Two Lions, One Tiger: The Final Showdown
Come on!
Asahi ran through the Zeus Woods with that thought pounding inside his skull harder than his footsteps.
He had sensed my mana a moment ago—faint, unstable, flaring through the forest as if begging to be noticed—but no matter how fast he ran, he never seemed to get any closer.
The woods warped distance in quiet, cruel ways.
One trunk became ten. One turn became a loop. Every branch that whipped across his robes felt like the forest trying to shove him back.
Ahead, the battle had already reached its most dangerous point.
I had just driven Florene into the ground hard enough to split the earth beneath her, and above the clearing, all the flame and crimson mist I had summoned were gathering for Dragon Breath.
The sky itself looked wounded.
Red light leaked through the treetops in trembling bands, turning leaves black at the edges and painting the smoke-choked air with the color of blood and sunset mixed together.
Asahi looked up while he ran.
That light gave him what the forest had denied him all this time—direction.
So this time, he didn’t run on instinct alone.
His gaze moved between the burning sky and the roots beneath his feet, adjusting every stride, every breath, every turn.
Then he saw it.
A massive concentration of flame hanging above the clearing like a second sun. And behind it—a tiny shape.
Me.
And his first instinct was to curse.
Then I unleashed the attack.
Dragon Breath came down in a violent torrent of fire, and when Florene raised her shield to block it, the impact ripped through the clearing with a howl.
The air exploded outward in a wave of pressure that tore through the surrounding woods, carrying heat, ash, and splintered petals with it. Brief flashes of redirected flame streaked off the shield and set nearby bark and leaves alight before dying.
The wind slammed into Asahi hard enough to make him stop.
He threw up an arm over his eyes.
Leaves tore free from the branches above him. Twigs snapped. Dust and pollen lashed across his face and caught in his golden hair.
Then the gust passed.
And he ran again.
By the time he reached the very edge of the clearing—just beyond the final wall of trees—Florene was already preparing to finish the fight.
He took it all in at once.
Me—barely standing. Florene—still capable of moving.
There was no time. I was out of range for a barrier. But the answer came to him in the same instant his fear did.
A light sword formed in his hand.
He didn’t think twice.
He hurled it sideways across the clearing with all the force he could put behind it. The blade spun through smoke and drifting petals in a streak of gold.
He did not wait to see if it would work.
More swords flashed into existence around him, and he sent them after the first in quick succession, forcing Florene to break her line and move back before she could follow her finishing blow with another.
Only then did Asahi rush toward me.
When he reached me, I was barely upright.
The heat from my last attack still clung to the air around me, and the ground beneath my feet was split and glowing faintly in places where too much power had touched it.
Asahi planted himself between Florene and me, shoulders squared, light still flickering around his hands, his eyes sharp with the kind of anger that didn’t belong on his face but was there anyway.
“Are you alright, Ryu?” he asked.
“Yeah…” I said, lowering myself onto one knee before forcing myself back upright. “I’ll live. Thanks for saving me back there.”
When Asahi saw Florene wasn’t pressing the attack immediately, he turned and dropped to one knee beside me.
“No problem,” he said, raising one palm toward my chest. “Holy Magic — Holy Heal.”
Warm light poured over me at once.
It flowed through every scrape, bruise, and aching muscle, washing the pain away in layers. The heat in my limbs softened. The strain in my chest loosened. Even the lingering sting of overusing my mana seemed to recede a little beneath the gold.
As the healing worked, Asahi kept talking.
“When Miss Reina told me you had that look in your eyes…” he said quietly, “…I knew I had to get here and show you I was okay.”
I looked at him.
“So you came all this way just to let me know Mary healed you successfully?”
“That,” he said, “and to help you deal with this enemy.”
The light faded.
I clenched my fist.
My body still felt exhausted, but lighter—like someone had lifted a weight off my bones.
I rose. Asahi rose with me.
He glared at Florene, and for the first time, there was no softness in his eyes at all.
“I can’t forgive her,” he said. “Not after she used Urizee like a puppet.”
I looked at him, one brow lifting.
“You came here to stop me from losing my cool… just to lose yours?”
Asahi blinked.
Then he forced a smile too quickly, scratching the back of his head like that could erase what he had just said.
