He grunted as pain exploded through his spine. His body spiraled downward, smoke trailing from his wounds as the skies above roared with power. Blood misted the air behind him, but he twisted mid-fall, halting his descent with a gust of wind. Hovering just above the ground, he gritted his teeth and looked up.
The Silver Lizard hovered in the sky, its phantasmal body glimmering like mercury. Behind it floated the true form of the Bone Clown—his painted face grinning wide, pale skin shimmering with sickly red veins of power. Kanoru's frown deepened.
That wasn't a clone. It was the clown himself.
Against just the Silver Lizard, Kanoru might have had a chance. But with the Bone Clown here, his odds of surviving this fight were nearly nonexistent. His mind raced. The only path forward was to delay—survive just long enough for reinforcements to sense the clown's presence. His elemental fluctuations couldn't be hidden. Someone would come.
Below, his men shouted his name. A small group surged forward to help, blades raised, phantasms flickering—but enemy reinforcements intercepted them mid-charge. Clashes broke out below, cries and steel ringing through the air.
But even if they reached him, they couldn't help. None of them were at the level needed. Only Spirit Kings and above could even stand in this storm.
Then, a sound split the sky—a piercing eagle's cry, wild and bright.
A golden eagle blazed into view, thunder swirling around her wings. She sliced through the clouds like a bolt of light, lightning trailing in her wake. Her presence shook the battlefield, drawing every eye skyward.
A voice echoed in Kanoru's mind, clear as thunder.
"Kanoru, I sent a message to Councilor Elewyn. She'll arrive soon. We just need to hold them back."
"I'll take the clown."
"You take the Silver Lizard."
Kanoru interjects, voice firm, "No, I'll take the clown."
Carmane turns, surprised.
"My energy can block him—for a moment. You can't stop his dead energy."
Carmane hesitates. Her eyes narrow as she assesses him, sees the determination in his blood-streaked face. She nods once.
"Yes."
But there's no more time to speak. The Silver Lizard charges at them like a streak of silver light, tearing through the clouds. The Bone Clown vanishes from sight.
Without a word, Carmane dives into the air, her thunder-formed phantasm shrieking forward to meet the Silver Lizard head-on. A blast of lightning trails her wings.
Kanoru stands alone. He activates all six alien energies at once.
Steam energy floods out first, boiling his blood from within—his skin sizzles, red mist rising from his pores. Blob-like water energy crashes to the ground, spreading like a tide, consuming grass, stone, and bark. He empties a bottle of pills into his mouth, their potent energy already pulled into his bloodstream to rebuild what steam burns away.
He draws his twin swords. Grey wind howls around them. The red blade flares with flames—hungry, alive. The blue blade turns to grey ice, cold spreading from its edge like a creeping mist.
Kanoru sidesteps—instinct screaming—and blocks the Bone Clown's scythe. Sparks explode on contact. But the force sends him flying, crashing through trees, splintering bark and earth.
He rises, coughing blood. The Clown floats above, a twisted grin widening. Kanoru doesn't have time to breathe before another assault comes. A wave of dead energy blankets the field.
They clash. Again and again. Kanoru is slashed, stabbed, thrown, and burned by the corrosive death aura. His self-healing stalls—the wounds fester. Dark veins spread through his skin.
Then—
A thought.
His grey energy. Unstable, experimental—but it had devoured death before.
He draws in a sharp breath, channels the grey wind through his body, and pushes it into the wounds. The pain is immediate—but then the dead energy dies. His healing flares back to life.
The Clown pauses, scythe resting on his shoulder.
"In the beginning of the late Tier-1 Realm… you already formed a prototype of Tier-2 energy. You really are a genius."
Kanoru pants, bloodied, but his eyes narrow.
"Tier-2 energy?"
The Clown's voice is amused. "You're going to die anyway, so why not. Tier-2 energy is one of the necessary conditions to break through into the Tier-2 Realm."
Even if his life here ends, the dream seed will return to Merin. Kanoru presses on, voice steady.
"What are the other conditions?"
The Clown tilts his head. A long pause. Then a slow grin.
"Hmph. It would be better to keep someone like you alive… You're rare. Talented. If you join us, I'll give you the full answer. I need the skeleton of a Spirit King."
