The three Lords were ready to fight Alice and finish her off quickly. She was only a Tier-5 Lord, just like them. However, given their age and combat experience, they ought to win without even breaking a sweat.
The woman with the violet string Soultrait, whom Michael named Violet, released her Soultrait through her other hand. Hundreds of violet strings shot out of the tip of her fingers with great velocity. They crossed the short distance to Alice in the blink of an eye and cut through the buildings and concrete around her.
The surrounding structures were cut apart and diced into small pieces, whereas the violet strings restrained Alice's movements. Simultaneously, the two other Lords unleashed their Soultraits. The body of one Lord expanded. His physique was reconstructed rapidly, his bones turning into metal and his flesh growing increasingly more resilient. The Lord's height increased to over four-meters and hair grew all over his body, further strengthening his defenses. The Lord's Soultrait turned him into a beast, therefore, granting him the name Beast.
Beast passed through the opening Violet left for him and emerged in front of Alice. Alice was just about to block Beast's attack when she lost control of the energy residing in her body. Alice required only a moment to realize that her energy veins had been sealed by the last Lord, preventing her from using her energy to reinforce her body physically, or to use her Soultrait.
Attempting to use the power inside her was painful and exerted a toll on his body. However, Alice was familiar with this Soultrait. She knew the owner of this Soultrait very well, and she was overly familiar with the downsides of this Soultrait; the increasingly high energy consumption. Energy Seal was a Soultrait that required a tremendous amount of energy to be initiated and maintained. As long as the user possessed enough energy to maintain Energy Seal, it was near-impossible to break it. Unfortunately, with increasing resistance of the target, the user would have to use more energy to maintain the Energy Seal.
With that in mind, Alice resisted the Energy Seal with all her might, while dealing with Beast as well. Beast's claws swept down, sinking into her shoulder, and tearing her frozen armor apart. Alice didn't expect the brute force of Beast's attack to be that high, but she allowed the attack to impact. In exchange, her longsword cut through the highly resilient fur and hide of Beast's leg. The longsword cut into Beast's leg but it didn't cut deep enough to inflict serious damage.
This left Alice with no other choice but to pull the sword back and struggle a battle of attrition. She had to stall time until the Energy Seal on her would break. She retracted the sword and retreated, only for dozens of violet strings to cut into her frozen armor, slicing it apart piece by piece. Beast pushed closer to Alice, acting like the cut in his leg didn't bother him. In fact, that was not far from the truth. After transforming into a beast, Beast's natural regeneration increased rapidly. His wound stopped bleeding and it was only a matter of minutes before the wound would heal completely.
The Lord using Energy Seal focused on his Soultrait. He didn't jump into the battle with Beast. Instead, he allowed Beast and Violet to focus on inflicting damage and stalling time. The three Lords required time. Just like Alice, they had an ace up their sleeves. Initially, they wanted to capture Michael and escape using the spatial-type Soultrait of James. Unfortunately, Alice killed James before he could move them out of the city. Therefore, they had to resort to Plan B.
The Lord using the Energy Seal retrieved a golden crystal and a dozen Common Energy Stones from his War Rune's spatial storage. He crushed the Common Energy Stones, resulting in a spontaneous explosion of power to fill the air around them. The highly purified, compressed energy swept through the surrounding for a moment until the Lord tapped into the compressed energy. He channeled the energy into the golden crystal, slowly filling it with energy.
The golden crystal began to glow dimly as the highly purified power filled it, bright sparks illuminating the sky.
'Spatial energy!' Michael realized, his eyes narrowing the moment he discovered the golden sparks the golden crystal manifested.
The golden crystal generated spatial energy. It required a tremendous amount of energy, but that hardly seemed like an issue given the purified energy that permeated the air.
Michael had no idea how much control the Lord had over the spatial energy, but Spirit Eyes allowed him to see that the golden crystal established a faint link to the Lord.
'Can he create spatial portals according to his will?' He wondered, his expression souring.
It was only fortunate that the violet strings around Michael grew weaker as Violet's focus remained on Alice. Michael used the opportunity and unleashed Extraction in a compressed and overclocked state, destroying the violet string with some effort.
