Thirty-Two Million Power

With a guttural scream that was pure, animalistic rage, Marutur slammed his fists together. “ATTACK THE SAINT!!!”  With their claws and teeth, the remaining forcesrushed forward, intent on drowning the lone figure in the clearing with a tidal wave of death.

But Anna didn't even bat an eye. 

“Maren,” she commanded telepathically, a predatory thrill in her mental voice. “It’s Blending time.”

“Understood!”

What happened next was more like a harvest than a battle. The two Maren duplicates became a silver-blue blender that tore through the front lines of the charging horde. They didn’t bother with bodies or limbs. In the span of ten seconds, the charge of hundreds of beasts was reduced to a field of twitching, headless corpses.

Then, as the last monster fell, both swords stopped, hovering over the carnage.

“DEVOUR!”

A mass of black liquid erupted from the ground. Each and every corpse vanished in an instant, their physical bodies and magical energies changing into torrents of rich, dark power that poured through the air and straight into Anna's body.

Marutur and Demidicus could only stare, their minds refusing to process what they had just witnessed.

“Now I’m at thirty-two million power, Maren!” Anna declared happily in her head.

The two Maren duplicates zipped back to her side, their light brighter and more intense than before, and shot towards the two stunned generals.

Marutur was the first to snap out of it, his reaction a visceral explosion of disgust and outrage. “What… what was that?!” he roared, parrying Maren’s strike with a clumsy, furious swing. “That’s a demon’s trick! A cheater!” He was genuinely offended, as if Anna had broken some sacred, unspoken rule of glorious combat.

Demidicus however, was not disgusted. He was utterly, completely fascinated. As he elegantly dodged the other Maren’s lunges, his mind was racing, deconstructing the beautiful paradox before him.

“No, it’s not a demon’s trick,” he murmured to himself, a brilliant, analytical light in his eyes. “I knew it. The energy signature is vampiric, but amplified to an impossible degree. A Saint… a being of pure holy radiance… using a high-tier vampiric soul-siphoning ability on a massive scale. Even I couldn’t do that, how much is her mana? 10 million? 15?” A wide, manic grin spread across his face. “The contradiction is exquisite! She’s not a Saint pretending to be a vampire, or a vampire playing a Saint. She’s something entirely new. Oh, how absolutely fascinating!”

The battlefield fell into a momentary, shocked silence. Demidicus stared at Anna with the rapt attention of a scholar discovering a new law of physics, while Marutur simply seethed, his brutish mind struggling to comprehend the dishonor of it all.

“Cheating…” the Horned General growled, the word a low rumble in his massive chest. “The Saint is cheating!” His knuckles cracked as he tightened his grip on his great axe. “If the holy one fights with dirty tricks, then so will I!”

His body started to twist as he roared and threw his head back. He tore through the seams of his beaten armor as his muscles grew with monstrous speed. The heat of a forge radiated from his elongated horns, which twisted into new and evil shapes. A molten, magma-like core burned within him as cracks appeared across his charcoal-colored skin.

While all eyes were drawn to Marutur’s explosive, ostentatious transformation, Demidicus saw his opening. The ‘Saint’ was focused on the big, loud, obvious threat. Perfect.

He dissolved into a black mist.

He reappeared right in front of Anna, his claws outstretched to rip the mask—and the face underneath it—clean off, his hand already swiping for her head. Anna threw herself backwards in response to the scream of her newly developed senses, but she was not quick enough. 

His claws made a long tear in the fabric after catching the edge of her hood, just missing her throat by a millimeter. 

"Tch."

He vanished as quickly as he had appeared, leaving Anna to face the terrifying truth of how near death she had been.

But she had no time to recover. Marutur, his transformation complete, he’s utterly unresponsive and fully berserk. He was no longer a soldier; he was a natural disaster. With a final, mind-shattering roar, he charged, raising a massive, lava-caked hoof to kill her in a single, earth-shattering stomp.

Anna’s mind, a cold and perfect engine, went into overdrive. She couldn’t block it. She couldn’t outrun it. She had to break it.

“Maren! Both of you! To me! Now!” she commanded telepathically.

The two silver-blue swords abandoned their harassment of Demidicus and shot back to her side, hovering like vigilant sentinels.

As Marutur’s colossal, burning foot began its descent, Anna activated her enhanced running ran towards a hole not too far.

It was enough.

“Into the ground!” Anna screamed in her mind. “Now! Unleash it all!”

The two Maren duplicates dove, plunging themselves like drills deep into the stone beneath his descending foot. The moment they were buried, Anna gave the final command. They unleashed the Art of the Sea.

The ground exploded.

A massive, high-pressure geyser of holy water erupted from the earth directly beneath Marutur.

Consequently, a destructive explosion of steam engulfed the entire clearing.

The shriek of tormented metal and the flash-boiling sound of rock close to him could only be drowned out by the Horned General's wailing, savage roar as his fire met his antithesis.

Through the thick, white fog, and hissing steam mess, Anna could see Marutur’s massive silhouette, kneeling and roaring in a mixture of pain and fury. The thermal shock had worked. He was wounded, vulnerable. This was her chance.

“Maren,” she commanded telepathically, her voice sharp with predatory focus. “Both of you. Converge on Marutur. Finish him now.”

But as her entire focus, her every newly-evolved sense, was locked on the wounded berserker, a whisper of cold air touched the back of her neck.

“Your focus is too singular, ‘Saint.’”