But the fight had already started. Nefit wielded a massive weapon, more like an oversized slab of solid iron than a blade. She gave a friendly warning.
"I'm going in. If you can't handle it, tell me to hold back."
Luna nodded and smiled. "It's fine. I'm actually pretty strong too."
"Alright, then here I go."
In the next instant, Nefit vanished, leaving only an afterimage. Nearly half of the reinforced arena shattered under her step, bursting into Crack as Shard flew everywhere.
She accelerated past Mach five, breaking the sound barrier. Even faster was the Greatsword in her hands, wrapped in violent air currents as black energy surged from her body. She swung down with full force.
A deafening explosion followed. Debris, dust, and shockwaves obscured the view, but Fei'er Li saw it clearly and her mouth fell open. Luna had not dodged.
She stood still and raised her pale hands, catching the strike with her palms. Bare-handed.
Wait, wasn't she an archer? Even if drawing a bow required strength, blocking a fully charged blow from a close-combat Warrior like this made no sense. Only now did Fei'er Li realize that Luna's role in Hero Party was seriously off.
On the arena, Nefit smiled when she saw this. "I knew it the moment I saw you. You're special, and strong."
"And your strength really is impressive."
"It's not as much as yours. Luna just used a bit of technique."
With hair lightly floating under an electromagnetic field and lightning flickering across her body, Luna smiled back. They had both found the right place.
Both felt the same strange satisfaction and laughed at the same time, then immediately went all out against each other. Black scale-like patterns appeared on Nefit's body as she swung again, the Battle Aura shockwave splitting the arena and smashing into a suddenly raised ice wall.
Then came Luna's fighting style, fully close combat with bare hands. Her glowing palms clashed directly with solid steel, each impact shaking the ground like a small quake.
"Electric current drive, thirty million volts."
"Charged Blade!"
Using her hand like a blade, wrapped in blazing Lightning Magic, she sliced through the giant sword as if cutting oil at Gold Rank. Nefit froze for a brief moment, sensing something shared with her through the fight.
After hearing the move names and feeling that rising emotion, Nefit paused, then smiled again a few seconds later. She understood. Gripping the broken hilt, black scales grew thicker, her hair lengthened, and small horns emerged.
She stepped forward heavily as dark Battle Aura surged outward, forming a dragon-shaped aura full of savage intent. "World-ending. Endless Blade!"
The broken sword extended into a massive construct of pure Battle Aura, black and claw-like, tearing through the air with Rend. Luna answered in kind, delighted by such a gift.
Lightning shaped a towering presence as the shadow of a tree spread across the world. The triangular bud mark on her forehead became a true Holy Tree war crest.
"Electric current drive, fifty million volts."
"Charged Blade.World Tree sword stance!"
The two attacks collided, their power different in nature yet equal in force. The shockwaves sliced apart even the ice wall formed by Icelis. Wind roared past, tangling Fei'er Li's hair and thoughts alike.
For a moment, her mind felt disconnected from her body. What exactly had those two just shouted?
One of them swung a Dragon-Shaped Greatsword with full force, the wind it stirred up howling like Eighteen Layers of Hell. The other used the edge of her hand as a blade, her knuckles and fingers as sharp points, her strikes fierce and fast as lightning, every hit landing solidly on flesh.
After simply blasting each other's arms apart and watching them grow back, the two of them laughed and stepped down from the ring together. "Just to confirm, your ability is called Electric Current Drive?" "Yeah. It's just a simple trick that uses lightning Magic to stimulate body cells and boost strength."
Then what the hell is a Charged Blade supposed to be?! Fei'er Li forcibly swallowed that kind of complaint, and only after Luna explained did she understand that it was just a different form of lightning Magic and a secret technique for strengthening the body. Some kind of ancient secret art of the Elven Race that might or might not really exist, and she decided to believe that explanation.
First, this person was the treasured darling and little ancestor of the Elven Race, so it would not be strange if such a secret art really existed and she could learn it. Second, she simply preferred to believe this version, because it was hard to say whether a bunch of lunatics brawling wildly was better or worse than the already broken state of the world.
As for why Nefit somehow drifted into the same style halfway through the fight, she did not really dare think too hard about it. "Electric Current Drive, ten million volts of power. Magnetic Heavenrend Blade!"
Nefit's voice suddenly rang out from behind her, along with an expanding electromagnetic field that made Fei'er Li turn around at once, her expression turning ugly. No way, was this actually contagious, and the real thing too?
Watching Nefit get excited and start messing around again, only to be suppressed barehanded by Icelis, all she could do was let out a helpless sigh. Forget it, weird is weird, and that is fine.
At least Electric Current Drive still seemed acceptable, and not as outrageous as Magnetic Field Rotation. "The collection progress is about halfway done. Next, there's only the priest, the saintess, and the mage who still can't be found anywhere."
Once those two were collected, she could give the Chosen Hero who would soon descend four starting Pocket Beasts. Even though, in theory, most of the monsters the Chosen Hero was supposed to fight in her past life had inexplicably disappeared, and it was not even certain whether the Chosen Hero would appear at all.
But the threat still existed. For example, those Evil God who had shown up in the original story, and possibly in large numbers, were problems so big that only the Chosen Hero could deal with them, which meant the Chosen Hero was still very likely to appear.
Especially a few days ago, when the sun shone brightly, a nearby Church of Holy Light church also glowed at the same time. Even the book in her hand gradually revealed the outline of the Holy Sword, which meant she still had to keep collecting people.
There was a reason why collecting had been so slow over the past decades. The timeline gap was simply too long, because who transmigrates into a novel decades before the original story even begins?
When she first arrived, at least three of them had not even been born yet, and one had so little information that there was only a title. How was she supposed to find anyone like that?
After returning to her room, Fei'er Li began her daily routine of Reorganization the information and intelligence she had gathered. It included important Church of Holy Light church locations across the entire The Continent, as well as various candidate families.
What she paid the most attention to recently was the Church of Holy Light, which was about to start the ceremony to elect a new pope and saintess. Because Daylight cannot be seen by the eye and has no fixed form, yet light walking in the world needs a visible body for people to see.
In plain terms, aside from Daylight itself, they had to choose a current leader of the Church of Holy Light from between the traditional factions of Gold Rank and Dawn. At the same time, according to the divine visage, they would first select the saintess and pope internally, and only then begin competition.
As for the previous pope, it was said that for unknown reasons he had already returned to the side of the god to serve the light. That part did not matter, because the Gold Rank faction had quickly pushed forward someone who looked kind and benevolent, but whom Fei'er Li immediately felt was not a good person.
The reason was simple. His name was Elfido.
"Forget all that. What matters more is the priest, the saintess. How exactly did this person die anyway?" "She just died outright during a cult riot, and there were no clear details at all."
What drove her crazy was this point. In the past few years, she and Icelis had cleared so many cultist strongholds alone, yet they still found no related clues.
Not every Abyss Church was that powerful. To be honest, only those that could directly receive support from an Evil God's Authority could be considered Hell-level threats.
The more she investigated, the stranger it felt. If most Abyss Church were this weak, then how on earth did they pull off something as absurd as burning the holy city in the original story?
The answer was actually easy to guess. "An insider."
That was the only possibility. Especially after confirming last time that Elfido was something from the Abyss, this possibility became even stronger, particularly now that he had changed his face and continued on as pope.