The quadruped beast, born of Rex’s severed dark reptilian-like tail, lunged at Azae with a feral expression. Its jaws bared wide open, awaiting the flesh and bones of the padin before it.

  Azae reeled in her weapon. She twirled the sword in her hands. The buckler melded into her sword and the sword then lost its shape and form too. The clump of bckish-grey goo morphed into a scythe in the next second, the instance before the jaws of the quadruped beast snapped shut on her. She brought the scythe around, pivoting along with a twirl of her body.

  The beast split into half, passing Azae by harmlessly and lifelessly, though the lifeless aspect sted only for a brief moment. The two halves of the beast came back together. A tinge of displeasure and a hint of annoyance creased her cheeks. She split the scythe in half and morphed them into a pair of swords that were neither too long nor too short.

  On one hand, Azae deflected the quadruped beast’s immediate retaliation. On the other hand, she fended off Rex’s sneaky assault.

  Rex tutted. “You didn’t forget about me,” he chuckled. “I’m honoured.”

  Azae hummed with a barely audible tone and her gaze expressed her indifference towards Rex’s taunt.

  Rex was the opposite of indifference. Azae’s ck of change in her expression was getting on his nerves even more. The skin around his right arm bckened as he charged at Azae. He wound his arm with his fist clenched and his veins bulging across the back of his palm. If one looked at it closely, the space around his fist was trembling and shivering.

  Of course, Azae noticed that subtle effect. She turned most of her attention to Rex, giving the quadruped beast her bare minimum focus.

  Rex threw his fist. Layers of air were shattered like gss as his fist travelled towards Azae’s face.

  Azae kicked the beast away and spun away from Rex’s punch. However, that punch of his encompassed more than just his fist. The air around his fist carried with it his intent to hurt. The air touched Azae’s visor and the air rippled. She was thrown off her feet and sent bouncing across the ground.

  “We’ll see how much longer you can keep up with that false composure of yours!” Rex snarled in glee.

  Azae didn’t bounce far. Her swords turned into a spear, which she then stabbed into the ground to prevent herself from hurtling too far. She recovered her poise and focus swiftly and retaliated by throwing the spear, which turned into a battle axe mid-flight.

  Rex had severely underestimated his opponent. She regained her advantage and grace faster than he liked to admit. Not only that, she even returned the favour in quick succession. His mind froze for a moment at his opponent’s prowess and the axe was not stopping. Beckoned by the danger that his master was facing, the quadruped beast jumped in front of the axe and took the blow.

  Only when the beast was torn by the axe, Rex recovered from his shock and disbelief. Even then, he wasn’t able to get a solid hold of himself. His opponent, the Scarlet Bde, had even the field by using her Divine Gift. Rex was currently a mortal like any other human. His Demonic power would not save him from a fatal blow, which his opponent was more than capable of inflicting. With these odds against him, he saw his chances of winning getting slimmer and slimmer as seconds went by.

  “If you’re thinking about surrendering, that ship has long sailed,” Azae said as she strode towards Rex.

  “Who’s surrendering here!?” Rex baulked. Azae’s axe was right in front of him, stuck to the ground after the quadruped beast had taken the blow for him. He reached out his hand to snatch away his opponent’s weapon but it disappeared into bck smoke and reappeared in Azae’s hand.

  “Get your own,” Azae muttered as she turned her axe into a longsword. A slight grin formed across her lips with fingers tracing the sword’s edge without cutting herself on it.

  Rex was about to spit out his rage but held it in. He knew there was no point in losing his composure in front of a dangerous opponent such as Azae. There was only one way he could come out of this victorious: to wholly accept the Demonic power within him.

  “Let us end this charade. You and I both know there’s only one outcome to this.”

  Rex snorted. “I agree. There’s only one outcome. There can only be one.” A bck mist began oozing out of the pores all over his boy. His appearance became even more distorted than it already was. His muscles grew along with his disfiguration. Spikes protruded from his back, horns sprouted from his head, and a pair of wings manifested behind him.

  “You fool.” Azae sighed. “You just made yourself even more vulnerable by assimiting with the Demonic essence within you.”

  Rex snarled incoherently and lunged at Azae. He took a swipe at her—

  —but she dodged low and countered with a ssh, taking his left arm.

  Instead of groaning or shrieking in pain, Rex swung his other arm at Azae while a new one took the pce of the freshly severed arm. Meanwhile, the severed arm grew into a quadruped beast that pounced at Azae.

  The sword in Azae’s hand morphed into a bde in the shape of a ring, a chakram. She wore the chakram around her like a hoop and spun, cutting the quadruped beast and also Rex’s fist. She quickly shaped it into an axe with a long handle and brought it down on the beast.

  Rex’s fist came again. The wound was still present, bleeding dark reddish blood profusely, but Rex’s current state of mind had made him detached from anything but Azae. Only she existed in his current state of mind.

  Her weapon then turned into a double-bded nce on both ends, which she used to stop Rex’s fist by impaling him by the wrist. She spun the nce, cutting off Rex’s arm, and swung the bde towards his face.