“Oh! Hahaha… sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t know what’s been wrong with me lately.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
He let the laugh die and faced Florene again, standing with more confidence than the situation should have allowed.
“So, Ryu,” he asked without taking his eyes off her, “this enemy… can we win?”
I blinked once, slowly, then looked back at Florene with my eyes narrowed.
“She’s strong,” I said. “Stronger than anything I’ve faced before.”
The wind carried the smell of burnt petals between us.
“And she heals her wounds effortlessly. So if you’re asking whether we can win…” I exhaled once. “I don’t know.”
“…Hm.”
Asahi studied my face for a heartbeat, then looked back toward Florene.
“Then I guess,” he said, settling into guard, “we just have to try.”
Before either of us could move, Florene’s voice cut through the clearing.
“And who are you to dare interrupt our fight?” She asked, calm anger lay over each word.
Asahi did not flinch.
He straightened fully and faced her as if he were addressing the whole forest itself.
“I am Asahi,” he declared, loud enough that even the leaves seemed to listen. “The right-hand man of the soon-to-be King of the land beyond the Mist.”
He struck his chest once with his fist.
“I am his loyal retainer, his sworn brother-in-arms, and most importantly—his friend.”
Then he pointed directly at her.
“If you want his life, you’ll have to get through me first.”
The words hung in the clearing.
The smoke. The drifting petals. The heat.
All of it seemed to pause for a second. And all I could feel was crushing secondhand embarrassment.
I covered my face with one hand while he spoke.
From behind it, I muttered, “That is so cringe, man.”
Asahi turned and gave me the cheesiest smile possible.
Then Florene spoke again, and both of us snapped our attention back to her.
“So…” she said, eyes narrowing with sharpened interest. “You’re another ArchHuman.”
Both of us widened our eyes.
Asahi turned to me first.
“Another Arch Human?” he muttered. “Ryu… does she know what we are?”
I narrowed my eyes at Florene.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s been saying confusing things like that this whole time. And every time I ask, she refuses to answer.”
Asahi swallowed as he turned his gaze toward Florene.
Then his whole body sharpened.
I did the same—rolling my shoulders once, cracking my neck, flexing my fingers until the joints popped. The sound was small compared to the battlefield around us, but in that moment, it felt like the opening click of a lock before something dangerous came free.
“Asahi,” I said, eyes fixed on Florene, “summon Rita. We’ll need every bit of help we can get if we want to win this.”
“I can’t.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
Asahi’s expression tightened. “Something is blocking her manifestation. I think this whole place has been stripped clean of light manacules.”
I clicked my tongue.
“That blows.”
“You summon Death’s Mercy,” Asahi shot back immediately.
“I would,” I said, “but with the mana I have left, he’d only last ten seconds. Maybe less.”
The air around us crackled with heat and drifting petals.
“It’s pointless.” I finished.
(No. It isn’t.)
Mercy’s voice struck through my thoughts the instant the words left my mouth.
(Mercy?)
(Ten seconds is enough.) His tone was iron. (I can set the stage for your victory, Master.)
The confidence in his voice hit me harder than I expected. It steadied something in me.
Even so, I still had to know.
(How do you plan to do that?)
(Summon me only when you know you have no better option.) His answer came sharp and certain. (Then leave the rest to me.)
The conviction in his words left me with a strange stillness.
(...You’ve got it.)
For half a heartbeat, I slipped out of the battlefield entirely—caught in the space between panic and trust.
“Ryu?” Asahi called.
I looked at him and realized I was smiling.
A strange smile. Sharp. Certain.
“You asked me if we could win this, right?” I said.
“Right,” Asahi answered.
I looked back at Florene, teeth showing.
“Then buckle up for victory, friend. I’ve got a plan.”
Asahi stared at me for a second, then smiled back—not because he understood, but because certainty and confidence are contagious.
Then I drove one fist into my open palm and let my eyes lock onto Florene.
“I don’t have enough mana left for real offense,” I said. “So back me up.”
Asahi nodded once.
“Got it.”
We stood side by side and faced her.
For the first time since Asahi had arrived, it really felt like Florene wasn’t facing one enemy. She was facing two.
Florene smiled.
Then she opened her arms wide as if she meant to embrace the entire woods.
And she began to speak.
