By utilizing the absolute zenith of her illusionary magecraft, Prelati had essentially overwritten her own Saint Graph, swapping her gender and manifestation entirely just as the male vessel was destroyed. It was a conceptual escape hatch a terrifying display of a Caster who treated reality itself as a mere suggestion.
"Gilles may have been incinerated, but my masterpiece is far from finished!" she declared, her smile widening into something genuinely terrifying. "And since I am now in a completely different 'role', it stands to reason I should have a completely different grand finale, wouldn't you agree?"
She raised her parasol towards the sky. The atmosphere didn't just feel oppressive; it felt profoundly wrong, as if the fundamental laws of physics were being rapidly rewritten around them.
"Now, let me show you the true depth of the abyss. Not a monster of flesh, but the supreme beauty of human madness!" Francesca chanted, her voice overlapping in a dizzying, intoxicating chorus. By mixing her ultimate illusions with raw, overwhelming magical energy, she began to temporarily replicate the authority of Até, the Greek goddess of madness and folly.
"Chóros Tis Theás Tis Trélas: The Goddess Dissolved Away Here, and Thus She Celebrates Man's Folly (Anti-Logic B+)"
"Ghk—!" Cú Chulainn stumbled, dropping to one knee. The primordial runes tattooed on his body began to burn with a sickening purple light. "My mana flow... it's reversing! The more I try to cast, the more it burns my own circuits!"
Beside him, Mash let out a cry of pain. The massive, cross-shaped shield of Lord Chaldeas: Virtual Noble Phantasm Pseudo-Deployment: Foundation of Human Order (Anti-Unit D) —which she usually wielded with relative ease—suddenly slammed into the ice. Her cognition had been warped to perceive the shield's conceptual weight as a literal, physical mountain. "Senpai! It's... it's too heavy! I can't lift it!"
"Ahahaha! Look at you all, completely paralyzed by your own rewritten minds!" Francesca cheered, floating above them with a sadistic, delighted twirl of her parasol. "The strong become weak, the absolute becomes fragile! This is the grand folly of mankind!"
Fujimaru tried to step forward, to shout a command, to do something—but the moment the invisible wave hit him, his world violently collapsed.
Anti-Logic specifically targeting strongest Ruler inside Fujimaru. The natural, fundamental logic of his own body—how to stand, how to breathe, how to move—was completely inverted and scrambled by the goddess of madness.
The conceptual weight of his own existence suddenly crushed down on him like a collapsing star.
THUD.
Fujimaru slammed hard into the melting ice. He gasped, but even the act of breathing felt wrong, as if his lungs were trying to push air out instead of pulling it in. His brain was firing desperate signals, but his rewritten cognition turned every command into agonizing dissonance.
"Senpai...!" Mash cried out, her voice straining in despair as she remained pinned by the impossible weight of her own shield.
Fujimaru gritted his teeth until he tasted blood. He glared up at the floating Caster, his sheer willpower fighting a losing battle against a B+ Rank Noble Phantasm. He told his right hand to push him off the ground. He screamed internally, pouring every ounce of his unyielding determination into that single, simple action.
But his body refused. The madness warped his commands. The muscles in his arm locked up in agonizing spasms. It was a Herculean, mind-breaking struggle just to make a single finger twitch against the ice. He was completely, utterly paralyzed by his own mind.
Francesca drifted lower, the hem of her elegant dress brushing against the frozen water. She looked down at the Last Master of Humanity, her sadistic eyes gleaming with pure delight at his agonizing struggle.
"Oh my... how wonderfully tragic!" Francesca purred, crouching down so she was right in his field of vision. She reached out and gently traced the rim of her parasol across his trembling cheek. "The great anchor of Chaldea, the boy who binds legends together... reduced to a helpless puppet who can't even lift a single finger. The reversal of your human potential is truly the most entertaining of all!"
She giggled, a sweet, melodic sound that felt like poison in his ears.
"Now then, little Master," Francesca whispered, raising her hand as a concentrated orb of fantastical, lethal mana began to gather at her fingertips. "Let's bring this beautiful tragedy to its final, logical conclusion. Any last, silent words?"
The lethal orb of fantastical mana buzzed at Francesca's fingertips, casting a sickly, prismatic glow over Fujimaru's paralyzed face.
