Chapter 250: The Steel Rose Breaks
The collision between Platinum-Rank steel and abyssal iron sounded like a thunderclap inside a sealed vault.
A shockwave erupted from the point of impact, carrying enough concussive force to distort the air itself. The kinetic blast pulverized the courtyard’s cobblestones, turning the ancient masonry into lethal shrapnel. The sheer pressure ripped the surrounding trees out by their roots, sending heavy oak trunks tumbling across the manicured grass.
Her greatsword rebounded. The physical feedback traveling down the hilt was severe enough to fracture the bones in an ordinary knight’s arms. The crimson flames wreathed around the blade scattered, splashing against the Demon Lord’s armor like liquid fire.
Samantha landed firmly on the edge of the crater, her boots digging deep trenches into the dirt to arrest her backward momentum. She checked the Demon Lord’s halberd.
The rusted iron remained flawless. Not a single dent marred the dark surface. Her strongest kinetic strike hadn’t even scratched the rust.
Samantha adjusted her grip on the leather-wrapped hilt. She changed tactics. Overpowering a twenty-meter Calamity in a contest of brute strength was a physical impossibility. She shifted her stance, dropping her center of gravity closer to the earth. Taking a sharp breath, she pulled most of her Platinum-Rank aura away from the blade and drove it directly into her legs, sacrificing raw striking power for blinding speed.
Samantha became a blur of crimson light.
She circled the giant, leaving deep, smoldering trenches in the earth with every push. She struck surgically at the exposed joints of its armor—slashing the back of its massive knees, the narrow gaps near its elbows, and the dark, featureless visor of its helmet. Showers of bright orange sparks rained down on the ruined courtyard as her blade ground against the abyssal steel.
Her strikes served a deliberate tactical purpose. She knew she couldn’t kill it with shallow cuts; she was steadily drawing the behemoth away from the faculty buildings, where the surviving professors were frantically shoving terrified cadets into the subterranean vaults.
A guttural screech echoed from her right flank.
A dozen obsidian gargoyles detached from the shadows of the crater, completely bypassing the Demon Lord. They spread their jagged wings and dove directly toward the vulnerable professors stationed at the vault entrance.
Samantha abandoned her assault. She crossed the fifty-yard courtyard in three massive strides and intercepted the swarm mid-air.
Her greatsword carved through the dark with ruthless, mathematical precision. She dismembered the first three gargoyles in a single spinning arc, severing their wings and thick obsidian torsos. She grabbed the fourth beast by its throat, ignited her aura through her gauntlet, and incinerated its head before throwing the burning corpse into two others. The dense steel of her blade crushed the skulls of the remaining beasts in seconds, leaving nothing but dissolving black sludge on the pavement.
The watching students finally understood why Samantha was the Academy’s most feared combat instructor.
In the center of the courtyard, the Demon Lord made no move to protect its swarm. It simply watched her slaughter its minions. The twenty-meter entity tracked her movements, coldly calculating the speed, trajectory, and limits of her Platinum enhancement.
Samantha turned her attention back to the primary target. She planted her boots, fracturing the stone beneath her, and launched herself directly at the Calamity’s chest.
The Demon Lord stomped its left boot.
A concentrated field of abyssal gravity erupted directly in Samantha’s path.
She hit the invisible wall of pressure. It felt like running full speed into a deep ocean current. The immense density of the gravity field violently forced the air from her lungs and slowed her forward momentum for a fraction of a second.
That fraction was all the Calamity needed.
The Demon Lord slammed both gauntlets around the flaming blade and clamped down.
The enchanted steel groaned between its palms. Cracks raced down the blade. Then it snapped.
As the upper half of the blade broke away, Samantha twisted the jagged lower half free before the Demon Lord could discard it. She drove herself inside its guard, stepping right into the shadow of its chest, and buried the broken steel deep into the narrow gap of its wrist joint.
The steel pierced the underlying dark mana, drawing a sharp hiss of escaping corrupted energy. Black ichor sprayed across Samantha’s tunic, smoking as it aggressively ate through the fabric and bit into her skin.
The Demon Lord retaliated.
It completely ignored the broken sword buried in its wrist, sweeping the heavy iron shaft of its halberd in a brutal, horizontal arc.
The blunt force struck Samantha directly in the ribs.
Her Platinum aura shattered on impact, scattering crimson fragments across the courtyard. The blow launched her like a cannonball. She crashed through the masonry wall of the alchemy building, shattered an alchemical vat, and slammed into a stone support column at the back of the room.
The front facade of the building groaned and partially collapsed on top of her.
For one stunned heartbeat, the courtyard went quiet.
Samantha lay buried in the rubble. Toxic alchemical fluids mixed with the thick gray dust settling over her body. Her left arm was mangled, twisted at a horrific angle. Several ribs had caved inward beneath her torn combat tunic, making every shallow breath an agonizing struggle. Her Platinum aura was gone.
She gripped the broken hilt of her sword with her good hand, trying to force herself up using the cracked masonry, but her legs refused to obey. She collapsed back into the choking dust, coughing up blood.
Near the edge of the central crater, the Golden Generation watched their invincible mentor fall.
The Demon Lord pulled the broken blade from its wrist joint and crushed the steel into fine powder inside its palm. It took heavy, deliberate steps toward the collapsed alchemy building, its starlight-forged boots shaking the earth. It raised its rusted halberd to execute the Academy’s strongest remaining defender.
Watching from the sidelines, Lucien analyzed the entity’s gait and the smoking wound on its wrist, calculating the exact density of its armor. He didn’t move yet. His piercing rounds were useless against the plating.
Kael dragged Celestia behind Bordon’s improvised rebar guard and forced his bleeding legs into motion.
Every step threatened to buckle beneath him, but Kael crossed the ruined courtyard before the Demon Lord reached the collapsed building. He stepped into the halberd’s shadow, placing himself squarely between the Calamity and the ruined wall where his instructor lay bleeding.
Kael gripped his chipped, blood-slick longsword. His golden Sovereign Aura was barely a flicker, struggling to stay ignited against the suffocating abyssal pressure. His armor was completely destroyed, and blood ran freely down his chest, dripping onto the pavement.
He stared up at the silent Calamity.
"You’re not touching her," Kael said.
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