“Roots of the deep earth, petals of unborn dawn… trees of towering skies…”
Her voice was not loud.
It didn’t need to be. It rolled through the forest like a law being remembered.
The woods heard her.
Branches shivered. Roots stirred beneath the earth. Leaves trembled where there was no wind.
Asahi’s eyes sharpened.
He understood immediately that she was casting something far bigger than anything before.
He snapped his hand forward and loosed a dozen light swords into the clearing, hoping to cut her spell short before it could fully take shape.
But Florene didn’t even break rhythm.
Roots erupted from the ground in front of her, and thick branches bent down from the surrounding trees, intercepting the swords in a violent series of impacts. Light shattered. Bark splintered. Golden fragments scattered into the air and vanished.
Asahi cursed under his breath.
“I guess there’s no stopping that spell.”
Florene kept going.
“Hear the voice of your sovereign and awaken.”
The ground trembled.
Then it broke.
Five gigantic trees burst from the earth around the clearing, rising so fast the soil around their roots exploded upward in waves. Their trunks were massive—far wider than any tree that should have been there before—and they towered over the surrounding forest, sealing us in with sheer scale.
Asahi and I turned our heads as they rose, unable to stop ourselves from watching.
The clearing shrank beneath them. The sky narrowed. The world closed.
“Let every path bend. Let every flower obey. Let every breath within these woods be mine to judge.”
Florene raised her hands to the sky.
Above us, the giant trees bloomed.
Flowers the size of carts opened at the tops of their trunks, shedding pollen and petals in thick, glowing streams.
And with that bloom, the forest changed.
Paths shifted. Trails folded into each other. Distances warped. The woods beyond the clearing twisted into something only Florene could navigate.
“Bloom, O sacred forest—by my will, by my name, by my authority…”
Her eyes gleamed.
“Zeus Woods: Absolute Bloom—Grand Cage!”
The spell completed.
The five trees stood like pillars of judgment around us. Their blossoms hung overhead like watching suns. Petals rained down in slow, deliberate spirals, and even the air felt different—heavier, claimed, ordered.
We were sealed in.
No help was coming. No path remained.
Only us. And her.
Florene stood beyond the ruined clearing, calm and untouched by the enormity of what she had just called down.
“This is my final spell,” she said. “If you can escape this cage, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
Her smile sharpened.
“But let me warn you…”
The ground trembled again.
The plant-beasts from before came to life all throughout the cage—hounds of thorn, serpents of bloom, root spiders, stag-beasts of vine and antler. They scraped, hissed, growled, and clawed at the earth, ready to rush the moment she ordered.
“Not even fire can burn it.”
As the sound of claws, roots, and breath filled the sealed arena, I felt something strange stir inside me.
A pulse of energy.
Just hearing her call it her *final spell* made my blood heat again.
So this was the end.
Good. Because I was done being dragged through her games.
“Asahi, let’s go!” I shouted.
“Right!”
We moved at once.
I rushed the swarm with nothing but my bare hands—but bare hands alone weren’t going to tear through Florene’s final cage. The beasts pouring toward us were too many, too fast, too relentless to beat down with raw strikes alone.
Asahi understood that immediately. Understood why I said to back me up.
Two long swords of light flashed into existence above the battlefield.
They came screaming down through the petal-thick air and stabbed into the ground directly in my line of advance, their glowing hilts quivering from the impact.
I didn’t slow down.
The moment I got within reach, I grabbed both hilts while still running and ripped them free from the earth.
The beasts hit me a heartbeat later. And I answered.
One slash—a hound split clean through the middle, roots and petals scattering in opposite directions.
Second slash—a serpent’s blooming body opened in two and burst apart in drifting ash and flower flesh.
The air filled with the smell of sap, smoke, and scorched pollen.
Behind me, Asahi came in like falling light.
Spears rained down from the sky, crashing into the rear line of beasts in bright, booming strikes that threw dirt and petals everywhere. The light spears impaled hounds, pinned root spiders to the ground, and tore through vines before detonating.
I kept pushing forward.
Florene still stood outside the cage. Still calm. Still watching.
The beasts surged up to stop me. So I changed my grip and hurled the first sword like a spear.
It punched through a vine stag’s chest and pinned it to the ground.
The second left my hand a breath later, skewering another before it could leap.
