Every moment, every pace Eli’Theria moved closer to the mining pit, the resistance grew stiffer. After a while, multiples of the Chaos Lords appeared, forsaking the barons and doubling the viscounts. The singular earl became twins and the barrage of Chaos energies grew too much.

Mum silently expanded her Domain. She didn’t try to command the Chaos Lords, knowing that it would only sap her Will. The basic ability of a Domain was to control her surroundings and she was able to weaken the Chaos energies as they entered within a hundred paces of her. Yuriko could do the same with her Anima but instead of just weakening attacks, she would also get hurt by trying to suppress the energies. Especially since her Anima was infused with Radiance now.

At the moment, her Anima was condensed around Eli’Theria, with a tiny fraction spread so thin that Chaos practically ignored it, for perception. She solidified shields and barriers when she felt an attack would be too strong, though she dared not take all of the damage. Instead, she set the barriers to ablate the Chaos and let some of it through to splash against the Colossus’ orichalcum armour.

Adamant Guardian Seal was set to go off anytime her instincts screamed at her. At her current level, the Seal’s consumption was practically a non-issue. Instead, it was the casting that took time, as well as the drain to her Will.

She hadn’t had time to quantify how much Will and Intent she could spend at any given moment, and it was honestly something she should do. Roughly, she could control three thousand sunblades at once, ready seven Adamant Guardian Seals in quick succession, or create a dozen Trinity sunblades at once. But she can’t do all three feats at the same time.

She was holding back on using her Trinity sunblades since defeating the cloned Chaos Lords wasn’t really the goal. It was to wait for the two Legates. But she had the feeling that wasting time was the enemy’s goal too, and that pressure was making her much more anxious than she expected. Mum’s presence and cool-headedness did much to rein in Yuriko’s rashness, so there was that.

‘How long before the Legates get here?’ Yuriko asked.

‘Who knows?’ She felt Mum shrug. ‘They’ll get here when they do. We simply have to take a better position so we can storm the chamber as soon as they arrive.’

Sadeen spun mandalas into existence. They were fighting dozens of competent Chaos Lords and they needed every advantage they could get. Yes, Mum could overpower them easily, but given the fact that more clones could be created, they could eventually be worn down. Each Chaos Lord faced the full might of Yuriko’s swords, but maintaining so many at once wore her down.

She hadn’t noticed it in her earlier battles since she had been flushed with success and arrogant from her reaching Transformation. Three thousand sunblades was the limit to how many she could control at once, however, being pushed against that limit meant that her Will and Intent were exhausted at a greater rate than ever. She could keep it up for ten minutes or so, maybe, before she grew weary enough that her hold over the blades and her connection to the Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords attenuated.

Of course, the fewer blades she had around should mean a lesser strain. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found where that threshold was. How many could she maintain and control such that the depletion of her ephemeral resources matched their regeneration? It was at least a hundred sunblades, but certainly not a thousand.

So she pulled back. She let the excess sunblades explode as they struck the Chaos Lords, spending their Animus and Radiant energies in the process, until she had nine hundred blades left. She still felt the strain so she reduced their number until she felt it reach the limit, which was about six hundred sunblades or so, controlled by the Ennoia. That was more than enough to fight the Chaos Lords, though she had to take manual control of fifty blades to kill a viscount.

She blinked in confusion as another Chaos Lord came out of the mining pit. As she suspected, the enemy was from the area she couldn’t spy with her sunblades. It was a familiar warrior, one she slew recently. The Chaos swordsman. She didn’t actually know his sobriquet.

The swordsman slashed at Yuriko’s spy sunblades with his curved blades, and even by linking the weapons to her Ennoia, he was a swordmaster and was able to anticipate the Ennoia’s prompted movements. She hissed in annoyance and pulled the scouting up and away from the core chamber, and the swordsman followed quickly.

‘Trouble,’ Yuriko said. ‘Copy of the swordsman that gave me trouble.’

‘I’ll handle him.’

And indeed, as soon as the Chaos swordsman reached Synkrasia’s level, the ground beneath him turned orange and sprouted tentacles made out of molten rock.

Hold still.

Mum’s command froze the warrior long enough for the tentacles to capture him, but Sadeen didn’t crush or otherwise try to kill the Chaos Lord. Instead, she left him to the tender mercies of the spell.

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Yuriko’s sunblades focused on the six-armed snake woman, whose blades suddenly wove an implacable defence. Yuriko stared as she saw the movements gave hints of the Ennoia of Swords. Her variant resonated with the woman’s, similar movements and stances highlighting the difference in styles.

Materially, Yuriko was able to anticipate how the woman moved her weapons and quickly gained a bit of insight on how to penetrate the defence. She stabbed with a similar number of blades, which tore an opening to her defensive net, and through that narrow needle’s eye, Yuriko threaded several blades past.

The sunblades stabbed into the woman’s armoured torso and slid in with no small amount of effort. The Chaos Earl perished to her Radiant fires.

Of course, that was just a copy, and soon enough, another one came out.

However, Yuriko already knew how to defeat them. And she repeated her feat less than a minute later. How long could the Chaos Duke keep this up, she wondered. There must be a limit.

‘There isn’t,’ Mum said grimly. ‘There are no limits to a Knight Imperious’ reserves. Everything around them moves to conform to their Will, and even the act of breathing replenishes spent Intent. We cannot win by attrition.’

