Chapter 1200. Decades of Experience Against Eternity

Chapter 1200: 1200. Decades of Experience Against Eternity

They moved as one.

It was not the desperate scramble of survivors but the synchronized execution of two masters. They launched their assault from opposite flanks, creating a pincer movement designed to shatter any single point of focus.

Valentina became the storm; Morwenna became the blade that guided it.

FWOOOOOM SHHHHIIIIII!

Valentina’s grimoire didn’t just hover; it screamed. The ancient tome levitated beside her shoulder, its pages flipping with supernatural fury. FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP, each page flaring with luminous, burning sigils.

Her fingers danced through the air like a conductor leading a symphony of destruction. Through her dual simultaneous grimoire technique, she unleashed a torrent of opposing elements.

Waves of infernal crimson fire and jagged, cerulean ice twisted around each other in a lethal, coiling vortex.

This wasn’t standard elemental casting. In most mages, fire melts ice; ice smothers flame.

But Valentina’s mana was different; it was disciplined, pressurized, and absolute. The flames licked along the frozen surfaces without melting them, while the ice hardened along the edges of the fire without being consumed.

It was a braided current of elemental paradox, a technique that would take a prodigy a decade to grasp, which she had forced into submission in six years through sheer, unadulterated stubbornness.

WHIRRRRR CRACKLE!

Beneath the leading edge of that elemental hurricane, Morwenna struck. She moved with the terrifying economy of motion that only thirty years of combat instruction could produce.

She was low to the ground, her boots finding purchase on the blood-slicked debris without hesitation. Her blade caught the dying torchlight in short, lethal arcs.

SHING. SHING. SHING.

She wasn’t swinging wildly; she was herding. Each feint, each precise cut aimed at his tendons or his guard, was designed to force Xerollion to shift his weight, to open a millimeter of space, to react.

She was a predator corralling prey into the path of a blizzard.

Xerollion met the onslaught with something he hadn’t shown all day: genuine alertness. The casual cruelty in his stance vanished, replaced by a coiled, predatory stillness.

BOOM. CLANG. CRACK.

His Full Potential Adaptation roared to life, his mind becoming a supercomputer processing two distinct, high-level threat vectors simultaneously.

’Dual source engagement detected, his mind catalogued with cold precision.’

’Elemental grimoire casting layered against hyper-efficient close-quarters blade work.’

’Two independent threat vectors running in parallel.’

’Adaptation protocols engaged: adjusting for thermal variance and kinetic trajectory simultaneously.’

For the first time, something akin to satisfaction flickered in his thoughts. Apollo had been convicted without craft, all heart, and no technique.

Elliot had been raw power without discipline, a blunt instrument. Evelyn had been speed without the substance to back it up.

But Valentina and Morwenna?

They brought something terrifyingly beautiful: decades of accumulated experience layered over flawless skill. They were not just fighters; they were living weapons.

A small, distant part of him felt something approaching regret the way a collector might regret crushing a priceless work of art because he knew that even this masterpiece would not be enough to stop him.

Morwenna lunged, her blade whistling toward his throat.

SST!

Xerollion didn’t retreat; he simply tilted his head by an inch, the steel grazing his mask with a shower of sparks.

TCHHH!

In the same heartbeat, Valentina sent a concentrated lance of braided frost fire screaming toward his chest.

KRA KOOOOM!

Xerollion’s telekinetic barrier flared. The fireball struck his barrier and detonated against the corridor wall instead, sending chunks of stone raining down like shrapnel.

CRUNCH.

One shard embedded itself in the wall beside Morwenna’s head as she twisted mid-lunge, her reflexes saving her from being decapitated by her own debris.

He caught Morwenna’s next strike on his bare forearm, the enchanted steel sparking against his skin while his free hand swept outward, catching one of Valentina’s secondary ice spikes and redirecting its momentum into the ground.

CRACK SHATTER.

The floor exploded beneath them as the redirected magic tore through the masonry.

"A reasonably good partnership," Xerollion said, his voice calm despite the chaos of ice shards and flames whipping around him.

His eyes remained fixed on them through the smoke, cold and unblinking. "The coordination is impressive..."

"The discipline is... admirable."