"The strong become weak, the absolute becomes fragile…"
Francesca's own gloating words echoed in Fujimaru's mind. Despite the agonizing dissonance scrambling his nervous system, the teenage Master's analytical instincts—honed through countless life-or-death battles across history—suddenly clicked.
Siegfried's invincible dragon armor had become paper. Mash's impregnable shield had become an unliftable mountain. Cú Chulainn's peerless magic circuits were burning him alive.
The Noble Phantasm didn't just scramble minds; it inverted the fundamental laws of power. It flipped the scale. Strong becomes weak.
Which meant... Weak becomes strong.
Fujimaru's eyes darted toward the empty space just inches from his face. Through a supreme, agonizing exertion of willpower, he forcibly accessed his dimensional inventory—the spatial pocket connected to his Mystic Code. A small, ripple-like void opened in the air.
He needed something weak. Something entirely pathetic.
Move, he commanded his right arm. Just an inch.
His muscles screamed. Because his baseline physical weakness had been inverted into a crushing, conceptual gravity pinning him down, every millimeter of movement felt like he was bench-pressing a truck. Blood trickled from his nose, his vision swimming, but his fingertips finally breached the void.
He closed his hand around a cold, bony object: a small, hollow horn covered in jagged red patterns. It was a low-tier summoning artifact he had picked up in a previous minor Singularity, something so utterly useless in a real Holy Grail War he had completely forgotten about it until now.
"Oh? What's this?" Francesca tilted her head, her sadistic smile faltering for a fraction of a second as she watched the paralyzed boy stubbornly pull the small horn to his lips. "A desperate final plea? A cry for help?"
Fujimaru didn't answer. Fighting the reversed signals of his own lungs, he forced himself to exhale instead of inhale, pushing a desperate burst of air into the artifact.
BBWWWOOOOOOOM!
A loud, jarring, and incredibly un-majestic sound blared across the frozen wasteland.
A puff of cheap, gray smoke erupted just a few feet away. When the smoke cleared, three small, green-skinned Goblins stood on the ice. They were hunched over, wearing nothing but dirty loincloths and incredibly low-quality, rusted iron scraps for armor. They clutched chipped, dull daggers, looking completely confused and entirely out of place in a battle of mythical legends.
For a moment, the battlefield was dead silent.
Then, Francesca burst into a fit of hysterical, manic laughter. She clutched her stomach, her parasol shaking.
"Ahahaha! Goblins?! You used your dying breath to summon Goblins?!" Francesca wiped a tear of mirth from her eye. "Oh, Master of Chaldea, you are too much! Did you think these bottom-tier pests would save you from a goddess of madness?!"
Fujimaru let his head fall back against the ice, a bloody, exhausted, but triumphant smirk crossing his face.
"You're the one who wrote the rules, Francesca," Fujimaru wheezed. "Under the domain of your goddess... the weak become absolute."
Francesca's laughter died in her throat. Her eyes widened as the realization hit her like a physical blow.
Chóros Tis Theás Tis Trélas inverted the logic of power. Heroic Spirits with EX-rank Noble Phantasms were reduced to helpless victims. But these Goblins? In the grand hierarchy of the mystical world, they were the absolute bottom of the barrel. They were the weakest, most pathetic, easily slaughterable creatures in existence.
And under the Anti-Logic field, that ultimate weakness was instantaneously inverted into ultimate, apocalyptic strength.
The three Goblins suddenly stopped slouching. Their cheap, rusty daggers began to hum with a terrifying, conceptual weight that rivaled divine constructs. Their low-tier scrap armor resonated with an impenetrable, absolute defense.
"W-Wait! That's not—!" Francesca shrieked, desperately throwing the concentrated orb of lethal mana at the closest Goblin.
The Goblin casually swatted the orb away with the back of its rusty dagger. The B+ rank Caster attack was effortlessly deflected, exploding harmlessly in the sky.
Francesca backed away in sheer terror. The Goblins turned their beady yellow eyes toward her.
In a fraction of a second, the first Goblin moved so fast it broke the sound barrier, instantly closing the distance. Francesca didn't even have time to blink before the Goblin swung its chipped dagger. The strike carried the inverted, overwhelming force of a meteor impact, completely shattering Francesca's layered illusionary barriers like they were made of thin glass.
