The compressed blade of fire, frost, and crackling lightning—the signature Elemental Barrage of the Naberius clan's Spell of Triskelion—bit deep into the unarmored flesh of Jin's neck.
Akane Naberius drove all her momentum into the execution, expecting the sickening resistance of severing bone. Instead, the blade met dead air.
With a sharp crack, the physical body of the intruder violently ruptured into a thick cloud of white smoke. Akane stumbled forward as her tri-elemental blade cleaved clean through a splintered wooden log that clattered uselessly onto the bloody stones.
"How?" Akane yelled, spinning on her heel, her eyes scanning the chaos.
A dozen feet away, the real Jin materialized from the shadow of a crumbling pillar. Akane didn't hesitate. As the Ace of the clan, she surged forward to become the vanguard, unleashing a torrent of simultaneous ice shards, searing flames, and lightning strikes.
Seeing her sister take the duty of co-ordenation, the Heir, Ruri Naberius her eyes glowing with psychic energy as she mapped the chaotic battlefield below.
Under Akane's relentless assault, the tide of the battle began to turn.
The Naberius forces finally found their anchor. Behind Akane's destructive threefold magic, the surviving Knights and Rooks reformed their defensive lines. They pushed forward in a coordinated wedge, striking from all sides.
Jin's shadow clones immediately felt the pressure. An encroaching wall of shields and demonic magic boxed them in. The clones danced backward, weaving water dragons and wind scythes to deflect the heavy strikes, but the sheer volume of attacks was overwhelming. Clones popped into white smoke one after another under the crushing blows of war hammers and focused magic blasts.
The real Jin held the deadlock in the center, catching a Knight's heavy sword with a hardened, bare hand, before snapping a brutal front kick into the man's throat. But the moment Akane's tri-elemental magic scorched the ground beneath him, he didn't tank it. He smoothly ducked under a lightning bolt, threw a cluster of explosive tags at her feet to blind her, and vanished seamlessly into a fresh cluster of identical clones.
The Naberius elites were gaining ground. They were crushing the clones, executing flawless team combinations, and clearing the courtyard. They felt the momentum shifting. They were winning.
But they couldn't secure the victory.
Every time Akane or a heavy hitter cornered the real body, he simply wasn't there anymore. He was smoke and misdirection. Then, from their blind spots, a clone would detonate, or the brawler would suddenly emerge from the throng of fakes, his skin hardened into jagged armor, caving in a Bishop's chest with a single, instinctual strike before fading back into the illusions. It was like trying to strangle the wind.
They were winning ground but loosing people.
Suddenly, a massive tremor shook the estate.
The ground buckled beneath their boots. From the eastern side, a deafening crash drowned out the battle. A three-story stone wall exploded outward in a shower of boulders and choking dust.
Through the rubble charged a colossal, three-headed Cerberus, its paws cratering the ground as it roared, shaking the very air of the courtyard.
Standing atop the ruins of the wall, looking down at the slaughter, was the Patriarch. Lord Taito Naberius had arrived.
He didn't look at the intruder. His furious, calculating gaze snapped directly to the roof where the Heir was perched.
"What is the situation, Ruri?" Taito's voice boomed, cutting through the din of combat.
"Only one of the entities below is the real body!" Ruri called back, her eyes tracking a clone detonating near the fountain. "The rest are fragile duplicates! He fights in two completely contradictory patterns. The first relies on magic—perhaps Yokai senjutsu. He fights smart. He lays traps, uses tools, and blankets the area in hypnosis and illusions. We can't corner him because he uses clones to mask his movements."
Below, a clone threw a barrage of shuriken, only to be impaled by a Knight's spear and burst into smoke but another clone snuck in taking opportunitie and taking knight dominate arm .
"And the second?" Taito demanded.
"A pure brawler," Ruri reported, her voice tightening as she recalled the sheer brutality of it. "When cornered, or when he wants to secure a kill, his main body came to front. His skin takes on a jagged, darkened pattern, immensely increasing his hardness. He fights on pure, instinct with endless stamina and monstrous physical strength. Akane has landed glancing hits, but that jagged armor regenerates. His raw Touki is overwhelming."
Ruri stood taller, her confidence swelling in the presence of the Clan Head. "When we push his brawler form back, he changes his shape to look identical to the fragile clones and hides among them! The clones have zero durability. He can produce them indefinitely, but only up to a certain number at a time!"
Taito's eyes narrowed as he analyzed the shifting sea of smoke and blood below.
"So," Taito rumbled, his voice dark with absolute authority. "We just have to corner him."
Taito looked down at the massive, snarling hellhound waiting below the rubble.
"Go. Attack."
The Cerberus didn't need to be told twice. The massive beast launched itself into the fray like a runaway siege engine. A shadow clone wove a hasty sequence of seals, exhaling a massive sphere of fire directly at the hound. The Cerberus didn't even blink. Highly resistant to elemental magic, the beast simply charged through the roaring flames, its jaws snapping shut around the clone's torso, instantly popping it into a cloud of useless smoke.
"Ruri," Taito commanded without looking at her. "Go down and join the others."
As Ruri leaped from the roof to rejoin the vanguard, Taito raised his hand, casting a wide-area telepathic communication spell that linked to every surviving Naberius member in the courtyard.
"The Cerberus will force the main body out," Taito's voice echoed in their minds. "It will ignore his elemental tricks. Hold your formations and get ready to pounce the second he shows his true face."
Taito lowered his hand, watching the three-headed beast carve a path of destruction through the remaining clones.
He only has two choices, Taito thought coldly to himself. He lets the hound run wild, decreasing his clone count faster than he can weave them, leaving him exposed. Or he steps out in his armored form to deal with the beast himself.
Taito's eyes tracked a cluster of clones scattering from the beast's snapping jaws.
Now. Come on out.