The instant she finished speaking, her Aether detonated.
It was not a release; it was an eruption, a declaration of war against the stillness of the room. A monstrous, unrestrained pressure, raw and untamed, swept through the chamber like a physical typhoon.
The air itself didn't just move; it shrieked, compressed and torn apart by the sheer kinetic violence of her will.
Reckless whirlwinds of pure force, visible only as heat-haze distortions in the air, smashed into everything with the indiscriminate fury of a hurricane.
The priceless, monolithic obsidian table, a slab of volcanic glass that had witnessed a century of noble politics, didn't just break; it atomized. In a split second, it was scoured into a cloud of glittering black dust that was blasted across the room.
Priceless crystal decorations, each worth a fortune, vaporized into mist.
The Aether-infused walls, grown from living crystal, groaned under the strain, the intricate internal patterns of glittering ice flickering as if their light was being strangled.
Elysia and Lisanna felt the immense, suffocating pressure for only a fraction of a second—a weight that threatened to crush the air from their lungs and buckle their knees.
Then, in a movement so swift it was more a suggestion than an action, Chloe was in front of them. A gentle, shimmering barrier of translucent, golden energy wrapped around them, cutting off the kinetic torrent completely.
The girls could only stare, bewildered and gasping, their minds still struggling to process this explosive, utterly untamed strength.
This wasn't the power of a student; it was the power of a natural disaster.
Orion, untouched by the storm his sister had unleashed, shot a calm, appraising look at Chloe.
"Protect them well," he said, his voice a steady anchor in the chaos. "Things are about to get chaotic."
At the same time, Theron, Kaelen, Elara, and Alya were violently forced from their seats. They didn't just jump; they flashed out of the way with the smooth, practiced efficiency of masters, their own potent Aethers flaring to life like miniature suns, carving out pockets of safety amidst the shockwave and shredded debris.
Commander Magnus and the golden guard similarly blurred, reappearing several meters away, their professional stoicism shattered, replaced by expressions of twisted shock and a flicker of genuine, primal horror.
Only the two Silver Guards remained where they stood, trembling, their bodies locked in place. Lyra was directing the full, crushing weight of her Aether pressure directly onto them. Their movements became terrifyingly sluggish, their state-of-the-art silver-frost armor groaning and popping as if caught in a hydraulic press powerful enough to compact a battleship.
Lyra shot them a disdainful glance, a predator eyeing wounded prey. "Orion. Let's hurry up and blast these glorified statues out of the way. I'm curious about the real toys—those C-Rank Heroes."
"Heh." A soft chuckle escaped Orion's lips, and an icy pressure of his own, a completely different flavor of terror, swirled into existence. Streams of crystalline Ice Aether, so dense and cold it seemed to absorb the light around it, erupted from the floor around him.
A pressure even stronger than Lyra's initial blast, more focused and conceptually heavier, swept out, superimposing itself over his sister's kinetic storm.
The effect was instantaneous and profound.
"This... this pressure... it's—!" Theron Wintercroft's eyes widened, his glacial composure finally cracking, the fissure of disbelief spreading across his stern features.
Lady Elara went rigid, staring at Orion as if he were an abomination, a ghost from a nightmare she never knew she had. She could sense it. The specific quantum signature of the Aether particles within that ice energy, the fundamental resonance of his core... it wasn't just like the Wintercroft Cryokinesis Talent.
It was a perfect, one-to-one, molecular-level match for her own daughter's unique Aether signature.
"HOW?!" The word was not spoken; it was torn from Elara's throat, a raw, ragged shriek that jettisoned every last shred of her noble composure into a pyre of stunned fury.
It wasn't just her. Theron, Kaelen, and Ayla couldn't maintain their calm. This was impossible. It defied every known law of Aether, every principle of inherited Talents, every sacred tenet of the bloodlines they held so dear.
How was this Sump rat, this gutter-born nobody, not only perfectly replicating their daughter's hallowed power, but surging it with a degree of profound control and raw, untainted purity that made Elysia's own feel like a pale imitation?