Violet noticed that some of her strings were destroyed, slowly ripped apart from within, but all she had to do to fix the issue was to create new violet strings. They coiled around Michael's body, and cut into his flesh. Michael's flesh felt much harder to cut through than before but its resilience was weaker. Oddly enough, it lacked energy.
Despite being unable to divert her attention from Alice, it wasn't further difficult for Violet to keep Michael in check. He was merely a Lesser Lifeform, after all.
The Energy Seal restrained Alice a lot but the effect wouldn't last much longer. It was only a matter of time before the Energy Seal would be too weak to contain Alice. The Frozen Duchess was a pain in the ass. She was a natural combat expert and dealing with her was much more difficult than the three Lords had anticipated. Even though her energy was sealed, restraining her usage of Frozen Kingdom, her Inheritance Technique and the vast majority of her other martial art techniques could be used to tackle Beast and Violet.
She had yet to sustain any serious injuries, whereas Beast had been inflicted with a few wounds.
Violet's patience was waning so she decided to end the battle.
She executed her Inheritance Technique, Storm of Bladed Strings, putting more pressure on Alice as the lethality of her strings increased by leaps and bounds. Violet transformed her strings into highly flexible blades with razor-sharp edges.
The strings cut through Alice's frozen armor and sliced into her flesh. Alice uttered a muffled scream before cutting through the strings. The longsword swirled around her body with deadly precision, severing the strings just before they could inflict severe injuries. However, the attack was not yet over. It had just begun.
Alice's eyes narrowed and her focus increased instantaneously as hundreds of bladed strings filled her peripheral view. Her body moved instinctively, the longsword in her hand dancing wildly, cutting through the majority of bladed strings. Only a few strings managed to reach her body.
Unfortunately, each string that managed to evade her sword-dance cut deep into her flesh, some even reaching her bones. Two bladed strings managed to cut into her bone, nearly severing her wrist in a single go.
As Alice was busy dealing with the Storm of Bladed Strings, while the energy in her body was still sealed, Beast didn't hesitate to attack either. He required a few moments to execute his Inheritance technique, but once his preparations had been completed, he initiated a terrific attack.
His monstrous body was like a bullet-train as he charged at Alice, flinging her through the air like a feather. Alice smashed hard into the nearest building. She crashed through the walls of the old, traditional building, which collapsed on top of her right after.
"How much longer do you need, Esmald?" Violet asked the Lord with the Energy Seal Soultrait.
She turned her attention back to Michael, who was supposed to be tied up like a lovely christmas present. But he was not there anymore. Her violet strings were coiled around a corpse…the corpse of a Tekur. Somehow, the corpse of a Tekur had replaced Michael in the tied knot of violet strings.
Michael managed to escape Violet's confinement of strings when she executed her Inheritance Technique. Storm of Bladed Strings required her entire focus, and a massive amount of energy. She executed the Inheritance Technique using her full mastery to eliminate Alice Zenovia before they could run away. By doing so, Violet created a small opening for Michael to escape, and he took it.
He made use of her distraction and escaped. However, instead of running for his life, Michael emerged in the old, collapsed building where he found Alice.
Her entire body looked like a hundred people had stomped over her. She was bruised black and blue and dozens of deep gashes decorated her fair skin. Michael had never seen Alice so beaten up. In fact, she had never been beaten, or so he thought.
The Energy Seal on her body was still intact.
Michael disregarded that and exerted Extraction to remove the Energy Seal as swiftly as possible. Thereafter, he used his newest creation, Heavenly Realm, with the Shard of Archangel's Grace inside him. His Soul Power was quickly drained but the wounds all over his body and that of Alice healed rapidly.
Alice opened her eyes and looked at Michael. The golden stigmatas covering his body grew dimmer and they were about to disappear entirely. Alice groaned and got up from the ground.
"I didn't expect you to come to rescue me. They're here to kidnap you, you know?" She joked lightly, knowing damn well that there was no time to joke right now.
"How about you beat them up a little bit?" Michael asked, ignoring her bad joke.
Instead, he used the energy he'd extracted from the air around him to apply several layers of Enhancement onto Alice's body.
"That should be enough," He mumbled,
"Go, rip them apart!"
