Camilla exploded from the shadows like a living comet, white-hot greaves trailing blazing lines of heat through the dusty air. She twisted mid-leap, launching a devastating aerial kick straight at Agatha's head.
Agatha's crimson-pupiled eyes narrowed. With effortless grace, she shifted several inches to the side using a burst of flight. Camilla's burning heel sliced through empty space, missing by a hair's breadth. The momentum carried her downward. She slammed into the ruined floor with cataclysmic force.
BOOM!
A violent ring of combustion erupted outward. The stone cratered violently beneath her, molten cracks spiderwebbing across the chamber as waves of searing heat and magma burst upward in a glowing orange arc. Chunks of rock melted instantly, bubbling and spitting.
Agatha hovered above the destruction, violet robes fluttering. A faint smirk touched her lips. "How cute."
Camilla rose from the crater, steam curling off her greaves, now glowing at a fierce 3000°C. Her eyes sparkled with reckless excitement. "Aww, you think so? Then let's see how you handle this!"
She launched forward again, greaves combusting with explosive force, propelling her at blinding speed. The ruined chamber became a battlefield of fire and gravity.
Camilla attacked relentlessly, leaping from floating debris to broken pillars, each movement accompanied by bursts of white-hot propulsion. Her kicks carved burning trails through the air. Agatha danced between them with elegant precision, using short, controlled bursts of flight and precise gravity pulses to redirect every strike. Whenever Camilla came close, Agatha would flick her wrist, slamming the younger woman into walls, dragging her down into the fractured floor with crushing gravitational force.
Yet Camilla refused to stay down.
She bounced back from every impact, laughing breathlessly. "That all you got, grandma? I've had rougher days!"
Agatha's expression remained cold, but her movements sharpened. She clapped her hands together, generating a localized gravity well that yanked Camilla mid-air and smashed her into a half-collapsed pillar. Stone exploded around her. Camilla coughed but immediately pushed off the debris, greaves flaring brighter as she ran straight up the vertical surface of another crumbling wall, leaving glowing molten footprints behind her.
"Too slow!" Camilla shouted, launching off the wall like a missile.
She spun into a blazing roundhouse kick. Agatha raised a shimmering golden-white barrier just in time. The impact sent violent ripples across the shield and forced Agatha backward several meters through the air. Heat waves rolled off Camilla's greaves, warping the air around them.
Bulk, still hunched in the far corner, watched with gritted teeth. He could see the tide shifting, Camilla was pure aggression and momentum, while Agatha remained composed, always one step ahead.
Camilla pressed harder, increasing her combat speed. Her greaves burned hotter, propulsion bursts growing stronger. She became a whirlwind of white-hot strikes, leaping, spinning, and diving from every angle. Agatha kept evading and redirecting, but the constant heat was beginning to wear on her barrier. Small cracks formed and reformed as her necklace charm pulsed steadily.
At one point, Agatha thrust her palm downward. A powerful Gravity Clamp seized Camilla, slamming her hard into the ground and pinning her there. The pressure was immense. Camilla's body sank slightly as her greaves continued heating the stone beneath her into molten slag. The magma bubbled and hissed around her legs.
"Persistent little pest," Agatha muttered, preparing a finishing spell.
From the darkened corner, Bulk roared and raised his heavy projectile launcher. Three consecutive glowing bolts screamed across the chamber. They slammed into Agatha's barrier with thunderous cracks, shattering it completely.
Agatha's head snapped toward Bulk, irritation flashing across her face. She extended her other hand and unleashed a crushing gravitational blast toward him.
That split-second distraction was all Camilla needed.
With a defiant shout, she forced every ounce of power into her greaves. White-hot combustion exploded beneath her, fighting against the gravity pinning her down. The ground melted further as she broke free in a violent burst, rocketing straight toward Agatha like a guided missile.
Agatha reacted instantly. She reversed the gravity field around Camilla, yanking her backward with tremendous force. Camilla crashed hard into the ground, tumbling violently across the broken floor.
For a moment, silence hung.
Then Camilla pushed herself up, wiping dust and blood from her lip. Her grin widened, eyes blazing with pure thrill. "Now we're talking!"
She broke into a dead sprint, then suddenly veered upward, running full speed along the vertical walls at ridiculous velocity. Her greaves surged to 5000°C, glowing like twin suns. Each step left deep molten gouges in the stone. She bounded from wall to wall, ceiling to pillar, becoming almost impossible to track by the ordinary eye, Agatha still match up to her haste, and her familiar detecting Camilla's several attack patterns.
Agatha's barrier reformed just in time to block a scorching kick. The impact broke the barrier and still sent painful waves of heat through the shield. Every combustion-fueled strike from Camilla carried not just physical force, but intense thermal radiation that made the air itself shimmer and burn.
The two women turned the chamber into a maelstrom. Camilla's laughter echoed between strikes while Agatha fought with cold, surgical precision, layering gravity manipulation with sudden bursts of flight.
