Controlling so many tornadoes seemed to strain the Anemo Hypostasis.
The tornadoes moved slowly.
Inside the windfield, Diluc didn't feel true, immediate danger—his stamina was just draining quickly.
Kaito had been right.
Even if you understood its patterns, dodging everything still meant one thing:
You had to shatter its core before your own strength ran out.
The tornadoes gradually dispersed.
In the air, countless wind-element crystal orbs condensed and hung like drifting stars.
The core dropped again.
Diluc lifted his claymore and charged.
Kaito, however, couldn't spare the time to add damage.
He spread his wind glider, jumped into the chaotic currents sweeping through the ruin, and collected the wind-element orbs one by one.
If those orbs were left here, the Anemo Hypostasis would absorb them and use the stored element for a wide-area Swirl attack.
At that point, there would be no dodging—
Only taking it head-on.
Windwail Moon's Pull, followed by Gathering Gale Formation.
A combo he knew all too well.
Diluc glanced at him but didn't ask.
Kaito had his reasons.
After unleashing such a large-scale attack, the Anemo Hypostasis's time to regenerate its inert shells had clearly lengthened.
Once the shells formed again, it blinked—
And appeared beside Kaito.
It rose upright.
The inert shells assembled like two enormous palms and slammed down together.
Kaito rolled aside at once, barely slipping out from under the blow.
The Anemo Hypostasis immediately shifted patterns—its shells spinning rapidly, hammering down toward both of them in relentless succession.
They dodged in a hurry, and when there was no space left, they raised their claymores to guard, taking the lesser damage instead of something fatal.
Then the core fell again.
And when it could move again, the Hypostasis shot into the sky—
Several streams of compressed wind plunged down like falling blades.
If the two of them hadn't been familiar with elemental sight—able to catch the traces of where the strikes would land—they wouldn't have been able to evade in time.
The Anemo Hypostasis cycled through its patterns, one after another, unable to finish them.
It spun into a wind drill again—
And kept attacking.
"It really does seem like those are all its patterns," Lumine said quietly from the edge, watching.
"Do we join in?" Paimon asked.
Lumine shook her head. She didn't want to be dead weight.
Calmly, she said, "If Master Diluc makes a mistake, Kaito can save him. Add one more person, and he might not be able to save everyone."
…
An hour later—
Diluc's stamina was visibly failing.
Even with the fierce wind howling across the ruin, he was overheating. Sweat poured down his body, and his breathing turned heavy.
For him, an hour of fighting wasn't normally that long.
But the wind resistance here was brutal. Every step took far more effort than it would anywhere else.
"Kaito! We're about done here, aren't we?" he shouted.
He knew Kaito had a burst Geo attack—he'd used it last time against the Electro Hypostasis.
"Wait for the next Windwail Moon's Pull," Kaito called back.
His stamina wasn't better than Diluc's, but Kaito wielded two elements—and one of them was Anemo.
In this environment, his movements didn't cost him nearly as much.
"Windwail Moon's Pull… that's the tornado pattern?" Diluc narrowed his eyes.
Kaito needed time to charge.
After the Hypostasis used Windwail Moon's Pull, it had a long fatigue window.
"Exactly," Kaito said.
As if on cue—
Both of them retreated sharply.
The Anemo Hypostasis, shells reassembled, spiraled high into the sky again and brought down another storm of tornadoes.
"Good thing it's not smart," Diluc muttered, weaving through the wind. His clothes snapped loudly in the gale. "It can't control this many tornadoes at once, and it doesn't even think to reduce the number."
"And it's in a hurry to die."
If it wanted Windwail Moon's Pull—
Fine.
Let it pull.
"Two artifacts," Diluc thought. "Find a way to 'acquire' them."
"At worst… I'll bring Kaito two bottles of my best vintage when we get back."
He waited for that familiar moment—the Hypostasis's exhaustion, the core dropping.
That would be its end.
At the same time, he couldn't help thinking about those two artifacts—how ridiculously durable they made him feel.
From the fight so far, his crit chance also seemed higher. Every so often, a surge of power would rise up in his strikes.
The tornadoes slowly began to fade.
And at that very moment—
A vast Geo energy erupted inside the wind's own domain.
Kaito gripped Wolf's Gravestone with both hands, its tip aimed at the Anemo Hypostasis's falling core.
Golden, flowing, sand-like Geo swirled around his body and poured into the sword's elemental conduction device.
The dark red blade's channels lit up one after another with Geo.
Wolf's Gravestone vibrated gently.
As if it had resonated with the land itself.
The ground of the plain trembled. Pebbles and fallen twigs rolled. Birds shot up in panic, squirrels darted away in fear.
Brilliant Geo light flared across the ruin and the surrounding earth.
The windfield of this ancient ruin began to disperse.
In this instant—
The guest seized the host's territory.
Kaito, bathed in Geo light, lifted his blade.
With a deep, rumbling roar—
Something seemed to be dragged up from beneath the earth by the sword he raised.
Like a land-dragon turning in its sleep.
"Geo Dragonvein!" Kaito roared.
A huge Geo dragon burst from the ground, soaring across the air above the ruin.
With Kaito's downward swing—
It plunged straight toward the core.
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