Kysa summoned three spirits in total. All of them were pix with wings. The only difference were the weapons they were carrying: a sword, a staff, and a flail.

"Now, perish for your sins." The spirits went flying to attack.

Without having to say anything, Emily, Jacob, and Rebecca went in different directions. Each spirit pursued one of them, while Kysa stood at the altar without lifting a finger.

"[Green Slash]!" After practicing for a week, Emily's ability to use spells had gotten better. She could cast them in a short time by sacrificing power, but the green blade split the spirit in two who tried to deflect it with its sword.

Jacob was on the left, running as he shot back. The spirit moved his staff to block the bullets, but the barrage was too much to handle. Its wings were pierced, and then its body and head.

Rebecca was the one who was having more trouble. She tried to parry the flail attacks, but her opponent was too fast. A hit from above almost knocked her helmet off and threw her to the ground.

She felt her head bouncing against the ground in pain and looked up to the spirit moving its flail with every intention of killing her. A volley of shots brought it down before it could attack her. With that, all three spirits were destroyed.

"Insolent fools. You think that is enough to deal with my messengers." She snapped her fingers, and the three spirits were back at her side. It was like nothing had happened. She sent them forward again.

The battle turned into a stamina race. Emily and Jacob were able to deal with the spirits, but it cost them stamina every time they cast spells and shot them down. Once one fell, Kysa brought it back and sent it back to attack. The result would be decided by who was going to get tired first.

This is bad. I can't keep casting spells so often. The angel can cut my roots in one swing. At this pace, I’m going to be the first one to lose stamina, and then she's going to kill me and Rebecca.

She had to find a way to break the stalemate. Rebecca was having trouble dealing with one spirit. She was keeping up thanks to the armor that Nadine had made. Emily tried to summon roots from below, but she could not do much with so little time between the attacks.

"Jacob, can you take them for a minute?"

"Sure!" He jumped high into the chamber and shot three rounds of bullets at the spirits to help Emily, and he gave her a moment where she ran to Rebecca.

Then she summoned a cocoon of vines to cover the two of them, while Jacob kept the spirits busy.

"I won’t let you do anything else other than bow to my mercy." Kysa sent the spirits to the cocoon, but Jacob shot them down with only one shot. "What is that power?"

The bullets were different than before. They were stronger and faster. It was the culmination of Jacob’s training. Cink told him to focus on his power.

"Warrior is a simple class, but that means your power can grow stronger with training. Just like your buddy can punch harder with his gloves, you can do the same with this weapon."

By putting more of his power into the gun, the bullets could become much more powerful for a brief period of time. Spending so much power on each bullet burned through his stamina like crazy, but he had to buy Emily time to prepare her spell.

"But I’m not the type of guy who does the bare minimum when someone asks me." He aimed back at the spirits and destroyed them. "How about you show me your hidden ace, Kysa!"

He kept shooting at her, who was trying to hide behind her spirits. For the first time in the fight, Kysa had to dodge by moving away from the altar. The bullets made holes all over the chamber.

She had to jump all over the place and use her spirits as a shield against the onslaught of attacks. She was forced to reveal another spirit. A big pix holding a massive shield to block the attacks.

"A defensive one. You kept it a secret all this time? You’re smarter than I thought." He shot three more bullets, but they all bounced off the shield.

He stopped his attack since wasting more energy right now would be useless. He needed to save some power for his "ultimate move," as Silas called it, but also because Emily was ready. He felt the power coming from inside the cocoon. It opened and revealed the two women.

"She has one more spirit to protect herself." He didn’t even look back as he spoke with a smile.

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"Thank you, Jacob." Emily summoned a massive root from the ground, breaking the floor and the cave just as it was about to crush Kysa.

The spirits moved and tried to stop it, but this was a spell with all her power. The chamber was obliterated under the weight of the massive root, but Kysa managed to dodge it.

"Such power, you must be a mage. But you don't look like a typical Bors. What are you?" She has only now started to notice them. But it was too late; more roots came from the ground and trapped her in a ball of wood. She summoned her spirits again to try to break it from the inside, but it was too hard.

With Kysa and her summons trapped in a single spot, Emily prepared another spell. The familiar blade. "[Green Slash]!"

The blade went flying and split the roots in half. They saw the blood dropping from the inside. There was no way to hide and not even her spirit with a shield could block the attack. They won.

"You sinners, no matter what tricks or traps you prepare, God is invincible." The roots were cut from the inside.

"How? I still have stamina for the spell." The answer was obvious at first glance. A spirit couldn’t block the spell or break free from the roots. One, but what if there were four?

"Four spirits with a sword. You can summon the same type of spirit multiple times."

