Watching everything that happened around her, Amelia was lost.

'When did our world became so broken?'

She knew such a situation was unnatural. A great amount of corrupted beasts was already something out of the ordinary outside of the yearly southern invasion, and human soldiers corrupted at such a massive scale.

Something was wrong on Triazils.

'It was never broken. This is just how it works.'

Ego's voice came to soothe a little of Amelia's worries.

'Ego?'

'This is the beginning. The exact same thing happened when Noah was in charge of protecting the world. If there was a difference, it would be the amount of corruption taking hold of the humans. They weren't important enough at the time for the Miasma to care about, that's what it seemed at the time.'

'At first, only small skirmishes with corrupted were taking place, but within a few years, it multiplied so much it became a joke. Corrupted Lords began to appear faster than regular corrupted beasts, and the corruption was close to take over the whole of Triazils, but because of one man, it was stopped.'

Amelia looked down.

'The Hero Noah. Was he human? How can such a person be able to manage such a feat?'

'There is a reason for that, and Tiorh-nam, the Tree of Life, gave the answer. Titles.'

'How can a title hold enough importance that it can change the fate of the world?'

'Because the world holds such power. With a title comes responsibilities, and a fate that shouldn't be able to be changed, but that's to debate. The world has a will, and I believe it can only interact with this realm by creating such beings.'

There was a small silence before Ego continued.

'How can a world work correctly, if it is corrupted and devoid of life? I believe even the world cannot tolerate such an end, so it births beings like Noah and Orion.'

There was one thing Ego kept to herself, to avoid making Amelia panic. The fact that the Heroes of the World are never given a happy ending.

This is the price to pay to obtain power out of their comprehension. But once again, it was for debate in Ego's mind. Who can be sure that everything is a tragedy?

*sigh*

After that sigh, Amelia glanced toward the battle that was in front of her.

~

Dramia was flying stationary over the dead bodies of soldiers she killed.

She stared at her hands, which were trembling from punching so much. Trying to open her hands who were tightly shut, she proceeded to look at herself.

Blood. Lots of blood on her. She was bathed in blood.

Her hands finally opened after much efforts. Funnily enough, the inside was clean of blood. She even managed to avoid injuring her palms with her nails.

"Sis! Are you alright?"

Drania, with her sword in hand, stopped in front of her sister.

"I'm fine. I just feels strange?"

"Eh? Why?"

Her sister was usually able to understand her, but not this time.

"I feel nothing. I've killed so many people, and yet I don't even feel regret. I'm not happy either. I feel... empty."

She looked at Drania.

"Is that how Noah felt each time he was on the battlefield?"

The darkest gaze she ever displayed astonished her sister.

"I don't know, I'm not Noah."

She released her grip on the sword, and it vanished. Then, she grabbed Dramia's cheeks with both hands, not caring about the blood that was on her face.

"Tell me, sis, why are we here?"

"Both of us, what was the choice we made?"

"Who was the one who told me to stop crying?"

Dramia blinked a few times, recovering her sanity quickly.

"You're right. I'm sorry. I've never realized the burden of taking lives was this heavy. I understand why he never talked about it with us. There's no words able to describe this feeling."

The battle was still going strong. They managed to decimate the central area of the army, leaving the soldiers of Albriar to deal with the sides.

But it was also doing good. There was no problem with their strategy, as they were progressively killing the soldiers.

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"When was the last time so much blood was spilled?"

"If we ignore the recent incident with the city of Kaios that Orion described to us, the 'Purging War' seems to be of a larger scale. We weren't conscious at that time, so I can't really say much on that."

The sisters tried to understand why such a thing was happening.

"Sis, why every time there is a conflict, we find trace of the corruption?"

Something seemed to click in both of their mind at the same time. They looked at each other in surprise.

"The Miasma!"

Exclaiming at the same time, they rapidly turned around and flew toward Albriar, leaving the soldiers to deal with whatever enemies were left breathing.

~

'Fighting at night is such a pain!'

Orion shot arrows toward Julian, who was defending against Karteira's punches. Florian was running around, attacking the metallic spheres with kicks to deviate their trajectory from Karteira.

The only help these two had to find the orbs, and Julian, was the sound of bouncing metal, Karteira's punches, and the reflection of the sky on the orbs.

This was an arduous task, and Orion was slightly overwhelmed by the amount of orbs bouncing around.

When Julian created the orbs, he heard fifteen hit from the hammer. Fifteen orbs bouncing in a ten meters radius around Julian. That's what his calculations showed.

Because when Orion was indeed further than ten meters from him, he saw no orbs near him at all, and when he got closer, he suddenly had to dodge.

There was only three real things he could see. The sparks Karteira created, and Florian's trails as he ran around the place. The last thing was his arrows.

*BUMP*

'One orb is coming my way.'

He heard a bump above him, and moved out of the way. It wasn't too hard considering he had the Second Gear to boost his speed, but the fact that every few seconds, he had to dodge, that didn't left him a lot of time to recover his breath.

The same was going on with Florian. He was working in protecting Karteira with his life on the line. Each kicks he did on the orbs injured his legs, and multiple times an orb grazed a vital area of his body.

'I can't go on like this.'

