Is it that... little girl?
In a flash, this thought flashed through Nai's mind.
Ram, who had vanished from her original spot, didn't attack with a straight dash or a high-altitude strike. Instead, she appeared behind Nai's right side, in a blind spot where both vision and perception were relatively weak.
The attack was simple yet lethal—a side kick infused with wind magic, tearing through the air to slam fiercely into Nai's waist.
The speed was too fast, and the angle too tricky.
Nai didn't even have time to turn fully. She only managed to raise her right arm to block her side.
Bang!
Nai's arm disintegrated the moment it came into contact with Ram's mana-infused kick. It instantly transformed into countless tiny, dancing reddish-orange sparks, scattering in all directions.
Even after shattering Nai's arm into scattered sparks with a single blow, Ram's face showed no sign of triumph or relaxation.
Her eyes remained cold and sharp, fixed intently on every subtle movement Nai made.
She softly uttered a string of ancient and tongue-twisting syllables.
Eye of the Storm!
The moment the words fell, centered directly above Nai's position, the air suddenly began to rotate frantically.
A dark green cyclone, visible to the naked eye, generated out of thin air, its center emitting an incomparably powerful and terrifying suction.
This wasn't the wind blades Ram usually used, which focused on cutting and speed. It was a brand-new skill clearly possessing suction characteristics.
Its inspiration was clearly derived from her observation and understanding of Tsukasa's Blue. Now, she was performing it based on her own wind magic combined with her horn's power.
The effect was immediate. The reddish-orange flames that had just begun to disperse around Nai, attempting to re-condense or change form, instantly lost control under this sudden, violent downward suction.
Countless sparks whistled as they broke free from Nai's control, surging frantically toward the center of the deep blue cyclone in the sky, where they were instantly swallowed.
Even the basic flames Nai used to maintain her form and envelope her body became somewhat flickering and unstable.
Nai's form showed obvious, uncontrolled lag and stiffness. She seemed to need to spend extra energy to stabilize her flame body and counteract that annoying gravitational pull.
"If it were just ordinary wind magic..."
Nai's voice rang out, a few shades deeper than before. Her eyes narrowed slightly as her gaze bypassed Ram, who was attacking from the front, and cast toward the small, silent figure in the back—Beatrice.
"...it would be absolutely impossible to reach this level."
"In this, there's also the hand of 'Yin Magic' hidden, isn't there?"
Ram's teleportation assault and this highly targeted "Eye of the Storm" were clearly not something pure wind magic could achieve. They were backed by exquisite mana construction and spatial interference.
Beatrice, who appeared to be doing nothing on the edge of the battlefield, had actually long been using Yin Magic to silently assist Ram's every attack.
"Die!"
Ram's cold shout interrupted Nai's thoughts.
Using the "Eye of the Storm" to interfere with and restrain Nai's flames, Ram's figure vanished. In the next instant, she appeared boldly right in front of Nai's pupils.
This time, her entire body—from the tips of her hair to her fingernails, from her torso to her toes—was wrapped in a layer of extremely dense, high-speed rotating pale green wind.
Even the stray sparks around Nai that tried to get close were repelled by the fierce rotational force the moment they touched this layer of astral wind, unable to get near her at all.
By relying on the "Eye of the Storm" to pin down Nai's core abilities and the precise assistance provided by Beatrice's Yin Magic, Ram abandoned her usual long-range wind blade skirmishing and opted for the most direct tactic—close-quarters combat.
She closed in, her fists, palms, elbows, knees, and legs... every part of her body transformed into the most lethal weapon.
Carrying sharp winds and boundless power, she launched a continuous, torrential assault against Nai's body of fire.
She intended to use this briefly created window of opportunity, with her horn-enhanced physical body and the extreme speed of wind magic, coupled with the interference from Beatrice's Yin Magic, to forcibly beat Nai's body into the Eye of the Storm bit by bit.
Facing this sudden and violent melee offensive, a flash of surprise crossed Nai's eyes.
"So your close-combat skills aren't bad either."
Nai's voice rang out amidst the dense exchange of blows, still carrying that sense of composure.
She parried Ram's fierce attacks, which were laden with violent winds, using seemingly gentle flame-enveloping movements while carefully analyzing the situation on the field.
But Ram's offensive was like a storm, never stopping for a second. Wind-infused fists tore through the air, and sharp kicks with the sound of breaking wind slammed toward Nai's vital points from various tricky angles.
The stray sparks dispersing from Nai were relentlessly swallowed by the powerful suction of the "Eye of the Storm" above, preventing Nai's control over her flames from ever being smooth.
The situation seemed to be suppressed by the joint efforts of Ram and Beatrice.
However, faced with this seemingly disadvantageous struggle, the curve of Nai's lips slowly deepened.
She no longer tried to counter Ram's close-range suppression. Instead—
At the moment Ram's full-power straight punch slammed toward her face again, Nai's parrying movement... suddenly stalled. She even leaned her body back slightly, as if actively giving up her defense.
Then, just as Ram's fist was about to touch the tip of her nose, Nai opened her arms wide. It wasn't a defense, nor an attack. It was a completely defenseless posture.
Ram's pupils contracted. But the punch had already been thrown, and it was hard to stop.
Bang!
The fist infused with wind slammed solidly and without hindrance, right into the center of Nai's open chest.
Instantly, at the moment of contact, Nai's entire body exploded like a punctured balloon filled with white-hot magma. It then transformed into countless dazzling flames.
This sudden self-explosion caused the pupils of both Ram and Beatrice, who had been maintaining the Yin Magic support from behind, to dilate violently at the same time.
However, an even more soul-shaking scene occurred—those gushing and exploding flames, massive and terrifying in quantity, did not re-condense as the stray sparks had before. They jerked to a halt in mid-air, then turned and surged frantically toward the center of the dark green cyclone above.
The cyclone was instantly stained with a layer of stinging crimson. From within came a grating "sizzle", along with violent fluctuations of rapidly rising and extremely unstable energy.
The entire "Eye of the Storm" expanded and vibrated, emitting destructive high temperatures and light.
The moment Ram witnessed this scene, she immediately began to guess Nai's intentions.
Countless fragments of information and tactical simulations flashed through her brain at high speed. Then, a terrifying conclusion made her spine turn cold.
This person... wasn't blown apart by her at all.
She did it on purpose!
She used the Eye of the Storm's attraction to flames to actively decompose her own flame body and then "fed" a massive amount of her power into the Eye of the Storm all at once.
She wanted to turn the Eye of the Storm into a super bomb composed of her own flames and influenced by her power.
"Beatrice-sama! Deactivate the magic, now!!!" Ram roared with almost every ounce of her strength.
They had to deactivate the Eye of the Storm immediately, before that lunatic finished her plan. Otherwise, the entire mansion, and even this whole area, would be completely swallowed by this out-of-control giant bomb.