of her lungs, her joyous triumphant shout ringing across the silent shattered ruins of the world.

...

BEEP... BEEP... BEEP.

The rhythmic chime of a diagnostic terminal hummed softly in the quiet room.

"Haah!"

Maya Da Silva’s eyes flew wide open as her torso violently jerked upward.

"Agh—damn it!"

A sharp tearing agony flashed through her thoracic wall, forcing a harsh hiss through her clamped teeth as she fell back against the stiff starch-scented pillows of the recovery bed.

"I would strongly advise against sudden exertion," a calm voice sounded from the corner.

Maya’s head snapped to the right, her amber eyes instantly narrowing into sharp slits despite the blinding headache throbbing behind her temples.

Sitting on a simple wooden chair beside the medical cart was Valerius Sterling.

The blond man was still wearing his pristine golden armor, though he had removed his heavy gauntlets, resting his pale hands casually across his knees.

He looked immaculate, unaffected by the dirt or blood of the wasteland, watching her with a calm curiosity.

Maya looked around the room, taking in the sterile white walls, the rows of empty medical cots, and the glowing runic vitals monitor mounted above her head.

"You’re in the eastern recovery pavilion," Valerius stated, his voice quiet, devoid of the usual aristocratic arrogance. "The tournament concluded roughly forty-five minutes ago and your coalition claimed the victory."

Maya shifted her weight slightly to the right, testing the tension in her ribs.