The mad Caster screamed as the impact sent her flying violently across the ice, her parasol snapping in half. The perfect, arrogant architect of illusions had just been outplayed by the lowest-level mobs in history, courtesy of her own grand masterpiece.
Francesca skidded violently across the melting ice, her elegant dress torn and her perfect composure utterly shattered. She clutched her bruised cheek, staring in absolute disbelief as the three low-level goblins advanced, their rusty daggers humming with the inverted, apocalyptic power her own Noble Phantasm had granted them.
"Ah! Cmon! Really?!" Francesca screamed, stomping her foot and throwing a tantrum like a spoiled child. "Getting bullied by bottom-tier trash in my own masterpiece? This is a terrible, tasteless joke!"
She glared at the paralyzed Fujimaru, her eyes burning with sheer, unadulterated malice. The boy had used her own conceptual rule against her. But Francesca Prelati was not a Caster who played by the rules for long—not even her own.
"Fine! If the rules of this reality are giving me a headache, then I'll just drown the entire board in the abyss!"
She reached into the empty air, her hand plunging into a distorted pocket of space. With a sickening squelch, she pulled out a massive, grotesque grimoire. The cover was made entirely of glistening, wet human skin that seemed to twitch and breathe in her hands.
"Prelati's Spellbook: Textbook of the Sunken Spiral Castle! (Anti-Logic EX)"
A suffocating aura of pure, eldritch evil immediately washed over the battlefield.
"I entrusted the original copy to my dearest, sworn friend, Gilles," Francesca smiled, her manic glee returning as she caressed the fleshy cover. "I couldn't unleash its true power while he had it. But since your flaming giant turned him to ash... the original book has spiritually returned to its rightful author!"
She flipped the grimoire open, holding the pages out toward the paralyzed Master and the struggling Servants.
"Tell me, little Master! What do you see?" Francesca giggled, her voice echoing with sadistic delight. "Do you see blank pages? Oh, good for you! That means you're still desperately clinging to your boring sanity! But... if you can start to read the text? If the ink is forming words? Ahahaha! That means your mind is already slipping into the horrifying abyss! Isn't that just a wonderful little test?"
Fujimaru squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to look at the maddening text, his body still completely immobilized by the Anti-Logic field.
Francesca didn't wait for an answer. She raised her hand, pouring her raw, overwhelming magical energy directly into the demonic guidebook. As the original owner and creator of the grimoire, her connection to the abyssal entities it contained was absolute.
"Come forth, my beautiful familiars! And rise, O' Supreme God of the Abyss!"
The ice beneath them completely shattered. The crater where the Wicker Man had previously incinerated Gilles's monster erupted like an underwater volcano. First came the near-endless waves of demonic, amphibious familiars—hideous, deep-sea aberrations that immediately swarmed the three super-powered goblins, burying them under a sheer, infinite tide of bodies.
But that was just the appetizer.
From the depths of the ruptured ground, a colossal shadow eclipsed the sky.
The Gigantic Horror returned. However, this was not the same beast they had just defeated. Gilles de Rais had only been a reader, a borrower of the book's power. Francesca was the author. Summoned by its true master, the massive evil god from another world manifested in a state far closer to its terrifying, original form.
It was significantly larger, its fleshy tentacles thicker and covered in thousands of unblinking, maddening eyes. Its regenerative capabilities, already near-infinite, were now visibly instantaneous; any damage the super-goblins managed to inflict on its lower tentacles healed before the blade even left the flesh. The pressure it exuded was so immense that the remaining water in the area began to boil into toxic steam.
Francesca floated up to rest directly upon the crown of the colossal abomination, the wet-skin grimoire glowing in her hands.
"Now, Master of Chaldea!" Francesca declared, her voice booming from the countless maws of the Gigantic Horror. "Your Servants are paralyzed! Your little goblin trick is drowning! Let us see if human willpower can survive the true, unfiltered despair of the abyss!"
In the scorched of the ruined Orleans—a territory transformed into the Evil Dragon's nest—Siegfried, the Dragon Slayer, stood entirely alone against a dual apocalypse.
The sky above him was blotted out by the flapping of Fafnir's colossal wings. The manifestation of the Evil Dragon Phenomenon roared, raining pitch-black, toxic fire down upon the mountain range.
