I hovered in the freezing mountain air, the massive leathery expanse of my demonic wings beating a rhythmic, predatory cadence against the howling blizzard. The gaping hole in my abdomen was a raw, smoking cavity, and the purple-black lines of the Lifeline curse still rotted through my veins, ruthlessly throttling my standard recovery. If I wanted to survive this aerial dogfight, I couldn't rely on standard rest. I needed to feed. I needed to violently rip the life force straight out of her flesh to stitch my own tissues back together.
High above the snowdrifts, the fallen angel let out a frustrated, celestial shriek. Deprived of her legendary longsword, she desperately channeled the innate, ancestral magic of her high-tier Triangulum pedigree. A radiant, pale-violet light enveloped her mangled torso, rapidly sealing the bullet craters and mending her torn feathers so she could stay airborne.
FWOOSH!
I didn't give her a single second to stabilize the ledger. I flexed my wings, cutting through the midnight sky like a horizontal crimson bullet, closing the forty-foot gap in a heartbeat. I thrust the heavy iron muzzle of the Death Chant Shotgun straight toward her chest.
Seeing me approach, the apex demon snarled, her long, razor-sharp claws erupting with dark celestial energy as she sliced through the air in a desperate, lethal counter-arc meant to shred my face.
SWIPE!
The claws tore cleanly through my hooded silhouette… but the flesh dissolved into thin air.
The moment her hand traveled through the space, my modern archive training overrode the system. I had instantly cast my Illusion of Cariñosa skill. A series of hyper-realistic, flickering afterimages manifested in the swirling snow, completely mimicking my momentum and tricking her apex senses into striking an empty pocket of wind.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Before she could even register the mechanical deception, the real me materialized directly behind her blind spot. I jammed the shotgun into the soft, unarmored muscle right between her pitch-black wing joints and pulled the trigger repeatedly.
The high-density blood pellets tore into her spinal column, vaporizing chunk after chunk of her dark flesh. Because the curse was still choking my biology, my innate Lifesteal was hard-capped at that pathetic 30% efficiency… but with multiple point-blank rounds drilling into an apex target, the sheer volume of siphoned essence acted as a critical stabilizer. Tiny, localized threads of muscle inside my abdomen began to knit themselves shut, stopping the internal bleeding.
"AHHHHG!"
The fallen angel let out a wet, agonizing howl of pure pain, her wings buckling as the heavy pellets shattered her aerial balance. Realizing she was completely outmatched in a raw, close-quarter aerial skirmish against a disarming demonic anomaly, she violently dove downward, abandoning the night sky entirely.
She targeted the ground convoy like a falling missile.
Driven by absolute, bloodthirsty desperation to regain a tactical advantage, she slammed straight toward the wreckage of the Branch 1 carriages below. The remnants of the white-and-scarlet vanguard were completely exposed. With her claws extended and her remaining dark mana flaring, she lunged directly at the nearest surviving paladin, aiming to slaughter the remaining soldiers and carve her way straight toward the primary medical line… where my eldest sister, Elicia, was currently maintaining her newly boosted holy barrier.
I folded my massive leathery wings and plummeted from the midnight sky like a falling stone, tracing the dark, chaotic trajectory of the fallen angel as she descended upon the shattered remains of the Branch 1 convoy.
The view from above was a grim, mathematical ledger of absolute devastation. Of the thirty elite Luminous Knights who had marched into the northern border, ten were already lying dead, their torsos sliced cleanly in half. Twelve heavily injured vanguards were huddled inside the shallow rocky alcove, their deep gashes glowing with a vibrant, hyper-amplified emerald light. Elicia was pouring every ounce of the artificial mana pool and the 500% healing enhancement rings I had given her into keeping them from the void, successfully overriding the lingering anti-heal curse. Four cowards had deserted into the blizzards, leaving exactly four able-bodied paladins standing shoulder-to-shoulder, their white-and-scarlet shields raised to form a desperate, final perimeter around my eldest sister.
As the wind howled, one of the remaining guards glanced back at Elicia, his face completely pale with raw, existential terror as he pointed up toward my descending, hooded demonic silhouette.
"Lady Elicia, we need to retreat immediately! The parameters have collapsed! There are two high-tier demons fighting each other in the sky! If we stay here, we will be nothing but ants crushed beneath the wheel while those monstrous entities clash!" the paladin screamed over the roaring storm.