He stepped into Morwenna’s guard, forcing her to abort a killing thrust, then pivoted to face Valentina’s next incantation. "But you both already know this isn’t going to be sufficient..."

"You are bringing decades of experience to a fight against eternity."

Morwenna said nothing. Silence was her weapon, a controlled void that allowed her to focus entirely on the mechanics of slaughter.

Her blade swept in a viciously low arc toward his ankles, a strike not meant to kill but to sever his connection to the ground.

Simultaneously, Valentina answered his taunt not with words, but with a devastating compound spell.

KRA KOOOOOM!

A spinning lance of jagged ice, wrapped in a writhing cocoon of contained lightning, shrieked through the air.

ZZZZT SHHHH!

The spell was launched at a precise, lethal angle, engineered to arrive at the exact millisecond Morwenna’s blade forced Xerollion to commit his weight to a defensive pivot.

It was a trap built of physics and timing, an extremely well-coordinated gambit for two women who had never trained together in their entire lives.

Xerollion’s eyes narrowed. ’Synchronized tactical execution... high-level coordination...’

Even as he twisted his body with supernatural fluidity to clear the strike, his mind was already calculating. He met the ice lance with a short, violent burst of telekinetic pressure.

CRACK SHATTER!

The lance detonated several feet short of its target, sending fragments of frozen lightning scattering across the stone like deadly glass confetti.

WHOOSH.

He didn’t wait for the debris to settle. He used the half-second of distraction to close the distance on Morwenna.

He moved like a shadow given mass, testing her guard with two lightning-fast strikes of his own.

CLANG! CLANG!

The sound of steel meeting telekinetic force rang through the corridor like a funeral bell. Morwenna caught the first strike on the flat of her blade and rolled her wrist with practiced grace, redirecting the second past her shoulder.

She gave ground exactly as far as necessary, not an inch more, maintaining the perfect distance between her life and his wrath.

The moment she regained her footing, she launched a brutal low sweep aimed at his ankles.

WHIP!

It was a strike meant to upend a giant. Xerollion was forced to leave the ground entirely for a fraction of a second, his boots losing contact with the blood-slicked tile.

’Now.’

Valentina’s next casting arrived in that same stolen heartbeat. A compressed sphere of raw, violet arcane force screamed across the corridor.

VROOOOM!

It clipped Xerollion’s side while he was still airborne, the impact sending him skidding several feet across the broken tiles.

SKREEEEE.

The sound of his boots dragging against stone echoed as he fought to maintain his balance.

For several exchanges, the two women tested him like wolves testing the hide of a dragon. They fought separately, probing his defenses, before finally finding their combined rhythm.

Morwenna feinted high with a diagonal slash that forced his guard upward, then abruptly dropped into what her soldiers called the Nightwing Guard, a low, coiled defensive stance built to absorb a devastating counter blow while keeping the blade positioned for an immediate, lethal riposte.

Behind her, Valentina layered the trap: a rolling wall of frost materialized, thick and opaque, cutting off his escape routes.

FROOOOOSH.

Xerollion was forced into a binary choice: burn through the frost wall or maneuver around it. Both options would cost him the one thing he couldn’t afford to lose time.

He chose to dominate both.

BOOM!

With a primal burst of telekinetic force, he shattered the frost wall. Shards of ice exploded outward like shrapnel.

SHING!

He stepped directly into Morwenna’s waiting riposte, a strike he anticipated a half second later than she expected.

Instead of letting the blade pierce his ribs, he caught the steel against his forearm. The impact was so violent it sent a shockwave through Morwenna’s arm, the force hard enough to numb her fingers around the hilt.

’Damn it,’ Morwenna thought, her pulse hammering against her ribs. ’He’s reading the timing...’

’He’s not just reacting; he’s predicting.’

But twenty years of blood-soaked muscle memory refused to let a numbed hand become a fatal opening. Without breaking her stance, she adjusted her grip with a grunt of exertion and answered immediately.

She twisted her wrist in a desperate, reversed cut. The enchanted steel bit deep.

SQUELCH.

A shallow but clean line opened across Xerollion’s forearm, crimson blood welling up instantly and trickling down his skin.

It was a small victory, a single drop of blood in an ocean of slaughter, but it was proof: he could bleed.