However, Fafnir was not only targeting Siegfried. Across the valley, the severely mutated Tarasque snarled viciously. After devouring Elizabeth Bathory and absorbing her Demonic Dragon Core, Tarasque's shell now pulsed with glowing red veins. Its predatory instincts were running rampant, viewing Fafnir as a territorial rival that needed to be eliminated, while Siegfried remained a hated natural enemy.
BAM! CRASH!
Tarasque leaped with enough force to shatter the mountain peak, slamming its spiked shell directly into Fafnir's chest. The Evil Dragon staggered backward, black blood splattering from its cracked scales. In retaliation, Fafnir gripped Tarasque with its massive claws and hurled the monster down into the valley.
Siegfried capitalized on the chaos. His silver armor shone as his Armor of Fafnir withstood the residual toxic flames in the air. He dashed down the rocky slope, dragging his greatsword Balmung behind him, gathering twilight-colored ether.
"One dragon or two, my duty remains the same!" Siegfried muttered.
Fafnir, noticing Siegfried's movement, instantly unleashed its fiery breath at the knight. At the exact same time, Tarasque, just rising from the rubble, spewed a sonic energy laser from its jaws, targeting both Fafnir and Siegfried, who was caught in the middle.
Siegfried planted his feet firmly, crossing his sword in front of his chest. The dual blast of black fire and sonic laser struck him simultaneously. Armor of Fafnir operated at its absolute maximum capacity, nullifying the lethal attacks, but the sheer kinetic force of the impact made Siegfried's bones creak. Fresh blood trickled from the corner of his lips.
The two giant monsters now realized that the silver-haired man beneath them was an anomaly that could not be killed with mere casual strikes. Both retreated, creating distance.
The air across the entire mountain range was suddenly sucked dry. Fafnir flapped its wings high in the air, its jaws opened wide as it began inhaling atmospheric mana with a maddening intensity. It was preparing to unleash Nibelheim, its breath of absolute annihilation.
In response, Tarasque's shell opened completely. The demonic dragon reactor inside its body hummed violently, focusing all of Elizabeth's remaining mana into its throat for an equivalently apocalyptic, devastating blast.
If these two attacks were unleashed and collided, the entire mountain range would be vaporized into nothingness.
Siegfried had no Master by his side to provide an additional mana supply via a Command Spell. He was completely on his own. Yet, his resolve as a Hero of Justice did not waver.
If he did not have enough mana to match them, then he simply needed to burn his own life force.
Siegfried forced his Magic Circuits open beyond the absolute limits of his Saint Graph. His body began to crack, radiating a blinding blue light as he sacrificed a portion of his own existence to boost the power of his sword. The jewel on Balmung's hilt erupted with brilliant light, forcibly altering the sword's status from Anti-Army to Anti-Fortress.
At the exact same moment, the sky fell.
"NIBELHEIM!" "GROOOOOOAAAAARRR!"
The sea of black death fire from Fafnir and the giant sonic-dragon energy laser from Tarasque were vomited forth simultaneously. Both surged forward, tearing through the vacuum towards the epicenter where Siegfried stood.
Siegfried twisted his hips and swung his greatsword upward from below with every ounce of strength he possessed.
"Balmung: Phantasmal Greatsword - Felling of the Sky Demon (Anti-Army EX Rank)"
A colossal wave of twilight-blue ether surged forward, cleaving the air. The collision of the three cosmic forces created a blinding white explosion that completely erased all sound from the world for several seconds.
However, Balmung, overcharged with its wielder's very life, could not be stopped. The twilight ether wave literally split Fafnir's sea of fire and Tarasque's energy laser right down the middle. The holy light continued forward unimpeded, forming a semi-circular vertical slash that pierced the heavens.
The slash struck Fafnir and Tarasque simultaneously.
The semi-circular wave of twilight ether struck its marks, tearing through the sky with the force of a falling star. But the outcome was far from the clean execution the Dragon Slayer had hoped for.
Fafnir roared in agonizing pain as Balmung cleaved its chest open, exposing its dark, pulsating spiritual core, but the Evil Dragon did not instantly disintegrate. At the same time, the holy wave shattered Tarasque's spiked shell, heavily wounding the beast and leaving it bleeding out on the rocky terrain. Both colossal dragons collapsed into the crater, bathing the scorched earth in a sea of black and crimson blood.