Before Elicia could even formulate a commanding response, the fallen angel struck.
She didn't use her claws… she had pulled a reserve, lower-grade manifestation of her Demon Valkyrie Longsword from her remaining dark celestial reserves. She plunged straight through the center of their makeshift defensive line like a localized meteor.
SHIIING…
The Mist Blade attribute ignited in a blinding, spectral violet flash. The blade turned into a ghostly vapor, passing effortlessly straight through the four paladins' raised shields without a single inch of resistance. The second the steel cleared their armor, it solidified with brutal, microscopic precision.
With a single, blindingly fast circular sweep, the fallen angel tore through the group. The phased steel carved a flawless line through the necks and torsos of all twelve injured knights who were still recovering on the frozen ground. They didn't even have time to scream. Their lifeforce was snuffed out in a fraction of a second, their severed remains sliding into the crimson-stained permafrost.
In a single, ruthless breath, the entire medical reserve was completely annihilated. Only the four uninjured front-line soldiers remained standing, their weapons trembling violently as the apex demon stood amidst the fresh slaughter, her crimson eyes locking directly onto Elicia.
I hit the snowbanks a millisecond later, the impact kicking up a massive cloud of white powder as my demonic wings snapped shut behind my crimson trench coat. Standing strictly between the apex killer and the sister who had no idea her "dead" sibling was the very anomaly the guards were terrified of, I raised the heavy, blood-slicked barrel of the Death Chant Shotgun, my single jade-green eye locking onto the angel through the void of my mask.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
I didn't give her another microsecond to breathe. Dropping low into a brutal, earth-bound charge, I tackled straight through the blood-stained snowdrifts, using my demonic wings to propel my weight forward with terrifying kinetic velocity. I jammed the iron barrel of the Death Chant Shotgun directly into her mangled torso and held down the trigger.
The heavy firearm roared repeatedly, violently siphoning my own blood to detonate high-density pellets inside her chest cavity. Every single blast tore her dark flesh apart, the sheer velocity of the kinetic impact leaving her core scorched and incinerated. With every trigger pull, the 30%-capped Lifesteal feedback loop hissed through my veins. Little by little, tiny fractions of her raw, apex lifeforce were forcefully ripped from her body and dragged into mine, preventing my heart from failing as the gaping hole in my own chest stubbornly refused to close.
But a Triangulum-class apex demon doesn't die quietly.
Driven by the frantic, dying desperation of a cornered beast, the fallen angel let out a guttural, blood-curdling shriek. As my shotgun blasted another crater into her ribcage, her free left hand blurred through the blizzard, her razor-sharp celestial claws gleaming with a volatile, dark violet light.
CRACK! SLASH!
The claws ripped violently across my face in a devastating, heavy sweep. The sheer, overwhelming force of the strike shattered the calcified bone of my Leech's Hollow Mask, sending jagged white fragments exploding into the snow. The heavy canvas hood of my crimson trench coat was violently shredded to tatters.
I was thrown backward into the permafrost, coughing up thick, dark blood as the severe trauma left me heavily, catastrophically injured. The freezing mountain air slapped directly against my bare, exposed skin.
The mask was entirely gone. My face was completely uncovered.
I lay gasped in the red-stained snow, my vision blurring as I desperately forced my Level 5 Healing ring to fight off the heavy physical shock. Beside me, my eldest sister, Elicia, didn't run. Even with the gruesome slaughter of the twelve injured knights fresh before her eyes, the prestigious Academy Principal stood her ground with an unyielding, military ferocity.
Using the massive reservoirs of the Level 8 Mana Pool and the Level 5 Healing Enhancement rings I had forcefully gifted her, she completely ignored the exposed, bleeding girl in the snow. She slammed her ornate staff into the ice, channeling a high-tier, radiant empowerment spell directly onto the four remaining white-and-scarlet guards.
"O, Divine Grace, arm the righteous! Divine Vanguard!" Elicia chanted, her voice a piercing, authoritative command that cut through the blizzard.
The four paladins' armor instantly erupted into a blinding, hyper-amplified emerald glow, their strength and physical parameters violently surging under her boosted magic. The sheer density of the holy light temporarily blinded the area, washing over the battlefield in a radiant wave.