His gaze shifts—toward the golden eagle in the distance.
"And there's another one here."
He points.
"Go and kill the golden eagle. I'll tell you everything."
Kanoru doesn't answer.
He just lifts his blade again. No ally who flies willingly into danger deserves betrayal.
He waits. The Clown attacks.
Scythe meets blade. Bone meets blood. Kanoru bleeds with every strike. His arms grow numb. His bones crack. Still he fights.
Then—
The heavens split.
A golden thunderbolt descends like judgment, slamming into the Clown with a roar that shakes the skies.
When the light clears, a dome of grey energy pulses around the Clown, barely holding.
Every fighter in the sky halts. Carmane. The Silver Lizard. Spirit Lords from both sides. All turn.
From the western sky—
A golden beam races forward, brilliant and unstoppable, and halts just before Kanoru.
He blinks through the pain, vision fading, but he sees the waterfall of golden hair flowing in the wind.
Then—her voice.
"You go and help Carmane."
Kanoru straightens. Weak, but alive.
"Yes, King Elewyn."
He flies toward Carmane.
And from behind, he hears her voice, sharp as lightning.
"Today, I will kill you."
A sneer answers her from above.
"I was going to say the same thing about you."
Kanoru doesn't look back. He doesn't watch the battle unfolding behind him. The sky trembles with Elewyn's golden fury, the Bone Clown's laughter cutting through thunder—but none of it matters now.
He needs to recover.
His body trembles, his vision dims, and blood leaks from his wounds in sluggish trails. But he remembers—the blob of water he cast earlier, still writhing on the ground like a sentient pool. At his silent call, it rises into the air, splits into dozens of tendrils, and rushes toward him.
They pierce into his skin, sink into his veins.
Cold. Piercing. Healing.
His wounds vanish one by one as new flesh knits itself over bone. The festering rot of the Clown's dead energy is scrubbed clean. Blood flow steadies. Breathing returns. The steam energy burning within fades as his forbidden state shuts down. His body no longer sizzles with pain.
But he feels it—
His strength, once at its peak, has waned. His core is drained. The cost of invoking six alien energies and surviving death is high.
Still, it's enough. Enough to fight the silver man.
Kanoru steadies his breathing and glances up through parting clouds.
High above, Carmane and the Silver Lizard clash again—thunderous bursts echo as her golden lightning crashes against silver beams and ethereal blades. Wings tear through clouds. Speed, power, and pressure shake the skies.
Kanoru draws in a breath and sheathes his swords.
Then he raises one hand. Ice gathers.
A spear forms—glowing ice blue, rimmed with frosted mist, the cold so sharp it cuts through sound. The air around it crackles as frost creeps along his fingers.
With a grunt, he hurls it.
The spear shoots toward the Silver Lizard, trailing a comet's tail of biting winter.
———
Far from the battlefield, within the grand hall of the High Council, the throne of Elewyn shimmers with golden light. An energy clone of the queen solidifies atop it, her presence pulsing outward in waves of pressure and urgency. One by one, the other thrones flicker to life as the energy clones of the council members appear.
Aslan's form emerges, fiery and resolute.
"I'm already on my way," he says, and without pause, his clone vanishes in a burst of golden flames.
Wen Qiang appears next, his brow furrowed.
"What happened?"
Elewyn doesn't turn. "My real body is fighting the Bone Clown."
A jolt of shock ripples through the others.
"The Clown appeared?"
"Where?"
"I'm coming!"
Hayate's wind-cloaked clone disperses immediately.
Ywet, the stillest among them, speaks next. "You three together can handle the Clown and Xenia."
"Xenia hasn't appeared," Elewyn replies. "Only one companion—a beginning Spirit King realm cultivator. A silver phantasm user."
Akila folds her arms. "We should go as well."
Ywet's eyes narrow. "If we leave and the commanders of the Three Continents move during our absence..."
"If the Clown escapes today," Akila cuts in, "you may never get another chance to kill him. Besides, the new Spirit Kings with a hundred runes can hold the commanders in check."
Wen Qiang nods. "Akila is right. We can't lose this opportunity." His clone dissipates.
Ywet lets out a sigh. "If all of you agree, I won't be the one to object." And then he too fades into motes of light.
