While Makhus was approaching the dragon, so was she, but rather than charging straight at it, she merely closed the distance while telekinetically drawing Vysaga out of its sheath. As the sword rose out of its sheath on Lydia’s back, its golden dragon-wing crossguard unfurled, previously wrapped closely to the blade. The reason for such an accommodation was made plain by the span of those golden wings, as wide as Lydia’s shoulders, the golden colour of its majority contrasted by silver talons. In the crossguard’s center, on each side, a diamond-shaped sapphire was set. In a motion that was at once swift yet agonizingly slow, the gigantic sword floated to a spot in front of Lydia, connected to her fingers by hair-thin arcs of pink lightning, petal-like sparks fluttering around it. The grip, far too thick for any normal hand to hold, was wrapped in criss-crossed strips of False Drake leather, and the pommel took the form of a golden dragon-claw gripping a spherical battery-gem, another sapphire in this case. The pommel-claw had four identical digits, ending in silver talons. Contrasting the elaborately decorated handle, Vysaga’s blade was a monolithic slab of matte-black metal with a shallow, decorative fuller and incredibly aggressive, wedgelike blades. This reconditioned surface concealed lichtenberg figures that ran all throughout the sword’s inner structure, the scars of wounds that had healed since it was wielded by Zelys Newman.

Then, with the slightest flick of her wrist, the blade flipped from a vertical to a horizontal alignment. Pink light shone within its pommel, and in an instant, the blade was enveloped by an outpour of lightning. While it appeared as if Lydia was merely standing with her free hand behind her back, she was in fact running through a series of hand signs, this stance being a concealment tactic. For the briefest moment, it appeared as if a pink serpent wrought of lightning, having the appearance of wood rather than scales, manifested along the sword’s blade. At that moment, Vysaga shot out with the velocity of a cannonball, its course just as erratic and unstable as the path of a lightning bolt, an arc of which it traced between itself and Lydia’s hand. Around the two-thirds point in its flight, two copies of the sword entirely made of lightning suddenly split away from it, forming a truly branch-like trail. Vysaga itself followed one of these branching paths, whereas a copy continued forward, and was thus the one which the dragon was able to shoot down. At the same exact moment, Vysaga and one of its copies struck the Wildfire Kite’s armored hide, and a flood of stormbloom petals followed with them, shredding away at its bared flesh. The great beast’s purple blood gushed out of its wounds, and its scream of pain and rage shook the forest.

STORMBLOOM SIGN

THE GOD-TREE’S JUDGMENT

LOOSED FROM A BOW OF CHERRY WOOD

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ART OF KILLING BLOSSOMS: FLOWERING FULGARROW -TRIFECTA-

Both Vysaga and its copy discharged bursts of power into the dragon, scales bursting out of its skin like rivets. The phantom sword faded out of being, whereas the real Vysaga was pulled out of the beast, a pink arc reigniting between it and Lydia as she threw herself into a mighty pulling motion. Despite the Kite’s attempt to disconnect the arc by spreading out its wing in its path, the sword tore itself free regardless, turning mid-flight so that it cut through the membrane as it returned back to Lydia. Lydia repositioned and stabbed Vysaga into the ground, beginning the casting of a technique that widn’t place so much strain on her aura. The sword erupted with lightning once more, a maelstrom of lightning petals spilling out and flowing around Lydia, shredding a pair of Kitelings that had been hiding in the trees. She outstretched her right hand towards Vysaga with fingers held apart, while placing her left forearm across it perpendicularly, the leftmost three fingers held straight while the index and thumb touched to form a somewhat triangular shape. While much of the energy for this technique came from Vysaga itself, Lydia was purposely drawing it into herself and passing it back into the sword through her right eye, rather than letting it flow directly from the battery gem into the blade. For reasons she could not yet fully understand, this made the technique both more potent and more focused. Moreover, she had been able to learn an improved breathing technique from the Newman Sect, but performing it was so focus-intensive that she only switched to it for short periods when casting techniques such as this one. It was none other than Engine Breathing.

Meanwhile, Makhus continued facing down the great beast face to face, sword to claw, constantly threatening it sufficiently to force the bulk of its offensive power - and its aura - on himself. Lucian, meanwhile, was fighting for his life at the beast’s rear, occupying its tail in the process. Lydia had no issue withstanding the Wildfire Kite’s passive aura, even if it wasn’t exactly pleasant, but Lucian was visibly impacted by the beast’s presence alone… But he was also hardening. The young man had gone from dodging for dear life and mostly keeping his distance to actively trying to annoy the giant beast. Lydia continued honing the furious blade of lightning, building up the technique.

As for Lucian…

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Lucian was having a very, very bad time, not just because of the physical fight. His spirit and aura, shaped with the truth of “Blades”, already possessed a hardened nature. His was not Armament Aura; it possessed the toughness of a blade, but none of its sharpness. But with each passing moment, each shift of the dragon’s massive body, each barely-dodged swing of its sabre-like claws, Lucian felt its immense aura as well, grazing him, grinding away at him. Lucian came to a realization. There was no wonder he hadn’t been able to reach the first milestone; his cultivation until this point had been a matter of refining himself into suitable stock, into the vague form of a blade. What he had needed was something to grind him and hone him to a sharp edge. It was just as Lydia had said.