Still dazed and fighting off the trauma, I squeezed my eyes shut, praying the blinding light and the swirling snow would keep her crimson eyes from locking onto my features. The four empowered guards gripped their greatswords, their newly infused strength turning their terror into lethal resolve. They completely misidentified my sixth-evolution biological scent, tracking the heavy, blood-soaked aura of my shotgun and my tattered wings.
"Forget the vampire! First, the fallen angel! Secure the commander's line!" the lead guard roared, his golden-infused blade tracking the faltering, incinerated form of the apex demon.
The blinding, emerald radiance of Elicia's boosted empowerment spell had barely settled over the snow when the lead paladin lunged forward. Armed with hyper-amplified velocity, he leaped high into the freezing air, raising his golden-fused greatsword to split the fallen angel's skull.
SWIPE.
The apex demon's counter-strike was near-invisible. Even with her torso heavily incinerated by my shotgun blasts, her survival instincts were ferocious. Her remaining hand blurred through the blizzard, her razor-sharp claws catching the knight cleanly across the throat.
The high-tier Luminous Knight was brutally decapitated.
Under normal circumstances, with a legendary High-Tier Healer like Elicia Rynd utilizing her absolute Divine Regeneration at full capacity, a severed head might have been an catastrophic hurdle, but her cells would have frantically attempted to knit, pop, and fight to grow back the missing structures. But the reality of the Lifeline attribute dictated otherwise. The millisecond the dark claws severed his flesh, the necrotic curse violently activated within the open wound. The knight's incoming healing ability was instantly capped at a miserable 30% efficiency. There was no hyper-accelerated cellular regrowth. The pale emerald light sputtered weakly against the stump of his neck, completely unable to manifest a new head. He collapsed into the permafrost, dead before his armor clanked against the ice.
"Hold the parameters!" another guard screamed, refusing to let the horror break his resolve.
He followed immediately behind his fallen comrade, raising a massive, rune-etched battleaxe to deliver a devastating overhead strike. The fallen angel hissed, thrusting her clawed hand forward to intercept the heavy steel.
CLANG… SHIIING!
The vanguard expertly turned the angle of his haft, attempting to parry her claws and deflect the kinetic force away from his vitals. But the fallen angel shifted her dark celestial mana, triggering the Mist Blade properties inherent to her very nature. Her strikes transformed into a spectral violet vapor. The moment the man tried to parry, the phased energy passed straight through the iron head of his axe and his armored forearms as if they were nothing but cold mist.
The claws solidified the microsecond they cleared his defense, slicing a massive, diagonal cavern across his chest.
He stumbled backward, gasping as his blood sprayed onto the white drifts. Once again, the Lifeline curse aggressively locked his parameters down to a 30% cap. Having absolutely no time or metabolic capacity to grow back his shredded muscles or severed arteries under such a brutal restriction, his heart gave out within seconds. He crashed face-first into the snow, the light in his eyes completely extinguishing.
The third remaining knight desperately threw his hands forward, unleashing a high-tier fireball that streaked through the midnight sky like a miniature sun. The fallen angel didn't even dodge; she violently snapped her charred, void-black wings forward, deflecting the explosive impact into a shower of harmless orange sparks.
Through the smoke, she gripped her reserve longsword by the crossguard, balancing it like a heavy javelin. With a piercing celestial shriek, she threw it forward like a spear.
WHOOSH…
The weapon traveled with terrifying velocity toward the final two paladins who were standing directly in front of Elicia. They instinctively raised their heavy white-and-scarlet shields, locking them together to take the impact. But the Mist Blade attribute flared a final time. The spear-thrown broadsword passed effortlessly straight through both physical shields, through their reinforced breastplates, and through their bodies… impaling both knights simultaneously on a single piece of steel before burying itself deep into the ice behind them.
The curse flared, their life force drained instantly, and their bodies slumped forward into the crimson drifts.
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the howling of the northern blizzard. Every single elite Luminous Knight of Branch 1 was dead. The perimeter had completely dissolved.
Only my eldest sister, Elicia, was left standing in the rocky alcove, her hands still clutching her glowing staff, completely unprotected as the incinerated apex demon turned her bloodshot, crimson eyes directly toward her. I lay just a few feet away in the snow, my face entirely uncovered, my single jade-green eye tracking the absolute finality of the battlefield as I struggled to lift my shotgun.