In that instant, the air throughout the cemetery erupted.
Kōichi's eyes sharpened as his hands rapidly crossed in front of his chest. Magic surged through his body, and the faint night breeze condensed under his will into several crescent-shaped blue wind blades.
"Go! Wind Blades!"
Kōichi roared. The wind blades shrieked through the air, precisely sealing off every escape route around the black-clad merchant.
"Watch this!"
Chris lightly pushed off a fallen gravestone and became a silver blur, skimming across the ground toward the center of the magic array.
Her agility as a high-level Thief was pushed to its limit. She darted between the bolts of purple lightning, heading straight for the Egg of Heaven suspended in midair.
Meanwhile, Kazuma Satou displayed his textbook-perfect scumbag stealth technique.
Keeping low and using the smoke and dust from Kōichi's magic as cover, he silently circled around behind the black-clad merchant.
His dead fish eyes gleamed red with greed for loot. He thrust out his right hand and silently invoked the skill that had made him famous throughout Axel.
"Steal!!!"
White light flashed in Kazuma's palm, but the heavy obsidian ring he had expected did not appear.
"Huh?"
Kazuma froze.
He looked down and found himself holding a torn piece of black hood covered in suspicious purple slime and reeking of scorched parchment.
"Waaah! What the hell is this?! My Steal actually failed?!"
Kazuma flung the cloth away in horror. The smug look of triumph on his face instantly collapsed.
"Kōichi! There's something wrong with this guy's Luck! My skill only stole a corner of his cloak!"
"Hmph. Ignorant mortal."
A wind blade tore through the black-clad merchant's mask, revealing a pair of eyes burning with dark purple flames.
He sneered and clenched the obsidian ring in his left hand. A violent surge of shadow energy exploded outward from his body.
"Before the Great Descent, your struggles are meaningless! Shadow Shockwave!"
The powerful shockwave hurled Chris away just as she was about to touch the Egg of Heaven. Kazuma, still agonizing over why his skill had failed, was sent tumbling across the ground.
Kōichi felt a crushing tightness in his chest. The oppressive force, something that clearly did not belong in this world, made even the flow of his magic sluggish.
The cracks in the eggshell widened. A razor-sharp claw covered in silver-white scales suddenly burst through, radiating an aura of destruction.
The magical pressure at the center of the cemetery altar had grown so dense that it was visible to the naked eye. Purple-black arcs of electricity danced wildly through the air.
Chris performed an elegant backflip and landed steadily, but her face had gone pale. Her usually lively eyes now held an unprecedented seriousness, along with a barely perceptible trace of distress.
"Kōichi-san, that power is rejecting me! It seems to have recognized my... identity! Please distract it for me!"
Chris gritted her teeth. Her right hand tightly gripped the hilt of her short sword, while her weakened left hand rested against her knee.
Just as she had said, the aura emanating from the Egg of Heaven seemed specifically designed to suppress divine power. As the incarnation of a Goddess, she was enduring a pressure upon her divine status that no mortal could begin to imagine.
Seeing Chris looking so stubborn yet helpless made something stir in Kōichi's heart.
He knew this was no time to hold back. If the owner of that claw fully descended, then forget thirty million Eris. They might not even live long enough to eat breakfast tomorrow.
"Leave it to me, Chris! Since it hates divine power, I'll show it what an unreasonable physical storm looks like!"
Kōichi took a deep breath and stomped hard enough to shatter the earth beneath his feet. He raised both hands and poured every last drop of his magic into his palms.
Blue light instantly enveloped his entire body. The dense fog around him was dragged inward by a violent suction force, forming an enormous vortex of air.
"Roar, Lord of the Atmosphere! Tear this false altar apart! Great Hurricane!"
At Kōichi's furious roar, a massive blue tornado over five meters wide erupted from the ground.
The raging wind instantly overturned the heavy gravestones around them. The zombie brides lunging at Kazuma let out shrill screams as they were swept high into the air like kites with severed strings.
"Waaaaah! Kōichi, you lunatic! Are you trying to blow me away too?!"
Kazuma clung desperately to a broken pillar embedded deep in the ground, his entire body flapping in the air like a flag.
"My three thousand Eris are still in my pocket! If I lose them, I swear I'll kill you!"
The gale sliced against the black-clad merchant's shadow shield like countless blades, producing a grating screech that set their teeth on edge.
Fear finally appeared on the merchant's arrogant face. He was forced to divert a large amount of his concentration and magic toward keeping himself steady, causing his once-stable summoning incantation to fall into complete disarray.
"Now, Chris! Go!"
Kōichi endured the violent magical backlash, his eyes bloodshot as he desperately maintained the hollow center of the tornado, creating a single clear path for Chris.
Chris's gaze sharpened. All hesitation vanished from her eyes.
She became a streak of silver lightning, riding the rhythm of the wind as she charged once more toward the unsteady Egg of Heaven.
At the center of the raging hurricane, the black-clad merchant's face twisted into a hideous mask of fury.
He watched helplessly as the Egg of Heaven swayed in the wind. The one responsible for all of this, the young Wizard desperately sustaining the storm, had become the sole target of his hatred.
"Damn mortal! Since you insist on stopping the Great Descent, then fall together into eternal nothingness! Necromantic Curse!"
The black-clad merchant let out a shrill, deranged laugh. Ignoring the hurricane tearing at his body, he bit down hard on the tip of his tongue and spat a mouthful of blood onto the obsidian ring.
In an instant, a necromantic aura so dense it appeared pitch-black condensed into a gigantic skeletal hand. Carrying a curse powerful enough to wither plants and extinguish all life, it pierced through the wall of wind and hurtled straight toward Kōichi's chest.
Kōichi's magic was almost completely exhausted. He watched the deadly curse approaching, but he no longer had the strength to move even a single finger.
"Kōichi-san!! Get out of the way!!"
Chris screamed in terror and tried to turn back, but it was already too late.
At that critical moment, footsteps suddenly echoed from the cemetery entrance. They sounded completely out of place, carrying with them a strangely refreshing air.