At the edge of the crater, Siegfried's legs finally gave out.
CLANG.
He dropped heavily to his knees, his silver armor violently sparking. He had burned every last drop of his mana and life force to unleash that overcharged, suicidal strike. He couldn't even lift a single finger; his vision blurred, and his magic circuits completely shut down. The greatsword remained planted in the ground, supporting his limp weight.
However, the battle was not over.
From the pooling blood at the bottom of the crater, Tarasque twitched. Driven by the chaotic, survivalist nature of Elizabeth Bathory's demonic reactor inside it, the heavily injured beast refused to fade away. Instead, its predatory instincts locked onto the dying Evil Dragon thrashing weakly beside it.
In a horrifying display of primal savagery, Tarasque lunged. It unhinged its massive, mangled jaws and sank its teeth directly into Fafnir's exposed, bleeding chest cavity.
Fafnir shrieked—a cosmic sound of terror—but it was too severely injured by Balmung to fight back. Tarasque began to violently devour and assimilate the Evil Dragon's core. The pitch-black mana of the Evil Dragon Phenomenon flooded into Tarasque's system. The beast's shattered shell rapidly regenerated, replacing its saintly white scales with Fafnir's impenetrable, cursed black armor.
The absorption was absolute. Fafnir's massive body dissolved into dark, abyssal mud that was entirely swallowed by Tarasque, triggering a catastrophic, second-stage mutation.
Siegfried watched in helpless horror. He desperately commanded his body to stand, to grip his sword for one last swing, but he was entirely paralyzed by his absolute exhaustion.
The newly mutated Tarasque slowly turned its head. Its multiple glowing, demonic red eyes locked onto the kneeling knight. However, it wasn't looking at Siegfried with mere vengeance. Tarasque was salivating. Its newly acquired draconic senses recognized the Armor of Fafnir—the ancient dragon's blood that had bathed Siegfried and permanently altered his flesh.
To the mutating horror, Siegfried was not just an enemy; he was the final piece of the puzzle. He possessed the last remaining fragment of Fafnir's Dragon Aspect in this Singularity.
"So... this is how my legend ends," Siegfried muttered, his voice weak but dignified, devoid of terror. He looked up at the looming, mountain-sized shadow of the abyssal beast, his hands resting motionlessly on the hilt of his greatsword. "I am sorry, Master. It seems... I could not fell the sky this time."
Tarasque lunged with blinding, terrifying speed. Its massive, pitch-black jaws snapped shut, completely engulfing the Dragon Slayer.
Siegfried was consumed in an instant. His physical vessel was crushed, and his legendary dragon blood was violently assimilated into the beast's chaotic, ever-expanding reactor.
The apocalyptic roar that shattered the Orleans mountain range slowly died down, replaced by a sickening, wet sound of flesh and magical energy violently boiling.
The colossal, mountain-sized mass of the mutated Tarasque did not continue to grow. Instead, the chaotic amalgamation of Elizabeth Bathory's demonic idol core, Fafnir's absolute evil mass, and the heroic twilight ether of Siegfried's dragon blood triggered a paradoxical, terrifying evolution. The sheer, impossible density of these conflicting draconic authorities forced the beast's chaotic reactor to compress.
The giant, monstrous silhouette collapsed inward, folding into a cocoon of pitch-black mud, golden light, and blazing red energy. The ground melted into glass beneath the sheer heat of its metamorphosis.
Then, the cocoon shattered.
When the smoke cleared, what stood in the center of the crater was no longer a mindless, quadrupedal beast. It had condensed its infinite, apocalyptic power into a chillingly regal, humanoid form—a terrifying, divine draconic arbiter.
The entity floated slightly above the scorched earth. Its torso was sculpted and terrifyingly muscular, covered entirely in stark white, interlocking draconic scales that looked as hard as diamond. Visceral, blood-red streaks ran down its pale chest and abdomen, looking like weeping wounds or glowing veins of raw, draconic mana.
It wore a mockery of holy raiment. Its shoulders were clad in heavily ornate, regal armor of crimson and gold, draped with pristine white fabric that was heavily stained with fresh blood at the hems. A dark blue jewel rested at the center of its collarbone, pulsing like a localized singularity.
