During the half-second of draconic transformation, Sakiko could clearly perceive every minute change in her body—down to the finest details—and she even seemed able to make slight adjustments to the final form.
Unfortunately… it was only a thought.
She wasn't a dragon, not even a hybrid. How could she possibly know what kind of form was best suited for combat?
So in the end, she left everything to instinct.
And this hyper-detailed perception also meant she experienced the pain of every single physical change.
But the dragon blood seemed to have strengthened her pain-perception system as well.
Agony that would make an ordinary person collapse on the spot—literally break down at a physical level—did not shake her thoughts in the slightest, nor did it cause her body to tremble, slow, or hesitate.
She could feel pain… but she wasn't ruled by it.
It was like becoming a slaughter machine born purely for destruction.
As for the thing she cared about most—her clothes—Sakiko willed it, and canceled Fourth-Stage Blood Rage.
"Haaa…"
Seeing her outfit restored perfectly, she released a satisfied breath.
Now she had no lingering worries.
She activated Fourth-Stage Blood Rage again.
This time she didn't just sample the power—she actively explored it, searching through this strength that belonged to the hybrid doppelganger.
Possession felt completely different from remote control.
When she controlled the doppelganger from afar, she could only issue broad, crude commands:
Go there. Rush in. Dodge. Defend. Come back.
How to execute those commands—what route to take, what technique to use, how to evade, how to parry—was entirely up to the doppelganger's combat instinct.
Like when Sakiko had crawled out of the rubble earlier and gave only a vague order to "get rid of the dust," and the doppelganger cleaned everything in an instant using a method Sakiko didn't understand at all.
But now… she could feel this strange power directly.
The wind changed.
It was no longer simple air currents.
It became invisible feelers—tentacles of information—carrying an ocean of data as they converged on her.
Inside her mind, an accurate model of the surrounding environment built itself automatically.
The sensing range kept extending—until, on the far side of that relatively intact building a hundred meters away, she pinpointed Eisen standing behind it.
The moment her perception touched him, Eisen seemed to notice.
He tilted his head slightly—his gaze felt like it pierced through layers of steel and concrete to meet hers—then he smiled.
Tch. What a monster, Sakiko cursed inwardly.
She ignored him and continued focusing on the new experience.
As her sensing range expanded, she began to feel strain.
When it reached a spherical radius of five kilometers, her brain started to boil—literally.
The vents across her body expelled scorching steam to dump heat.
In Fourth-Stage Blood Rage, her brain was no longer a weakness, and the modified pain system let her ignore even that kind of suffering—
but she still understood: this was her limit. The area her mind could model was only so large.
The "sphere" wasn't fixed, though. If she only received information from a single direction, her perception could extend extremely far.
Now she understood.
She had gained the favor of wind.
When she wanted to sense, the wind carried information.
When she wanted to move, the wind slid aside smoothly, so she suffered no air resistance at all.
And when she attacked…
Sakiko abruptly drew the katana from the left-arm energy blade and casually swung upward at the sky.
The wind spontaneously formed into an extremely thin wind-blade along the path of her slash, shooting straight into the heavens—
and only vanished abruptly after leaving the atmosphere.
Now, wind would also automatically amplify destruction with every strike, expanding her effective range.
But it was passive—she couldn't command the wind to attack on its own.
And it seemed limited to the atmosphere. If she went deep into space or dove into the deep sea—losing air as a medium—this "wind's favor" would fail.
"This should be the authority of the higher dragon tied to the hybrid Sakiko…" she guessed.
"If it used this power directly, it could probably summon void-born gale blades that shred everything—even in vacuum or the deep ocean."
That was about all the new power amounted to.
Now it was time for the main event.
Sakiko turned her gaze toward Eisen.
Truthfully, she never fantasized about beating the group leader. She just wanted to use Eisen as a practice dummy while she got used to the power—
especially since this doppelganger would exist for only twenty-four hours.
First conclusion:
Pure physical attacks and swordsmanship weren't even worth considering anymore. Too inefficient.
So—try the new wind authority first.
Decision made.
The two-point-three-meter humanoid tyrannosaur vanished from where she stood.
If swinging a blade could draw wind into an attack—
then at her extreme speed, wouldn't every raised ridge on her body scraping through the air be "slashes" as well?
Countless wind-blades erupted from her as the center, firing in every direction. They collided and carved through the air—losing some power—but splitting into denser, more chaotic swarms.
When Sakiko halted sharply a kilometer away and revealed her form again, she left behind a ruin-belt nearly a hundred meters wide, where everything had been shredded into fragments.
Everything—
except Eisen.
He still stood where he'd been, casually dusting off nonexistent grime with amused interest.
"Honestly, the power's a bit… so-so."
"I get why you're chasing area damage, but at your current speed, wouldn't killing them one-by-one be only a little less efficient?"
In response to Eisen's sharp critique, Sakiko silently activated Kotoba… Monarch's Blaze.
From the initial information she'd gotten about the doppelganger, Monarch's Blaze was pretty useless at base:
It needed charging, could only detonate centered on the user, and consumed enormous energy.
But in Blood Rage, the power skyrocketed, the wind-up vanished, and she could attach Monarch's Blaze to other objects and detonate them remotely like bombs.
And now, in Fourth-Stage Blood Rage…
She accelerated again, releasing countless wind-blades—
but this time, cutting wasn't the primary damage method.
She layered the Monarch's Blaze domain onto the wind-blades.
The instant the pitch-black wind-blades touched anything, raging flame vaporized all material at the point of contact!
The explosions chained together without end—roaring blasts, pillars of fire stabbing into the sky—
but that was only the beginning.
Sakiko stopped producing wind-blades and instead began moving at high speed in a circular path, with Eisen's position as the center.
The scorching gas and flames produced by Monarch's Blaze were tightly bound by wind into a spherical zone roughly three kilometers in radius!
An invisible wind-wall pressed inward, forcibly compressing the blaze and superheated air into a smaller and smaller space.
Three kilometers!
Two!
One!
As the volume shrank, the fireball's light grew more and more incandescent, like a real sun.
Sakiko stopped and hovered in midair, staring at the miniature sun she'd created with her own hands, emotion surging through her.
She hadn't actually done anything complicated.
She'd merely been moving.
Yet under a higher dragon's wind authority, simple movement triggered a terrifying cascade, producing destruction on the scale of a natural disaster.
The hybrid Sakiko's world really is horrifying.
When she stopped moving, she released the wind-barrier's containment and compression.
Freed from restraint, the terrifying energy expanded outward. A violent shockwave swept everything away—
eventually becoming a world-scouring firestorm that slowly dissipated into the air, leaving behind a field of land completely crystallized, lava running like veins across scorched earth.
Sakiko canceled Blood Rage and returned to human form, standing at the edge of the burned wasteland.
In the very center of the scorched zone, only Eisen remained intact.
"…How am I still not getting through your defense?" Sakiko's voice carried a faint, frustrated edge.
Eisen smiled and strolled over casually.
"You're still far from being able to hurt me."
"But that move was good."
"At this point, you've got the power to cleanse the surface of the world."
Sakiko shuddered and waved her hands urgently.
"Don't say such terrifying things!"
If there were no audience left, who would she even perform concerts for?!
The band was the foundational logic!
Eisen watched her bristle and didn't continue the topic.
"Since the hybrid doppelganger issue is solved, I should get going."
Hearing that, Sakiko gave him a formal bow.
"Mm! Thank you very much for the help, Group Leader!"
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 90)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 95)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 80)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter70)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter70)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter50)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter60)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 30
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 30
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