'Temporary status Mistress of Darkness granted!' Hitting his head against the ice wall, a skull-shattering pain jolted across Haruki's body.
"Master!" Cried Asuka as she dashed towards him.
"Crap! We've got company," turning towards the open door, Riley noticed a pair of flaring eyes peering from inside the dark. "Anyone else has any fighting experience?"
Glancing between Margarette and Moriyana, she was worried about her stepmother's unstable state and unsure as to just how much help Moriyana could actually be.
"Don't joke around now," Moriyana replied, putting up a pair of magic shields over her hands. "What about her though? We're gonna need her help if we're fighting a dragon."
Pointing at Margarette, she brought Riley's attention right back to her. However, with little time to spare, she decided to take swift action instead spending any time replying back to Moriyana.
"I'll take her away, I doubt she can fight right now," activating her invisibility, Riley used wind magic to fly right over to Margarette. "Come with me."
Grabbing her by the arms, she tried to pick Margarette up, however, shaking Riley's hands off of her body, Margarette got back onto her feet herself.
"You don't understand, escaping will only make things worse!" Having witnessed a hint of the future, Margarette wasn't too keen on simply escaping the immediate clutches of the dragon.
Coming out of invisibility, Riley violently grabbed Margarette again and turned her to look right into her terrified eyes.
"What the hell are you talking about?! We can't win against a dragon!" Riley screamed right into her stepmother's face.
Her eyes still jittering nervously, Margarette was left panting while glaring at Riley. Trying to calm her nerves, she quickly wrapped her hands around Riley.
"You just have to trust me, I saw destruction, we'd all be dead if we leave right now!" As Margarette's nails dug into her daughter's back, Riley noticed a scorching ball of flame approaching them at incomprehensible speed.
"Sorry Margarette, you staying here is suicidal!" Ignoring her mother's plea, Riley tightened her grasp around Margarette to help her escape the scene. "Lonesome widow: Take us away!"
As her invisibility vanished the two in thin air, the ball of fire crashed onto the wall behind where they once stood.
"Fuck," cursed Moriyana unable to tell whether the two escaped on their own. "I guess it's time to figure out whether illusions affect dragons."
Watching the flaming body of Roselia Ironfrost walking out the door, Moriyana prepared herself for whatever the dragoness had to offer. Still, in a sub-human form with her clothes replaced with burning scales resembling lava, Roselia stood silent looking around for a moment before her eyes caught Haruki being treated by Asuka at the very back of the hall.
"High-tier magic: God-killing inferno," holding her finger pointed in Haruki's direction, a plethora of magic circles intertwined with each other appeared at the tip of her finger.
'Goddammit, why do I have to be the one to fight her?' Cursing her fate, Moriyana abandoned all pretense and flung herself in Roselia's direction. Turning into her succubus form to use the full extent of her powers, she casted a counterspell of her own before Roselia's spell manifested itself.
"Devour Mana!" Sucking out the mana from Roselia's spell, Moriyana had locked her into a cycle where she was repurposing Roselia's mana to devour her spell.
After a few seconds when Rose realized what Moriyana was doing, she let go of the spell and turned to gaze at the succubus flying in front of her.
"No wonder, young frost was corrupted, you must be the reason," still unaware of Haruki's real identity, she'd mistaken Moriyana as the mastermind behind the sudden changes in the duke.
'Asuka, heal him quickly, I don't have any other gimmick spells to cancel her spells!' Already feeling drained by the burst of mana in her body, Moriyana was feeling dizzyingly light-headed.
"It hardly matters now, you're gonna die soon anyway," in the blink of an eye, Roselia appeared right inches close to Moriyana.
Although she noticed her in time, neither her mind nor her body could match the speed of an enraged dragoness. With a punch in the guts, her body combusted into flames and tore through an ice pillar behind her.
"Aghhhh! Ah! Ah!!!" Her blood bubbling inside her skin, Moriyana's squirmed and thrashed about on the floor as she suffered through a living hell. "Garden of illusion!"
Activating her ability just in time, she managed to escape from reality and take refuge in her dreams. Expecting her to be dealt with, Roselia began moving down the hall toward the barely conscious Haruki.
"Asuka, move aside, I only have business with the duke," knowing Asuka to only be Snow's servant, Rose didn't want to lay a finger on her skin.
"Don't think I'm done yet!" Appearing behind Rose, Moriyana's face as well as her body was crinkled up from the burns, and yet it wasn't gonna make her back off just yet. "Here's what you get for burning my beautiful body!"
Conjuring a whip of Rose-flower vines, she wrapped it around Roselia's and flew as high up as she could. Trapped inside her human form, Roselia tried to defend herself by flying as well but failed miserably as she relied completely on her wings to fly.
'Damn you first duke for trapping me as a human!' Cursed Roselia, vowing to crush the trapped soul of the primordial Frost inside Snow's brooch.
"You bitch! I'll kill you first!" Grabbing the whip, Roselia incinerated it to dust. However, as she fell back down on the floor, her composure was loose enough for Asuka to jump in as well.
"Familiar summon: Miasmic flytrap! Lulu!" Summoning her familiars, she had Roselia bound through their tentacles and paralyzing thorn vines.
"Wh-what?!" Noticing Asuka in her demonic form for the first time, Roselia was caught off-guard once again.
Growing stabbing thorns in its body, the miasmic flytrap stabbed them into Rose's arms. Not giving her a moment to retaliate, it began pumping her body full of poison. For a moment, both Asuka and Moriyana thought that they'd successfully managed to subdue the dragoness, however, crushing those hopes, a blast of heat coming out of Rose exploded the familiars and sent their body parts flying.
'What the hell are we supposed to do?' Backing away from Rose, Asuka stumbled against something on her back. 'What?'
As she turned around to look, it was Haruki stumbling on his feet, standing behind her in his demonic form.
"I should've known the moment you used that healing spell," mumbled Rose, glaring at Haruki.
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