But its head was the true horror. It wore a biometric, crown-like helm of red and gold, featuring glowing, soulless golden slits for eyes. Below the elegant upper half of the helm gaped a terrifying, exposed maw filled with razor-sharp, interlocking fangs—a chilling reminder of the predatory beast that still lurked beneath the divine exterior.
Behind this humanoid abomination floated a massive, architectural structure of dark gold. It resembled a cross between mechanical, geometric wings and a twisted, opulent stage backdrop—a final, mocking tribute to the idol it had consumed to begin this nightmare.
The newly birthed entity did not roar. It simply slowly closed its terrifying jaws, its glowing golden "eyes" staring blankly at the ruined world around it.
By consuming the Dragon Slayer and the Evil Dragon, the mutated Tarasque had transcended the realm of mere monsters. It had become a supreme, localized god of destruction—an absolute pinnacle of draconic evolution wrapped in the twisted guise of a holy, blood-stained knight. The Singularity had birthed an entirely new, unprecedented calamity.
Name: Bestia Avaritia
Class: Sub-Beast VI/S
Attribute: Beast
Gender: ?
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
! Saber, Siegfried has been defeated !
-
The hardened illusionary ocean was melting into a chaotic sea of boiling water and jagged ice, completely overwhelmed by a storm of pitch-black fire.
"Is this all?! Is this the absolute limit of your 'love' and 'holy light'?!" Jeanne Alter laughed, her voice echoing with amplified, manic hatred.
Thanks to the lingering effects of Dumas's Musketeers' Masquerade and her own Avenger-class passive skills feeding on the damage she had taken, Jalter's parameters had skyrocketed. She swung her blackened sword, unleashing another cataclysmic wave of cursed fire.
Kiyohime had already fallen. Her massive serpentine transformation had been violently broken by Jalter's relentless assault, leaving the Berserker unconscious and severely burned on the melting ice.
Only Jeanne d'Arc remained standing, but just barely. She was forced down to one knee, her hands trembling as she held her holy standard aloft. Luminosité Eternelle: God is Here With Me (Barrier A Rank) was glowing faintly, but the golden barrier was webbed with massive cracks, struggling to hold back the apocalyptic heat of Jalter's La Grondement Du Haine: Roar, Rage of Mine (Anti-Army EX).
"You cannot win, hypocrite!" Jalter sneered, stepping closer, her tattered cape billowing in the updraft of her own inferno. "Your god isn't here to save you! The only thing waiting for you is the ash of my vengeance!"
Jeanne gritted her teeth, blood dripping from her forehead. Her spiritual core was flickering. She had nothing left to stop the next strike.
Jalter raised her blackened sword high, pouring every ounce of her amplified hatred into the blade for the final, executing blow. "Burn into noth—!"
Then, the world simply... stopped.
The roaring inferno of black flames was instantly, silently snuffed out. The crushing heat vanished, replaced by an unnatural, freezing vacuum. A suffocating, low-frequency thrum—the Singing Void—vibrated through the air, causing Jalter's sword to violently vibrate in her hands.
"What... what is this pressure?!" Jalter gasped, her triumphant smirk instantly vanishing. Her Avenger instincts screamed at her, a primal terror overriding her amplified hatred.
Above the boiling ocean, the space distorted. The humanoid draconic abomination—Bestia Avaritia—floated silently into view. The Sin Dragon of Greed didn't look at Jeanne or the unconscious Kiyohime. Its glowing, soulless golden slits locked instantly and entirely onto Jalter.
It didn't see an Avenger. It didn't see a woman born of a wish. It saw only one thing: an EX-Rank Dragon Aspect at the absolute peak of its power. The ultimate delicacy for an entity of bottomless draconic greed.
The dark blue jewel resting on Avaritia's collarbone pulsed with a sickening, inverted light. The entity slowly raised a white-scaled, clawed hand toward the Dragon Witch.
"Don't you dare look at me like that!" Jalter roared, trying to swing her sword to launch a wave of fire at the Beast.
But her body refused to move.
The fundamental laws of space warped around her. Avaritia projected a localized gravitational singularity of pure greed, weaponizing its own absurd, paradoxical density. Jalter was violently yanked into the air, her limbs spread-eagled and chained by invisible, conceptual tethers of demonic energy.
