The return from the world within her skill, was…quite harsh, she returned to her body only to find it weaving around shadow spikes. Apparently she hadn’t quite experimented a time stop as she had thought.

So [The Shadow Tide] took the chance when her consciousness left her body. At least her body had reacted accordingly moving to dodge, while she was dealing with the remnants of Aetheria, at least she had learned some things about her skill.

“[Hmph, so what if you can make puny weapons. Your weak skill will not be able to pierce all the way, my Divine Granted power will grant my Wish.]” [The Shadow Tide] ranted as he summoned more and more shadow zombies from within his [Shadow Tide], they stumbled and crawled away from it and zeroed into Elizabeth.

As if she was a beacon of light in the darkness…And considering she was bathed in Holy Lightning, she may as well be.

Even so, she wasn’t scared, not anymore. Not after she awoke this new skill, a skill that connected her to her Haven, to the space within her Soul, straight to her Domain. This skill was a game-changer, a trustworthy armory full of weapons that could help her with her battle against [The Shadow Tide]. And since Reginald was ensuring no influence was left on that part of her skill, she could finally let go.

So raising her hand Elizabeth called upon her newest skill.

“Open the Gate to the Armory.” Elizabeth felt a ripple in the space spread behind her, one, two, three…a hundred, two hundred….a thousand….ten thousand…. From the original ripple in space, Elizabeth felt the space behind her distort as thousands of swords, spears, maces, hammers, arrows, and even chains poked their head from the empty space. Each weapon was unique, with intricate designs and a menacing aura. “Open your eyes wide and prepare yourself.”

Elizabeth smirked as even the mindless shadow zombies stood there awestruck as Elizabeth’s Armory was open and the weapons showed themselves.

Of course, this was not a free show; Elizabeth knew that these were mere illusions of the weapons she could summon; not even her mana was that vast. Should she summon all these weapons, she would end up without any mana left to fight.

But then again, she didn’t need to summon them all in one go… Even though Elizabeth liked to joke about how she failed to fight back the bimbo allegations, she was not stupid. She knew that summoning all these weapons at once would deplete her mana, leaving her vulnerable. Instead, she planned to summon them strategically, one at a time in small quantities, testing how much mana they consumed. She slowly ramped up its use when she was comfortable, using them to her advantage without exhausting her resources.

“Seven Series - Pride’s Crown” Elizabeth, first and foremost, only needed to take what had made from a washed-out A-Tier Hero into this monster, the unending horde of victims afflicted by his Taint. So she summoned her Crown, the one that she had got a few days ago.

The one that allowed her very specific power she had thought would never use, but now was very useful. For it would allow her to take his power away…

“Railgun - Gattling.” After getting the Crown on her head, the thing was quite simple for something that was based upon her [Pride], if anything it looked more like a Tiara than a Crown.

Even so, Elizabeth used what had become one of her best ways of attack; she summoned the lighting at her back and focused it on the nearest seven ripples near her. Each space ripple got a Railgun, each one materialized a weapon and all of them shot at the same time.

As soon as a weapon materialized it got supercharged and shot at three times the speed of sound towards the nearest congregation of Shadow Zombies, to be honest Elizabeth couldn’t see quite well the projectile flying, she could, however. See the destruction that happened when the weapon embedded itself into the ground.

In the best-case scenario, the Shadow Zombies got vaporized at the contact. Elizabeth felt a trickle of her mana dissapear as something was caught into her Crown and ripped away and shoved into her Domain.

At first, the effect was negligible; what mattered if a few dozen of Shadow Zombies got annihilated?

“[STOP!]” But soon enough even a monkey would notice something was amiss, “[WHAT ARE YOU DOING?]”

[The Shadow Tide] seemed to focus on and try to pull something from his [Shadow Tide], but nothing came out of it, “[What have you stolen from me?!?!? You all forgot my Sister and then dared to steal what is rightfully mine?!?!?]” [The Shadow Tide] screamed as he raved and threw Shadow Spikes at her.

“Rho Aias.” Elizabeth merely said raising her hand and was honestly waiting for the weird leather shield that Akira had used, that one looked shabby as hell, instead what manifested in front of her was a beautiful seven-layered magical circle, each layer was made out of a superimposed shield out of different materials.

The first layer seemed to be made out of Golden metal, followed by a black material, then blue, red, pink, white and finally silver. Seven layers of different colors set one after the other.

The Shadow Spikes struck against the golden layer and seemed to evaporate as usual, but Elizabeth got the impression that the layers could be moved as needed. How had the shabby leather shield turned into this?