He was nearing his physical limits.

With lightning fast speed, he ran toward Orion. His back turned toward him, he asked.

"Can you give me a quick heal? I won't be able to help anymore otherwise."

But there was no time for Orion to decide. He placed his right hand on Florian's shoulder, and healed him in a few seconds.

Since the injuries were light, it was done quickly. Quickly enough to avoid the next orb.

"Thanks."

Trails of light left the area, before Florian returned to block the orbs.

'I swear, I wasn't expecting such a situation.'

Orion rolled on the flattened ground, and fired another arrow.

The arrow touched the place where a wall had been erected. A wall that Karteira was punching with her full force.

Little by little, she forced Julian to remove his walls and do create them somewhere else. But she was exhausting her strength at the same time, while being unable to hit him directly.

'Amelia's walls aren't that tough. I've never had to punch something like this before.'

'I'm not making a single crack on it.'

"HAHAHA! Weakling! You will never be able to hit me like that. None of you will be able to kill me. I will be the one to do it!"

His voice was pissing Karteira off so much, her rage was growing at an exponential rate.

'Shut up! Just shut up!'

"Woman, tell me your name!"

'As if! Shut the fuck up!'

*Bink*

An arrow hit right next to her before vanishing.

'Orion... I have to do something about that guy!'

Each time she saw an arrow hit, she remembered that he was there to support her. Even though those arrows were his strongest ever, and that they were stopped easily by the walls, the force behind it pushed them slightly anyways.

Karteira was beginning to time her strongest punches with his arrows, to magnify the pushing effect.

'I know it's mostly useless unless we break through his protection, but that's all I can do.'

'Ten seconds.'

*FUUUSH*

The arrow she was expecting came at the right moment.

"EY!"

She punched the wall at the same time as the arrow.

*CRACK*

A cracking sound was heard. But it wasn't the expected one. The scales on Karteira's left fist broke in pieces.

'Shit!'

Julian didn't miss that sound. The wall disappeared in front of Karteira, and with the hammer in hand, and an orb in front of him, he threw another one toward her.

'!'

The only thing Karteira could do was change from her 'Cerulean Storm' form, to the 'Cerulean Aegis' in a split second.

She crouched on the ground, and placed her shields in front of her body.

*BANG*

"Tch!"

While hearing Julian click his tongue, she got pushed back a meter from him.

With her left hand being injured, there was little she could do right now, beside protect herself.

Preparing another orb to throw at Karteira, Julian forgot about his enemies.

Florian appeared in front of him, taking this chance to bother him.

"Florian! Shit!"

But the reason he appeared like that was for another reason.

"Bye."

With a flash of light, he moved away, revealing an arrow flying at high speed toward Julian.

"Fuck!"

He tried to create a wall to protect himself, but the arrow was faster and managed to get through before the wall was built.

Julian twisted his body to avoid taking a hit in his stomach.

Orion, who was ten meters away, heard a scream of pain behind the metallic wall.

'We made contact. Let's hope it will be enough to hinder his power.'

But the orbs remained the same. Their velocity did not change either.

The wall that he just created disappeared, and revealed an injured Julian.

Even though it was too dark to see the injury, his red eyes were easy no notice.

In fact, he didn't receive a life threatening wound. Orion only managed to pierce and open a few centimeters of his right side. It was bleeding, but he needed more than that to be defeated.

"N-NO!"

Everything stopped around them in this instant. All the orbs came to a halt, before all moving toward him.

Florian ran next to Orion and stopped.

"This doesn't look good. Don't you want to recover Karteira?"

"Good ide-"

But he couldn't finish. Julian dropped his hand, and the orbs began to rotate above him. One at a time, they were launched toward Karteira, before returning to him.

"UGH!"

Karteira, who was still defending, endured each powerful hit while being pushed back.

'I won't be able to defend longer! I have no choice!'

'Bastion!'

A light began to envelop Karteira, making her visible to Orion and Florian. The same was said for Julian, but for some reason, he was able to clearly see them all.

'Karteira!'

Orion was about to move.

'Ten seconds! I can hold for ten seconds. Orion will find a way!'

She saw multiple arrows fly over her head.

*BANG* *BINK*

"I won't get tricked a second time!"

The arrows were blocked by the orbs instead of a wall.

*GRIT*

Orion wasn't feeling good about this, and Karteira was in a really bad situation.

'I'm out!'

Her ability stopped, and she returned to normal.

An orb came at full speed, and bumped the upper shield in a weird angle that made her arms separate.

Her right arm that had the upper shield was brought above her.

Another orb came before she could block, bounced on the ground and hit the lower shield, completely breaking her defense.

The hit was so bad, Karteira was thrown a few meters in the air, completely defenseless.

'KARTEIRA!'

The worst thing that could happen was happening.

Memories of Amelia's words echoed in his mind.

-

"Orion, take care of her. I want nothing happening to her, you hear?"

"As if I'd let that happen."

-

Karteira saw two orbs fly at full speed toward her, as she tried to recover her balance, but it was too late.

*Cough!*

All she could do was watch as she took the hits... or it was what she was expecting.

"ORION! NO!"

The man she loved was in front of her, taking the brunt of the attack.