Sisters

“Yonga…?”

Ma Hana froze from the sudden conversation.
And the Demon Lord Kazantia kept speaking something to her.

Ju Na-young glanced between the two with a bewildered expression.
The unintelligible language Kazantia had just spat out—its meaning and form unknown.
Ju Na-young knew exactly what it was.

‘The tongue of demons.’

A different otherworld from the current realm,
One of the regions commonly called the “outside.”
The home of demons and their leaders,
Beings formed from special concepts,
The birthplace of Demon Lords.

It was a language usable only by those living in the world commonly called the Demon Realm.
It wasn’t merely like different national languages such as English, French, or Japanese.

Because it was a kind of racial that transmitted meaning through the blood flowing in one’s body.
Therefore, only demons or Demon Lords could use it or even comprehend it.

‘…But right now Ma Hana…’

She clearly had a face that showed she had understood its meaning.

Ju Na-young found that puzzling.

No, how on earth…
Huh?

‘How…?’

Meanwhile, the person in question, Ma Hana.
The girl, far more overwhelmed than Ju Na-young, looked at Kazantia with trembling eyes.

She fumbled with her words.
She tried to ask what on earth that voice meant.

But the Demon Lord before her seemed to treat Ma Hana as if she didn’t exist at all,
Merely turning his body to watch the sisters’ fight beyond the ice wall.

‘Mu, muaa…’

The most overwhelming in her nineteen years of life,
Literally a muamua-level shock.
Ma Hana turned back with trembling eyes and stared into the air.

No matter how little intent there was to attack,
to avert one’s eyes in front of a being who was a Demon Lord.

But she couldn’t help it.
Ma Hana’s gaze.
She looked toward the white spirit that had always been beside her since she noticed its presence and asked.

“…M-Mom?”

Ma Hana stammered out her words.
But the spirit…
As always, gave no answer.

At that moment.

―……!!!

Suddenly, as if startled by something, Kazantia turned her body.
Sensing that something terribly dangerous was coming,
She gathered a beam of light far more powerful than what she’d fired at Ju Na-young.

―What, it reached this distance in just ten seconds?!

Kazantia fired not at the two of them but toward the entrance.
An intense roar of magical force spread as if the matter itself were being annihilated.
Yet, though it hit perfectly, a figure sprang out like lightning.

The clack-clack of footsteps.
A torso of a human,
A lower body of a divine beast.

Yu Seha,
He appeared as if the Demon Lord’s strike meant nothing to him,
Standing bare and unflinching.

Yu Seha stared directly at Kazantia,
And at once understood that the Demon Lord had descended imperfectly and where to strike.

He shouted loudly.

“Ju Na-young, Meowii!!!!!”
“Yonga! Yu Seha!”

Ju Na-young raised a hand in response.
She flinched slightly at Yu Seha’s unusual appearance,
But did not bother to mention it.
She was simply glad that he had come.

And…
Ma Hana looked at him with tears in her eyes.

“Muaa…”
“……?!”

For Ma Hana, whose mental state was shaken,
His voice now felt like salvation.

The voice of the beloved man who always reassured her.
All the mysterious words she had heard a moment ago,
Were swept away by a single word from Yu Seha.

“Se, Se-ha…”
“Meowi! Don’t worry, I’m here!”

Both of them bowed their heads!

Yu Seha’s cry,
Made Ma Hana immediately lower her head.
She let out a cute “muaang!” cry.

Ju Na-young enveloped her in a protective embrace.
Red wings fluttered out with a whoosh.
Though they couldn’t fly, the strong, flexible wings served dutifully as a protective barrier.

Yu Seha sprang forward on his four legs without hesitation.

He thrust the [Sword of the Saint] like a flash at the flustered Kazantia.

A sword charge based on a speed of 180 and strength far beyond the human realm of 150.

Kazantia’s body shattered in an instant and regenerated.