Perhaps what she was calling and what Akira called were fundamentally different?

“Hmm….if so….” Elizabeth thought back at the fight and the weapons that Akira had summoned, he had called forth dangerous weapons that looked shabby too, “Longinus.”

Elizabeth focused on the myth behind this Spear, a spear that was allegedly used to kill gods in some myths, while other depictions told a tale of a standard weapon that got almost revered since it was used to make sure the son of God was truly dead.

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In a sense, both had the same implications, to fatally wound the divine. But the implications vastly made for different weapons, what Akira had summoned was closer to what she expected from the original to be…

But what Elizabeth got….

“Yeah….mine are….weird.” Was vastly different, her ‘Spear’ was closer to a diapason than a spear, it had a blood red metallic shaft and instead of a pointy end it, it forked into two ends. “This is more of a diapason than a spear tho…”

It was weird, but Elizabeth was fully aware that this Spear was dangerous, it had an ominous feeling, and it was closer to something that Elizabeth felt could truly damage her Domain. What was it called? A Bident? A two-pronged implement resembling a pitchfork of a weapon.

“Railgun - Sealing Shot.” So she threw it into the air and made a magnetic cannon for it, she pointed it straight at [The Shadow Tide] and let the skill do the rest.

She felt some resistance from her skill, as if the Spear of Longinus refused to bend down to her, even so. She didn’t need the permission from the weapon, nor its acceptance, she was using cold physics and logic. If the weapon refused to magnetize itself to the wavelength of her Railgun…

“I only need to change the channel to fit the magnetic properties of your make…” Elizabeth felt a smirk form on her face as the properties of the Spear of Longinus started flowing into her mind.

The make of the metal and its properties, she ignored the Mystic properties and instead focused on the metals, she needed the magnetic charge and nothing else, she felt the data flow into her brain and sure enough, the weapon was metallic on its make.

Mystic Metal? Perhaps, but any metal had a magnetic field, and Elizabeth only needed to match it and make the cannon of her Railgun compatible with it, she only needed a spark to match it.

And after some fiddling with the magnetic field she made it possible, the Railgun matched the correct frequency and so, it mattered not if the Spear wanted it or not, it was shot at almost five times the speed of sound (Elizabeth may have feed more power into it to get back at the weapon) against [The Shadow Tide] and his [Shadow Tide].

Just as before [The Shadow Tide] sank into the wave of shadows to try and protect himself, perhaps he expected this to fail like the previous attempt?

Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile at that; the previous attempt had failed because her ammo couldn’t withstand the might of her power, but this? This was a weapon out of the Myths, quite literally, not the recreation of the weapon wielded by mortals.

And instead a recreation of a weapon from what said mortals thought it would be, instead of the generic Spear made for a soldier. It was a Divine Weapon capable of felling gods; it should be able to withstand the rigors of Match 5 and the immense temperatures from the friction as it pierced the sound barrier.

So, as she expected, the Spear blasted through the [Shadow Tide] and sank into the floor, leaving behind a huge hole and the stare of a surprised [Maximilian Windsor], not [The Shadow Tide], but the face of [Maximilian Windsor].

How was it different? For a second Elizabeth had seen not the Madness of [The Shadow Tide], but the astoundished face of a broken man.

“Also, for your information. I do know the name of your Sister, she was someone important to me too.” Elizabeth said as she took the image of the broken man that once had been her [Hero].

“[Impossible.]” He said as he turned to look to his arm, or what was left of it anyway. The Spear of Longinus had ripped it apart and nailed it into the floor almost 300 meters behind him, had he attempted to use it to shield himself? Did he miss his chance to dodge and get the arm nailed instead?

Elizabeth didn’t know.

“[How can you, a mere brat. Remember the name of MY SISTER.]” [The Shadow Tide] shook his head as shadows bloomed from his stump, making a new arm made entirely out of shadows. “[I will not stand for this disrespect, you may have proven to be a worthy inheritor of the power of one of my former friends. But your power shows your allegiance.]”

It did?

“[I will not be thwarted by the Italians. Even if you hide your name, only a De’Medici would wield Divine Weapons like that.]” [The Shadow Tide] said as he cloaked himself in more shadows, these seemed to have red pulsating veins covering him as if to spread and make sure he was fully Tainted. “[I will recover what is mine!]”

…Yeah, that still sounded sketchy as hell. Did Chloe really have a healthy relationship with him?

But then again, who was Elizabeth to judge the relationships of other people?

So Elizabeth re-energized the Railguns she had made before and tweaked the direction they pointed “Reload, Aim, Shoot.”

