The tornado of fire travelled across the battlefield, scorching everything in its path. I dove forward, rolling under a wave of burning steel. The heat was beyond anything I’d experienced. Behind me, I heard Estella's chakrams singing as they deflected flaming blades, her movements transformed from dance into pure survival.

  "Keep moving!" I shouted, ducking as a burning sword nearly took my head off. The blade passed so close I felt it singe my hair. We needed to stop the six paths, and we needed to stop it now.We needed to stop the six paths and we needed to stop it now.

  I glanced at my mana bar - completely empty from pushing Spellblade to 100%. The system messages were clear:

  There was only one option left. I drew my nightsky blade. Truth be told, I wasn't keen on using Blood Weapon again after my earlier complications with it. But we were out of options. Out of time. Out of everything except desperation.

  I dragged the blade across my palm, offering my blade blood as nourishment.

  The nightsky blade grew warm as my blood flowed down its mana channels empowering it, giving it a crimson sheen.

  A rain of burning swords descended on us like a meteor shower.

  I moved into an uppercut. Where the burning blades met my strike, they were deflected in sprays of crimson sparks. The burning blades kept coming, and I kept swinging. But I couldn't stop. One missed deflection and those flaming swords would cut through our entire party.

  But just playing defense wouldn't work. We were bleeding time as fast as I was bleeding HP. The blademaster stood at the center of his storm of burning blades, untouchable behind his wall of steel and flame. But if I could just reach him...

  I needed something with range. My mind raced through gaming logic - blood weapons created an aura of crimson energy around the blade. If I could project that somehow, extend it beyond the physical metal...

  "Everything's connected through mana channels," I muttered, remembering countless theory discussions about game mechanics. "Blood is just liquid mana. And mana can be..."

  The blood coating my blade began to pulse as if responding to my thoughts.

  The notification caught me off guard. But I didn't have time to think it through. More burning blades were screaming toward us.

  "Everyone down!" I shouted, gathering what remained of my strength. The blood on my blade began to swirl, responding to my will rather than gravity. I could feel it drawing more blood directly from my wound, intensifying the HP drain.

  I swung the blade in a wide arc, focusing everything into a single strike. The blood lifted off the metal, condensing into a crimson crescent that cut through the air. Where it passed, the floating swords were knocked aside.

  The beam struck true but just before impact, the blademaster's stance shifted.

  “Immovable as the earth.”

  Stone erupted from the ground, forming a hasty shield. My blood beam struck it with a sound like thunder, and for a moment everything stopped. The spinning blades, the howling wind, even time itself seemed to pause.

  Then the shield cracked.

  The stone barrier shattered, and through the falling debris, I saw something I'd thought impossible. The blademaster was bleeding. Just small cuts, nothing serious, but he was actually bleeding.

  His serene expression had vanished, replaced by something more focused, more dangerous. He touched one of the cuts on his arm, studying the blood with what seemed like genuine surprise.

  “Your destructive power is indeed admirable.” His fingers traced another cut on his cheek. "How long," he asked quietly, "has it been since someone has drew my blood ? Years? Decades?"

  The cuts were minor, but they represented something significant, proof that he wasn't invincible. That his defenses could be broken.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Well done," he said as he licked his blood coated finger. “But it will all be over soon.”

  The temperature dropped as ice crystals formed in the air.

  “Frozen as ice.”

  The blademaster raised his blade, and the ice responded. The very moisture in the air transformed into blades of ice as my breath shattered in the air with tiny fragments of frozen vapor tinkling to the ground like broken glass.

  "This feels much colder than before," Estella managed through chattering teeth. Her chakrams' spin had slowed to a crawl, ice forming along their edges faster than the motion could break it off.

  "Your blood techniques are impressive," he said. "But blood freezes like everything else."

  Looking down at my sword, I saw he was right. The blood coating the blade was crystallizing, the power that had let us pierce his defenses turning solid and useless.

  Ice spears began forming around us, each one aimed at us.