Orion and Lyra didn't give anyone a single moment to process the sacrilege.
Lyra casually flicked her fingers, a gesture one might use to dismiss a fly. A tiny, compressed stream of vibrating Aether, almost invisible save for the way it warped the light passing through it, hummed through the air.
Beside her, Orion mirrored the gesture, his own finger flicking forward to unleash a needle-thin shard of glacial ice. It was a sliver of absolute zero, so cold it left a lingering trail of frozen, glittering condensation in the air behind it.
The two tiny, almost insignificant streams locked onto the two Silver Guards.
The guards' faces went pale white with terror. They roared in unison, a sound of desperate defiance, unleashing every single ounce of Aether from their cores.
Surging their most powerful combined skill, they brought their hands together, instantly condensing a single, giant Ice Aether greatsword between them—a massive, shimmering blade radiating enough raw power to level a city block.
It was their ultimate technique, the "Glacial Executioner."
In that same moment, they slashed down, unleashing their combined might in a glorious, defiant arc of crystalline fury.
It was utterly, pathetically, useless.
The moment the vibrating stream and the ice shard touched the giant sword, it didn't slow.
It didn't struggle or crack.
The complex Aether construct was simply unmade.
The vibrating energy destabilized its kinetic bonds from within while the glacial shard froze its core structure solid, causing a catastrophic, instantaneous structural failure. The greatsword ceased to exist, shattering into a silent cloud of glittering, inert dust.
The attacks continued unabated, savagely smashing into the two guards.
"AHH—!"
They shrieked, a harmony of pain and horror. Their powerful, silver-frost armor, touted as powerful C-Rank defensive technology, seemed as fragile as porcelain.
With a deafening CRACK, shards of enchanted metal blasted across the air. Blood spewed from their mouths and erupted from the impact points on their chests in a fine, crimson mist.
They were thrown like bullets, smashing clear across the chamber, their bodies carving deep trenches in the obsidian floor before they slammed into the far wall with a sickening, final crunch. They crumbled to the ground like broken puppets, silent and unmoving.
A brief, stunned lull descended as every noble and guard tried to comprehend what they had just witnessed.
C-Rank elite heroes, scions of a great house trained from birth and far stronger than the average street hero, had just used their strongest combined skill... and were instantly, effortlessly, and contemptuously crushed by a mere flick of the siblings' fingers.
There was no time to comprehend it.
Orion and Lyra shared a look of perfect, silent understanding. In their shared gaze was a lifetime of fighting for survival in the Sump, a cold, hard-won philosophy. They couldn't hesitate. They couldn't hope for peace through negotiation.
In this world, whether it was heroes preaching saccharine justice or villains justifying their atrocities, one fundamental truth reigned supreme: absolute power decides the rules.
Lyra barely waited a second before she dashed.
She didn't run; she exploded forward, the floor cracking and spiderwebbing beneath her feet as she became a blur of motion. Her oppressive aura crashed down solely on the remaining golden guard.
She punched out, unleashing not a simple stream, but a tidal wave of vibrating Aether energy that tore through the air.
The golden guard howled, his survival instincts screaming at him. He erupted with all of his Aether, unleashing blinding streams of pure Light Aether that illuminated the ruined chamber.
He instantly condensed his strongest defensive skill: a miniature, phantom replica of a searing sun, a "Solar Corona," which swirled to life above his head, radiating unbearable heat and blinding light.
"You insolent—!" the guard tried to shout, to buy a moment, to establish his own momentum.
It didn't matter. The vibrating tidal wave smashed into his phantom sun. Shockwaves of conflicting light and kinetic energy erupted outward, pulverizing what was left of the chamber's interior and forcing the nobles to retreat again, their faces grim masks of fury.
In seconds, the phantom sun, a technique designed to incinerate battalions, was vibrated apart, systematically dismantled at a molecular level as if it were a child's sandcastle against the tide.
