The Seven Demon's Tamer

"I think you must be mistaken," Valachi said, and his body slowly began to levitate upward, rising into the air without any visible means of support.

Valachi pure white eye, which had been unsettling enough before, now began to burn with actual black flames that flowed with menace in the darkness of the night.

"I haven't even begun to use my own internal energy yet, not my techniques, and you're acting like you've achieved some great victory," Valachi continued. "You must have forgotten your place just because I decided to have some fun with you."

Everything that had happened so far—the intense battle, the lightning techniques, the transformation abilities, the single scratch that Master Sung had managed to inflict—all of it had been nothing more than Valachi playing around.

The creature hadn't even been trying, and that seemed to be just about to end.

---

Mikasa slowly circled Draki like a predator analyzing its prey, though it wasn't the actual case right now, because... Well, she was the one being hunted.

The memory of her perfectly crafted crystal spear bouncing harmlessly off his scaled hide played on repeat in her mind. It hadn't just been deflected—it had been dismissed, as if her most powerful offensive technique was nothing more than child's play.

'I don't know exactly what this thing is capable of,' she began her inner monologue, her breathing carefully controlled to help her remain calm. 'Nor do I want to be the victim that would enable me to figure it out.'

'But it's not like I have a choice.'

*Crystal Manipulation!*

She chanted with the full force of her intent, pouring her gamma energy into the technique, activating it instantly at full power.

Crystals began materializing around her skin like living armor, growing and materializing as a coat around her. Each crystalline plate was perfectly formed, harder than steel yet lighter than paper, creating a protective shell that should have been capable of withstanding tremendous force.

*Wham!*

It was as if she had known this would be handy half a second later, because as soon as the crystal armor formed around her body, it shattered half a second later.

Draki had swooped in so fast that her enhanced reflexes as a Sen couldn't even begin to process the speed. One moment he was standing casually in front of her, the next he was behind her, his massive fist buried in her back.

The crystal armor that had been infused with gamma energy in the creation process shattered like fragile glass under a hammer.

The air was knocked from her lungs with such force her vision momentarily went blurry.

'How?' The question echoed in her mind as she stumbled forward, her legs finding it hard to maintain balance. *How did he move that fast? How did he know exactly where to strike to shatter the entire armor structure with a single blow?*

The air felt like it was coming back slowly to her lungs as she tried to regain her balance, each breath a conscious effort that required more energy than it should have. But even as she fought to stay upright, she could sense that Draki was already positioning himself for another attack.

'This is it,' she realized with crystalline clarity. 'I can't dodge this. I can't block it. I can't even see it coming.'

Time seemed to slow as Draki's fist began its forward movement, cutting through the air with so much force that his fist was ignited in motion.

*Wham!*

The impact of the punch was solid evidence that Draki hadn't held back his strength, not even in the slightest, for that potentially final blow.

A heavy ripple of force erupted from the point of impact, carrying so much destructive energy that it leveled the entire vicinity around them.

Trees that had somehow survived the earlier battles were uprooted and sent flying violently. The ground cracked for hundreds of meters. The very air seemed to compress and then explode outward, creating a shockwave.

All these were the product of one punch.

At this point, with all the chaotic battles that had taken place across the Red Eastern Guild's base, the area didn't look like a place that had once contained civilization anymore.

What had been the Red Eastern Guild base, a feared exclusive vicinity during the daytime, was now a wasteland of war, dry and devoid of life except for the combatants.

It was now a wasteland of war, as dry and devoid of life as a desert.

Draki slowly pulled his massive fist out of the ground where it had created a crater, this one significant. He straightened up with the unhurried movements of someone who had all the time in the world.

"It was your familiar's affinity, wasn't it?" Draki, who wasn't the conversational type, spoke, his voice loud enough for the one he wanted to hear him.

He was speaking to someone who definitely wasn't Mikasa—someone who had interfered at the last possible moment.

"The ability to swap the places of two different tangible entities," he continued, his gaze fixed on Akira, who was standing protectively in front of a very shaken Mikasa.

Akira had made a split-second decision about which battle she would join, and that had turned out to be the combat between Mikasa and Draki.

She had made this choice just moments ago, as Draki was preparing to deliver what would certainly have been a fatal blow to the unprotected Mikasa, who had lost her crystalline defense.

Without a second thought, she had activated her familiar technique—the Entity Swap technique that defined her combat style and had saved more lives than she could count, even now.

In the time within one heartbeat, she had made Mikasa exchange places with a large chunk of rubble, effectively teleporting her out of harm's way just as Draki's devastating punch connected with solid rock instead of human flesh.

"She had no chance to dodge it after all," Akira murmured to herself, helping Mikasa to her feet while keeping her eyes fixed on Draki. "You move too fast for even a Sen to track."