  "Any more tricks?" Estella asked as she watched the ice spears multiply around us.

  "Nope," I said with resignation, watching my HP tick down from Blood Weapon. The crimson coating on my blade had turned to useless crystals. "If you guys have any ideas, now's the time."

  “Whatever we do, we need to do it fast. Only two more paths remain.” Tirion said.

  "I still have one trick up my sleeve," Lysa said as shadows gathered around her hands. "But Noctus, this will drain everything I have left. Make it count."

  The surge of shadow-infused mana hit me like a shot of adrenaline. I could feel Lysa's exhaustion in it, her desperation, her trust. She collapsed against Tirion, spent but conscious.

  The blademaster's eyes narrowed and his stance tighten up as he sensed the danger from my renewed energy.

  With Lysa's mana flowing through me, I activated Spellblade at full power, pushing everything into a single desperate gambit.

  The mana erupted through my blade in a torrent of dark flames, and I felt the crystallized blood crackling and liquifying. The two forces, shadow-infused magic and blood mixed, creating a bloody darkness. Where the bloody darkness touched the ice spears, they sublimated instantly, turning to steam without bothering to melt first.

  "It's time to end this," I said, glancing at Estella. “ Buff me Estella.”

  “Alright, follow my lead.” She smiled.

  I took Estellla hand in mine and we danced around the battlefield. We spun and spun , creating our own tornado of bloody dark flames to combat the ice.

  Her hand found mine, warm despite the biting cold of the blademaster's ice magic. I remembered our first dance in the Undercity, how she'd guided me through those initial awkward steps. This was faster and deadlier, but the fundamental trust remained the same.

  "Remember what I taught you," she said as we began to move. "Dancing isn't about memorizing steps. It's about—"

  "—feeling the rhythm," I finished, letting her lead us into a spiral. The bloody dark flames followed our movement, creating a helix of power that rose around us like a tornado's funnel. Where Estella's chakrams passed through the flames, they caught the energy, leaving trails of darkness in their wake.

  The blademaster's ice magic clashed against our dark cyclone, creating a storm of steam and shadow.

  For the first time, there was fear in his face.

  "That's it!" Estella called out as we spun increasingly faster across the arena. "Feel how the energy wants to flow. Like a performance, but the stage is the battlefield!" Our combined tornado of bloody darkness growing stronger with each revolution

  The blademaster, sensing the danger, took evasive action.

  “Formless as the shadows.”

  He split into ten shadow clones, each indistinguishable from the other.

  “Which one?” Estella asked. We had one shot at this. Pick the wrong clone and we'd waste our combined attack.

  I hesitated. The copies were perfect, no visual tells, no obvious flaws discernable in the chaos of battle.

  Then I heard it.A soft, musical sound cutting through the chaos of battle.

  tinkle tinkle

  Tirion was sprinting across the battlefield, the bell on his bunny ear creating a sound that would have been comical in any other situation. But I noticed something crucial. One of the clones tracked his movement for a fraction of a second too long.

  Thank goodness Estella had insisted on getting that bell for Tirion.

  "That one!" I pointed at the clone that had reacted to Tirion. "Third from the left!"

  Estella's grip on my hand tightened as she spun me toward our target, using the momentum we'd built up to launch me forward. The bloody dark flames spiraled around us like a drill.

  “Go get him!” Estella called out as she released me into the spin.

  It all came down to this. Me against the blademaster. Everything focused into this single moment.

  “Still as holy.” The blademaster quickly changed his stance as I approached. He raised his sword high and emitted a bright light from it. He was attempting to drown the battlefield in light again, to return us to that endless white void. But not this time.

  Using the momentum from Estella's spin, I channeled everything I had left into my blade. The bloody darkness swirled around it. My first slash cut horizontal. The second slash fell vertical.

  Where my darkness met his light, neither yielded. My bloody cross stood in the middle, demarcating the boundary between night and day. Then, the world exploded.