―W-What are you! A monster!?
“Shut up and die! How dare you make our Meowi cry!?”

The word “monster” actually came out of the Demon Lord’s mouth.
Even at full descent it would be hard,
But in his incomplete state Kazantia couldn’t win against Yu Seha no matter what he did.

Kazantia resisted.
He couldn’t use his proper powers,
But fired vast magic like a laser equivalent to them.

But Yu Seha had grown to the point of closely pursuing an overwhelming powerhouse like the Sword Ghost.
No attack could stand before the Ghost-Shadow Sword he unleashed based on the Sword of the Saint.

Whoosh-!

Soon, a [Sacred Strike] burst forth from the Sword of the Saint.
With [Thunderous Blow] and [Usurping Wave of Light] added, it literally vaporized more than half of Kazantia’s body.

Soon the exposed, thudding core lay defenseless.
A sort of heart.
It showed signs of beginning to regenerate.

“……”

Yu Seha stared blankly.
For some reason he felt it might be possible.

He snapped his mouth open.
Without hesitation, he aimed for the toughest part of the core.

Grit-!

He bit off a chunk of it.

Thirty minutes before Yu Seha arrived to deliver the finishing blow.

Beyond the ice wall,

Two sisters who shared the same blood,
struggled with lethal intent.

Moon Bora, Moon Ha-yeon.
The ice magic erupting from each of their hands
took on a fierce form meant to steal the other’s life as cold as the chill itself.

A time of clashes and collisions.
Before long they’d exhausted their magic and,
Traded small injuries.

Crack-!

Moon Ha-yeon crushed the head of a golem that tried to ambush her.
She ground her teeth.

‘How…’

How could anyone fight on equal footing with her like this?

The question she’d felt from the start.
It grew stronger,
And now it had manifested as an unsettling reality.

Moon Ha-yeon spat out curses she could barely voice.
It was a habit that came out when she was cornered.
She had to lash out like this to steady herself.

No matter how much she’d exerted power to get here,
And how much magic she’d wasted to awaken Demon Lord Kazantia,
Even accounting for that, this was absurd.

In fact, Moon Ha-yeon’s thinking wasn’t wrong.
To tell the truth…
This shouldn’t have been a fight at all.

Even if Moon Bora had recently attained a high level, she was still at the top of B-rank.
By contrast, the elder sister Moon Ha-yeon was an upper A-rank mage.

She wasn’t an absurd monster like the Sword Ghost or Yu Seha, who transcended classes.
Moon Ha-yeon was still considered a formidable threat and calamity by the world.

Yet they were equal.
The reason this was possible and the variable.
The depth of the bond Moon Bora had formed with Yu Seha.

It wasn’t mere flashy rhetoric or spiritualism.
It was a practical power more real than anything displayed by the .

Thanks to that, Moon Bora had clearly surpassed the A-rank barrier.
Hence the achieved parity.

Moon Ha-yeon felt this couldn’t continue.
Her belief that she would win, whether in a short or long fight, was shaken.

The more time dragged on,
The more everything favored Moon Bora.

She vowed to settle the match here and now.
That determination
rushed into Moon Ha-yeon’s hands.

Moon Bora was suddenly startled by the abrupt release of power.
She could see it.

The unusual outpouring of magic swirling around her sister,
Moon Bora, as a fellow mage, knew exactly what it was.

‘Ultimate skill!’

In the past, after enduring the Moon family’s horrific human experiments,
and surviving the burning mansion, Moon Bora.

After she formally became the head of the Moon family,
She investigated her older sister.

In the cellar that hadn’t fully burned,
A recorded research log of her sister’s abilities.
From that she learned of her sister’s innate power.

[All things in the universe],
Commonly called [Fusion of All Things]
An actual Legendary skill.

An absurd power with the lofty capability to forcibly fuse opposing ideas and phenomena.