Then Agatha's lips moved in a swift incantation.
"Echo—Shape Simulacrum!"
A large violet sigil bloomed in front of her, shimmering with intricate patterns. Mana waves of Agatha presence scattered around the floor. Immediately after, she followed up:
"Gelidus!"
A second icy sigil formed, massive and glowing cold blue. As Camilla leaped in, greaves thrust forward for a killing strike from eight meters away, the sigil erupted.
A colossal icicle construct twice Agatha's size, shot forward at terrifying velocity. It struck Camilla's greaves dead-on with a deafening CRACK!
The collision created a massive shockwave. Giant plumes of steam exploded outward as extreme heat met extreme cold. Camilla was sent tumbling backward through the air, performing ten rapid, uncontrolled somersaults before landing hard on her feet. She skidded to a stop, breathing heavily, but the smirk never left her face.
"Hah… this just keeps getting even better!" she cheered, rolling her shoulders.
The battle intensified. What began as Camilla clearly trying to dominate had slowly become a fierce, neck-struggle. The chamber floor and lower walls were now half-molten magma, glowing orange and shifting under their feet. Agatha relentless counters and mobility pushed Camilla to her break her limits, while Agatha's gravity and growing ice magic kept Camilla from landing a decisive blow.
Camilla dashed forward again, spinning rapidly in a blazing wheel-like run, greaves screaming with heat. She closed the distance at terrifying speed, aiming a white-hot kick straight at Agatha's midsection.
Agatha's eyes flashed. She thrust both hands outward.
Gravity multiplied one hundred times in a fifty-meter radius.
The sudden crushing weight slammed down on everything. Camilla's charge faltered mid-stride. Her greaves hit the ground with a violent combustion, the impact blowing out like clinging bombs of heat and force. The explosion cracked Agatha's newly reformed barrier.
But the gravity held.
Agatha followed up immediately, voice cold and commanding:
"Frost—Brittle. Lessen Blizzard!"
Two hundred inches icy sigils materialized in rapid succession above her head, spinning in opposite directions. In the blink of an eye, a catastrophic blizzard roared across the entire floor. Freezing winds howled through the chamber. The molten ground flash-froze. Magma turned to blackened, brittle ice. Walls, ceiling, and debris were encased in thick layers of frost.
Camilla was caught mid-motion and frozen solid, her body locked in a brittle ice statue, mouth still open in a defiant grin.
Bulk tried to run but was only halfway across the chamber before the blizzard overtook him. He froze mid-stride, becoming a corded ice sculpture, launcher still raised.
Rate, who had been slowly recovering near the collapsed entrance, saw the incoming storm. His hollow eyes widened. Without hesitation, he lunged toward Quinn's helpless form on the ground, scooping the injured man onto his knee. Dark energy flared desperately as he tried to construct a protective shadow field. The blizzard still swallowed them both. Rate and Quinn were encased deep in ice, frozen in their protective huddle.
Agatha hovered above the frozen battlefield, breathing steadily, her expression one of cold finality.
Then, a brilliant white light began glowing from within Camilla's icy prison. Steam poured out in thick streams. The temperature around her skyrocketed. Her greaves blazed with blinding intensity, now reaching a staggering 10,000°C. The brittle ice around her began to melt violently, cracking and exploding outward in chunks. The enchanted spells embedded in floor suppresses the heatwaves of Camilla's Greaves.
Agatha's eyes widened slightly. She pulled back immediately.
Camilla burst free with a triumphant shout, "Arhhhhhhh!" molten ice water steaming off her body. Frost bite on face and fingers, her cheeky smile stretched wider than ever, eyes burning with exhilaration.
"Miss me?"
She launched forward at maximum velocity, a straight, white-hot kick aimed directly at Agatha on ground level. Agatha responded instantly, conjuring a massive rotating ice crystal that fired forward like a cannonball.
The two attacks collided.
A cataclysmic explosion of steam and energy erupted, engulfing nearly fifty-four meters of the chamber in thick, blinding white clouds. The temperature difference created violent turbulence.
Camilla moved through the dense steam without hesitation. Her senses picked up Agatha's silhouette within the swirling mist. With no excitation, she struck.
Her greaves slammed into the barrier with devastating force. Combustion followed instantly.
KABOOOOOM!
A blinding flare of heat and light detonated, scorching and melting everything within an eighty-meter radius. The floor jagged and warped under the extreme temperature. For a moment, Agatha's form seemed to vanish inside the inferno.
Camilla landed, rubbing under her nose playfully as dust, steam, and debris began to clear.
"Who would have thought…Now I'm a legend of legends!" she declared with a cocky laugh.
But as the haze settled, a presence manifested directly behind her.
Agatha stood unharmed, two hands already extended, fingers gracefully whirling at the sides of Camilla's head, as Agatha began casting another spell.