Barehanded again. Still moving.
I jumped and raised my hands above my head as if I were already holding a weapon.
Asahi saw me.
He didn’t hesitate.
With a flick of his hand, a hammer of light appeared in my grip—heavy, radiant, and already formed for impact.
I brought it down into the middle of the swarm.
The ground screamed.
The strike broke earth and root alike, the shockwave blasting outward in a violent ring. Dust, broken petals, and chunks of soil flew in all directions as the beasts nearest the point of impact were hurled away like toys.
Asahi picked off the ones that survived the blast as they scattered, cutting through them with clean light strikes before they could regroup.
For a heartbeat, it looked like we had made space.
Then the cage responded.
The five giant trees groaned.
Their bark split, and roots thicker than spears tore out from the trunks, lashing through the air toward us.
One slammed down where I had been standing a breath earlier.
I threw myself aside.
The root smashed into the ground with enough force to crack stone, then ripped free again and came for me a second time. Another followed. Then another.
They weren’t just attacking. They were herding me. Driving me.
I ran toward Asahi because every instinct I had said the only way to survive this was to stay inside his reach.
He was under attack, too.
Roots and branches hammered down on him from multiple sides, and the light around his body flashed constantly as he blocked with shields, cut through vines with swords, and forced openings just big enough to move.
When he saw me closing the distance, he moved too.
We crossed paths in a blur.
He threw his sword into my hand. Then he formed a light whip.
We switched roles without speaking.
I planted myself and cut down the roots snapping in from his side.
He spun the whip in bright arcs behind me, lashing branches apart before they could crush my blind spot.
The clearing thundered with impacts.
Wood splintered. Roots cracked. Light hissed. Flame burst. And when we finally destroyed the last wave—the next one was already there.
The tree trunks split open.
Not like bark breaking.
Like mouths opening.
Deep within those hollowed cavities, seed-like chambers glowed—and then spat volleys of hard, glistening seeds toward us.
At the same time, the giant flowers blooming atop the trees lit up.
Solar Bloom Beams.
The air around us turned lethal in an instant.
We dodged some of the seeds—but once the beams came with them, there was no weaving out of it cleanly.
Asahi threw up a light shield, and we dove beneath it together.
The Solar Bloom Beams struck the barrier and dragged across it with a shrieking sound, bright and terrible, like metal being welded to the sky. Heat spilled over the edges. Light bled through in cracks.
Above us, seeds slammed into the shield and burst, releasing thorns and vines that scraped uselessly against the outside.
The whole barrier shook.
Then the beams stopped. Reloading.
We burst back out from under the shield before the next volley could lock us in place.
And that was when we realized the worst part—the beasts were back.
The ones we had just cut down had regenerated.
New root spiders skittered over the shattered earth. New hounds prowled through drifting petals. New serpents slithered through the cracks in the ground.
And all around them, the roots rose again.
“This is bad, Ryu!” Asahi shouted, breath ragged as he fought.
He was right. The situation was not in our favor.
I was still carrying battle fatigue from Florene.
He was burning through focus and magic to cover both of us. And every second inside this cage was being spent on survival.
Not progress. Not escape. Not victory. Just surviving.
“I don’t think we can keep this up much longer!” Asahi yelled, eyes flicking upward toward the flowers already glowing for another round.
He was right about that, too.
All this time, we had been doing nothing but fighting off what the cage sent at us.
We hadn’t even tried to break free.
That had been the point of the spell, hadn’t it?
Not just to kill us—but to trap us in a battle that would eventually wear us down.
The cage wanted to keep us inside. Alive or dead, it didn’t matter.
And Florene… She still stood outside all of it.
Watching.
She hadn’t lifted a finger since casting the spell. She didn’t need to.
The forest was fighting for her.
The beasts swarmed.
Roots angled toward us like spears ready to be loosed.
Above, the Solar Blooms brightened again.
The next wave was already coming.
“I think it’s time you used that plan of yours!” Asahi shouted.
The words hit me in the last moment before the pressure finally broke past what we could answer alone.
I didn’t think. I called.
“Death’s Mercy!” I shouted. “I don’t know what you’ve planned—but come to me!”
And just like that… I placed our escape in his hands.
And in that instant—time seemed to slow.
Not because the world had changed, but because something in the battlefield made room for him.