And that was why they were waiting for the two Knights Domini.

Just as she was thinking about the Legates, the enemy retaliated. It wasn’t the Chaos swordsman who struck, as he was still entangled in the magma tentacles. The other Chaos Lords were either being bombarded by Mum’s spells or Yuriko’s blades.

A new Chaos Lord came out of the pit, and he wore the body that Yuriko fought in Fri’Avgi’s tomb. She wasn’t sure if that was his real appearance, but the duke’s smirk made her want to smack it off his face.

Well, he only popped out of the pit for a single moment, before he unleashed a wave of Chaos that rippled across the city.

It was a soft white light, with waves like that of the ocean. When it passed by the Chaos swordsman and his tentacle grapplers, the magma lost all heat, turned from orange to dull black, then crumbled to ashes.

The silver serpents Mum’s mandalas spewed out, which struck Chaos Lords and left holes in their wake, were caught in the ripple, wriggled futilely, then turned to silver mists. As for the obsidian cranes, as soon as the ripple went across them, they burst to ashes.

Wait…the ripple was still moving, and headed directly to them!

Yuriko immediately cried out, “Adamant Guardian Seal!”

Mum just grunted while the rippling wave washed over and around the seal, then hit her mandalas, causing them to burst, too.

As for the Seal, Yuriko felt her mandala begin to destabilise, but then, nothing happened.

‘Tsk. Lost the connections,’ Sadeen muttered. ‘That was a dispel, my dear. Hmmm, your Adamant Guardian Seal’s make must be tougher and more resilient than my spellforms.’

The duke’s incarnation gave them an infuriatingly cheeky wave before he popped back down the mining pit.

‘Why would he bother doing that?’ Yuriko wondered.

‘Was he actually vulnerable to attrition?’ Mum mused.

‘But I thought you said…’

‘I know, of course, but you must understand that information about the level above mine is scarce. There are only two Knights Imperious. And while there are more Chaos Dukes scattered across the Sea, they rarely fight us.’

‘So what you said was conjecture?’

‘Of course, you can never be too sure of your foe’s capabilities. If he was worried enough to do this, then…’

‘It must interfere with his plans. But he probably just doesn’t want us to wipe out his forces too soon,’ Yuriko grumbled.

‘We can only press on.’

Yuriko’s sunblades had not been affected, and she doubled her numbers to attack more aggressively. Well, it wasn’t as if the sacrificed sunblades had done nothing. She doubled her attacks, and the Chaos Lords fell twice as quickly as before once Mum finished setting up her spell mandalas again.

Five minutes later, both of them felt a disturbance behind them, and when Yuriko checked, she yelped in glee when she saw Legate Segawa appear in mid-air. He glanced around to get his bearings, found the battle they were embroiled in, and flew towards them. His armour was glistening and unmarred, and if his helm didn’t cover his head, Yuriko was sure he’d cut the dashing figure.

A moment after he began flying, there was another ripple in the air, before Legate Brygos emerged. She was surrounded by numerous crystalline birds, which immediately circled around her in a defensive pattern.

Her eyes caught Legate Segawa’s, then saw the current battle. She tilted her head for a moment, then tapped her temple. Both Legates flew towards Eli’Theria, and the crystalline birds rushed towards the Chaos Lords. The armoured Legate Segawa, on the other hand, pointed with his finger and shot small orbs at the Chaos Lords. Each orb pierced through the enemies easily, before striking the ones behind.

Yuriko and Sadeen stepped up their aggression, and a couple of minutes later, most of the Chaos Lord clones were dead. No more wandered above the mining pit, and the two Legates moved next to the Colossus.

“Spell broken?” Legate Brygos asked.

Eli’Theria projected Sadeen’s voice, “Yes. Enemy counterspell.”

“These Chaos Lords look familiar,” Legate Brygos said to herself.

“They’re incarnations of the Chaos Duke,” Yuriko said. “Many of these I was sure I destroyed.”

“You’re able to give them final dissolution?” Legate Segawa asked.

“Yes, through my artefact.”

“Hmmm, then were the copies able to use their original powers or weaker mimicry?”

“Hmmm,” Yuriko pondered. “I think they were the same.”

“Not stronger?” Iola Brygos mused. “Regardless, what did you find?”

“At the mining pit, there’s a hidden layer. I found what I assumed was the planar core chamber, but I couldn’t send my sunblades to scout inside. I saw a Chaos Lord copy come out of the chamber, and the pillars of light came from there too!”

“Then there’s no time to lose,” Legate Brygos said grimly.

“Wait, let me recast our communication spell,” Mum interjected.

“Can we spare a couple of minutes for it?” Legate Brygos growled.

Yuriko chuckled to herself. The four of them had been speaking rapidly, and if an unawakened were to overhear them, they might not understand since the words blurred together. The conversation had barely lasted ten seconds.

“I can do it in one,” Mum said.

“Then go ahead…!” But the Legate’s words were cut off when the entire city began to shake. Cracks crawled outwards from the mining pit, and green light spilt out of them.

Even worse, a fell voice boomed from the pit.

“Your weak Empress’ hold has been broken! Hahaha, fools! You’re too late!”

As one, all four of them charged towards the mining pit and leapt towards the bottom.