  A sphere of dark red energy quickly formed in Rex’s mouth and was unleashed just as rapidly as its conjuration. The beam of dark red energy shattered the nce into splinters but it didn’t stay destroyed for long.

  With a flick of her hand, Azae’s weapon was back in her hand in one piece and it had taken the form of a chain with barbed bdes running along the body.

  Rex opened his mouth once more as dark red energy began accumuting at once.

  Azae wasn’t so gracious to let the energy accumute, however. She whipped her newly-shaped weapon and destroyed the growing energy sphere in Rex’s mouth.

  Rex let out a groan that was mixed with vexation and rage while stumbling back a few short steps.

  Azae reeled in the chain before snapping it back at Rex’s face.

  A roar burst out of Rex’s gaping mouth. He caught the chain with his jaws, biting it down without a care to the barbed bdes. Blood trickled from his mouth but he bit down harder.

  If Azae was annoyed by this trick of his, she did not show it. Her aloof expression did not falter. She let go of her weapon and willed it out of existence. Before she could conjure it back in her hand, Rex was already flying towards her, way before she dispelled her weapon.

  Azae held her breath and straightened her fingers. A thin golden glow covered her hand. She thrust her fingers towards Rex as if her hand was a bde.

  The stunt caught Rex by surprise. He did not think Azae was capable of such a trick. His momentum was carrying him forward hard. There was no way for him to stop in time. The best he could do was canting his head but that was not enough. Though he avoided having his whole head pierced, Azae’s fingers cut deeply across his cheek.

  Her weapon reappeared in the form of a sword. Letting not a second lose, she swung upwards with all of her might. In her current stance, she wasn’t able to exude much strength despite giving her all in that swing but it inflicted a considerable amount of damage on Rex.

  His right ear and the horns growing out of the right side of his head were all cut off with that single swing. It nearly took a portion of his head if he had been a second slower in dodging.

  Azae’s triumphant retaliation was no bearing on her victory. Having swung her sword from an awkward position, she left herself vulnerable to her opponent’s counterattack.

  No words came out of Rex’s lips. Only a look of triumph was present as he swung his newly-grown arm at Azae with barely any distance between them. A mere single second would be all that was needed for the cw to reach Azae.

  However, Rex’s cw only barely grazed Azae’s helmet. She had moved out of harm’s way in less than a second. Her weapon turned into a scythe while she was swinging it as a sword. The sudden shift in weight accelerated the momentum of her swing and thereby, increased the speed. It took only half a second for her bde to reach Rex’s newly-grown limb.

  The sudden loss of his limb as he was thrown forward by the weight of his swing, Rex lost all of his bance and he toppled.

  Azae dodged low, twirled on her toes, and brought her scythe around a wide arc, nearly a full circle.

  Red as bck as the night sky of a blood moon spttered everywhere. Tendrils grew from the bleeding gaping stumps. The two halves that were Rex were trying to reattach themselves back into one but Azae did not let it just happen in front of her eyes.

  She kicked away the lower half of Rex’s severed body and pinned the upper half to the ground with her weapon she had now transformed into a spear with a head that was designed to fix its mark on a surface. She then pointed a finger at Rex.

  Tendrils and limbs burst out from Rex’s lower half. It crawled towards Azae rapidly. Or rather, it was crawling towards the upper half but Azae was in its way.

  The finger pointed at Rex was then shifted to the lower half. Her finger glowed radiantly and sharply. Beams shot out from the ceiling of the dome, striking the lower half of Rex’s body like thunder.

  Nothing was left of it afterwards.

  Rex knew nothing of the spell or skill Azae had just cast but he knew it was of the Divine. He felt it as the beams disintegrated his severed lower half. It was a direct exposure to a Divine’s power.

  Azae lowered her finger and heaved a huge breath as if she had just moved a massive load across a long distance in a single round without breaks in between. Her gaze fastened on Rex as she gathered her breaths. An Apostle she might be, but it was still a huge burden on her body to invoke the Divine’s power directly unto a mark.

  Once her breaths had steadied, she raised her finger and at the end of it was Rex’s despairing face.

  “Wait! Wait! Wait!!” Rex shouted with a distorted voice and his hands thrown above his head. “I yield! I yield!”

  “Unbelievable,” Azae scoffed as she stared at Rex with a gaze that belittled his entire existence. “Face your death with some dignity at least.”

  “Please, spare me. I have much to offer. I know things. A lot of things. I possess knowledge that you don’t even know existed. What say you, Scarlet Bde?”

  “Don’t move,” Azae replied.

  “Y-yes?”

  “I don’t want to miss. It’s a very tasking spell.”

  “W-what…? You’re not going to spare me? B-but you said—”

  “I don’t trust people who only change their mind at the brink of their demise.”

  Rex fell silent and gritted his teeth.

  Azae said not a single word more and smote Rex with the authority of her Divine Guardian. Solid beams of light descended upon Rex and smothered him in a dazzling radiance, leaving not a single speck of dust of his existence afterwards.