In that same instant, Lyra appeared directly in front of the horrified guard and smashed out a fist encased in a visible, shimmering shroud of vibrating power.
"DIE!" the golden guard reacted on pure instinct, drawing a saber from his waist in a blur of light and encasing it in his photonic Aether. He slashed out to intercept her fist.
With a thunderous CRACK that echoed like a cannon shot, the saber—an Aetheric artifact of immense value—was brutally smashed out of the guard's hand. It spun end over end, a streak of gold flying across the room until it embedded itself, humming, deep into the far wall.
Lyra's fist continued, savagely smashing into the golden guard's chest. His gold-plated armor, superior even to the silver, offered no resistance. It crumpled and imploded like tin foil as her fist bashed directly into his sternum.
The guard let out a choked, wet shriek. Numerous bones within his chest shattered instantly. He soared backward like a meteorite, smashing into the wall with even greater force than the silver guards, leaving a massive spiderweb of cracks radiating from his impact point before he crumbled to the ground in a broken heap.
And it still wasn't over.
The instant the golden guard was airborne, Orion reacted. A spear formed of pure, crystalline ice, so perfectly clear it was nearly invisible, roared to life in his hand.
He thrust it straight toward Commander Magnus, and a whirlwind of unfathomable ice pressure swirled across the entire chamber, the ambient temperature plummeting toward absolute zero.
"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Commander Magnus finally roared, his disciplined calm shattered into a thousand pieces of righteous fury.
He had no other choice but to unleash every single ounce of Aether within his core. A storm of ice and golden light blasted out of him simultaneously as he surged his own strongest skill, condensing a massive, raging waterfall of glacial Aether and hard-light photons above his head.
A magnificent broadsword, similarly encased in his powerful, combined ice-light Aether, appeared in his hand. His momentum utterly dwarfed that of the other three guards combined.
This was the true power of the Captain of the Wintercroft Guard.
"GIVE UP, YOU—!"
Magnus couldn't finish his sentence. Orion didn't meet the apocalyptic attack head-on. With an Aether-enhanced leap, he suddenly launched himself high into the air, soaring above the roaring ice waterfall with impossible grace.
And without a moment's hesitation, he inverted his spear and slammed it down from above.
The resulting shockwave of pure, condensed Cryo-Aether continually swept across the entire chamber.
"Damn it!" Theron, Kaelen, Elara, and Alya were forced back again and again, needing to push their own C-Rank Aethers to their limits just to stand their ground against the secondary shockwaves.
Chloe silently dragged Elysia and Lisanna to the farthest corner of the room, her own golden power flaring brightly to protect them as the chamber's automated defense mechanisms finally activated, shimmering energy shields flickering to life only to be battered and stressed by the sheer output.
In that moment, a series of thunderous shatterings echoed out. Orion's ice spear descended like a falling mountain, continually smashing apart the cascading ice waterfall, reducing the complex, ultimate technique to nothing but tiny, glittering particles of inert dust.
Commander Magnus roared, the ground cracking beneath his boots. Seeing his ultimate attack annihilated, he brought his ice-encased broadsword up in a desperate, two-handed slash the moment the spearpoint neared his head.
Ice spear met ice sword. A surging shockwave of pure zero-point energy exploded outward.
But the collision didn't even last for a second.
The broadsword, an artifact of immense power and the symbol of his station, was smashed out of Commander Magnus's hands as if it were a wooden toy.
Before the commander could even register the loss of his weapon, Orion instantly shifted his grip on the spear, savagely smashing the blunt, heavy end of the weapon straight into his chest.
"GAAH!"
The Commander shrieked. His golden armor, the pride of the Wintercroft estate, completely burst apart. His chest caved inward with a sickening crunch as blood spewed from his mouth, and he vomited a torrent of red.
He soared across the air, tumbling end over end, before smashing into the wall and crumbling into a heap beside his three fallen subordinates.