SSS Gacha Master: I Can Only Gacha Bikini Warriors

Chapter 70: 70. My Buffer Has an Apocalypse Setting and a Mom Setting.

Serenia reached into her gear, her fingers brushing against the fine leather of her pouches until they closed around a heavy, ornate object. She pulled out a golden goblet, its surface etched with intricate, swirling patterns that caught the dying light of the embers.

She was a woman of meticulous preparation; she never traveled without the tools of her station, and a toast was a ritual she refused to neglect.

"To our Master," she declared, her voice cutting through the stillness with a sharp, melodic edge. She raised the vessel high, the gold gleaming like a predatory eye. "And to us."

"His golden harem."

Glacielle met her gaze, her expression stoic but her eyes softening with a rare, quiet reverence.

"To family," she corrected softly.

The goblets collided with a delicate, crystalline clink, a small, fragile sound that seemed to underscore the immense weight of the bond they shared.

As the wine settled, the atmosphere shifted from the intimate to the clinical. The warmth of the toast evaporated, replaced by the cold, hard pragmatism of four SSS-rank warriors.

This was no longer a gathering of women; it was a war council of legends. They spoke in the shorthand of veterans, their voices low and intense as they dissected the tactical nightmare that awaited them at the ritual site.

They moved through the offensive plan with the surgical precision of generals. Serenia’s role was defined with absolute clarity: she was to be the lynchpin, the divine engine of their survival.

She would create a steady flow of helpful spells, providing ongoing healing and strong protective barriers that would let the other four fight fiercely without holding back.

"Your maximum output," Marshal interjected, her eyes narrowing as she calculated the sheer energy required. "Can you sustain the entire party through a sustained siege?"

"As long as my mana holds, they remain unbroken," Serenia replied, her voice devoid of doubt. "I can keep all five of us standing in the middle of a god’s wrath."

"My reserves are deep enough to drown a continent."

Octavia leaned forward, the firelight dancing in the dark depths of her eyes.

She asked the question that sat like a heavy stone in the center of the camp, the one that bypassed strategy and touched the divine: "Can you cheat the Reaper, Serenia? Can you truly get rid of death?"

A silence fell, heavy and suffocating. Serenia didn’t blink.

"In one minute," Serenia answered, her voice chillingly precise. "If a soul is torn from its body, I can pull it back within sixty seconds."

"After that... the threads get tangled."

’The cost becomes complicated. But until that minute passes? They won’t die."

"Not on my watch. Not while there is breath in my lungs."

"Good enough," Marshal grunted.

It wasn’t a compliment; it was a tactical validation, the way one accepts a weapon of unparalleled lethality.

Serenia looked around the small, flickering circle of the fire. For a fleeting, unguarded moment, the mask of the untouchable goddess slipped.

In her eyes, the three facets of her soul collided: the glittering greed of the gold, the razor-sharp smugness of her power, and a terrifying, raw warmth.

"If Lucian dies tomorrow," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that carried more weight than a war cry.

The honey-sweet veneer was gone, stripped away to reveal the iron-hard truth beneath. "I die with him. That is my oath."

"My soul is anchored to his. I won’t survive the heartbreak of finding another master."

The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic, hungry crackle of the firewood. The gravity of her vow hung in the air, thick as blood.

Glacielle was the first to break it, her voice a vow of its own, steady and unbreakable as permafrost.

"Then we make sure he lives," she said, her gaze sweeping across the faces of her sisters in arms. "All of us."

No one disagreed.

...

The dawn did not break with a gentle light; it arrived as a bruised, sickly violet, signaling the start of an assault that felt less like a battle and more like a desecration. The attack on Corvus’s forward positions was a grueling, two-hour descent into madness.

The physical toll was deceptively light, kept at bay by the shimmering, impenetrable walls of Serenia’s Divine Sanctuary. The dome of light absorbed the shock of steel and the spray of blood, keeping the party’s flesh intact.

But the emotional cost was a different kind of carnage. To watch the capital’s finest defenders, men and women who, only two weeks ago, had stood as symbols of hope now fighting with the hollow, terrifying precision of puppets was soul-crushing.

They moved with a perfect, terrible coordination, their eyes vacant, their movements dictated by the cruel whims of the purple seals etched into their skin. They weren’t fighting for glory; they were fighting because their very wills had been hollowed out and replaced by Corvus’s malice.

Through the chaotic fray, a figure emerged that commanded the very air around him. The leader of the corrupted guard was a towering man, clad in the shattered remains of S-rank hero armor plate so finely crafted it seemed to hum with its own history.

He fought with a desperate, violent grace, a man reclaiming the dignity of his movements even as his soul was being steered by a force he had never consented to. He cut a path through the carnage, ignoring the warriors around him, his eyes locked onto Lucian with the singular, unshakeable purpose of a guided missile.

He skidded to a halt before Lucian, his breathing a ragged, wet sound. His voice was a horrifying paradox, a broken, fractured thing that somehow maintained a terrifying, unnatural command.

"Master Corvus... is waiting," the commander rasped, the words tearing through a throat that sounded like it was filled with gravel and blood.

The puppet was speaking, but the man was screaming underneath. "You... will not pass."

The air around the party suddenly grew heavy, the temperature spiking as if a sun had just been born on the battlefield. Serenia opened her eyes.

"Touch my Master," she whispered. Her voice was low, devoid of its usual melodic gold, replaced by a cold, terrifying vacuum of sound. "And I will not be held responsible for the carnage that follows."

She didn’t cast a spell; she unleashed an apocalypse. Her staff channeled a Radiant Smite that was less a holy blessing and more a concentrated eruption of three hundred years of accumulated celestial fury.

This was the magic of a woman who had chosen, in this singular, violent moment, to stop being a healer and start being an executioner.

The purification energy didn’t just hit the commander; it tore through him. The golden light shredded the purple corruption like a hot blade through silk, but the sheer force of the holy impact was catastrophic.

As the light surged through his body, the commander’s eyes suddenly cleared. For one fleeting, agonizing second, the puppet vanished, and the true man looked out from behind the violet haze.

"Thanks," he choked out, a genuine, heartbreaking smile touching his lips as the light began to dismantle his very atoms.

Then, he was gone, disintegrated into a cloud of golden ash and fading echoes.

As the light receded, Serenia stood trembling. Lucian had seen her calm, her smug, and her fierce, but he had never seen her breathe like this ragged, heavy, and primal, as if she had just run a marathon through a furnace.

She lowered her staff, her knuckles white against the wood, and stood in a moment of heavy, ringing silence.

"No one threatens my boy," she snapped at the empty space where the commander had stood.

The ferocity in her voice wasn’t a performance; it was the raw, unvarnished territoriality of a lioness. She turned to Lucian, the intensity in her eyes slowly softening into something more human.

"Are you okay? Did that bastard touch you?"

"I’m okay," Lucian said, his voice steady despite the adrenaline still coursing through his veins. He searched her face. "But are you?"

For a heartbeat, the mask slipped completely. She looked at him with a vulnerability so profound it was almost painful to witness a glimpse of the woman beneath the goddess.

Then, with a sharp, practiced inhale, the composure snapped back into place. The warmth returned to her eyes, and that familiar, untouchable smile graced her lips.

She stepped forward, her movements fluid and elegant once more, and reached out to straighten the collar of his armor with the brisk, efficient grace of someone simply returning to their daily chores.

"Of course, sweetie," she said, her voice regaining its honeyed lilt. "I’m always fine."