Chu Tian’s mind surged with wild emotion.
Before him stood the young girl knight, silver armor drenched in blood, yet her fighting spirit undiminished.
Her sky-blue eyes shone with a startling brilliance.
A surge of unprecedented desire for conquest, mingled with a twisted affection and admiration, roiled in his chest.
The space around him is subtly distorted, radiating unsettling waves.
The newly mastered power of triple fusion—lightning’s ferocity, darkness’s enigma, and space’s unpredictability—circulated and resonated within him in a brand new way.
The awkwardness he’d felt before while merging the forces had vanished, replaced by a smoothness as natural as moving his own arm.
It felt as if some invisible barrier had been pierced.
He sensed his power ascending.
That raging battle spirit allowed him to break through mid-fight!
The power after fusion was far greater than he had anticipated.
***
On the other hand, Su Nian’s assault showed not the slightest pause.
Within the girl’s petite body seemed to reside boundless strength—each sword strike heavy and forceful, forcing Chu Tian to focus with all his might.
The Wind Elemental Holy Dragon, Little Green, roared in the sky, its massive wings stirring up destructive blue-green storms with every beat, gouging deep trenches in the ground below.
Meanwhile, the Purple Domain Spirit Cat, Little Violet, darted across the Battlefield as streaks of violet lightning, weaving through with Spatial Rift Blade and Lightning Chains at impossible angles, impossible to guard against.
Even though Chu Tian’s power had just advanced, he still felt unprecedented pressure, having to face Su Nian and her two Saint-level Contract Beasts attacking relentlessly at once.
This combination was hundreds of times more troublesome than he had imagined.
His clothing had long been reduced to tatters in the fierce battle, revealing firm muscle and crisscrossing scars beneath.
Some wounds were so deep the bone showed, dark red blood constantly seeping out, staining the rock beneath his feet even darker.
A trace of blood slowly dripped from the corner of his mouth.
His breath became heavy and urgent.
If this went on…
Was it possible he might actually lose to this disobedient little wildcat?
That thought gnawed at his pride.
At that moment, an extremely faint but soul-achingly familiar fluctuation abruptly echoed in his heart.
“Ma… ster…”
The voice was broken, breath as thin as gossamer.
“I… I… can… still… fight…”
It was Da Hei!
Chu Tian’s heart gave a jolt.
Earlier, to block Su Nian’s lethal strike imbued with Holy Light and wrath, Da Hei’s Soulfire had been nearly purified to nothing, leaving only a wisp of fragile flame, forcibly withdrawn into his Soul Prism to barely linger on.
“In… the prism… those… filthy… souls… as… kindling…”
“I… can… rekindle… the unyielding… battle soul!”
Da Hei’s voice was still frail, yet carried an indomitable resolve.
Chu Tian instantly understood its meaning.
Within his Soul Prism were stored vast numbers of souls—Mossenburg’s undead, Monster Forest’s beasts, and even wicked spirits his men had gathered from across the land.
Day and night, these souls were burned and refined by his Soulfire in the prism, generating endless pure Negative Emotion Value, one of his main sources of Annoyance Value.
Each soul represented a stream of continuous “income.”
Now, Da Hei wanted to use them as fuel, forcibly re-forming its soul body to fight one final desperate battle?
This meant he would permanently lose a massive amount of future Annoyance Value income.
The cost was nothing short of disastrous.
But if he didn’t do this, he might truly perish here today.
Besides, Da Hei had ended up in this state saving him.
He, Chu Tian, was not one to be miserly or narrow-minded!
“Alright!”
“As your master, I permit it! Consume all souls in the prism, and let your battle soul blaze anew!”
A flash of mad determination lit Chu Tian’s eyes—he hesitated no more.
He would risk it all!
With a single thought, the Soul Prism at his chest erupted with a piercing, ghostly radiance!
Across its surface, countless twisted faces writhed in pain, issuing silent, agonized howls.
In the next instant, surging torrents of soul energy, like a black flood breaking its banks, surged forth, carrying fragments of shattered souls, rushing madly to where Da Hei had dissipated before!
Those wicked spirits and monster souls, tormented for countless days and nights within the prism, now became the purest, most primal soul fuel, forcibly injected, compressed, and reforged by an invisible, tyrannical force!
“Bzzz—!”
A deep, muffled vibration shook the Blackstone Gorge.
Upon the once-empty ground, thick black motes gathered as if summoned.
A knight’s figure, more solid, larger, and exuding an overwhelming aura of ferocity and death, slowly took shape from the black light, rising to its feet step by step!
Its heavy black armor was now engraved with even more intricate and eerie dark red patterns, as if molten lava flowed within.
In its hollow eye sockets, the two flames of Soulfire were no longer the previous ghostly blue, but had become a deep, abyssal red, enough to chill the soul, filled with savagery, rage, and a will to destroy everything!
Da Hei had returned and he was even stronger than before!
A terrifying pressure swept outward like a tide.
The tide of battle reversed in an instant!
What had been a three-on-one advantage for Su Nian suddenly turned into a perilous three-on-two!
***
“Not good!”
Alarms blared in Su Nian’s mind, a chill shooting from her soles to the crown of her head.
She could clearly sense that the Undead Knight who had risen again was now several times stronger than before; the aura of death and brutality was nearly tangible.
Adding to that the troublesome horned demon who had broken through during battle and whose powers after fusion had become even more inscrutable and difficult—
In an instant, the advantage Su Nian’s side had fought for was utterly gone.
The strength of both sides now seemed nearly even—and perhaps even tilting against her!
The resurrected, terrifying Da Hei fixed its abyssal red Soulfire upon Su Nian, who was locked in close combat with Chu Tian, and gave a low, bestial roar.
It ignored Little Green and Little Violet in the air, brandishing its newly forged, ominous greatsword and charging straight for Su Nian!
Su Nian gritted her silver-white teeth.
If it were before, when she still had plenty of mana, she could have used light-based magic that countered the undead to easily handle this terrifying knight.
But now, all the magic power in her body had long been drained to the last drop by that damned [Lover’s Prison Collar] on her neck.
Now, she could only rely on her Saint-level knight’s physique to go head-to-head with the now even stronger Undead Knight!
“Clang—!”
Su Nian’s refined steel longsword clashed brutally with Da Hei’s rune-engraved greatsword, exploding in a deafening clang of metal and a shower of sparks!
The massive shockwave numbed Su Nian’s tiger’s mouth and left her arms weak and aching.
“Clang—! Clang—! Clang—!”
“Boom! Boom! Boom—!”
***
Deep in Blackstone Gorge.
Weapon clashes, violent magical explosions, the furious roars of the dragon, the sharp shrieks of the spirit cat—all echoed madly within the narrow gorge, reverberating without end.
Whether it was the Wind Elemental Holy Dragon soaring through the sky, spewing destructive breath, or the graceful spirit cat, manipulating lightning and spatial power while darting unpredictably through the Battlefield, or the undead knight risen once more, its fighting spirit and murderous aura fiercer than ever or that horned demon, fusing darkness, lightning, and spatial power, growing stronger with every clash.
And of course, the girl clad in Saint Radiance Knight Armor (Female)—clearly a Magic Girl Idol shining in the public eye, yet now, sword in hand, locked in ferocious melee with undead and demons, her beauty undiminished.
Every battle here, every being present, was enough to shatter the understanding of any ordinary person.
If any commoner from Academy City, or those self-styled well-informed magicians, appeared here to witness this godlike combat—
Their jaws would surely drop to the floor in shock.