The flattery poured in like a flood, but Ranni only caught a few key phrases. Consort-to-be. Consort-to-be.
Miriam glanced sideways and saw Ranni's expression shift—first blank, then a faint flush, and finally her teeth clenched.
"The audacity! How dare he!"
Her voice trembled, teetering on the edge of composure.
Sensing Miriam's gaze, Ranni swallowed the rest of her words. As a demigod, refined and restrained, she couldn't muster anything harsher than "audacity."
"Your Highness, what's wrong?"
"Forget it," Ranni snapped, her glare silencing Miriam instantly.
Damn it, why doesn't that idiot just drop dead? No. No, that's wrong. He's fighting for his life right now. Better not curse him.
The conflict twisted her thoughts, leaving her restless. She wanted to freeze something, shatter it—anything to vent this frustration. But the situation demanded restraint, and the tension only made it worse. Not disgust, not repulsion, but anger, simmering, grinding her teeth.
Boom!
A deafening thud shook the room—War Counselor Iji's hammer striking the ground. Miriam sprang to her feet, shoving aside all distractions. Ranni turned to the window, her frustration suddenly finding direction.
"Just in time."
Shadows moved in the night. She raised her hand and summoned two swords—one slender and elegant, the other cold, dark, and massive.
"Let's go. Our fight begins now."
If her instincts were right, Ranni was already in the thick of it.
......
On the Crumbling Plaza, under the same full moon, Throne stood in silence.
Oritis could wait. Before him loomed an insurmountable mountain—a Crucible Knight, the pinnacle of all knights. Their strength wasn't even comparable. This one exuded a presence that could challenge Godrick himself.
No tricks could bridge this gap. No fools to exploit. On the plaza, only three stood—himself, Melina, and the wounded Red Wolf.
Throne's lips curved into a faint smile.
"May I ask who you are?"
The knight's deep voice rumbled, "Crucible Knight, Premia."
Permian? Throne couldn't recall who'd mentioned it, but Crucible Knights' names tied to prehistoric eras. At least it wasn't one of their leaders. No matter how formidable, a regular Crucible Knight was still at the hero level.
No clever tactics this time. Head-on combat was the only option. During the standoff, he'd absorbed nearly all of Leon's strength.
The night wind whipped his tattered cloak. Throne gripped his sword and murmured, "Carian Knight, Throne."
The air froze. Oritis raised his staff. Premia leveled her spear. Azure particles drifted from Throne's body. The whimpering Red Wolf's eyes widened.
Melina, expressionless, stepped to his side and drew her short blade without hesitation. This wasn't like before. No urging, no commands—she acted on her own will for the first time.
Throne blinked, surprised. He knew Melina had expended much energy earlier, but his unease melted away. From this moment, they were comrades in life and death. Two against two.
The opponents were significantly stronger, but Throne had no intention of backing down.
"We'll cover each other. Can you do that?"
Melina gave a slight nod. "I can."
"Wherever you crawled out from," Throne added, "you don't seem to understand the situation."
Oritis laughed in anger, his magic billowing his robes: "To be so arrogant even in the presence of a Crucible Knight—don't you even try to run? Apologies, but with the secrets you harbor, there is no place for you in The Lands Between."
A single step back would mean endless pursuit. He felt he had firmly secured the advantage, but the silent man and woman did not retort. Instead, they bent low and lunged forward together.
They ran in a crisscross pattern, their speeds roughly equal, which left Oritis stunned for a moment. Immediately, he chose to blast them both.
Glintstone Arc!
Meteors circled around him, forming an azure ring. The two figures in his vision separated and overlapped, and when they were within attack range, it was Throne who charged ahead.
A cyan ripple deflected the meteors directly into the night sky. Oritis sneered and pressed his staff downward. The several meteors fell through the air, tracing an arc as they flew toward Throne's back.
"Behind you."
"I know."
Throne hunched his body, acting as a stepping stone as the meteors grazed his hair.
A pair of slender legs stepped onto his back, instantly launching her toward the magic professor. Oritis was not flustered and raised his staff again.
Crystal—Glintstone Arc!
A crescent blade moved faster than him, forcing him to duck and dodge. But a strong wind followed—it was Melina, right behind the Glintstone Arc.
The Crucible Knight finally moved.
She grabbed Oritis by the collar and tossed him aside, then stepped forward, raising her left arm toward the girl swooping down.
Clang! The Golden Land blade struck the armor but failed to break through, and the intricate spear was already raised. Melina paid it no mind. She tightened her legs in mid-air and then stepped on thin air—Throne had already appeared beneath her feet.
This step was still solid ground. Melina flew over the Crucible Knight's head like a vaulter, and the lightning-fast spear thrust naturally struck only empty air.
She spun in the air, the light of Golden Land unfurling, all of it flying toward Oritis, who was gathering magic to cast Comet Azur.
What? Premia was taken aback and couldn't be bothered with the mage. She pressed her hand down, driving the butt of her spear into the ground. Then, a massive force surged into her palms.
Moonveil!
Clang!!
Throne's eyes had turned gold. While acting as a stepping stone, he leaned down and unleashed a sheathed sword strike, slamming his full force into the butt of the spear and sending it flying up.
As expected of a Crucible Knight. A strike intended for her legs had been blocked, and despite such great force, she hadn't lost her balance. He pressed forward with his blade against her spear, pressing his left hand to the ground.
