The moment the words left her lips, the flames that had been coiling around Alise's limbs vanished. She raised her rapier before her chest with both hands, and magic power began pouring out of her in a wild surge.
"Burn, burn, burn—full flame output!"
"Scarlet Stitchwort!"
Flames even fiercer than before erupted outward. What had only wrapped around her arms and legs instantly engulfed her entire body, turning her into a human blaze as she took a step forward.
"Kid, do you need me to wait for you?"
"…No. My magic will keep up."
Still slightly stunned by the sheer force of Alise's spell, Duncan paused for half a beat before shaking his head.
"Good! Then I'm going in!"
She took a second step.
Her figure was already in front of Andares.
Only a faint trail of lingering fire was left burning where she had just stood beside Duncan.
Perhaps sensing that this living flame had found its weak point, Andares lashed out with all four of its bladed forelimbs, both massive pincers, and its scorpion tail at once, retreating even as it swung at her.
"Silence."
The boy's nightmare-like whisper shattered the plan it had been gathering in secret once more. Its flowing magic froze as though locked in ice, stopping dead and causing a brief hitch in its enormous body.
"Thanks!"
The crimson magic lines coating its shell vanished. Alise swung her flaming blade and shattered every limb coming at her. In the next instant, she had flipped over Andares and was directly above it, upside down in midair.
"Step on it!"
Duncan shouted.
"Huh? Oh!"
Though she had no idea what he meant, her feet—suspended in empty air—suddenly found something to stand on. Alise yelled as she borrowed that foothold and launched herself forward. The orange-red flames gathered along her rapier darkened into a deep crimson as they struck the armored hump of Andares's upper body dead center.
"Flame Bloom!"
The explosion swallowed half the cavern in an instant.
A pillar of fire shot upward with a ferocity Duncan had never seen before. The blast of heat alone sent him, not yet fully recovered, flying backward.
Only then did Duncan understand that it wasn't that Alise had been unable to turn her advantage into victory before.
It was that when she went all out, the scale of destruction was simply too overwhelming.
Not only would it have interfered with Ryuu and the rescue effort, it would have affected the others still buried beneath the stone spikes as well. The aftershock from the blast alone sent the temperature of the cramped cavern soaring. She looked like a teenage girl—but the magic she wielded was utterly absurd.
A moment later, Alise leapt out of the flames.
There was no joy of victory on her face—only grim concentration as she stared into the fire that had yet to disperse. To stop Andares from recovering its magic, Duncan even cast another Silence through the blaze.
"How is it?"
Even though Alise's expression already told him most of the answer, Duncan still asked with a shred of hope.
"The moment the fire touched it, I burned through the shell quickly enough. But its regeneration was too fast—ridiculously fast. Even faster than before."
Alise shook her head.
As the flaming dust cleared, Andares's hulking body reappeared before them. White smoke rose in threads from its frame. Its enormous lower half had been charred black by the flames—but its upper body was still alive.
"So it abandoned full-body regeneration and focused everything on restoring its torso instead?"
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
"Oh—Ryuu. How are things on your side?"
"Letsa's awake. But she's in no condition to return to the front line… I had her try to dig Lady Artemis out first."
Ryuu glanced once at Duncan before continuing. Elves were far more sensitive to magic than ordinary humans. When Duncan and Letsa had both been too weakened to locate Artemis, Ryuu had been able to sense where everyone was within the mountain of stone spikes.
"No, Ryuu. This kid can cut off that scorpion's magic flow. You don't want another mountain like this one springing up, do you?"
Alise seemed to have seen through her friend's thoughts. She wagged a finger.
"Now that you're here, perfect. I'm not sure I can handle it alone. Target its upper body. Full firepower."
"Wait—ugh, honestly! Fine. Support it is."
Seeing that Alise had already charged off again without waiting for an answer, Ryuu could only stamp her foot, toss Duncan a quick remark, and chase after the path of fire.
Just as Silence ended, Andares's magic began flowing again—
and Alise was already on top of it.
Her fighting style looked reckless, but in the details it was incredibly precise. She gave Andares no opening at all to bring its magic to bear. Whether it was careful calculation or the intuition of an adventurer, Duncan couldn't tell.
Ryuu's arrival changed the battlefield completely.
Two Level 4 adventurers working in perfect sync overturned the situation in an instant.
Realizing this, Andares let out a furious roar—and as if answering that cry, the earth began to tremble violently. Chunks of rock rained down from the cavern walls.
"Silence."
Duncan cast it once more.
The mental energy he had recovered with two stamina potions was drained dry again in an instant.
But the quake did not stop just because the magic was sealed.
After being imprisoned in this land for a thousand years, Andares's power had already seeped into the ground itself. Even without actively channeling magic, it could still manipulate the corrupted earth around it.
"Not good! It's going to bring down the whole cavern and bury us with it! Kill it now!"
Duncan's face changed.
Once they were buried, even a Level 4 adventurer would have a hard time escaping from hundreds of meters underground.
"You don't have to tell me!"
The flower of fire that had bloomed in full force before flared to life once more.
This time, not only fire, but Ryuu's green-glowing projectiles surged toward Andares together.
"Flame Bloom!"
"Wind of Light!"
The roar of the explosions instantly drowned out both the quake and the crashing stone. Fire and light hammered at Andares, peeling apart and blasting through its defenses layer by layer.
Unable to continue using Silence, Duncan could only watch as Andares poured every scrap of its magic into resisting those twin attacks.
It was like a brutal tug-of-war.
Its shell melted, cracked, and burst apart before the eye—
only to regenerate, then melt, crack, and burst apart all over again, endlessly repeating.
"Flame Bloom!"
Alise clenched her teeth and shouted.
A faint red glow rose over her body, and the weakening blaze flared violently once more. The temperature shot up again—until finally the armor burst open, splitting apart to reveal a massive gap.
In that split-second opening, a spear tore through the air.
Carrying a surge of invisible force and a razor-edged gust, it broke through the final line of defense and plunged deep into the blue crystal core inside Andares.
"SKREEEEEEE—!!!"
Andares let out a piercing, miserable shriek.
Its crystal core shattered like glass, exploding into fragments. The shockwave even blew Alise backward despite her proximity.
And then, at last, Andares's enormous body dissolved into black ash.
"Ahh… finally over. I'm so wiped out I don't even have the energy to shout a slogan."
Blown back by the blast, Alise landed in a clumsy stumble and took two more unsteady steps before regaining her footing. She let out a long breath and muttered as she watched Andares vanish piece by piece. Even with a Level 4 body, chaining together that many high-output spells had pushed her close to her limit.
"This isn't the time to rest. Get over here and help dig Lady Artemis out."
Ryuu grabbed Alise by the arm and dragged her straight toward the pile of shattered stone.
"Ehhh~~~"
....
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