Having surely lived through long years,
Forcedly mixing and mingling with countless things, copulating and birthing,

The very force that symbolized the Moon family’s ugly, depraved line of succession.
The extreme ritual using that power unfolded before her eyes.

Fire and ice.
Two things that normally cannot mix,
rotated together to form a Taiji.

Taiji is commonly
considered a symbol of harmony.

But the Taiji Moon Ha-yeon made
was nothing more than a forced, artificial fusion.

As if to prove it, the Taiji rotated in opposite forms and exuded an ominous aura by itself.

Moon Bora silently watched the secret technique.
Moon Ha-yeon sneered sourly as if mocking her sister.

She didn’t utter vague villainous lines like ‘I’ll let you live if you don’t interfere now.’

To Moon Ha-yeon, Moon Bora was nothing but an obstacle to be killed and removed.
A younger sister who uniquely inherited the blood that survived?
If she cared about that, she wouldn’t have killed their parents with her own hands.

“Moon Bora.”
“Sister…”
“Just die here.”

If you survive,
you’ll keep interfering with me.
From now on, forever..Y
If that’s the case…

“Die here!!!”

She hurled the Taiji without hesitation.
Moon Bora looked at the massive incoming strike and calculated her remaining strength.

‘…She already used her ultimate skill long ago.’

A conclusion reached in one second.
She felt it was time to gamble right here and now.

Moon Bora charged forward.
Moon Ha-yeon watching let out an incredulous snort.

She runs in as if there wouldn’t be enough to block or dodge with everything you had?
A moth-to-flame choice of running into burning flames.

But Moon Bora had thought it all through.
At the moment the blow would land.

The wooden staff in Moon Bora’s hand separated into dozens of roots,
Transforming into a shield that enveloped her body.

The Yggdrasil Staff transformed into [Guns Weapon], her innate ability.
An inherent skill and protective function it possessed.

It could be used only once per month,
But consumed gathered essences of nature to cast a powerful protective buff.

Literally Hero-grade equipment,
a weapon fitting for Yu Seha, who prioritized his comrades’ lives.

Moon Ha-yeon flinched for a moment.
But she smiled darkly as the raging Taiji froze and burned the roots.

She took it as proof that one such defense couldn’t possibly be enough.

True to that, the Taiji struck aiming for Moon Bora’s life.
At that rate, she would surely be struck down.

But the gamble wasn’t a single move.
What Yu Seha had prepared,
Lent power to a second contingency.

An ice ring on her ring finger shone brilliantly.
Hero-grade equipment, [Essence of Ice].
It radiated cold and blew the Taiji apart.

At the same time, the remaining residual magic
seeped through Moon Bora’s entire body.

Saving her life once,
it activated a buff that increased <Cold Attack Power>.

With overwhelming equipment power never before heard of, Moon Bora closed the distance to right in front of a flustered Moon Ha-yeon.

A purple ring composed of [Burning Flame Demon] and [Frozen Wasteland] rippled behind her.
The manifestation of an incomplete technique.
Even a little would do.

‘My own limits…’

I’m going to surpass them right here and now!

Bang-!

Moon Bora took her stance.

To overcome the innate weakness of being a mage,
A technique she’d trained nearly two weeks to land a lethal blow against another mage.

For Ju Na-young, for Ma Hana,
And finally honed under Yu Seha’s direct demonstration, she displayed that martial art.

The [Rising Dragon Tide] coiled around her fist.
The <Sea Dragon> power that had been Moon Bora’s trauma,
Now became her strength and aided her.
A punch filled with that, driven into the abdomen!

Crush-!

The injected shock and magic crushed the inside,
Damaging organs,
And ruining the mage’s magic circuit.

Moon Ha-yeon’s eyes widened as if they would bulge out.
She spat out a mouthful of blood.

“Gah, gahk! You, you!!!”
“Sister, brace yourself!!!”

The essence and shockwave of the technique commonly called ‘eruption’, burst through Moon Ha-yeon’s abdomen.