Akila's expression hardens. "Elewyn. Don't let the Clown escape." Her clone vanishes last—leaving Elewyn's echo to dissolve silently, the hall empty once more.
———
Back on the battlefield, Kanoru and Carmane push the Silver Lizard further into retreat. The creature, though still deadly, is slowly losing ground beneath their combined assault. Kanoru's frost still lingers in the air, disrupting its phantasmal form.
Then—
A lion's roar cracks the sky.
Kanoru looks up.
From the east, a wave of purple thunder surges forward, slamming into the Bone Clown. A massive lion, wreathed in purple lightning, crashes into the scene—its roar splitting clouds, its form pulsing with Spirit King might.
Minutes later, the sky splits again.
A winged lizard, its scales a gleaming blue, streaks through the air. Thunder flickers around its body as it soars toward the fight—carrying a man cloaked in flowing energy, who joins Elewyn and the thunder lion in the assault.
Soon after, ethereal light floods the battlefield as another man descends.
Light gathers at his back like a halo.
His presence burns with an ancient pressure.
He raises his hands.
Fire, Wood, Earth, Metal, and Water spiral around him. Then, they merge—melding into a white ethereal energy that lashes toward the Clown like a divine judgment. Each blast alternates—sometimes raw fire, sometimes pure water, sometimes that blinding white energy that seems to erase death itself.
Then comes a hissing rumble.
A colossal serpent slithers out of the clouds, its translucent, glassy skin reflecting starlight. It opens its mouth and spews venom—where it lands, forests turn crystalline, trees petrified into glittering jade.
And last—
The wind screams.
A dark-skinned woman descends from the skies, her eyes glowing with smoldering wrath. In her hands, a bone spear crackles with molten energy. She hurls it at the Clown—
An explosion of lava and crimson fire detonates across the sky, blotting out stars.
The Clown, surrounded now by the wrath of five Spirit Kings, laughs—a jagged, echoing sound that splits the clouds above.
Kanoru tightens his grip.
This day… this day will decide the fate of everything.
The Bone Clown, besieged by six Spirit Kings, laughs through it all.
His scythe blurs, and his body flickers—faster than the eye can follow.
Dead energy trails him like smoke, corrupting air, erasing life.
None dare let it touch them.
Even surrounded, the Clown defends himself. Barely.
Wounds mar his skeleton body, yet he dances between gods.
He sends out a single thread of consciousness.
And the world burns.
Across every continent, the Grey Rose Circus erupts.
Their forces, once guarding nodes, now abandon them—
Charging into cities, villages, sacred lands—attacking indiscriminately.
Chaos.
Blood.
Screams.
Each region becomes a battlefield.
Everyone fights for survival.
Everyone—except the four commanders of the Circus.
Far beneath the surface, in a chamber reeking of death,
Xenia stands in silence beside a wide, stone basin.
It appears empty—
But a thick, viscous fluid begins to rise.
Not water.
Blood.
Dark, steaming blood with the stench of a thousand corpses.
On each of the Four Continents, massive formations begin to glow.
Whenever a life is lost, the formation flares.
Essence and blood are drawn through invisible veins—
poured into the basin at Xenia's feet.
And the same happens elsewhere.
Other lands.
Other pools.
Each one filling. Slowly. Deliberately.
Back on the battlefield, the six Spirit Kings falter.
They feel it—the shift.
The rise of a world-spanning ritual.
The elemental fluctuations of battle have changed.
The Clown smiles.
And strikes.
He begins his true assault—
A blur of scythe and smoke and crimson madness.
The six warriors steel themselves, no longer holding back.
Night falls.
But the war does not stop.
Even in darkness, battle rages across the skies, plains, oceans.
Kanoru and Carmane, exhausted and bloodstained, finally cut down the Silver Man—
his silver phantasm dissipating in a storm of grey shards.
They turn, blades raised, to face new enemies—
new Spirit Kings, friend or foe, no longer clear.
Then it happens.
A column of light erupts.
Blood-colored.
Thick. Blinding.
It pierces the sky, splitting the clouds with a deafening roar.
All heads turn.
The blood beam quivers once—
Then slowly bends—
drawn upward toward the heavens.
And above it, the blood moon pulses—
its surface glowing darker, deeper—
as the beam of blood converges on it.