Chapter 470: Perfect Clarity (1)
The two Purebloods stared at Serah’s blazing form, wings unfurled, eyes like molten suns, her entire being a furnace of authority and wrath. Their narrowed gazes revealed what they would not say aloud: they should have killed her the very moment she stood bloodied and breathing heavy. They had underestimated her, toyed with her, as Purebloods always did, savoring the hunt more than the kill. And now, that indulgence came back to bite.
But instead of retreating, instead of flinching before the infernal goddess standing before them, they only grinned. Their golden eyes gleamed with sinister light, and the ground around them began to tremble under the surge of their power.
Blood erupted from their bodies in violent streams, pouring like rivers before halting midair and twisting into countless forms—blades, axes, spears, hooks, tendrils tipped with jagged teeth. The clearing was instantly alive with a storm of crimson steel and writhing flesh, circling them in a macabre dance of war. Their frames shook, their muscles swelled, and then their shapes began to warp.
Bones cracked and elongated, their spines arching unnaturally. Their skin peeled and split as black veins pulsed like snakes beneath their flesh. Horns grew, twisted, then merged as their bodies intertwined in an unholy fusion. In seconds, the forest bore witness to a single towering monstrosity nearly ten feet tall, six horns crowning its head like the jagged points of a throne, its red skin rippling with unnatural strength as veins glowed like rivers of magma. Its breath came out in waves of rot and iron, and its claws gouged into the earth with each step.
A single, merged Pureblood. A giant. A living nightmare.
Serah didn’t move or even flinch. Her face bore no panic or hesitation. She merely watched, her blazing wings flexing slightly, casting rippling waves of heat that warped the air between them. To her, this wasn’t terror. This was a divine blessing. Instead of fighting two cunning predators circling her from different angles, they had gifted her one body to strike. One merged core to break.
Her lips curved into the faintest smirk. "I’m grateful."
The demon roared, a guttural sound that shook the earth and sent flocks of scorched birds fleeing from the treetops. The ground split beneath its feet as it lunged forward, blood-forged weapons and tendrils raining down in a storm meant to crush, skewer, and flay her alive in the same instant.
Serah’s wings snapped outward. Flames surged beneath her boots, and in the blink of an eye, she was airborne. The first volley of blood-forged spears tore into the ground where she stood, detonating the earth in an explosion of dirt and gore-like liquid. But Serah was already descending, claymore ablaze, her swing carving a trail of fire so bright it split the air.
The demon raised a wall of blood, hardened into crimson steel, to block her. Her blade struck, and the impact was apocalyptic. The entire forest seemed to convulse with the force—flames roared outward, the wall cracked and bled, and yet the demon’s strength held. It shoved back, tendrils whipping out from its torso like serpents, striking at her from every direction.
Serah twisted in midair, wings folding tight, body spinning in a spiral as she cut through three tendrils with blazing precision. Another tendril wrapped around her ankle, but before it could pull, she ignited her entire leg, burning the limb to ash and freeing herself. She landed, slid backward across the scorched earth, then launched herself again without pause.
The demon’s massive claw swiped, fast for its size, a blur of red and black. Serah ducked beneath it, her wings flaring outward, and the heat melted the soil where she moved. She countered with an upward slash, claymore tearing through its forearm. The wound gushed blood—but almost instantly began stitching itself back together.
Serah’s eyes narrowed but she wasn’t surprised. Her strikes were surgical, deliberate, and were never wasted. Each clash was more than offense—it was perfect calculation. She watched the rhythm of its movements, the pace of its regeneration, and the flow of its myst energy. Every flick of her wrist, every deflection of a tendril, every dodge through showers of crimson blades—all of it was data, feeding her mind as much as her blade cut flesh.
The demon pressed harder. Desperation seeped into its monstrous movements. It stomped, and the ground erupted in spikes of blood that shot upward like jagged stalagmites. Serah leapt, wings carrying her high, but the air itself filled with swirling blades of crimson. She slashed, spun, twisted, fire streaming from her every motion until she became a storm within a storm, sparks clashing against bloodsteel. Cuts opened across her arms and legs, shallow but stinging, poison seeping in with each strike. She burned it out instantly, steam rising from her skin as her flames scoured the toxins before they could spread.
But the demon noticed. It taunted her with every gash it inflicted, its booming voice carrying venom: "Burn yourself alive, little phoenix. Every cut is another coal feeding your pyre. How long before you choke on your own fire?"
Serah didn’t answer. She only pressed forward.
The demon thrust its six-horned head downward, a beam of compressed blood energy firing from its maw. Serah’s wings snapped shut, shielding her body as she countered with a fiery eruption of her own. The two forces collided in a cataclysmic explosion that flattened the nearest trees and sent shockwaves for miles. When the smoke cleared, both still stood, glaring at each other through the haze.
Then Serah moved.
She vanished in a blur of flame, reappearing behind the demon’s massive leg. Her claymore arced low, severing through tendons with a precise slash. The demon roared, staggering, but before it could fall, its core shifted—she felt it, sensed it sliding through the beast’s massive torso. Her eyes narrowed, every ounce of her concentration focused.
The demon retaliated, whipping its massive arm back. She dodged, flames propelling her upward, wings folding tight as she spun through the narrowing gap between two tendrils. She slashed once, twice, three times in the blink of an eye, her strikes tracing burning arcs across its chest. Each strike pushed the regeneration harder, forced the core to keep shifting.
And that was what she wanted.
The longer she fought, the clearer it became. Its movements weren’t random. Not anymore. The longer she danced with the monster, the more she began to see—patterns within chaos, a rhythm hidden beneath brutality. The way its tendrils whipped in threes, the slight pause before its blood beams, the half-second delay each time its core shifted through its body.
She was dissecting it in real time.
And with every passing heartbeat, her fiery wings beat stronger, brighter, her aura swelling like a second sun. Her strikes no longer just defended—they predicted, intercepted, and punished. Her claymore burned hotter, leaving trails of white flame in the air, each slash more devastating than the last.
The demon fought with everything it had, a storm of blood, steel, and venomous hate, but Serah Magna, the Phoenix of Solara, fought with something greater—clarity. She wasn’t just surviving anymore. She was orchestrating its death.