Purgatory Dragon's Blazing Hell collided with the White Rose Garden.
The clash between fire and ice filled the battlefield with enormous amounts of steam, completely obscuring God Serena's vision and causing him to lose track of Ultear.
Then, without warning, dozens of magical crystal spheres appeared around him from every direction.
"Damn it!"
The spheres immediately began closing in.
By the time Serena realized what was happening, it was already too late.
Boom—!
Art was an explosion.
Every crystal sphere detonated at point-blank range against Serena's body.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The explosions came one after another without pause.
Unlike the eight elemental Dragon Slayer attributes Serena possessed, Ultear's Time Magic was something he could not devour.
His only option was to activate the Diamond Dragon's power across his entire body as quickly as possible, covering himself in a layer of hardened dragon scales and enduring the barrage head-on.
"Impossible... This is impossible..."
For perhaps the first time, Serena's confidence was beginning to genuinely waver.
...
Elsewhere, Kagura's battle with Kotetsu was also approaching its conclusion.
Kotetsu had repeatedly used Steel Transmutation to create enormous scythes and other weapons, but every one of them had been shattered the moment it reached Kagura by Archenemy's Severing Form.
"Looks like close combat is my only option... Steel Transmutation!"
Kotetsu transmuted his own body into a lightweight metallic form, leaped high into the air, and brought an enormous sword down toward Kagura with both hands.
The attack was extremely fast.
He drew the sword and launched into the descending strike almost as a single motion.
Kagura did not try to meet it head-on.
She simply stepped backward twice.
Kotetsu immediately followed with another sequence.
A lunging sweep flowed into an upward cut, and after the rising slash, he snapped his wrist over and brought the blade down again at tremendous speed.
Kagura blocked with Archenemy.
Kotetsu did not stop.
He stepped through into a reverse rising slash, turned his wrist with the momentum, and swept horizontally.
Kagura parried every strike with ease.
"Too slow."
Compared to the pressure she had experienced fighting the three sword spirits and Erza, Kotetsu's swordsmanship was painfully sluggish.
The taunt visibly irritated him.
His attacks became heavier and more forceful, but Kagura remained completely composed.
When Kotetsu jumped forward and brought his sword down toward her again—
"Gravity Suppression: Full Power!"
A massive Gravity Magic circle appeared overhead.
The sudden and extreme increase in gravity caught Kotetsu completely off guard. His balance collapsed, forcing him into a half-crouch.
Kagura seized the opening instantly.
Archenemy stabbed diagonally into his back before she flicked the blade upward.
A gruesome wound opened across Kotetsu's back.
Against an ordinary human, the fight would effectively have ended there.
A deep stab through the back would tear through muscle, cripple movement and power generation, and might even damage the spine.
Then Kotetsu stood up again.
Kagura blinked awkwardly.
"Right... I forgot you're a doll."
The wound still affected him, but nowhere near as badly as Kagura had expected.
He was still able to raise his sword and block her horizontal slash.
Their weapons locked together.
Kagura immediately applied pressure and drove into a powerful sweep, but Kotetsu reacted quickly enough to bend backward and narrowly evade it.
At the same time, he used Steel Transmutation to create a hollow metal tube roughly the same diameter as Archenemy's blade, intending to trap the sword and wrench it away.
Unfortunately for him, Archenemy was far sharper than he expected.
The blade sliced through the steel tube as easily as if it were cutting vegetables.
"That sword is absurdly sharp..."
Kotetsu hurriedly retreated several steps as Kagura's reverse rising slash followed immediately.
He had no doubt that if the blade caught him, he would be split in two from the bottom up.
Archenemy had not been forged from Dramon Steel, the toughest and sharpest metal they currently knew, but from mithril.
Yet the material was no longer what truly made the weapon extraordinary.
Something had changed during its forging.
Archenemy had become a cursed blade capable of absorbing resentment and negative emotions to continuously strengthen itself.
After feeding on the despair of humans, dragons, and magical beasts across several battlefields during the Dragon King Festival, the sword had long since surpassed even weapons forged from Dramon Steel.
By this point, Kotetsu had more or less accepted defeat.
He was also well aware of what was happening over the Deltara Mountains.
The Gold Dragon God Viernes was being completely overwhelmed.
Raizel had already switched to [Take Over: Examon.], becoming a streak of crimson light as he repeatedly collided with Viernes's massive metallic body.
Kagura noticed Kotetsu's hesitation.
Her offensive immediately intensified.
She moved.
In the next instant, Kagura had already turned and rushed straight toward him, Archenemy descending in a storm of blade shadows that left him barely enough room to defend.
Faced with that relentless assault, Kotetsu decided to risk everything on one final attack.
He first forced enough distance between them, then formed a hand seal.
"Steel Transmutation: Metal Sword!"
Kotetsu's entire body transformed into a colossal metal blade large enough to blot out the sky as it came crashing down toward Kagura.
Against the enormous sword, Kagura looked almost insignificant.
An ordinary person might have frozen on the spot.
Kagura had once stood before Aldoron.
Compared to the Wood Dragon God, this was hardly enough to shake her.
She calmly returned Archenemy to its sheath.
The moment the blade disappeared, a vast tide of killing intent, resentment, and other negative emotions flooded the battlefield.
Amid that suffocating pressure came faint echoes—the roars of dragons, the screams of humans, and the enraged cries of magical beasts.
Inside the sheath, Archenemy's blade slowly turned crimson.
Kagura's own presence changed with it.
Her aura became razor-sharp, mirroring the sword she wielded.
Before, Kagura had resembled a peerless weapon still hidden inside its sheath, all of its murderous intent tightly contained.
Now she and Archenemy were the same.
A lethal blade drawn bare.
Crimson light flashed.
Archenemy had already left its sheath before anyone could see Kagura draw.
A crescent of scarlet sword light swept toward the enormous metal blade.
Although Kotetsu had transformed himself into a sword, he could still see.
By the time Kagura's blade moved and that crimson radiance entered his vision, even his normally expressionless face changed completely.
Kotetsu had been created for the sword.
Yet never in his existence had he imagined a blade could be this beautiful.
He was certain of one thing.
He had never seen anything like it.
A crimson blade curved with the elegance of a peerless beauty's waist, graceful enough to captivate the eye.
But a beautiful sword was still a sword.
And swords existed to kill.
The crimson arc carried overwhelming killing intent, its path impossible to read as the blade seemed to tear through everything before it.
The gigantic metal sword was severed cleanly in half.
As the crimson light passed through him, Kotetsu felt no regret.
'If I'm going to lose... then losing to a swordswoman like this, and to a blade like that, isn't shameful.'
When the colossal metal sword had appeared, Kagura had not moved a single step.
And when it was destroyed, she still had not moved.
She calmly slid Archenemy back into its sheath.
Behind her, the gigantic sword slowly dissolved.
Kotetsu's doll body reappeared—split cleanly in two by Archenemy.