As the words left her mouth, Elizabeth felt the mana drop and the Railgun Cannons re align, her Armory still had plenty of weapons and she could even feel some weapons brimming with energy as if to asking her to use them, she of course took them into consideration but decide to set them apart.

For now these would remain at the side for Reginald to use if needed, she was still wary about Aetheria and Akira. So she would save those for later unless she got a kill shot…But then again, she wasn’t suppose to kill [The shadow tide]....

“[YOU.WILL.FALL!]” Even if he seemed to be quite intent on making her kill him, he continued raving and throwing spears made out of shadows at her, Elizabeth was starting to get annoyed at what once was quite a valid strategy that she loved to use.

And so he started spreading his shadows, using his own [Shadow Tide] as fuel, making solid walls out of shadows to block her barrage. Each time one of her attacks hit these walls, Elizabeth could see the shadows attempting to taint her weapons, but all her weapons had been supercharged with her Divine Lightning, so they not only resisted the influence, but they bursted into spheres of purging fire.

[The Shadow Tide] was still trying to fight her away, even though both of them knew that Elizabeth had the advantage by the mere fact that her Divine Lightning was anathema to his shadows. He could not Taint her, and Elizabeth could destroy his shadows.

Even so, he raised his attack intensity trying to nail down Elizabeth, while Elizabeth just kept her Rho Aias active, blocking as many attacks as they came her way.

At this point, what had been a dangerous encounter had morphed into...something pathetic.

There was no thought behind these attacks, no master plan, no trap hidden within the barrage, nothing. Just a broken man throwing a tantrum.

"You really are a pathetic little man." Elizabeth said as she sighed, as she took in the appearance of this man.

She couldn't help but pity him a little.

But only a little, since he did cause much pain and suffering to not only two different Chloes, but also to Alice. He could not be allowed to get away with that.

So Elizabeth started analyzing what she had achieved, the amount of damage she had made, the size comparison between the [Shadow Tide] of now and the one that was at the start; the difference outwardly didn't seem as much. From where Elizabeth was standing it looked about the same, but according to her senses it was different.

The pressure coming from the [Shadow Tide] was weaker, it hadn't as much gravity to it, or was it mass? She couldn't quite name it, but she knew it seemed more brittle.

So looking at her own Mana Pool and how much it was going down...She was surprised at seeing that it wasn't quite going down as low as she had thought, turning her attention more to it she noticed that she was getting a trickle of mana from a new part of her Haven.

What looked to be some kind of tribal group of...birds? They seemed to be some kind of small round-ish yellow bird that occasionally burst into lumps of lightning to move around.

But whatever they were they seemed to be the reason that her mana wasn't going down as far as it should, these ones seemed to be fueling her mana regeneration...Somehow.

She would look at them later.

For now, this meant that she had a bigger allowance for what she was able to use in this combat, case in point...She now could afford to spam her weapons and increase her allowance from seven railgun cannons to fourteen.

Not that much in the grand scheme of things, merely going twice as much... But when you were shooting, what was a railgun from Mach three to Mach Five that was almost indestructible projectile? Well, each weapon made you more of a nuisance than before.

"Railgun Rain." Yeah, Elizabeth was not proud of that one. But the effect was felt nonetheless, as another series of seven Railgun cannons materialized surrounding her.

Each one of those had their own ripple into space that loaded a new weapon; this time, Elizabeth focused her weapons on spears, as they were more aerodynamic for throwing. Granted, some of those had ornamented parts as they seemed to be famed weapons. And unlike the practical ones, these were designed for grandeur and not so much for war.

Even so Elizabeth didn't mind that much, what does it matter if a weapon loses some speed when its base speed is around Mach 3?

Not much; Mach 3 and Mach 2.9 are around the same; if you get hit with something at that speed, it will still hurt. And so with a rate of fourteen weapon shot at [The Shadow Tide] Elizabeth slowly and methodically started destroying his [Shadow Tide].

First she went ahead and cut the connection he had with the broader part of his [Shadow Tide], she sent her Railguns as if they were a beam using them to cut him away from the rest. As soon as the broader parts were separated it was a child's play to exterminate the other parts.

Elizabeth went methodically reducing his broader access to shadows, [The Shadow Tide] of course caught on to it and started to pull the excess shadows into himself. However, not even Elizabeth could house that many shadows, and she had her Haven to offload most of them.

So it was now only a matter of time. The critical bit would be if someone would come to interrupt her before she was done, and she would have to trust Jenna to prevent that.