"GHK—! Let... go of me!" Jalter writhed in absolute agony, her sword slipping from her grasp and clattering against the ice below.
The Beast's conceptual gravity was literally sinking into her Saint Graph. The terrifying, fanged maw beneath Avaritia's elegant red helm unhinged. The Beast was forcibly extracting the "Dragon Witch" authority directly from her living soul to add to its own apocalyptic reactor.
Jalter felt her mana, her hatred, and her very existence being rapidly siphoned into the void of the Beast's open jaws. For the first time since she was created, the Witch of Vengeance felt genuine, helpless despair.
"Stop!"
A blinding flash of golden light pierced through the suffocating aura of the Sin Dragon.
Jeanne d'Arc, who had been on the verge of defeat just seconds ago, forced herself to stand. Ignoring her own critical injuries, she planted her battered standard into the ground directly between the suspended Jalter and the floating abomination.
"You will not defile her!" Jeanne declared, her blue eyes blazing with absolute, unyielding resolve. Even though Jalter was her dark reflection—an enemy who had just been inches away from killing her—she was still a soul. And Jeanne d'Arc would never allow a soul to be desecrated by a Beast.
"Luminosité Eternelle: God is Here With Me (Barrier A Rank)"
Jeanne poured the absolute last drop of her life force into her flag. A massive, brilliant shield of holy light erupted outward, crashing into Avaritia's gravitational field and violently severing the conceptual tethers holding Jalter.
Jalter plummeted, crashing heavily into the ice behind Jeanne, gasping for air as her stolen mana slowly began to stabilize. The Avenger looked up at the original Holy Maiden's back in absolute shock.
"You... why...?" Jalter coughed, clutching her chest. "I was just about to kill you..."
"Because my duty is to protect," Jeanne said softly, not looking back, her entire focus locked on the terrifying draconic god looming before her. "Your vengeance is yours to carry, Alter. But I will not let this Beast steal your existence."
Bestia Avaritia's jaws snapped shut. It floated silently in the air, the blood-red streaks on its stark white chest glowing fiercely. The ultimate Sin Dragon of Greed tilted its head, its golden eyes locking onto the battered Holy Maiden who dared to deny it its prize.
Jeanne d'Arc felt this fundamental difference immediately.
She stood directly between the recovering Jeanne Alter and the floating, white-scaled abomination. Her Holy Ruler resistances—granted to her by the Root itself—were screaming in a way they never had before.
During her time assisting Chaldea, Jeanne had witnessed the horrors of the Demon God Pillars. Those fleshy towers of eyes and tentacles were terrifying, yes, but they had felt like weapons—tools deployed by a distant, calculating intelligence.
The entity floating before her was completely different.
Bestia Avaritia exuded a pressure that wasn't just physical or magical; it was deeply, spiritually corrosive. The dark blue jewel on its chest pulsed, and the massive, architectural theater wings behind it slowly flared outward.
"What... what is that thing?" Jalter whispered from the ice behind her. The Avenger, who had been ready to burn the world just moments ago, was clutching her chest where her spirit origin had nearly been ripped away. "That's not a dragon... that's a black hole."
"It is a Beast," Jeanne replied, her grip on her holy standard tightening until her knuckles turned white.
Avaritia did not speak. It didn't need to. The low, subsonic thrum of its Singing Void resonated through the frozen wasteland, shattering the remaining glaciers into fine mist.
It slowly raised its right hand. The geometric, golden architecture behind it shifted, locking into a new configuration. The air temperature plummeted to absolute zero, yet the localized gravity around them skyrocketed.
Avaritia was no longer interested in just extracting Jalter's Dragon Aspect. Since the Holy Maiden had chosen to interfere and shield the prey, the Sin Dragon's greed simply expanded. It would not just take the Dragon Witch; it would consume the Ruler, the surrounding environment, and the very concept of "salvation" itself.
The blood-red streaks on its stark white chest began to boil, glowing with the apocalyptic light of a dying star.
Jeanne braced her feet against the melting ice, her golden aura flaring desperately against the suffocating darkness. "Stand up, Alter!" she commanded, not looking back. "If you want your vengeance against the world, you must first survive its end!"