Chapter 2103: A Palm

Aina's head snapped toward Leonel, her glare quite vindictive. She looked as though she wanted to teach Leonel a lesson right here and now, he was truly too much. It didn't matter if he teased her like this in private, but why with so many people listening? The worst part was that her parents-in-law were definitely watching, and who knew, maybe her father was out there, somewhere, watching too? How was she going to face people now?!

Her face blushed down to her neck. It likely went much further than that, but the spinning black metallic feathers were moving so fast that nothing between her knees and collarbone could be seen clearly.

In the past, this transformation had completely ruined Aina's clothing. Leonel had long since created something for her that could survive the change, but that didn't stop these feathers from acting much the same as they always did.

Aina couldn't seem to stand still anymore, feeling that her embarrassment was about to boil over. However, how could she vent her anger on Leonel? Obviously, the two to suffer would be the shadow woman and Xavnik.

Xavnik didn't even know what hit him. He barely registered a crimson-black glow and then he felt as though his body was streaking through the skies even faster than any meteor shower he had ever laid eyes upon. He was stunned. He couldn't imagine why the gap was so large. Weren't they both in the Seventh Dimension? He was even quite confident in his strength. He had met so many powerful enemies, and he had defeated them all, but how had things ended up like this?!

He felt that if it wasn't for the fact that he had deployed his Divine Armor at the final second, he would have been pierced right through.

As he flew, his armor finally slid into place, but a huge dent had appeared in his chest plate, deforming his blackish green armor and shattering his ribcage.

He coughed up a mouthful of blood, his gaze turning redder and redder as he flew.

How had things ended like this? How had he turned out to be so pathetic? How could he lose like this?! Xavnik was so agitated that the beating of his heart pushed against his shattered rib cage. When he rebounded against the ground, he didn't seem to feel anything. The whites of his eyes turned entirely black, and his bronze irises seemed to streak with lightning.

The shadow woman, who was still coughing up blood herself, was trying to stand when she sensed this change. Her own expression warped, and she didn't seem to be happy about what was happening.

The demon blood running through Xavnik's body wasn't pure. Technically, the strength of the demon race was that they could reproduce with any race and the mutations that occurred would allow them to come out much stronger on the other side, it also helped them to not be bound by the same weaknesses as humans.

However, not every such mutation would turn out to be extraordinary.

Xavnik was lucky in that the Morales bloodline had strong ties with demons to begin with. As such, the other half of his lineage worked even better than usual.

But what was happening right now was an unexpected variable. It was none other than something that Leonel was quite intimately familiar with: Bloodline Deviation.

When Leonel had first awakened his Metal Synergy Lineage Factor, he hadn't been well informed on how things worked. As a result, he had tried to awaken it far too early and before he had developed all nine, or rather, ten of his Nodes. Back then, he had almost failed and the Bloodline Deviation caused a crimson character to appear within his Lineage Factor. Even until this moment, he wasn't quite sure what it was, and it was still with him to this day.

He didn't really think about it much because it didn't seem to affect him much. However, when he had the conversation with Adawarth's father, he began to speculate that that crimson energy was likely related to the Morales family's fiery tempers. It was probably the case that Leonel's Bloodline Deviation had caused it to appear much earlier in his life than it did for most others.

However, there was something else that had happened that day as the elders of the Morales family observed Leonel's breakthrough.

The violet winds rise north.

Those words were meaningless to Leonel. After all, he hadn't been there when they were spoken and he wasn't even aware of them. But they were currently a shadowy whisper, almost as though an echo of another reality was speaking into his ears.

This aside, it was Xavnik's changes that had triggered this memory within Leonel. He seemed to have lost himself to rage, the hidden danger of the Morales family's Lineage Factor fusing with the intricacies of his demon bloodline.

His body was filled with an endless amount of vitality, his Divine Armor even quickly repairing, but his mind wasn't clear.

Large plumes of black fog came from his body, pushing his body up from the ground and standing him up. He looked as though he had been possessed by an abyss of blackness.

The shadow woman grit her teeth and suddenly vanished, entering Xavnik's shadow. Her aura vanished entirely and Xavnik's own multiplied several times over. Some clarity returned to his eyes, but a fiendish, menacing hint of something extra was still hidden within.

He howled to the skies, a spear twice the height of his body appearing in his hand as he suddenly struck out.

Aina stood in silence. From start to end, she didn't seem to feel the need to act at all.

Suddenly, a towering crimson manifestation appeared to her back. She struck out a palm the moment it formed, the manifestation and her real body moving as one.

BANG!

The newly strengthened Xavnik froze, a powerful pressure descending upon him from above. Under the astonished gazes of those watching, his Divine Armor began to disintegrate, fluttering into the wind and leaving behind nothing but a naked Xavnik.