Everything spiraled south faster than Ciel could blink.

  The scene transformed in an instant; where combatants had in coughing up water now became a field of rolling bodies and frenzied melee. Er Long rushed at him with the force of a raging bull. One gnce at that savage, adrenaline-charged face was enough; Ciel threw Yi Tong directly at his attacker and fled the crimson-drenched monster's path.

  The blood-thirsty prince, relishing in the chaos of battle, knocked his flying half-brother aside. Yi Tong careened into the cliff face, bones and spirit cracking on impact before he dropped to the ground with a wet smack.

  Ciel pressed forward, ducking beneath the monstrous prince who flew over him with votile momentum. The Second Prince's nding shattered the rocky ground into gravel. As he unched himself into another attack with a ugh, Nuan Yulong intercepted with a kick to his side.

  Er Long blocked and retaliated. His punch sent his half-sister flying straight into Ciel's waiting arms like a thrown sack of cement, eliciting an "oomph" from the inventor.

  The two parties exchanged dreadful stares as combat roared to life around them. Royal guards crashed against men in bck, dragging each other into the wet ravine ground. Xia's bombardment and destruction spells rang in the distance like heaven's trumpets. But none of that mattered; the tension concentrated on the two siblings, once allies, now enemies.

  "Why, brother?" Nuan asked.

  "Ah, do we need to talk?" Er Long shrugged dismissively. "Isn't your weakness enough?"

  "Of course not!" she yelled. "After all the help I've given you in those wars, I deserve some benefit of the doubt." She scoffed. "I can guess what you told the men, but there must be more. You're not the unthinking savage people think you are, brother!"

  The Second Prince sighed. "So you want the reason?" With eyes brimming with bloodlust, he spoke the truth. "You're right. Even fwed tools can be of use. What kind of general would I be if I didn't understand the universality of failure? But I never lied to my men—" he squinted at his weak little sister "—I cut you to the wolves because of weakness. Little sister, the truth is you never had the resolve to be a weapon."

  Nuan trembled as Er Long began to dig deeper into her character.

  "You could have wiped out those Curtis crusaders easily, but your timeline showed you held back to a disgusting degree." He continued. "I had doubts when I saw you cry during your first deathmatch with our te half-brother, but I hoped you'd move past those fws." His voice rose to a boom. "We, Dragon Scions, are the weapons of the God-Emperor. Through his will, we draw blood from this empire's enemies." Er Long pulled out a retractable spear, extending its bde toward her face. "Your weakness, your sin, is your ck of resolve to be merciless, Nuan!"

  "Wow," Ciel muttered, watching the family drama unfold before him. "I know for certain Mandrake never taught you this."

  Nuan, rejected and dejected, met the eyes of her half-brother and former allies. She steeled herself for the fight of her life.

  "You say I'm not ruthless enough?" She tore the sleeves of her robes for better mobility, settling into a martial arts stance with her fist extended. "Why not test my resolve for yourself?"

  The Second Prince spun his spear in a slow windmill motion, each mighty rotation stirring up coarse sand and making the air hum with power. "Good," he said, licking his lips. "This will be fun."

  As for the tag-along Lord, Ciel immediately threw himself sideways, barely escaping the range of the family drama. He watched as the two masters of Aura leaped at each other and cshed in midair, their impact shattering the sound barrier and rattling every pebble in the ravine.

  Two AURA BLADES collided. The ground beneath disintegrated with the sound of ten thousand sanders. Before anyone could properly focus on the spectacur bout that commanded all attention, Nuan, slowly being pushed back by her brother's superior strength, spun. The thin yer of Aura above her skin expanded into an AURA SPIN, knocking her opponent flying across the gaping battlefield.

  Er Long shot through the air like an arrow, soaring above the troops from both sides who had stopped to stare. Hearing the ground crack beneath a pair of feet, he spotted a familiar shadow about to fall upon him. The Second Prince reacted with expert grace, catching his little sister's drop kick by the knee and flinging her toward the earth below.

  Nuan yelped, nding on her back with enough force to knock the wind from her lungs. Through blurred vision, she saw her brother descending, his spear aimed at her heart. Teeth gritted, she rolled away and countered with her favorite combo.

  VACUUM PALM: ATTRACTION

  The funnel of Aura unbanced Er Long, nearly toppling him as if he'd been dragged by a rope attached to a falling boulder. Nuan seized the opening she'd created. She buried her fist into his abdomen while gathering her Aura for another technique.