Magic rained down. The rain of glintstone falling from the sky clattered against her armor. Premia took the hit head-on, twisted her waist to the side, and flicked her spear upward.
"Rise!"
Throne hadn't expected the Crucible Knight to have such strong defense; she didn't even flinch after tanking a mid-tier spell. He pulled his longsword back to block in front of his chest, only to feel himself being launched several meters into the air by a massive force.
The night wind whistled by his ears. He saw the Crucible Knight spin, a long tail growing from her back.
Starlight movement.
His body suddenly vanished. After a momentary daze, Throne appeared above the ruins of a fountain. As his vision cleared, he saw the spear coming straight at him.
Such intuition! Starlight movement could not be used consecutively. Throne gripped his sword with both hands and slashed upward with all his might, knocking the spear into the air.
The impact carved a trench meters long through the earth. Before his heels could touch dirt, that armored colossus was already on him. Premia's wings erupted from her back as she transformed into a living battering ram.
BANG.
A shockwave bleached the air white. Her spaulder smashed into Throne's upraised longsword.
He flew. His face burned crimson. Thud. Thud. Thud. Like a stone skipping water, he ricocheted across the battlefield, each impact leaving craters. Moonveil shrieked as he rammed it into the ground, gouging a twelve-meter furrow before stopping. His Carian breastplate crumpled like parchment.
One glance behind revealed the abyss yawning beneath him. No mass-produced armor would've survived that—Cuckoo plate would've left him in ribbons. His pupils shrank to pinpricks.
Above, the Crucible Knight ascended again, wings spread, but now a spear gleamed in her grip. No taunts. No warning. Just a predator's low sprint.
Understanding struck like lightning. This wasn't Godrick—panicked, poisoned, fleeing. This was perfection: mind, muscle, and steel honed to a razor's edge. A true hero of the age.
The old epic surfaced unbidden—sixteen knights and their King beneath the Erdtree, sweeping from mountain peaks to sea cliffs through a thousand battles. Not one casualty.
Her charge came like cavalry. No flourish. No wasted motion. Just slaughter distilled to its purest form.
High-tier spells required time he didn't have. Low-tier magic might as well have been spit.
That impact force turned blockers into corpses. Hesitation meant death. Throne's body moved before thought could follow—hand rising, foot lifting.
Gravity Well. Storm Stomp.
Purple light and howling wind erupted in tandem, forming twin barriers.
The knight hit the gravity field first, momentum bleeding away. The storm shredded at her like a thousand knives. When she burst through the dust screen, his blade was already descending.
Dragon Slash.
CLANG.
The shockwave sent paving stones flying. Trying to stop her was like swinging at a runaway siege engine. His palm split open. The cliff's edge kissed his heels.
Then—impossibly—she retreated, wings snapping wide.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Golden beams hammered the ground between them. Melina's covering fire. But Oritis seized the opening instantly.
Crystal Torrent.
A hailstorm of glintstone missiles screamed toward the unarmored girl.
"Melina, return!"
Throne's roar chased her vanishing form. The crystal barrage turned ten meters of earth into a pockmarked wasteland.
Throne felt the girl return to him and, taking advantage of the Crucible Knight's momentary retreat, unleashed his gathered magic.
Starlight Leap.
Two hundred meters vanished beneath him in a single bound. After witnessing her preternatural reflexes, he dared no short-range teleports. At least Leon's essence had finally shattered his Intelligence plateau.
The stone steps groaned under his sudden weight as he materialized midair on the spiral staircase. Below him, the Crucible Knight banked hard, wings flaring crimson against the smoke-choked sky.
Throne's fingers crackled with gathering energy—a swirling cyan sphere coalescing in his palm.
Comet Azur. The legendary spell hummed with contained destruction.
Premia's armored boots skidded across broken masonry as she aborted her charge. The beam lanced past her helm with inches to spare, carving a molten trench through the plaza behind her.
She moved like liquid steel—zigzagging across rubble with terrifying precision.
"Winged Aspect has limits," she called between strides, voice muffled by her visor. "Stamina drains faster than blood from opened veins."
Throne's face might as well have been carved from granite. He drained the flask in one savage tilt, never breaking eye contact. Above them, the air shimmered violet. Meteorites screeched into existence, hurtling downward like divine punishment.
Melina materialized at his shoulder, a blue vial already uncorked. He drank without looking, the cerulean droplets restoring his magic even as it hemorrhaged from continuous spellcasting.
Preliminary assessment: catastrophic. The Crucible Knight fought with mechanical perfection—every parry, every feint honed through centuries of war.
No tells. No openings. Godrick's sloppiness had been a mercy by comparison. Her armor alone defied comprehension—whatever alloy composed it laughed at gravity wells. Without sword formations to weaken her, they were fighting a fortress.
Starlight teleportation burned through reserves like wildfire. Against this opponent, blinking meant death. No allies to intercept. No distractions. Just the distant chime of the professor's staff as he prepared another—
"Scatter!"
Throne's shout sent Melina diving left as he rolled right. The comet struck where they'd stood, detonating with enough force to shear off the building's facade. Chunks of masonry rained down as Premia emerged unscathed from the dust cloud.
The meteors had turned the plaza into a cratered wasteland. Useless. All of it.
But the instant the bombardment stopped, Premia did not falter. Her spear tip found Throne's throat through the settling debris, unwavering as execution steel.