She was correct. Kysa survived by using four shields instead of one, but she still lost an arm. She was bleeding badly from below the shoulder, and her eyes were full of rage.

"You sinners who denied my divinity. There is no punishment worthy of your sins!" She transformed two spirits into the ones holding shields and sent the other two at Emily.

They had played all their cards and were too tired to try anything else. As she predicted, her energy was too low in comparison to Kysa's. She raised some vines, but they were cut by the swords.

Jacob shot one of them down, but it took them a second to be summoned again. Now, without Emily’s magic, she and Rebecca had to really be in close combat. The spirits slashed them.

Rebecca's armor was finally broken by the attacks, and Rebecca lost a hand after only a couple of strikes.

"Crap, what should we do, Emily?" Jacob asked while shooting the spirits down and trying to reach Kysa, but now she was hiding behind two shields. She wasn't going to give them any chances.

"Sorry, Jacob. I used too much in the last couple of spells. I’ll try to make an opening, and you can use the rest of your power to kill her."

"How are you going to do that?"

"I’m counting on you, Rebecca."

"M-Me? But I can only heal. How is that supposed to help you in making an opening?" She couldn’t finish before Emily went running.

She took everyone by surprise with that, but Kysa changed the spirits' directions, and the two of them cut one of her legs. Despite that, she kept running, using the roots under her feet to support her weight.

Focusing the last of her power, she summoned another root from the ground. It was much smaller and crashed against one of the shields. a last ditch effort, but it didn’t accomplish anything. The two spirits flew to her side and stabbed her in the back.

Rebecca was running at her while Jacob took his chance. I see it, Emily!

She risked her life to give him a chance. Small roots were holding the two spirits that stabbed her. Kysa couldn’t use them to block the next attack. Jacob used his remaining power. He had to use his last attack. His gun lit up on fire and was aimed at Kysa.

"Another technique?" She focused on the two shields in front of her, anticipating a powerful attack.

Jacob shot a bullet of fire at the two spirits being held in place. Both were destroyed while Kysa was wondering why he wasted an attack like that to save the dead Bors on the floor.

"You’re a devil, Emily." A sharp pain stabbed Kysa in the back.

"What, a root?" It was the last root Emily used to attack before. She was still controlling it. "How? I’m sure my messengers got you. They pierced your core. Not even a Bors can survive that."

Kysa struggled to think of the reason until she saw a flimsy stream of blood growing bigger and bigger. It went all the way back to Rebecca. She had stopped running because she was already helping Emily.

"Blood transfusion I didn’t know I could do it either, but Emily still had faith in my power." The shadow was using her blood to keep Emily alive and heal her chest at the same time.

It was an amazing scene. The shadow was performing the transfusion while using an unknown substance and syringes to reconstruct the flesh. It was a miracle of medicine, and yet Kysa had no idea what she was seeing. Her thoughts only went to herself.

"How pathetic, to leave my back exposed..." She fell to the floor, and the spirits vanished.

Jacob grabbed Rebecca and took her close to Emily.

"You know how my things are wrong with this? I don’t even know if our blood types are compatible. I’m just assuming this thing is changing my type to match yours." Rebecca started to reprimand her while healing her wound. "How can you be so reckless? If it wasn’t for Jacob attacking the spirits, I couldn’t have helped you."

"Well, that was my plan. I would give him a chance, hoping to live long enough for a few more seconds, but I don’t think I could with this wound. Thank you to both of you."

"Just promise me you won’t try another plan that involves you sacrificing your life. Let me tell you right now, I won’t follow it." Jacob was stern as he said it. He wasn’t going to accept the idea of sacrificing a companion to win a battle.

"Okay, I won’t do it again, but Rebecca has to promise to stop talking down to herself."

"What, I’m mean is the true. Is the shadow—"

"Enough! I don’t want to hear you say it again. It’s your power. You gave me your blood to save my life."

Rebecca had a hard time accepting it. She looked at Jacob and Emily's reassuring expressions, but she also remembered Cink’s words. When she took the test to find out about her class.

"Rebecca, are you missing something?"

"W-Why are you asking me that?"

"I have met my fair share of Invokers. One thing they all had in common was the void in their hearts. They want something so desperately that their power takes a form to fill that void."

"Are you saying healing is my desire?"

"No, only your heart knows the answer. But don’t let it control you. It may seem like a good thing at first, but it is only a temporary relief. All the Invokers who surrender their hearts to their power still end up empty."

Those words resonated in her heart as she watched Kysa's dead body. Rejecting the shadow, treating it like another entity, or accepting it as a part of herself. Which was control, and which was submission?