  VACUUM PALM: REPULSION

  The shocking bst of Aura smmed into the Second Prince with the force of a sledgehammer swung by a mountain, transforming him into a bent projectile. He smashed into the rocky cliff opposite her. Crunches of fractured rock followed as Er Long fell amid an avanche of debris.

  But it wasn't enough. Before the st rock could join the stony piles, they exploded. The Second Prince emerged, his sapphire armor cracked and scarred from the previous blow, while his spear spun like a rotor bde. Its gleaming edge, charged with massive amounts of Aura, moved too fast to be observed.

  ER LONG'S ORIGINAL: AURA BLADE (STORM)

  Razor-sharp edges of Aura flew from the turbine of devastation revolving in his hand. Each attack unched like an unstoppable sword from a bottomless armory. Men scattered, but many were cut down in sprays of blood by the nearly invisible sshes flying through the air.

  Ciel and Xia weren't spared from this barrage. The Lord of Union ran out of range and ducked behind a sturdy rock while the ground around him was reduced to scarred earth. The First Bride wasn't as lucky; she received several shes from the AURA BLADE before falling back in a pool of blood, desperately working healing magic.

  Ciel heaved a breath and found the wrecked body of Yi Tong gring at him. The First Prince had been utterly devastated by his little brother's grievous strike, but still possessed enough strength to accuse the Lord of Union with a gre.

  "This is your fault," came the raspy condemnation.

  "Personally, I bme your deadbeat father."

  Nuan, unable to hear that exchange, rushed toward Er Long. Invisible flying bdes cut her path short, but she leapt back in time. Her hand flung forth, conjuring another technique with a finger gun.

  MINI ROTATION BULLET!

  A spinning ball of Aura built around her finger as she aimed at her older brother's shoulder. She fired the bullet of crushing internal energy.

  Er Long scowled, redirecting his spinning weapon into a massive ssh. His attack cleaved through the her projectile and crushed the cliff face behind her with a gargantuan quantity of Aura. It carved a trench into the stone-hard wall, causing another colpse into the ravine, drawing screams and shouts from the evacuating men below.

  The Second Prince was none too pleased by this bout. "Disappointing! Even now you refuse to go for the kill!" He tapped his cranium. "You should have aimed for the head!"

  Nuan nded on the ground, refusing to meet his eyes. "But..."

  "But what?!" the Second Prince screamed. "All your movements stink of fear. Do you starve for kinship that badly?" He spat. "You are supposed to be the Yulong's most prodigious warrior, and you dare disappoint me!"

  Nuan didn't look up, much to Er Long's disappointment.

  "Fine," he spun his spear, winding it up for a critical attack. "Let me dispose of another fwed tool. I have given up on you."

  Nuan's eyes twitched, recalling the words:

  "Will you surrender?"

  Those were her father's words. She had never understood them at first. No, in all likelihood she had understood them incorrectly.

  "There's nothing wrong with just quitting an unwinnable battle, but I guess your old man couldn't properly teach you that lesson given he sucks ass at crifying his position."

  Those were Ciel's words. Now, before this scenario she couldn't change, Nuan finally understood.

  "I give up," She decred as she conjured her Aura with her breath. She gathered an enormous portion of it into a spinning ball and squeezed it even tighter, intensifying the pressure until the air charred like the scorching mantle depths. Her hesitation disappeared as she gave voice to her epiphany. "You are not going to change. I give up trying to appeal to you."

  Er Long blinked. He almost stopped his spear, now shining with a purple haze of boiling Aura. "What?" he gawked.

  "You heard me," arrived the voice of a totally different woman standing where his little sister once was. "Since you consider me a tool, I will consider you to be the same." Nuan's voice dripped with warning. "Brace yourself, Er Long. I'm not sure I can hold back this attack enough. I just perfected it a few months ago."

  The ball of Aura, now compressed into a topaz sphere, unched with the pressure and force of a blowtorch hose, glittering like gems.

  AMBER CLOUD

  The Second Prince, feeling his hair rising in fright, jabbed his spear forward.

  ER LONG'S ORIGINAL: AURA BLADE (DRAGON'S THRUST)

  Yi Tong and Ciel, poking their heads from cover, gaped at the csh. Their reaction was shared by everyone else watching the carnage.

  A heated glow of honeyed amber met a purple dragon of searing energy in an earth-shattering collision. Winds battered every sense as the world contracted and rexed. Men from all factions yelped like panicked squirrels as they were thrown backward by the repulsive force.

  Nuan gritted her teeth, endeavoring not to fall.

  As for Er Long, he was smiling ear-to-ear, any sense of self-preservation repced by blood-pumping excitement.