Miledi and the others blazed through the night sky like shooting stars. Thanks to Miledi’s supersonic flight and Naiz’s teleportation, they were able to cross half the continent in just a few hours.
It was a few hours before dawn. The night had been long, but no night lasted forever. And tonight, the Liberators would fight to bring about the dawn they wished for.
“O-kun!”
“Got it!”
Oscar took aim with his Black Umbrella, pointing it at the sky directly above the Divine Mountain’s summit. The compass had told them that this was the place where the boundary between Tortus and Ehit’s Sanctuary was the thinnest. Oscar had fitted his umbrella with the Arrow of Boundaries, and once he’d locked onto his target, he fired.
“Shoot straight through to Ehit’s throne!”
The arrow shot straight up, leaving a rainbow-colored trail behind it. As it reached its destination, ripples of light spread out from it.
Cracks appeared in the sky, and a second later, there was the sound of shattering glass. A multicolored portal, wide enough for a few people to pass through at a time, appeared around the arrow. And at the same time, countless whirlpools of silver light appeared, spitting out apostles. That, more than anything, was proof that the Arrow of Boundaries was capable of opening the way into Ehit’s domain.
“Out of the way!” Miledi shouted, using an extremely powerful Heavencrush to obliterate three of those silver portals and crush any apostles around them.
“It’s past time that you paid for your crimes—Unlimited Overdrive! Core Seal!” Lyutillis exclaimed, enveloping allies and enemies alike with her evolution magic, empowering Miledi and the others while weakening the apostles.
“This is what you deserve—Voidshatter!” Naiz roared, venting the anger he felt due to being unable to protect those he’d sworn to by annihilating a group of apostles with a powerful spatial explosion.
“If only you were capable of feeling pain, I would make you suffer a thousandfold for what you’ve done—Stagnation!” Meiru exclaimed, slowing down all of the remaining apostles and channeling her fury at losing her crew into her spell.
“I’ve had enough tragedy in my life!”
“We’re putting an end to your twisted game!”
Oscar destroyed the apostles Meiru had slowed with a series of disintegration blasts, while Vandre rotted them from the inside out with Invasive Ruin.
“Get out here and fight us, you coward! If you have even a speck of pride, then stop hiding behind your dolls—Limit Break - Final Stage!”
Laus made two clones of himself and started crushing any apostles that got close with his war maces. Miledi flew past the broken corpses of the apostles, using her gravity magic to take Oscar and the others with her. Not even an endless stream of apostles could stop the seven ancient magic users now.
“Ehiiiiiit!”
Just as Miledi and the others were about to pass through the multicolored gate, it vanished.
Not because the path to the Sanctuary had been closed, but rather because Ehit had chosen to open it all the way. The Liberators could see straight into Ehit’s domain.
“Huh? Aaaaaaaaah!”
“Wha—? Ngh, s-stop!”
Miledi and the others had, of course, planned for a potential ambush the moment they passed through the gate. That was why they’d packed their concept magic into an arrow that could be fired remotely rather than a sword or some other weapon that needed to be swung at close range.
But who could have expected that it would be regular people waiting for them on the other side of the portal instead of apostles.
Miledi locked eyes with a young girl who looked scared out of her wits. She forcibly decelerated, which taxed her body quite a bit because of how fast she’d been going. Her innards churned, and Oscar and the others also stopped their attacks just in time with gritted teeth.
It was precisely because the Liberators had made saving people their primary goal that this was the one weakness Ehit could exploit. And it was also this weakness that sealed their fate.
Miledi and the others could hear war cries from down below. The teleportation circle that took people from the ground to the main cathedral had been repaired, and people were being teleported into the cathedral en masse. Those who were still sane were running around begging for mercy, while those who’d been fully brainwashed by Ehit chased them down and killed them. Furthermore, the people Ehit had brought into the Sanctuary suddenly started jumping off the edge of the gate.
The apostles fired lethal bursts of disintegration magic into the crowd, not caring about who they hit.
“Guys!” Miledi shouted, and Oscar and the others started moving immediately.
Miledi used gravity magic to save the people jumping to their deaths, while Laus used Soul Shock to knock out the fanatics. Meiru healed everyone who’d been mortally injured, while Naiz and Lyutillis erected barriers to protect people from the apostles’ attacks and Oscar and Vandre set out to kill all the apostles.
However, because they were all preoccupied, they noticed all too late that the girl Miledi had first seen in the Sanctuary had picked up the arrow they’d fired. She looked completely expressionless now though, and her hair went from black to white in an instant.
“Are you willing to kill her to get this back?” the girl said in a low, gravelly voice that clearly wasn’t hers. She grinned wickedly, and Miledi and the others immediately realized that Ehit had possessed her and was using her body as a shield. Ehit then hugged the arrow close and with a silver flash, destroyed it with disintegration magic.
Split in half, the arrow lost its rainbow aura, and Ehit tossed the broken ends away like they were nothing.