Black-and-white ash-smoke curled into existence at the center of the Grand Cage, twisting upward in a narrow column. The beasts lunged. The roots snapped forward. The Solar Bloom Beams blazed overhead—
And then a samurai stood there.
Death’s Mercy.
The air around him felt cut clean.
1 second.
His swords flashed.
The nearest beasts were split apart before their bodies understood they’d been struck. Roots were severed in clean, smoking halves. The Solar Bloom Beams that had been screaming toward us were knocked aside, their redirected light carving harmless lines through the cage instead of through our bodies.
2 seconds.
He stepped once. Just once.
And everything around that step became a path for death.
3 seconds.
His sword returned to its sheath.
The battlefield lagged behind him, as if reality itself needed a moment to catch up.
4 seconds.
5 seconds.
Before either of us could fully understand what he had already done, Mercy was in front of us.
He seized Asahi and me by the collars in one motion.
“Forgive me, Master. Sir Asahi.”
Then he moved us.
Asahi was flung first—launched through the air with precise violence.
I followed immediately after, hurled in the same direction: straight toward Florene.
“WHOA—!!”
We both shouted as the world dropped beneath us.
6 seconds.
Mercy unsheathed both swords—light in one hand, dark in the other—holding them in reverse grips. A black-and-white ash-colored aura ignited around him, the smoke and light twisting together until it looked like dusk and dawn had been folded into one body.
7 seconds.
8 seconds.
9 seconds.
He spoke as he moved.
“Composite Magic…”
The words were low, but the whole cage seemed to hear them.
“Yin Yang.”
A giant magic circle bloomed across the ground beneath the Grand Cage, its lines stretching from trunk to trunk until the entire battlefield was marked. The symbols glowed in shifting black and white, and for a breath, everything under the circle seemed to lose its natural balance.
In Mercy’s eyes, the world turned grey.
Then he ran.
Not like a man. Not even like a spirit. Like a cut made visible.
He crossed the battlefield faster than sight could follow, and every place he passed was undone.
The beasts fell apart in clean lines before they could turn their heads. Roots that had taken all our effort to break were sliced and dropped like dead snakes.
Then Mercy turned his path upward.
He leapt. And in one fluid motion, he reached the five giant flowering trees and cut through their crowns.
The massive blooms—those gigantic flowers feeding the Grand Cage—were severed at the stems.
Petals exploded into the air.
The sound came a heartbeat later.
10 seconds.
Mercy landed. Sheathed both swords. And bowed to us as black-white smoke began to pull his body apart.
The cage responded instantly.
Everything that had been threatening us—beasts, roots, the oppressive force of the spell itself—went slack.
The giant trees groaned.
Then the flowers, too massive to fall gracefully, crashed downward. The earth rumbled beneath the impact.
Petals poured through the air like a dead season.
He did it, I thought, watching the Grand Cage begin to collapse.
“Let’s do this, Asahi!” I shouted. “Let’s finish it!”
“Yeah!”
We flew side by side toward Florene, bursting through the dying edge of the cage while petals and broken branches still rained around us.
Florene was in a daze. She had seen everything that happened—and even that hadn’t helped her stop it.
By the time she realized we were already on her, it was too late.
Asahi and I clenched our fists. And drove them into her face at the same time.
We screamed as we hit her—not from rage, but from venting everything she had dragged us through. Every illusion. Every insult. Every wound. Every moment, she made us suffer.
The impact was beautiful.
Her face rippled under the strike.
Momentum carried through all three of us, and Florene flew backward through the woods, smashing through trunks and tearing down branches as she went.
Asahi and I landed outside the ruins of the fallen cage.
Both of us were gasping.
Our lungs burned. Our bodies shook. Every joint and muscle felt used to the limit. But it didn’t matter.
Because for that one moment—We had finally put our hands on her.
“We did it,” Asahi said between breaths.
“Yes,” I answered, breathing just as hard. “We did.”
We looked at each other.
Then a grin spread across both our faces at the same time—the kind born from exhaustion, relief, and shared madness.
We stood a little straighter and bumped our fists together.
This was the first time we had truly fought side by side on equal footing. Not like against Vevil. where one of us was leading and the other supporting.
This time, we stood together. And I had to admit—it felt damn good.
