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BOOM!
A muffled detonation rolled out, and the Abyss Devourer's body swelled violently, then collapsed in on itself like a punctured balloon, its aura sinking with every breath. Look closely, and white smoke could be seen venting from patches all across its hide.
Plainly, Angewomon X's little trick of detonating the Grand Celestial Arrow from the inside, all its power released in one burst, had cost the Devourer dearly.
On the other front, the Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl and the rest had closed with the Abyss Predators, and Elise and the girls sent their own cards into the field as well. All three knew their role precisely: support Luke's three dragons, and let the dragons do the killing.
Twin Edge!
The vibrating Chrome Digizoid blades along both arms crossed and cut, and the Predator before WarGrowlmon took a giant X carved straight across its chest. Its answering strike landed on WarGrowlmon's armor and left not one mark behind.
Ambush!
Shhk! At WarGrowlmon's will, the assault balancer at its back crossed the whole distance between them in a flicker, drove into the carved chest, and punched out the other side.
AWROO!
Whether that Predator's luck had simply run to its end, no one could say. The Ambush proc'd its weak-point strike clean, and the beast died on one grief-cry.
Atomic Blaster!
WarGrowlmon didn't blink. It turned into the second Predator's charge with the twin cannon-ports on its chest already condensing terrible energy, and fired point-blank.
The raw impact hurled the incoming Predator away bodily, and the decomposition force riding the shockwave set about eroding everything the beast was. It fought. The fighting meant nothing. The Atomic Blaster dissolved it whole.
And almost in the same breath that WarGrowlmon instant-killed its pair, the Dragon Knight and Red-Eyes each finished their own opponents, clean and crisp.
Eight Abyss Predators, cut to two in the space of a blink.
The Storm Mermaid, the Eternal Crystal Orchid, and the other support spirits froze mid-cast, wearing the faces of card spirits questioning their entire existence. We haven't even ACTED yet and you've cleared the board?! Support WHAT, exactly?!
And so the fully charged support skills, steeped in deep and sincere resentment, were dumped wholesale onto the Lethe Spider Lily's battlefield instead. Everything was charged already. Waste not.
The incoming barrage nearly startled the Spider Lily out of her petals. For one bad moment she genuinely wondered whether a batch of traitors had cropped up among them.
Then she registered that, outside Angewomon X's duel, hers was the only battlefield still standing, and her eyes went wide with understanding. So THAT was why everyone's skills were raining down on her lane.
Like master, like spirit. If you're not a cheat-wall, you can't get through this family's door, is that it?
So the Lethe Spider Lily dug in and went all out, skills pouring like they cost nothing, and with the Orchid and the Mermaid feeding her from behind, she ground the last two Abyss Predators down into nothing, raw.
In days past, she would never have believed it. Two extra-domain beasts of her own grade, resolved in a stretch this short, by her.
So it's true even for card spirits. Until you're forced, you never learn how deep your own potential runs.
Though with the work done, the Spider Lily found she was too tired to move a stem, and the Mermaid and the Orchid behind her ran little better. Fighting Seven-Star extra-domain beasts was nothing so easy as it had just looked.
Watching all of it, the three girls didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The gap was real, and it did not taste good.
As for Silas, he came within a hair of spraying blood outright. The Abyss Devourer he'd paid so dearly to field, wounded by that angel. The eight Predators, cleared in minutes.
YOU LOT are the extra-domain beasts here!
"Damn it. Damn it. DAMN IT." Three in a row, each louder than the last, laid his state of mind out plainly. "You forced my hand. Remember that."
The field had run far past his control again, and if this dragged on, Celestial's people might genuinely arrive, and by then even running would come too late. Everyone here had to die, fast.
A flicker of genuine, flesh-deep pain crossed his face, and Silas hurled the Dark Prison Transfer Writ straight into the Abyss Devourer.
ROAR!
The instant the Writ touched the Devourer, it sank into the beast's body without the least resistance, and the wounded creature's aura began to climb. Higher, and higher, until it crested at a peak, and grudge-spirit force thick enough to touch took shape across its hide, weaving at last into phantom after phantom shaped like colossal dragons.
The dragon-phantoms had barely finished forming before countless threads of grudge condensed into psychic assault and tore toward Luke's group.
Under that unseen barrage, the three girls' faces drained white in the same instant, and Viola took it deepest of all. The girl swayed on her feet, and if Luke's hands hadn't moved fast, she'd have gone straight to the ground.
His other arm had long since been claimed by Elise. As for Iris, with nothing left to hold to against a pressure no eye could see, she could only clutch at Luke's back to keep herself upright.
Nor was it only the girls. Even the Dragon Knight, the Lethe Spider Lily, and the other spirits showed pain flickering across their faces.
"However strong your card spirits run, you Card Masters yourselves are still far, far too weak." Watching it, Silas finally tasted something like vindication. "The Writ holds within it the grudges of countless slaughtered dragon-kind. And the Devourer's Cruelty can amplify and deepen those grudges without any limit at all."
"The psychic assault inside a dragon-grudge is the condensed, twisted resentment of dragons cruelly slain. Bathe in it long enough, and every mind here collapses. You'll live out your days as idiots."
"You wanted the way out, didn't you? Then here it is. Kill this Abyss Devourer, and you may leave."
This was his last insurance. Entering the Dark Purgatory, leaving the Dark Purgatory, the simplest road for both ran through the spatial coordinates built into the Writ itself.
And the Writ now sat inside the Abyss Devourer. For Luke's group, the only road out left in the world was to slay it.
The Black Gate still gaped wide. All he needed was to buy time, enough time for something stronger to cross over, and then Luke's group died here regardless of anything. Beyond the Dark Purgatory lay the alien dimensions, and if the alien dimensions lacked for anything, it was not beasts.
And even as Silas spoke, an abnormal flush was climbing Viola's face, deepening with every passing breath. Elise and Iris ran the same, cheeks burning scarlet, plainly in real pain.
"NOISY BITCH." Luke's voice had gone cold and flat, and in the next moment the purple cross of Heaven's Charge swept the field, and a swath of the grudge-born dragon-phantoms was annihilated before a single one of them could scream.