482 Against the Waves
Igni stood her ground, with flames raging all over her body, protecting her like armor.
The angel-like enemies charged without regard, shouting things in a language the girls couldn't understand. They sounded angry—no, completely furious—at the intruders!
"...!"
As usual, despite being in the 9th stage, their only attack method was charging forward and waving their weapons. Although it wasn't as threatening as getting rained on by long-range attacks from thousands of enemies, fending them off was still a jarring task.
Igni met their charge bravely, waving the flaming sword in her hand.
*ZASH!*
The soul-vanquishing flames covering her blade took the lives of all the enemies they touched in a few seconds. But although their bodies also burned, it took time before they became ashes. As such, corpses were starting to pile up around her, making it a lot more difficult to maneuver.
"Fang! A little help over here, please!"
Igni was slowly getting surrounded by the enemies, and although their weapons couldn't slip through the flames covering her body, she couldn't guarantee that her defenses would hold for all their attacks.
"I'm on it already!"
Fang, of course, wasn't wasting time.
From the shadows, she confirmed the positions of each "angel" before popping out. Then, with one clean slash of her dagger, she lopped their heads off like an expert headhunter.
However, despite her kill count increasing by tens every second, the number of enemies surrounding Igni just kept on increasing.
"There are just too many of them!"
Igni cried, gritting her teeth hard while blocking a few more attacks.
"Can I just raze them all to the ground?!"
"NO!"
Fang immediately answered, her voice sounding irritated.
"We're in a cave! If you keep using your flames, what will you do if we run out of air to breathe?!"
09:31
*BAM!*
Igni blocked one attack, a heavy hammer, and was sent reeling back a few steps. From this, her irritation was also reaching its peak, but unfortunately, she couldn't use any of her wide-area annihilation attacks.
"Just once should be fine! Right?!"
Igni groaned, seeing them still try to approach with their weapons ready to swing down on her.
"But if you think my domain is just something that can heat up things to this pitiful degree, you're completely mistaken!"
"IGNI, NO!"
Fang, realizing what she was planning, quickly called her name to stop her; however, it went on deaf ears as Igni resumed her actions.
She threw her sword up in the air, letting it float as if it had a life of its own, while her hands moved before her chest, clasping each other as if in a deep prayer.
She then shut her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, flames burst from their corners as her pupils glowed a brilliant yellow.
"[Hell's Flame Dominion: Eternal Suffering]!"
As she called the name of the second stage of her Domain, everything went crazy. The flames within her domain increased the temperature to about a million degrees Celsius. It was a temperature that would melt literally anything around it in just a few moments.
However, beings with energy could "resist" the effect by a little, making them suffer the pain of getting burned for much longer. Furthermore, after activating Eternal Suffering, the heat caused everyone to feel as if time was flowing faster than it actually was.
As such, the single instant that her domain turned them to ashes felt like a punishment for them getting "slowly burned" for an eternity! It was an extremely brutal domain, one that made her enemies suffer!
*SNAP!*
The total duration that she had her domain activated was a short five seconds. However, within that short amount of time, the roughly two-thousand-strong army of "angels" had already vanished without a trace.
"IGNI!!!"
Fang's angry voice echoed from within the shadows.
"YOU OVERDID IT, YOU IDIOT!"
*RUMBLE!* *RUMBLE!* *RUMBLE!* *RUMBLE!* *RUMBLE!*
Of course, such extreme temperatures affected not only the enemies but the entire cave as well. The rocks around them melted away, turning to lava as they flowed toward the ground. The entire place shook greatly, as if everything were about to crumble away.
"... What?"
However, the shaking stopped soon. Looking closely, after the rock layer was peeled off, shiny blue crystals appeared, covering the entire space in a spherical manner.
Right.
Under the cave's walls, floor, and ceiling were nothing but blue crystals! Furthermore, they remained undamaged even after suffering under the full power of Igni's Domain's Second stage!
"These... aren't normal crystals."
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SeraphWedd